L'Aquarium de la nuit

by Victor Hugo

« Le rêve est l'aquarium de la nuit » Surréaliste sans le savoir, grand amateur de songes et d'images insolites, Victor Hugo a souvent navigué dans les eaux sous-marines de l'esprit et de l'âme bien avant que le XXe siècle ait inventé l'existence de l'inconscient. Ce recueil, qui s'inspire d'une plaquette publiée dans les années cinquante par Guy Lévis Mano (GLM), poète et imprimeur bien connu des bibliophiles, présente un choix d'environ quatre-vingts petits textes en prose (vingt-six dans l'édition GLM) de longueurs diverses, tirés de l'oeuvre de Victor Hugo. « Vous tenez le livre, vous l'avez sous les yeux, tout à coup il semble que la page se déchire de haut en bas comme le voile du temple. Par ce trou, l'infini apparaît. » Puisse cet ouvrage inciter le lecteur, qu'il soit ou non un admirateur de Victor Hugo, à découvrir une facette méconnue d'un poète trop célèbre, et à plonger lui-même dans les profondeurs de ses propres rêves.

47 pages

First published November 15, 2005

About the author

After Napoleon III seized power in 1851, French writer Victor Marie Hugo went into exile and in 1870 returned to France; his novels include The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).

This poet, playwright, novelist, dramatist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, and perhaps the most influential, important exponent of the Romantic movement in France, campaigned for human rights. People in France regard him as one of greatest poets of that country and know him better abroad.

Reviews

[a · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a nice little book of mystical prose poems and aphorisms. I probably won't have the motivation to read any of Hugo's longer works any time soon so this was just the ticket.

Some rough translations of my favorites:

10. "The man who doesn't reflect lives in blindness, the man who reflects lives in darkness. We have only a choice between blacknesses."

11. "The night is the normal state proper to the special creation we are part of. The day, short in duration as in space, is only the nearness of a star."

15. "Oh God, only punished stars! Only crucified constellations! Lord, your heaven is covered in wounds, your stars are drops of blood, your suns fester, your moons suffer from the horrible disease of punishment...."

21. "If I have wings, they are the wings of a bat the flowers have never seen, but the stars know."

31. "The apostle pales at the things he says, as the bell-tower trembles with its bells."

38. "The root births in the dark a rose for the sun."

39. "Things are the pores God comes out of."

41. "Music is thinking noise."

45. "A kiss that easily becomes a bite—this is the sea."

51. "Religion is nothing other than the shadow cast upon human intelligence by the universe."

55. "The I of the infinite is God."

62. "Pride has the advantage of protection from envy."