Victor Hugo dans la Grande Guerre

Abstract

This paper looks back at Victor Hugo's uses, in France, during the Great War and just after it. During the war, the poet's pacifism and internationalism are essentially ignored at the almost exclusive benefit of the patriotic and sometimes warmongering verses from L'Année terrible (1872). Later on, the commemoration of the killed soldiers will often use the poem ‘Hymne’ (1831) from Les Chants du crépuscule. This presence of Hugo in propaganda and civic rituals can be explained by his status as a national icon, but also by the historical situation of poetic practice: Hugo's verses echo the one written by many amateur poets. Furthermore, these uses of Hugo's work place the Great War in the continuity of wars and revolutions of the 19th century, and contribute to the symbolic construction of a post-revolutionary national history, even if it implies to obscure the evolutions affecting the political meaning of nationalism.