HUGO (Victor).

Lot 47
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Estimation :
2000 - 3000 EUR
HUGO (Victor).
Les Burgraves. Paris, E. Michaud, 1843. In-8, red morocco, triple gilt fillet, spine decorated with a repeated gilt fleuron, inner gilt lace, gilt head, untrimmed (Gayler-Hirou). First edition. Les Burgraves was first performed at the Comédie-Française on March 7, 1843 and played a total of thirty-three times in the same year. The play is traditionally considered as the major event that provoked the fall of Victor Hugo and put an end to theatrical Romanticism; wrongly, it seems, because the story is quite different, in reality born of a cabal set up from scratch against Hugo: Very quickly a theatrical myth is born: that of the failure of Victor Hugo, and with him of all Romantic drama, which would have had a very short existence, from 1830 with the battle of Hernani to 1843 with the fall of Les Burgraves. [...] Hugo's contemporary critics made people believe in the fall of the play, and ultimately in the end of Romanticism, which disturbed an official stage, that of the Comédie-Française, reputedly classical. For them, it was a question of signing the death certificate of Romanticism, but also of annihilating the figure of Victor Hugo, who was both aesthetically and politically embarrassing (Agathe Giraud, "La cabale contre les Burgraves de Victor Hugo", COnTEXTES, 27, 2020, [text online]). On the false-title, a signed letter from Hugo to his friend Agénor Altaroche (1811-1884), editor of the Charivari and future director of the Odéon theatre (from 1850 to 1852). A copy bound in the period by Gayler-Hirou, Barbey d'Aurevilly's usual bookbinder. Some rubbing to the binding, a tiny crack of one cm to a jaw.
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