Essay On The Imagery Of Victor Hugo

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Victor Hugo Used Imagery In His Poetry,To Appeal To The Reader'S Five Senses

Victor Hugo, a French novelist, philosopher, poet and politician was the literal counterpart of Napoleon Bonaparte. Pre – eminent scholars like Leo Tolstoy hailed, the French general as the personification of the verve and spirit of France. He was the embodiment of the throbbing omniscient “life force” that had unseated the “old order” in post – revolution era. Studying Hugo in isolation would be a great injustice to a prolific artist. Boisterous and pompous, Hugo asserted that his works constituted a whole. He employed different vehicles to disseminate his brilliant ideas. At times discursive, at times rambling, and at times tangential but always with flashes of pristine sublimity. A discerning genius who let himself sink into the profundity of the words he conjured. A radical rebel with poignant analysis he was epitome of the unrelenting profuse manifestation of virtuosity.
Critics of art have always profusely praised the lyrical nature of Hugo’s prose and poetry. The breadth of his vision is expansive and all encompassing. It does not classify between beauty and depravity, perfection and mundane, sublime and base. It is syncretic amalgamation of antipodes. A fusion of contradictions but a breathtaking whole. He paints pictures, describes sounds and captures the imagination of the reader. Reading Hugo is tantamount to allowing a painter the canvas of one’s imagination, without thinking, without any conscious effort, he draws pictures like a master craftsmen. Victor Hugo was republican and a devout Christian.
His religious overtures deeply tinge his poetry with a melancholy brooding. In addition, he was a romantic par excellence. He even s...

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...ole is expressed in his verse. In all these respects, he is the precursor and inspiration for the poets who follow: Baudelaire, the Parnassians, and the Symbolists are all to a large extent his disciples and his debtors. Hugo stature as Napoleon of literature remains unchallenged not because of the fertility of his ideas nor because of the magnitude of his writing. They are enduring because they evoke subjectivity. Reading his works is like following the journey of Dante in Divine Comedy. The reader is Dante Alighieri, whereas Hugo attains the position of Vigil. He guides us through the labyrinthine of poetry and soothes are faculties with wondrous beauty. The words of Keats, aptly define the works of Victor Marie Hugo,“A thing of beauty is a joy forever” Hugo created beauty irrespective of genre. This is the sole reason is highly revered in all form of expression.

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