15. “Tout reposait dans Ur et dans Jérimadeth” (All were asleep in Ur and in Jerimadeth). Jerimadeth (the word rhymes with demandait, three lines down) sounds like the biblical name of a place, but in fact there is no such place — it is a phonetic equivalent of “J’ai rime à dait” (I’ve got a rhyme for dait).
16. In this perspective, one can better appreciate why the Surrealist movement and the practitioners of écriture automatique recognised Hugo as their ancestor. André Breton himself — the Pope of Surrealism — acknowledged it (such generosity was not usual for him): “Hugo is a Surrealist when he isn’t stupid.”
17. Quoted in Claude Roy, Victor Hugo témoin de son siècle (Paris: Editions J’ai Lu, 1962), pp. 13, 14.
18. Quoted in Jean-Marc Hovasse, Victor Hugo chez les Belges (Brussels: Le Cri, 1994), p. 27.
19. Océan, pp. 273, 276, 286.
20. Adèle Foucher (1803–1868) and Victor Hugo were teenage sweethearts; when they married, he was only twenty and she nineteen; both were virgins and passionately in love. Soon, however, their union did cool down. Adèle had no great interest in poetry and was quite bewildered by the frightful physical frenzy of Victor’s passion. Marriage gave the latter a first revelation of the ecstasies of the flesh, which from then on he was to explore relentlessly with other, more responsive partners. Nevertheless, Adèle dutifully bore him five children; after one early lapse, for the rest of her life she discharged with dignity her role of wife and mother; she became the loyal servant of Hugo’s glory, and until her own death gave him her unstinting support.
21. Just a few months ago, I was struck to find in an influential Chinese magazine (published in Hong Kong) a dialogue between Jin Yong and Ikeda Daisaku on the subject of Victor Hugo. (Jin Yong — pen name of Cha Liang-yong [Louis Cha] — is a prolific, talented and hugely successful author of historical novels, who has rightly been called “the Chinese Alexandre Dumas.” The first volume of his most famous series, The Deer and the Cauldron, masterfully translated into English by John Minford, was published in 1997 by Oxford University Press. Ikeda is a religious leader, former president of Soka Gakkai.) Both read Les Misérables when they were adolescents, and they comment on the indelible impression this left upon them. The remarkable impact of Hugo on at least two successive generations of intellectuals and writers in China and Japan is a topic that deserves a special study. (See Jin Yong and Ikeda Daisaku: “Da wenhao Yuguo: yi renxing zhi guang zhaohui shijie,” in Ming Bao monthly, January 1998, pp. 82–8.)
22. In Brussels alone, within two weeks of the first printing of Volume One, eleven pirated editions came out. See Hovasse, op. cit., p. 98.
23. Tolstoy worked on War and Peace from 1863 till 1868. Les Misérables, which he read in February 1863 as he was in the decisive gestation stage of his most ambitious project, revealed to him what could be achieved by combining the epic sweep of history with the particular incidents of individual destinies — by mixing fictional characters and historic figures. See Tolstoy’s Diaries, edited and translated by R.F. Christian (London: Flamingo, 1994), pp. 154, 158 and 508.
24. Hugo’s involvement with China had two aspects: in public affairs, he showed active human concern and denounced vigorously Western imperialist aggressions in China. (To this day, the Chinese remember his generous interventions.) On the cultural side, however, his awareness of China never went beyond the superficial chinoiserie that was in fashion at the time. One can freely speculate on what his response would have been had he ever seen real Chinese paintings — especially the wild splashed-ink improvisations of the monk-painters of the Song, or the works of the great eccentric scholarly painters of the Ming and the Qing — but the fact is that he had no inkling of their existence. Hugo’s chinoiseries, however, have a grotesque exuberance that is mesmerising, humorous and delightfully crazy; during his exile, he designed an entire salon chinois for his mistress — complete with carved wood panelling, carved and painted screens and furniture. This amazing ensemble has been moved to Paris and reconstructed in the Maison de Victor Hugo in the Place des Vosges.
25. See Journal de Eugène Delacroix, A. Joubin ed. (Paris: Plon, 1950), Vol. 2, p. 88.
26. See André Malraux, Les Voix du silence, (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), pp. 416–18.
27. Pushkin was commenting in a letter on the indecent curiosity with which people were trying to obtain information about the private life of Byron. (Quoted in S. Volkov, Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, op. cit., p. 141.)
VICTOR SEGALEN REVISITED
1. English translations are, respectively: A Lapse of Memory, tr. Rosemary Arnoux (Mount Nebo, Queensland: Boombana, 1995); Steles, tr. Andrew Harvey and Iain Watson (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2007); and Paintings, tr. Andrew Harvey and Iain Watson (London: Quartet, 1991).
2. Les Habits neufs du président Mao: Chronique de la “Révolution culturelle” (Paris: Éditions Champ Libre, Collection Bibliothéque Asia-tique, 1971). English-language translation by Carol Appleyard and Patrick Goode: The Chairman’s New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (London: Allison and Busby, 1977, revised 1981).
3. Victor Segalen, Correspondance, presented by Henri Bouillier, edited by Annie Joly-Segalen, Dominique Lelong and Philippe Postel. 2 vols. (Paris: Fayard, 2004).
4. At this university, if we are to believe Marianne Bourgeois’s congenial Monsieur Sié (Paris: La Différence, 2003), the poet’s name continues to be pronounced, Paris-fashion, as “Segalein,” although he himself always insisted on the Breton “Segalène” (see Correspondance 1, p. 1, 273).
5. It was at this time that Segalen paid a visit to Jules Renard, then recently elected to membership of the Académie Goncourt. In a letter to his wife, Segalen announced that he was going to see Renard, but thereafter he made no further mention of it. Renard, for his part, devoted a few lines in his Journal (14 November 1907) to the occasion: “Had a visit from [Segalen], author of Les Immémoriaux. Under thirty, I think. Navy doctor. Has already made his trip around the world. Seems young, sickly, pale, ravaged, too curly-haired, a mouth full of gold presumably brought back from over there along with tuberculosis. Situation middling but adequate. Would like the Prix Goncourt not for the money but in order to write another book.” And that was that. In all likelihood neither ever read a word the other wrote. Indeed it would be hard to picture two writers, two men even, more profoundly dissimilar: life experience, interests, style, aesthetic — not one thing in common. This was a non-meeting of two asteroids each whirling around on its own orbit. Ultimately the only real meeting point would be in the mind of any reader who happened to nourish a like passion for the work of each writer.