The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-22 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

William Shakespeare. By Victor Hugo. Trans-
lated by A. Baillot. Oae vol., pp. 366. Hurst
and Blackett.
A magnificent rhapsody in glorification of Shak-
spere has here been penned by the illustrious author
of " Les Miserables." Yet—glorification of Shak-
spere though it is, and issued to the world though
it has been in the year of the Tercentenary of the
Poet's Birth—the work, as the writer himself takes
occasion to notify expressly at the very outset, was
originally designed by him to further another pur-
pose altogether. Considered purely with reference
to that first intention of the author's on undertaking
the composition of this work, it might be described
not inaptly as a grand and prolonged flourish of
trumpets upon the issue to the world of Victor
Hogo'a son's translation into French of the writ.-
ings of Shakspere. Victor Hugo himself says
of the book—which, as will be seen above,
he designates simply upo❑ his title-page " William
Shakespeare" that its true title should be Apropos
to Shakespeare. Nevertheless—though he thinks
so and says EJ—we, for one, think not. We regard
each of these two suggested titles as distinctly a
misnomer. The one of them quite as much a mis-
nomer as the other : second thoughts for once, here,
being no better than first—the old proverb to the
contrary, nevertheless, notwithstanding. Although
there are here, for example, upwards of 360 goodly
pages, octavo, it is surprising to find how few of
them are dedicated expressly to William Shak-
spere. Less than thirty recount anew the little
there is known in regard to his " Life." That—
leading off the first of the Three Parts into which
the work is divided Part the Second, in its turn,
leads off with less than thirty pages about the
" genius" of Shakspere. The rest of the book being
not so much apropos to Shakspere, as M. Victor
Hugo would wish us to believe, as apropos to
nearly every great man, ancient, medimval, and
modern—personages as incongruously associated
together in such an astounding gallimaufry of
panegyric, as Orpheus and Rabelais, as Job and
Kant, as Hermes and Beethoven, as St. Paul the
Apostle of the Gentiles and Mootgolfier the
asseonaut, as Isaiah and Moliere, as Phiidias and'
lzekiel, as Socrates and Washington. The whole
of this extraordinary composition constituting in
effect a sort of incoherent apotheosis of the Haman
Race as typified in its Representative Men. That
there are passages of resplendent eloquence in a
work having so wide a range, is only what any one
might reasonably have regarded as inevitable,
emanating, as the volume does, from the hand of
such a master of rhetoric as M. Victor Hugo—him-
self Poet, Orator, Novelist, Publicist, Critic, Man-
of Letters, and Man-of-Politics, if not actually
Statesman and Philosopher as well, all rolled into
one. Yet—admitting this—recognising the genius
squandered over these pages—appreciating to the
lull the varied intellectual power manifested
at uncertain intervals throughout this elabo-
rate and lengthy monologue—we must still
avow quite frankly that we look upon the work as
a whole as unworthy alike of its great writer and of
the yet greater theme upon which that great writer
has therein so eloquently but so incoherently rhapso-
dized. As a whole, we repeat, the Book appears to
us to be unworthy both of Victor Hugo and of
William Shakspere. The author has himself evi-
denced, as we conceive, his own conscious•
ness of the insufficiency of his labours here
—where he, candidly confesses that, in all this,
he is indulging in a sort of wild extravagance.
Asking—when he says so—Why for once in a way
ne should not be allowed so to do. In other words,
it is as though, out of a wilful desire to indulge in
a kind of an intellectual gallop over all creation, he
had fairly flung the reins upon the neck of that
lightning-eyed, thunder-footed Pegasus of his, which
at the first page, as it were, he has bestridden at a
boned. Naturally, again, we would even say, ine-
vitably, while careering thus over so boundless an
expanse of themes, the hoofs of this for once wholly
untrameiledPegasus of Victor Hugo's, strike thoughts
out of the very dust, as it were, now one by one, now
in showers and cascades of light--' like sparks
into the darkness." Turning lightly, carelessly over
these alternately sombre and flaming leaves nomi-
nally about Shakspere, but really de omnibus
rebus et quibusdam aliis, let us catch hap-hazard
some of these same flitting sparks of light as they
glitter out upon our recognition
" Homer is the huge poet child. The world is barn.
Homer sings. He is the bird of this aurora."
" Juvenal whips with cutting thongs; Dante scourges
with flames. Juvenal condemns; Dante damns."
" Music is the vapour of art, It is to poetry what reverie
is to thought."
" The theatre is a crucible of civilization."
" The Greek drama had occasionally strophes as powerful
as swords. It rushed on the scene wearing the helmet. It
was an ode around cap-a-pie.
Take, however, for once, a longer passage, as
affording a far more signal illustration of the
abounding beauty and eloquence lavished by Victor
Hugo upon this wayward and wandering dis-
quisition of his apropos to Shakspere. Take his
definition of some omng the countless marvels
noticeable in "Hamlet." He has already remarked
upon the strange reality which characterises poeti-
cal creations. WLerenpon he seizes the occasion to
observe that there is no more striking evidence
that it is so than this very type—
HAMLET.

Hamlet has nothing belonging to an abstraction about
him. He has been at the University ; ho has the Danish
rudeness softened by Italian politeness ; he is small, plump,
somewhat lymphatic; he fences well with the sword, hut
is soon out of breath. He does not care to drink too soon
during the assault of arms with Laertes, probably for fear
of producing perspiration. After having thus supplied his
personage with real life, the poet can launch him into full
ideal. There is ballast enough.
Other works of the human mind equal " Hamlet," none
surpasses it. The whole majesty of melancholy is in
Hamlet, An open sepulchre from which goes forth a
drama, this is colossal. Hamlet, is to our mind, Shake-
speare's chief work.
No figure among those that poets have created is more
poignant and stirring. Doubt counselled by a ghost, that
is Hamlet. Hamlet has seen his dead father and has
spoken to him. Is he convinced ? No, he shakes his head.
What shall he do ? He does not know. His hands clench,
then fall by his side. Within him are conjectures, sys-
tems, monstrous apparitions, bloody recollections, vene-
ration for the spectre, hate, tenderness, anxiety to act and
not to act, his father, his mother, his duties in contradiction
to each other, a deep storm. Livid hesitation is in his
mind. Shakespeare, wonderful plastic poet, makes the
grandiose pallor of this soul almost visible. Like the great
larva of Albert Darer, Hamlet might be named "Melan-
cholia," He also has above his head the bat which flies
embowelled, and at his feet science, the sphere, the compass,
the hour-glass, love, and behind him in the horizon an
enormous terrible sun which seems to make the sky but
darker,

Nevertheless at least one half of Hamlet is anger, trans-
port, outrage, hurricane, sarcasm to Ophelia, malediction
on his mother, insult to himself. He talks with the grave-
diggers, nearly laughs, then clutches Laertes by the hair
in the very grave of Ophelia and stamps furiously upon the
cane. Swordthrusts at Polonius, swordthrusts at Laertes,
swordthrusts at Claudius. From time to time his inaction
is torn in twain, and from the rent comes forth thunder.
He is tormented by that possible life, intermixed with
reality and chimera, the anxiety of which is shared by all of
us. There is in all his actions an expanded somnambulism.
One might almost consider his brain as a formation ; there
is a layer of suffering, a layer of thought, then a layer of
dreaminess, It is through this layer of dreaminess that he
feeht, comprehends, learns, perceives, drinks, eats, frets,
mocks, weeps, and reasons. There is between life and him
a transparency; it is the wall of dreams; one sees beyond,
but one cannot step over it. A kind of cloudy obstacle
everywhere surrounds Hamlet. have you ever whilst
sleeping had the nightmare of pursuit or flight, and tried
to hasten on, and felt anchylosis in the knees, heaviness in
the arms, the horror of paralysed hands, the iu possibility
of movement? This nightmare Hamlet undergoes whilst
waking. Hamlet is not upon the spot where his life is. He
has ever the appearance of a man who talks to you from
the other side of a stream. He calls to you at the same
time that he questions you. Ho is at a distance from the
catastrophe in which he takes part, from the passer-by
whom he interrogates, from the thought that ha carries,
from the action that he performs. He seems not to touch
even what he grinds, It is isolation in its h ghest degree.
It is the lonelinr, 38 of a mind, even more than the loftiness
of a prince. Indecision is in fact a solitude. You have not
even your will to keep you company. It is as if your own
of
self was absent and had left you there. The burden
Hamlet is less rigid than that of Orestes, but moreun,.du-
lating; Orestes carries predestination, Hamletcal:ri.e _s fate.
a
And thus apart from men, Hamlet has still in hira
something which represents them all. Agnosco f
ra
trem.
have
At certain hours, if we felt our own pulse,
we
would
conscience of his fever. His strange reality is our own
reality after all. He is the funeral man that
in certain situations, Unhealthy as he is, hamlet
all are
tunlet Vl3rMes

a permanent condition of man. Be represents the discom-
fort of the soul in a lire which is not sufficiently adapted to
it. He represents the shoe that pinches and stops our
walking; the shoe is the body. Shakespeare frees him
from it, and he is right. Hamlet—prince if you like, but
king never—Hamlet is incapable of governing a people, he
lives too much in a world beyond. On the other hand, he
does better than to reign ; he is. Take from him his family,
his country, his ghost, and the whole adventure at Elsinore,
and even in the form of an inactive type, he remains
strangely terrible. That is the consequence of the amount
of humanity and the amount of mystery that is in him.
Hamlet is formidable, which does not prevent his being
ironical. He has the two profiles of destiny.

In all which there is, as we take it, much of
subtle criticism. As there is also, abundantly dis-
cernible in other portions of the work, in which the
great French poet descants upon divers other among
the marvellous creations of the Great Poet not of
England merely, not of et tido. n Europeans even, but
of tae vast and countless race of Humanity. Othello,
for example, and Gordolia—Falstaff and Macbeth—
Portia and lago—with the rest, not alike, but in
the widest imaginable way dissimilar. lu.
asmuch as the book will, doubtless, ac-
complish its primary object, it may be
pronounced successful. It will, without doubt,
serve to llx the general attention both here in Eng-
land and yonder in France, upon the dawning
literary exploit of the author's accomplished son,
namely, the latter's translation (for the first time
worthily) of the immortal works of William Shak-
spere. Otherwise, the book here under -con-
sideration is little better than a superb failure.
It is so wondrous in art, and yet so flawed
and incomplete, that it is more unsatisfactory tha❑
a torso just issued as a torso from the hand of some
consummate sculptor. It is as if a Praxitiles had
presented to the world quite newly from his atelier,
just fresh from his wonder-working chisel, aTneseus
as marred in form, and yet as marvellous in
anatomy (what there is of it) as the Theseus of
the Elgin Marbles! No hands—mere stumps !
No feet—again mere Stumps of limbs Here
and there the wondrous surface jagged and
splintered. The heroic visage itself—noseless !
As faulty, yet as noble,in its outline is this august,
yet, at the same time, this grotesquely incomplete
egigtes of Shakspere. We read it at once provoked
and delighted. It seems at one and the same
moment—all through—to captivate our imagination
and to outrage our judgment. And it is significative
of the unsatisfactory bearing of the whole of this
oratorical rhapsody in honour of Shakspere and of
a good many others besides Shakspere, that it closes
the enumeration of the great names the author
therein especially desires to eulogize by the mention
of one so holy and so divine, that the mere allusion
to it hero among those who, in spite of their won-
drous genius, are, after all, the mereest mortals,
sounds to us, reads to us, startles us, torments us
like nothing less than a flagrant and certainly a
wholly uncalled-for profanity.