HUGO (Victor).

Lot 35
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Estimation :
1200 - 1500 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 1 769EUR
HUGO (Victor).
Hernani ou L'Honneur castillan. Paris, Mame and Delaunay-Vallée, 1830. In-8, red morocco, title laid out in the Chinese style with white oeser on the spine and the first cover, original composition on the boards and the spine painted with white and grey gouache, with black highlights, the first cover decorated with a piece of leather cut out evoking a fortress, which is entirely enhanced with gouache, untrimmed, cover and back (E. Descamps). First edition of this drama created on February 25, 1830 at the Comédie-Française. The premiere was the occasion of a ruckus orchestrated by the young romantics and a battle led by Théophile Gautier and his famous red waistcoat. Hernani is the first original romantic drama staged at the Théâtre-Français - after Alfred de Vigny's verse translation of The More of Venice, on October 24, 1829, which was performed sixteen times. This was a milestone in the history of the theatre; the Romantics imposed themselves against the resistance of the classics, a resistance that had been shaken by the success of the English company that had triumphed in Shakespeare shortly before (En français dans le texte, n°244). Théophile Gautier, in his Histoire du romantisme (1874), remembers this memorable battle: "Despite the terror inspired by Hugo's band, spread out in small squads and easily recognizable by their eccentric fits and ferocious airs, that deaf rumour of agitated crowds was buzzing in the hall [...]. It was February 25, 1830, the day of Hernani, a date that no Romantic has forgotten and that the classics may remember, for the struggle was fierce on both sides. For this generation, Hernani was what the Cid was for Corneille's contemporaries. Everything that was young, valiant, amorous, poetic, received its breath. A copy bound in pamphlet form, enriched with an autograph note in Victor Hugo's hand, which relates these incidents: in 1830, at Hernani, a man was whistling. Suddenly, he took his key out of his mouth, and shouted: this does not mean: it is bad; it means: it is new.
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