Lettre autographe inédite signée de Victor Hugo adressée à Pierre Véron : "Ma maison est sombre et ressemble un peu à la nuit "

Unpublished, handwritten letter signed by Victory Hugo, addressed to Pierre Véron: «Ma maison est sombre et ressemble un peu à la nuit"

Hauteville House 26 March [1866], 12.5 x 20.2 cm, 2 pages on one folded leaf

Unpublished, handwritten letter, signed by Victor Hugo, addressed to Pierre Véron, the editor-in-chief of Le Charivari. Recipient's address handwritten, stamp and several postmarks on the back of the second page.
Several examples of underlining and corrections by Victor Hugo. A small hole ever so slightly affects one letter, due to the mail having been opened, as well as some light signs of folding.

An important, unpublished, lyrical and political letter, in which the ‘homme océan' (ocean man), beset by loneliness on his Guernsey rock, testifies his affinity with Le Charivari's republican artists and journalists.

Exiled following the Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's coup d'état on 2 December 1851, Victor Hugo is successively driven out of Belgium and Jersey. He finally came to Guernsey, to the Anglo-Norman Islands and, thanks to the colossal sales of Contemplations, he acquired Hauteville House in 1856.
In this month in March 1866, Adèle left to live in Brussels with their two sons. Hugo, who refused the general amnesty granted to political prisoners signed by Napoléon III in 1859, decided to live alone on “[son] rocher” “[his] rock,” he stayed there for around fifteen years.
It is from this “demeure haute, poétique et que ressemble à [son] esprite” “high, poetic house which resembles [his] spirit,” as it was described by Baudelaire, that Victor Hugo writes this letter to the journalist, Pierre Véron, the new editor-in-chief of Le Charivari, a satirical, republican magazine that, at its own instigation, takes a more involved turn.
This letter, that remained unpublished, perhaps never did reach its recipient, as Victor Hugo suspected in his second missive addressed to the same person some weeks later. In fact, the poet's mail was closely monitored. The eminently political tenor of this missive, addressed to the “l'étincelante légion d'esprits du Charivari” “Charivari's shining legion of spirts,” most certainly did not escape the censors who could detect a skilful invitation to sedition in the poet's flight of lyricism: “la nuit ne fait pas peur aux étoiles” “the night does not frighten the stars”; “ces chimères pouvaient devenir une réalité” “these chimeras could become reality”; “vous dire tout ce que je ne vous écris pas” “tell you everything that I do not write to you”; and perhaps, this strange sign of (or from) times to come: “Voici avril, voici mai, notre printemps est admirable” “This is April, this is May, our spring is admirable”...
However, this invitation to “s'envoler par-dessus la mer jusqu'à [s]on rocher” “fly over the sea to [his] rock” is above all a moving testimony to the poet's loneliness, which gives his correspondent two superb pages of poetic prose showing Hugo's great themes: “Ma maison est sombre, c'est vrai, et ressemble un peu à la nuit” “My house is dark, it is true, and it looks a little like the night”; “nous causerions, vous, moi, tous vos amis, tous les miens, et je vous présenterais mon vieil océan” “we would talk, you, me, all of your friends, all of mine, and I would offer you my old ocean”; “ma cuisinière bretonne rapporte quelquefois [...] des monstres marins” “my Breton cook sometimes reports [...] sea monsters”...
“Je fais quelquefois un rêve” “I sometimes have a dream.” With this incipit, Victor Hugo creates a dream world in which he “f[ait] de Hauteville House un grand dortoir” “makes Hauteville House a large dormitory” where ”les ténèbres” ”the darkness” of his exile, filled with “chimères” “chimeras” and “monstres marins” “sea monsters” that he invites his reader to enjoy with him, time for a “songe, un peu mêlé d'espérance” “dream, mixed with a little hope.”
However, despite this allegorical breath, the poet does not hide his nostalgia for the capital: “Pourquoi ne me feriez-vous pas cette joie et n'apporteriez-vous pas Paris dans ma solitude? Comme vous y seriez les bienvenus!” “Why do you not give me the joy of bringing Paris to my loneliness? Since you would be welcomed!”
Yet, having refused to return to France, Hugo reveals his doubts to this new comrade in arms: “telles sont les illusions que je me fais” “such are the illusions that I am making”; “le cœur de l'absent s'épanouirait, cela me ferait l'effet d'une rentrée dans la patrie, et je serais un moment heureux” “the heart of the absentee would flourish, this would be like returning to the homeland, and for a moment I would be happy”; “que de remerciements je vous dois, tantôt pour une page, tantôt pour un mot, toujours et partout!” “I owe you so much thanks, sometimes for a page, sometimes for a word, for everything!”
Torn between the Parisian cultural excitement and Guernsey's rich tranquillity, Victor Hugo, in this letter, paints a wonderful picture of his island, like the seascapes he likes to paint. The reference to the “rocher” “rock” is reminiscent of the writer's series of photographs on the ‘rocher des Proscrits' (rock of the Exiles) on his arrival in Jersey in 1852, taken by his son Charles. The rock that was then synonymous with rebellion, in this letter becomes the symbol of his isolation.
However, the most beautiful and important image that Victor Hugo paints for his correspondent is undoubtedly that of his « vieil océan » « old ocean », the poet's faithful friend, that he never tires of contemplating from the top of the lockout that he built looking out to sea. For him, it is not only a source of fictional inspiration - it is in Guernsey that he composes Les Travailleurs de la mer, the huge saga depicting the island's residents - but also pictorial: here he paints several seascapes, paying tribute to this element of which he is so fond. The Ocean is also, and above all, the poet's mirror; it symbolises the ebb and flow of human thought. Several years earlier on the occasion of William Shakepeare's jubilee, Victor Hugo had also coined the term “homme océan” “ocean man,” appointing a whole series of geniuses that made the history of humanity. Would the ocean not be the poet's double, an element that would symbolise his breadth and his polymorphism?
Paradoxically, these difficult years, far away from France, will be the richest in Hugo's career: it is in Guernsey that he will produce many of his main works, particularly Les Châtiments (1853), Les Contemplations (1856), La Légende des siècles (1859) and even Les Misérables (1862).

Faithful to his political commitments and probably aware of the creativity that Guernsey provides, he will refuse amnesty for the second time in 1869: “Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-là !” “And if there is only one left, I will be that one!”