He captures the slangy sarcasm of the gamin, the eloquence of the idealist, the lyricism of the lover. His expository prose, fed by an insatiable curiosity, deals with a range of subjects rarely encountered in a novel. Hugo writes with an absolute command of the mot juste , about history, logistics, philosophy, religion, and political morality. He remains, of course, the greatest word painter in the French language. Countless vignettes and a few bravura pieces such as the desciption of the Battle of Waterloo invest his novels with a heightened sence of reality.
Few writers can rival the vividness and eloquence of Hugo's style.
Created October Third, Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Eight.