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Victor HUGO Poème autographe signé des Rayons et des Ombres : "Écrit sur le tombeau d'un petit enfant au bord de la mer"

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Victor HUGO

Poème autographe signé des Rayons et des Ombres : "Écrit sur le tombeau d'un petit enfant au bord de la mer"

s.d. (21 janvier 1840), 21,2x26,7cm, un feuillet [cadre non inclus].

| "Spare still the mother vainly weeping

O'er baby, lost not long, a-sleeping." |

Signed autograph poem, from Les Rayons et les Ombres:“Écrit sur le tombeau d'un petit enfant au bord de la mer” [Baby's seaside grave]
[21 January 1840] ◇ 21,2 x 26,7 cm ◇ one leaf mounted

Autograph poem by Victor Hugo signed “V. H.”, four stanzas written black ink on a leaf.
Blind stamp of the city of Bath in the lower left-hand corner. Some folds, small traces of foxing along the folds, a few pale stains to the lower right margin, not affecting the text. A few very small dark spots in the lower right margin, one affecting a single letter of the word “retombe”.
Original manuscript and earlier version of Victor Hugo's poem, published as “Écrit sur le tombeau d'un petit enfant au bord de la mer” [Baby's seaside grave] in Les Rayons et les Ombres, XXXVIII (Paris, Delloye, 1840).
Hugo wrote this magnificent eulogy in memory of his great friend Auguste Vacquerie's young nephew, who died at the age of four years and ten months.
The poet had promised a poetic epitaph and personally addressed this manuscript to Vacquerie: “Take these verses, if you still want them for the tomb of this dear little one” (Letter to Vacquerie, January 21, 1840).
As Joseph Petrus Christiaan de Boer pointed out, “There is no sorrow Hugo understood and expressed more delicately than the immense grief that fills the hearts of parents upon the death of a child” (Victor Hugo et l'enfant, 1933, p. 48-49). This poem is the first of a sublime, macabre series composed on the occasion of the numerous tragedies suffered by the families of both Victor Hugo and his friend Auguste Vacquerie. The most famous will be “Demain dès l'aube...”, written after the untimely death of Hugo's beloved daughter Léopoldine who drowned alongside Auguste Vacquerie's brother Charles on September 4, 1843, shortly after their marriage.
Hugo wrote these verses for Charles-Emile Lefèvre, the young child of Vacquerie's sister who had succumbed to sudden illness on November 6, 1839. On January 21, 1840, Hugo sent this manuscript to Vacquerie which includes a variation from the final version published by Delloye on May 16 of the same year:

« Vieux lierre, frais gazon, herbe, roseaux, corolles ;
Église où l'esprit voit le Dieu qu'il rêve ailleurs ;
mouches qui murmurez d'ineffables paroles
A l'oreille du pâtre assoupi dans les fleurs ;

Vents, flots, hymne orageux, chœur sans fin, voix sans nombre ;
Bois qui faites songer le passant sérieux ;
fruits qui tombez de l'arbre impénétrable et sombre ;
Étoiles qui tombez du ciel mystérieux ;

oiseaux aux cris joyeux, vague aux rumeurs [' plaintes' in the published version] profondes ;
froid lézard des vieux murs dans les pierres tapi ;
plaines qui répandez vos souffles sur les ondes ;
Mer où la perle éclot, terre où germe l'épi ;

Nature d'où tout sort, nature où tout retombe,
feuilles, nids, doux rameaux que l'air n'ose effleurer,
Ne faites pas de bruit autour de cette tombe ;
Laissez l'enfant dormir et la mère pleurer. »

' Brown ivy old, green herbage new;
Soft seaweed stealing up the shingle;
An ancient chapel where a crew,
Ere sailing, in the prayer commingle.

A far-off forest's darkling frown,
Which makes the prudent start and tremble,
Whilst rotten nuts are rattling down,
And clouds in demon hordes assemble.

Land birds which twit the mews that scream
Round walls where lolls the languid lizard;
Brine-bubbling brooks where fishes stream
Past caves fit for an ocean wizard.

Alow, aloft, no lull—all life,
But far aside its whirls are keeping,
As wishfully to let its strife
Spare still the mother vainly weeping
O'er baby, lost not long, a-sleeping.'
(tr. Nelson Rich Tyerman)

Hugo sent the manuscript with a touching letter: “Here at last, my poet, is what I have kept you waiting for so stupidly long. [...] Take these verses, if you still want them for the tomb of this dear little one [...] For my part, I do not feel that I have repaid my debt to this angel with so little. I have begun something longer for him that I will one day lay at the feet of his poor mother” (OEuvres complètes de Victor Hugo, Correspondance I, Albin Michel, 1947, vol. 41, p. 141). It is not known which “longer” poem made its way to Marie Arsène Lefèvre, the “poor mother” who would lose her husband and two sons in less than four years. Hugo also wrote two poems in memory of Paul-Léon Lefèvre, Charles-Emile's twin brother who followed him into the grave three years later at the age of seven (Contemplations, Liv. III, XIV and XV).
The immense grief of Hugo and Vacquerie would only bring their “hearts bound to the dreary pedestal” closer together (Contemplations, Liv. V, I , “A Aug. V.”). From August 1848, Vacquerie contributed to L'Événement, the newspaper founded by Meurice and Hugo's sons. He frequently visited Hugo during his years of exile and shot a number of photographs of the writer and his family. Hugo also maintained close ties with Ernest, the surviving son of Marie Lefèvre and nephew of Auguste Vacquerie, whom he named as one of his testamentary executors alongside Vacquerie and Paul Meurice.
We know of another manuscript of the poem sent by Hugo to Juliette Drouet, now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (NAF 13390, fol. 197). It is one of 11 out of the 42 poems in the collection he chose to offer to the love of his life.
A sublime epitaph by Victor Hugo still engraved – with the manuscript variation – on the tombstone of little Charles Émile Lefèvre, “by the sea”, in the romantic cemetery of Graville, Normandy.

Provenance: Auguste Vacquerie; Mme André Gaveau (by descent).