New-York tribune., 1907-06-22
OR4CULAR PAGES.
Victor Hugo in Philosophical and
V0IubIe Mood.

VICTOR HUGo's INTELLECTUAL AUToB1OG-
RAPHY. Postscrptum de Ma Vie) Being the
Last of the Unpublished Works, and Embody-
ing the Authors Ideas on Literature, Philoso-
ply and Religion. Translated with a study of
the last phase Of Hugo's genius, by Lorenzo
O'Rourke. l2rno, PIP. go Funk & WagEalls
Company.
This is amusingly characteristic book. 1t
contains. indeed, the very essence of Victor
Hugo-his violent antithses, his sublime COM
placency, his humorless building up Of rhetori-
cal stuff which is supposed to express great
thoughts but which might mean almost any
thing The translator of these oracular frag
ments writes precisely the kind OF Introduction
10 them that their atmosphere requires. Mr.
ORourke belauds his hero in terms almost
hysterical The seven-stringed Tyre Of Greece"
he says, had sufficed for Racine and Corneille
and Andre Chenier, but Hugo fashioned for him
self mighty organ whose gamut ranged from
the pipes of Pan TO the trumpet of the Last
Judgment" The reader has scarcely caught his
breath after this oUtburst before he comes upon
the statement that Hugo lis primitive genius
of the Homeric strain" Thenceforth Mr.
ORourke is neither TO bind nor to hold, and
from the tumultuous utterance Of his own opin-
ions he passes, easily enough, TO conclusion
in which he attempts 20 speak for others. And
now" he winds up "over one hundred years
after his birth. the conviction seems gradually
TO be gaining ground that Victor Hugo Is TO
be regarded, not merely the greatest figure
In contemporary literature, the bright particular
star Of a single group in the literary empyrean'
but that he is to be ranked in that supreme
constellation of Orion, whose four central orbs
are Homer HGschylus, Dante and Shakespeare.
This we submit is rather tall order, but there
is no doubt about its being in harmony with the
grandiloquence OF Hugo's Intellectual Auto
biography"
That title. by the way is not wholly accurate
There Is a good deal in this book that suggests
wide reading and certain mental processes, yet
its broad tone is essentially emotional We
seem to see the great French egoist seiZing upon
an idea and then developing it, with a thousand
hourishes. TO the beating Of tomtoms, what time
a calcium light is played skilfully over his agi-
tated form His eye rolls in fine frenzy. He
Saws q number Of solemn things but in some
strange fashion his personality gets between us
and their meaning: feel vaguely that he is
driving at something right and fine, but that his
progress is impeded by the nero sound and
fury in which he INDUCES himself He writes
like man who has grown drunk upon words
Thus in his delverances on Genius and Taste"
Great Men," Things of the Infinite" Life and
Death" and so on, he amuses US with his cpl
grams. occasionally threatens to kindle the
imagination. persuades us that he serves high
ideal vet fails in the long run to add anything
fresh or really inspiring TO our thought. With
an appearance of profundity he states that two
and two make four Witness the following:
When then will It be understood that poets are
entities that their faculties combined according to
that a the heart OF all these beings one feels the
same being, the unknown. that in these men there
Is something elemental. that what they 90, they
must needs do ueu roared Iionl that these things
are necessary and crn acterc, that II blows rains
and thunders in their works as in nature and tnat
at certain moments earth trembes at their genius.
primitive genius does not necessarily belong 10
what we wrongly call primifire times II Is a genus
which whatever the age and whatever the ciVlliza-
ton 10 which II belongs springs directly from nat
ure and humanity Whoever drinks al tie granu l
source is primitive whoever enables you TO drink
from thence Is primitive. Beaumarchais is as
primitive as A-istopEanes. Didcrot is as primitive
as Hesiod Figaro and the NeYeu de Rameau
issue directly without transition from the heart OF
humanity. There Is here no question OF reelection:
these immediate creations; II is HE caught
the living
Taste like genius is essentially divine Genius Is
conquest; taste is choice. The all-powertul talon
commences by taking ali; then the flaming eye
its sorting. This sorting OF the prey is taste.
Each genius makes it according to his fancy. The
spics themselves differ from another in huInoC.