The Man of Action of French Romanticism. Aesthetic Views of Victor Hugo and their Embodiment in Poetry and Dramaturgy

Mankovskaya Nadezda Borisovna Doctor of Philosophy Chief Researcher at Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences 119019, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 mankowskaya.nadia@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

The aesthetic views of Victor Hugo, an emblematic figure of French Romanticism, are organically connected with the diverse aspects of his work as a whole as a novelist, poet, playwright, artist, publicist. During his long life, they underwent a significant evolution – from adherence to the aesthetics of classicism and royalist views to the established theory and artistic practice of Romanticism, tinged with democratic pathos. The well-known novels "Notre Dame de Paris" and "Les Miserables" still inspire the creation of operas, ballets, musicals, films, theatrical performances based on them in many countries of the world. At the same time, Hugo's reflections of an aesthetic nature are connected not so much with his monumental romantic canvases as with poetic and dramatic works, early novels on historical subjects, to many of which he wrote prefaces containing the quintessence of his views on art, creativity and the artist's mission.

The core of Hugo's aesthetics was the original concept of the grotesque, which found convincing embodiment in his works of art. The writer's aesthetic quest is connected with the problems of the correlation of the tragic and the comic, the beautiful and the ugly, the sublime and the base, content and form, freedom and order, historical truth and fiction in art, romantic symbolization in the context of the formation of his concept of the artistic essence of Romanticism. Like other French romantics, he paid considerable attention to the issues of national specifics of art, local color, problems of artistic taste, inspiration, imagination, aesthetic enjoyment, artistic style, genius, talent. All these topics form the basis of his judgments about the nature of romantic drama as the pinnacle of poetry of the XIX century and its differences from the classic tragedy.  

Victor Marie Hugo (1802-1885) was born in Besancon, the son of Napoleon's army general Joseph Leopold Sigisber Hugo and a staunch royalist Sophie Trebuchet, the daughter of a shipowner. He had two older brothers, Abel and Eugene. On the business of his father's service, the family often changed their place of residence – from Marseille, Corsica, Elba to Italy and Madrid (in Spain, Victor visited the town of Hernani in the Basque Country), periodically returning to Paris. These trips in childhood largely determined the romantic mood of the future writer. When the boy was eleven years old, he moved with his mother to the capital of France – by that time she had separated from her husband. Here he entered the Lyceum of Louis the Great [See.: 22; 26; 31; 32].

At the age of fourteen, Victor tries himself in drama and poetry. His first writing experiences receive a favorable reception at poetry competitions – an honorable mention for the poem "The Advantages of Learning" (1817) and prizes for the poem "The Maidens of Verdun" and the ode "On the restoration of the statue of Henry IV" – the harbinger of his future "Legend of the Ages". In 1819-1821 . Hugo is actively published in the magazine "Literary Conservative" founded by his elder brother Abel (a literary supplement to the royalist Catholic magazine "Conservative") – soon Victor became its editor-in-chief. His satire "The Telegraph" and "Ode to the Death of the Duke of Berry" earned him a reputation as a royalist and monarchist.

This period includes the early trial of Hugo's pen in the historical genre, the novel Byug-Jargal ^[2] (1818 – the first version was published in 1821), dedicated to the uprising of Negroes in 1791 in the French colony of San Domingo ^[1], as well as the first aesthetic experiences of the young writer associated with reflections on the character the French historical novel and the preservation of the traditions of French literature in the spirit of classical aesthetics – "Walter Scott" ("Literary Conservative, December 1819), "The Legend of Montrose". "The Lammermoor Bride" (ibid., May 1820).

The idol of the young Hugo is Rene de Chateaubriand, he declares that he would like to be Chateaubriand, or nobody ^{[37, p. 339]}. His landmark in the field of historical romance is the Chateaubriand epic poem in prose "The Martyrs, or the Triumph of the Christian Faith" (1809)." To the ability to observe, Hugo notes, the early French romantic added his creative genius, an imagination that can paint, which allowed him to become a great writer. Reflections on the work of Walter Scott lead Hugo to the conclusion that it is necessary to create a new type of historical novel in which historical events would embody the spirit of the times. He sees the dignity of the works of the Scottish writer in the fact that they are almost always as true as what he observes in life. "Stupidity is blind: talent is observant..."; "when talent is developed to such an extent, it is more than talent" ^{[3, pp. 431, 433]}. Scott's romantic stories arouse his admiration – after all, this writer, endowed with a brilliant imagination, the plots of novels are always based on something real, and what is not true in them is always plausible, "and if sometimes you don't read the history of people, then always the history of the human heart" ^{[3, p. 432][2]}.

Hugo pays considerable attention to the national peculiarities of the historical novel, the local flavor. Diving into the creative laboratory of the "Great Scotsman", he notes that the characters of his characters are well outlined and grounded; and if some of them look a little strange, it's only because they are like that in reality. Each of them has as much humanity as is possible with their mores; but it is the lively description of these mores that gives Walter Scott's novels a unique shade of originality. "Sir W. Scott is a Scotsman: it is enough to read his novels to understand this. His commitment to subjects from the history of his homeland proves his love for Scotland; his passion for ancient customs is such that he describes them with all care ... <...> and reverent reverence for the national character allows him to condescendingly describe its shortcomings" ^{[3, p. 433]}.

These ideas were embodied in Hugo's second historical novel "Gan the Icelander" ^[4], written two years after "Bug Jargal" (published in 1823). This Gothic-style adventure novel is clearly tinged with a romantic atmosphere. The author refers to the Middle Ages in it, the action takes place in the European North, much attention is paid to the local flavor, which is characteristic of the aesthetics and art of French Romanticism in general. His young hero, Ordener Guldenlew, the son of the Viceroy of Norway, is noble and brave. For the sake of saving his beloved girl, the daughter of the enemies of the imprisoned grand Chancellor of the kingdom, he, despite the intrigues of intriguers, fearlessly embarks on incredible adventures against the backdrop of the grandiose northern nature. He faces many dangers, including a meeting with the bandit Gan Icelander – an invulnerable man-beast, an evil bloodsucker. The author's description of the cruel mores of that era creates a gloomy atmosphere, contrasting with the sublime feelings of selfless lovers.

"Gan the Icelander" was received by the reading public and critics rather coolly. The critical analysis of this novel by Charles Nodier led to the acquaintance of the author and the critic and served as the beginning of their friendship. Both of them publish their works in the almanac magazine "The French Muse" (1823-1824). In 1824, Nodier headed the Cenacle, the first literary circle of French romantic writers who gathered at his apartment at the Arsenal Library (it includes A. de Lamartine, V. Hugo, A. de Vigny, E. Deschamps, A. Giro and other writers). The "French Muse" becomes the printing organ of this association. The atmosphere of the first Cenacle, this cradle of romanticism, seriously influenced the work of Hugo [see: 12; 13; 14; 28].

Special attention should be paid to Hugo's arguments at the early stage of the formation of his aesthetic views about the beautiful and ugly – later they will be radically revised. The beautiful is associated with the simplicity and spontaneity of literary performance, while the ugly, as the lot of mediocrity, causes disgust. In the mature period of creativity, it is the paradoxical pairing of the beautiful and the ugly that will give rise to the idea of the grotesque. Its forerunner appears to be Hugo's judgments about Scott's literary innovation, associated with the skillful combination of the tragic and the comic: "V. Scott has a great art, he causes laughter and tears almost simultaneously, and the transition from one state to another seems so natural that the contrast is imperceptible" ^{[3, p. 432]}.

In the article "The Spirit of the great Corneille" ("Literary Conservative", January 1820), Hugo is a passionate supporter of this pillar of French classicism, considering him a great tragedian [see: 5, p. 434], but at the same time sharply criticizes the epigones of classicism, linking them with the decline of modern literature. However, in the same issue of the magazine, the article "On Genius" already outlines a departure from classical principles in favor of the romantic language of passions.

Insisting on the "greatness of simplicity" in art, Hugo proceeds from the fact that the language of great passions and events is understandable to everyone. Referring to ancient Athens, he writes that great people are generated by unrest, not order, as in Sparta. "That's why most great people are born at moments of special uplift of the masses. Homer – in the heroic ages of Greece; Virgil – in the time of the triumvirate; Ossian – on the ruins of his homeland and its gods; Dante, Ariosto, Tasso – in the midst of the convulsions of the Italian Renaissance; Corneille and Racine – in the age of the Fronde; and, finally, Milton – singing the first uprising at the foot of the bloody scaffold of White Hall"^{[8, p. 435]}.

By the passions, Hugo understands conscious aspirations, dreams about the main thing on the principle of "all or nothing". It is such great passions that give birth to great people who have the gift of communicating their thoughts to others, making them believe themselves. Suggestive influence, contagiousness is the fruit of emotional excitement: to excite, you need to be excited yourself and effectively express your feelings. The above also applies to art: eloquence is "action, action and action again; but both in the moral and physical fields, in order to convey movement, one must possess it himself" ^{[8, p. 434]}. The young author sees the difference between the types of art only in language, based on the fact that our thoughts are nothing but sensations, and sensations are comparable. Art in this case is designed to express our thoughts in various ways.

At this stage of reasoning, the rational classicist principle is already colored by a passionate romantic impulse, but it continues to persistently assert itself. The author does not forget about the principle of the art of classicism "entertaining – teaching", insisting that "Genius is a Virtue" ^{[8, p. 436]}.

These sentiments find expression in Hugo's first poetry collection, Odes and Various Poems (1822). The royalist orientation of the works included in it impressed Louis XVIII, who appointed the author an annual pension of 1200 francs. The drama of the events is colored in them by lyricism, foreshadowing the strengthening of the romantic line in Hugo's poetry [see: 25]. The moderation of classical stylistics gradually gives way to the passionate emotionality of a spiritual impulse.

This tendency is reinforced in the collection "New Odes" (1824). The author's preface to it marks the strengthening of Hugo's interest in the issues of aesthetic theory, associated with the search for a compromise between classicism and Romanticism as two parties in literature, between which there is a poetic war, no less fierce and fierce than the social war. However, battles, in his opinion, are a bad way to understand each other, negotiations are needed to clarify the essence of the classical and romantic genres and the nature of the relationship between them.

In search of a solution to this problem, Hugo turns to the aesthetic ideas of Madame de Stael, who attributed the classical genre to the pre–Christian, and the romantic to the Christian era ^[3]. However, he considers the literal understanding of this division to be illegitimate – after all, then Voltaire's Henriade should be considered a romantic work. It is unacceptable for Hugo and the idea of contemporary critics that romantic literature is the prerogative exclusively of the XIX century, and romanticism as such is an imperfect expression of an unfinished era. Commenting on the controversy about the origin of this term, Hugo is not inclined to associate the language of romantic literature with the Romance or Roman language. He considers this dispute itself fruitless, as well as the identification of romanticism with something fantastic, indefinite and terrible. And sarcastically remarks: "We wish strength to all these poor out-of-breath Sisyphus, who can not roll their stone on a low hillock in any way. <...> ... the light–weight quarrel of romantics and classics is only a parody of a really important dispute that worries now sane heads capable of reflection. Let's leave the “War of Mice and Frogs” for the “Iliad". <...> There is nothing in common between mice and frogs, whereas Achilles and Hector share their nobility and greatness" ^{[10, p. 439]}.

Offering his own vision of the relationship between Romanticism and classicism, Hugo insists that true talent with good reason sees in the classical rules a boundary that should not be transgressed, and not at all the only path along which one can walk. The rules always call thought to one center – to the beautiful; but they do not limit thought. A poet will never be great just because he writes according to the rules: literature should be enlivened by poetry and fertilized by genius. Hugo emphasizes that in literature, as in any other field, there is only good and bad, beautiful and ugly, true and false. From this point of view, "... the beautiful in Shakespeare is as classical (if classical means "worthy of study") as the beautiful in Racine; and the false in Voltaire is as romantic (if romantic means "bad") as the false in Calderon" ^{[10, p. 437]}.

In the context of reflections on classicism and romanticism, Hugo addresses the problem of taste. Critical notes are clearly beginning to sound in relation to classicism. In relation to the classical ideas of taste, he sees in the latter nothing more than the "ruling power" in literature. However, the rigid normativity of classical aesthetics is fraught with its transformation into a false scholasticism with its lack of taste. Thus, Hugo recognizes the merit of Boileau and Racine in creating the foundations of the French language, but finds in Boileau -the poet – false colors associated with an imbalance of content and form: after all, works that are truthful in essence, he is convinced, should be equally truthful in form.

Like other French romantics, Hugo shows an emphatic interest in the national character of literature and art. Believing that there are as many different literatures from each other as there were different societies, special nations, he advocates the purity of his native language, considering at this stage of his work that "any innovation alien to the nature of our prosody and the spirit of our language should be met as an attempt on the most important principles of taste" ^{[10, p. 442]}. The French national taste, in his opinion, is accustomed not to distinguish the ideas of religion from the ideas of poetry.

Hugo examines the question of the nature of modern French literature in a broad socio-political and religious context – at this stage of his work from conservative positions. He proceeds from the fact that modern literature is the harbinger of that religious and monarchical society that rises from the piles of ancient rubble and recent ruins. Noting that there is a wide, deeply hidden fermentation in the literature of the XIX century, he wonders whether the literary revolution is a consequence of the political revolution. And he comes to the conclusion that modern literature may partly be a consequence of the revolution, without being its expression – after all, society and literature of the French bourgeois Revolution have died and will not rise again. Now, he believes at that time, order is being revived both in state institutions and in literature: "Religion illuminates freedom – we have citizens. Faith purifies the imagination –we have poets. Law comes to life everywhere and everywhere – in morals, in laws, in art. The new literature is truthful. What is the importance if it is the fruit of the revolution? Is the harvest worse because the grains are ripe on the volcano? <...> The greatest poets of the world appeared after great social disasters" ^{[10, p. 439]}. And he sees the poet's task in showing the way to the peoples, returning them to the principles of order, morality and honor – to be an echo of the word of God.: "The lessons of heaven continue to live on in songs. This is the mission of the genius, his chosen ones are the sentinels that are left by the Lord on the towers of Jerusalem and call to each other day and night" ^{[10, p. 440]}.

Two years after the publication of the preface to the collection "New Odes", the scales in Hugo's fluctuations between classicism and romanticism are sharply inclined in favor of the latter, as evidenced by the preface to his collection "Odes and Ballads" (1826)^[4]. The author's choice in favor of Romanticism, both in the poetic structure of the works and in aesthetic terms, is accompanied by an increasingly decisive criticism of classicism in the manifesto spirit: "There are such waters in the world: immerse a flower, fruit or bird in them and after a while you will take them out covered with a dense stone shell, however, under it you can see their original shape, but their aroma, taste, life will disappear. Pedantic scholarship, scholastic prejudices, the contagion of routine, the passion for imitation act in the same way. Immerse your innate abilities, your imagination, your thought in them – they will not come to life anymore. What you extract back may retain some semblance of intelligence, talent, genius, but it has already petrified.If you listen to writers who proclaim themselves classics, then anyone who does not slavishly follow the footsteps laid before him by others deviates from the path of truth and beauty. Delusion! These writers mix routine with art, they take a worn-out track for a good road" ^{[11, p. 446]}.

Hugo strongly condemns imitation in art, considering it a scourge of artistic creativity. He argues more and more passionately that a poet should have only one model – nature, only one leader – truth. It is necessary to write, relying not on what has already been written, but on what the artist's heart and soul, his feelings suggest. He opposes the author's originality to copying classical samples. At the same time, Hugo condemns the very spirit of imitation of both classical and romantic authors, noting that "whoever imitates the romantic poet inevitably becomes a classic because he imitates" ^{[11, p. 446]}. In copyism as such, he sees only an echo and a reflection of genuine art: "After you accurately copy the work of a brilliant person, you will still miss his originality, that is, genius" ^{[11, p. 446]}.

Hugo's reflections on order and freedom in art are connected with this position. He proceeds from the fact that order in him perfectly gets along with freedom, and even is its consequence. However, the order, which he understands as the essence of things from God, should not be confused with correctness, i.e. with the external form created by man. So, in the Gothic cathedral, he sees order, admirable in its irregularity, in modern buildings – the right disorder. And he comes to the conclusion that the creator creates internal order according to the laws of his nature, while the imitator creates correctness according to the rules of his school. From this point of view, Hugo comes to an assessment of classical and romantic literature in favor of the latter – because the order inherent in it expresses the taste of genius, whereas classical correctness is the taste of mediocrity. Moreover, he stands for the natural order, resorting to the opposition of Versailles as an artificially constructed classical park, in which the natural order is violated, perverted, to the splendor of the untouched wilderness of the New World: "Choose between the creation of nature and a masterpiece of gardening, between artificial literature and genuine poetry! It will be objected to us that thousands of dangerous animals hide in the desolate splendor of the virgin forest, while the muddy pools of the French park at best conceal only the most insignificant living creature. Yes, but if you think sensibly, it's better a crocodile than a toad; better the barbarity of Shakespeare than the absurdities of Campistron" ^{[11, p. 445]} – an imitator of Racine and Schiller.

The analogy between romantic art and free, unfettered natural nature does not mean that the artist's freedom of choice is identified with anarchy: in literature, the execution should be the more flawless, the bolder the idea, Hugo emphasizes. And the problem of style is put forward in the first place here – after all, making mistakes in language, it is impossible to clearly convey the idea: "style is like a crystal, its brilliance also depends on its purity" ^{[11, p. 445]}. In his preface, the author of the collection "Odes and Ballads" draws a distinction between these poetic genres, points out their differences. He defines an ode as a poem inspired by religious thought, ancient images, but also by modern events, life impressions – the spiritual principle prevails in it. The ballad has a different character: these are whimsical picturesque sketches: picturesque paintings, dreams, stories and scenes from life, legends generated by superstition, folk legends – more imagination is invested in it. Thinking of the ballad as a proper romantic genre and associating with it the reform of French poetry, Hugo strives at the same time to romanticize the ode, saturating it with the movement of thought that determines the composition and development of the plot, introducing Christian images into it. The combination in the collection of romanticized odes, dating back to classical poetic genres, and ballads, such as "Fairy" (1824), referring to medieval poetry so attractive to romantics, is evidence of the artistic and aesthetic search of the author, the crystallization of his romantic aesthetics.

Whether it's Urganda or Morgana, – 

But I love when in a dream,

All of transparent mist,

The fairy bends the stem of the mill

To me in the midnight silence.

Under the lute the roar of a nightingale

She sings those songs to me,

What did the paladins put together in the old days, –

And I see you, giants,

In your mighty beauty.

She is for everything that is holy,

He tells us to fight to the end,

Orders to squeeze in the hand of a severe

Knight's sword, ready to fight,

And the singer's sonorous harp.

In the wilderness, where I wander for hours,

She, my ubiquitous friend,

With your gentle hands

A ray of light turns into a flame

And it turns sound into a voice. <…>

Victor Hugo. Fairy. Translated by E. Linetskaya

The process of such crystallization was crowned with a genuine manifesto of romantic art, combining the aesthetic credo of Romanticism with the concept of the development of fiction, drama and theater in this vein – Hugo's preface to his drama "Cromwell" (1827). This five–act play, consisting of 6000 stanzas, was dedicated to the vicissitudes of the English revolution of the XVII century. and the fate of its leader - Oliver Cromwell. In the drama, romantic in spirit, the irreconcilable positions of two poets collide, the romantic John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, secretary of the Council of State under Cromwell, and the classicist John Wilmot, reproaching his passionate, irreconcilable opponent for lack of taste:

The French are an example to us in everything. Take

Rakana, he has a Thyrsis with Aminta

Walking through the meadows, leading a lamb

The ribbon is blue. It's elegant!

But Eve, but Adam, but this hell,

The flaming lake, – all this

So rude, harsh; naked Satan

With charred wings! At least

You dressed him in an elegant suit,

In a Florentine cloak, in a pink doublet,

As in the Paris Opera.

Both in the drama itself, permeated with local flavor, and in the preface to it, Hugo unequivocally takes the side of the romantic poet ^[5].

The conceptual core of the preface to "Cromwell" was the theory of the grotesque. An essential place in it is occupied by reflections on such key categories and concepts for the aesthetics of Romanticism as the sublime, melancholy, truth, freedom, judgments about the essence of romantic drama and comedy.

In line with the idea laid down by R. De Chateaubriand in the "Genius of Christianity" and developed by other French Romantics about the superiority of Christianity over paganism, including in the artistic sphere, Hugo proceeds from the fact that the arrival of the spiritualist religion marked the beginning of a new era for the world and for poetry: "This religion embraces everything, because it is true; between her dogma and her cult, she settles morality" ^{[6, p. 447]}. Replacing the decrepit paganism, Christianity lays in its remains the germ of a new civilization that will lead art to the truth, because the starting point of religion is always the starting point of poetry, he is convinced. And based on this, he comes to the conclusion that the new poetry will feel that not everything in this world is beautiful from a human point of view, that the world cannot be deprived of muscles and springs, that the ugly exists in it next to the beautiful, the ugly – next to the beautiful, the funny – with the terrible, the grotesque – with the sublime, evil is with good, darkness is with light. Thus art will make a great, decisive step forward, which, like an earthquake, will change the whole face of the spiritual world. It will begin to act like nature, combining in its creations, but not mixing with each other, body with soul, animal with spirit: "Here is a beginning alien to antiquity, here is a new element that has entered poetry; and just as every new phenomenon in the organism changes the whole organism, a new form develops in art. This element is grotesque. This form is comedy" ^{[6, p. 449]}. It is in the emphasis on the grotesque as the central, from his point of view, aesthetic category of Romanticism, opposite to the sublime, that Hugo sees the main difference between romantic and classical literature, modern and ancient art. He considers the grotesque to be the richest source that nature reveals to art, a fruitful artistic form that contributes to its extreme expressiveness due to the possibility of contrasts. Hugo sees a huge role of the grotesque in the fact that it legitimizes the ugly and terrible, comic and buffoonish, generates picturesque fantasy burlesque images, largely turning inside out the techniques of ancient poetry: when a dwarf appears instead of a giant, a dwarf instead of a cyclops, and the role of the Lernaean hydra is played by local French dragons like the Rouen gargoyle, a violation of habitual expectations gives these opposites are more striking in nature. This is how Rubens understood the grotesque, who willingly placed an ugly figure of a court dwarf among the magnificent royal celebrations.

From all that has been said, Hugo concludes that "the universal beauty that antiquity solemnly extended to everything was not without monotony; the same recurring impression eventually tires. The sublime, following the sublime, can hardly make a contrast, and yet you need to rest from everything, even from the beautiful. The grotesque, the grotesque is like a respite, a measure for comparison, a starting point from which you rise to the beautiful with a fresher and more cheerful feeling, thanks to the salamander, the Undine wins a lot, the dwarf makes the sylph even more beautiful.  <...> the neighborhood with the ugly in our time has made the sublime purer, more majestic, in a word, more sublime than the ancient beauty ..." ^{[6, p. 450]}.

From the standpoint of the priority of the grotesque in the aesthetics and art of Romanticism, Hugo compares it with those categories that prevailed in the theory and artistic practice of most French romantics – sublime and beautiful. He proceeds from the fact that "while the sublime in the new poetry is intended to depict the soul in its true form, purified by Christian morality, the grotesque plays the role of the beast imprisoned in man in relation to it" ^{[6, p. 450]}. Freed from any impure impurity, the sublime is associated with charm, charm, beauty – it will give life in art to Juliet, Desdemona, Ophelia [see: 41]. The grotesque is associated with images of sensuality, avarice, treachery, hypocrisy, figures of the ridiculous, the feeble, the ugly – the offspring of passions, vices, crimes: the embodiments of this will be Iago, Tartuffe, Polonius.

At the same time, Hugo insists that the true poetry of the romantic era, integral poetry, consists in the harmony of the opposites of the grotesque and the sublime, the grotesque and the beautiful: antiquity could not have created "Beauty and the Beast," he notes. In this context, he turns to the comparison of the categories of the beautiful and the ugly. Hugo proceeds from the fact that the beautiful has only one appearance, while the ugly has many of them, "for the beautiful, when applied to a person, is only a form in its simplest ratio, in the most perfect proportion, in the deepest harmony with our organization. Therefore, it always shows us something whole – complete, but limited, like ourselves. On the contrary, what we call ugly is only a special case of an elusive for us huge whole, consistent not with man, but with the whole being. That is why the ugly reveals to us new, but only private aspects of life" ^{[6, pp. 450-451]}. At the same time, another disadvantage, he notes, is sometimes only an integral consequence of a particular beauty: by destroying one, you can destroy the other, together they testify to the identity of the artist. So, some sharp smear, unpleasant at close range, complements the impression and gives liveliness to the whole.

Proceeding from the idea of the predominance of the grotesque over the beautiful and sublime in the literature and art of the Romantic era, Hugo at the same time very soberly notes that it is associated with a fever of reaction, a thirst for novelty, which soon passes: this is the first wave, gradually subsiding. "The beautiful will soon regain its place and its right, which is not to expel the other principle, but to prevail over it. <...> The time will come when a balance will be established between these two principles" ^{[6, p. 451]}, and then the grotesque will have to be satisfied with only one corner of the picture, as in the canvases of Murillo, Veronese, Michelangelo, Rubens.

Hugo's priority interest in the grotesque in its relation to the beautiful and sublime does not mean that he underestimates such concepts as melancholy and local color, which are fundamentally important for the aesthetics of French Romanticism. Melancholy in Hugo's understanding is a feeling that is more than seriousness and less than sadness. This new feeling was unfamiliar to the ancient peoples, it arose under the influence of the spirit of Christianity: "In the face of great vicissitudes, a person, going deeper into himself, began to reflect on the bitter mockery of life. Christianity turned this feeling, which meant despair for the pagan Cato, into melancholy" ^{[6, p. 448]}. Based on his own poetic experience, Hugo has every reason to say that his era, mainly dramatic, is thus highly lyrical. However, lyrical poetry – radiant, dreamy at the dawn of nations, appears gloomy and thoughtful at the time of their decline. Therefore, the ode of the new age is still inspired, but it has already lost its ignorance, it reflects more than contemplates; its dreaminess is melancholy. "It is clear from her birth pains that she has entered into an alliance with the drama" ^{[6, p. 452]}. Drama, on the other hand, contains all poetry in its entirety; poetry is capable of taking any dramatic forms, both sublime and grotesque. The Ode and the epic contain only the germs of the drama, whereas in the drama both are contained in development; it has absorbed their essence.

As for the local color, Hugo proceeds from the fact that the drama should take into account the era, the country, local influences. However, all this should not lie on the surface of the drama, in the form of a few screaming strokes superimposed on a conditional general background when the work is already finished, but in its depths, in the very heart of the work, evenly penetrating into all its corners, as the sap rises from the root of the tree to its very last leaf. "The drama should be deeply imbued with this flavor of the era, so that it ... floats in the air, so that only when you enter the drama and leave it, you can notice that you are moving into another century and another atmosphere" ^{[6, p. 456]}. And here, as in art in general, Hugo calls for choosing not the beautiful, but the characteristic as a product of opposite principles.

It is this combination of opposite principles – the beautiful and the ugly, the sublime and the grotesque – that Hugo lays the foundation for his theory of drama. If B. Constant saw the specifics of the romantic drama, in contrast to the classic tragedy, in the holistic effective portrayal of characters, rather than dramatic passions, bringing to the forefront a new romantic hero – melancholic, passionate, fickle in his feelings and actions, attention to national history, local flavor, the influence of society on artistic life [see: 15 16; 18]; A. de Vigny – in the broad picture of life, instead of the concisely depicted development of intrigue, attention to characters, not types, alternation of comic and tragic scenes [see: 1; 19]; A. de Musset, in contrast, called for a return from drama to tragedy, Aristotelian principles mimesis and catharsis, classical rules that did not allow mixing tragedy and comedy, the portrayal of heroic action in tragedy ^{[23; 24; 17]}, then Hugo thinks of drama as the embodiment of modern romantic poetry born by Christianity. The peculiarity of drama, he believes, lies in its reality, arising from the natural union of two forms – the sublime and the grotesque, combined in drama as well as they are combined in life and in creation, for everything that is in nature is also in art: "So, the grotesque is one of the greatest beauties of drama. He is not only befitting her – he is often necessary to her. Sometimes he appears in it as a homogeneous mass, in the form of whole characters… It penetrates everywhere, because if the lowest natures often have sublime impulses, then the highest ones often pay tribute to the vulgar and ridiculous. Therefore, he is always present on the stage, even when he is silent, even when he is hiding, often elusive, often unnoticeable. Thanks to him, there are no monotonous impressions. He brings laughter and horror into the tragedy. ... he can sometimes, without disturbing harmony, as in the scene of King Lear with his buffoon, add his loud voice to the most sublime, darkest, most poetic music of the soul" ^{[6, p. 453]}. Such integral characters are Danden, Juliet's nurse; Richard III, Mephistopheles are terrifying; in the images of Figaro, Osric, Mercutio, Don Juan, the grotesque is softened by grace and grace. The grotesque, according to Hugo, is also the germ of comedy.

The concept of the grotesque in Hugo's aesthetics is organically linked to his ideas about the truth in art. He points to the insurmountable boundary separating the real in art from the real in reality, the inadmissibility of their mixing. Commenting on the popular idea that drama is a mirror in which reality is reflected, Hugo remarks that if it is an ordinary mirror with a smooth and even surface, it will only give a dim and flat reflection, true, but colorless – paints and color lose a lot in a simple reflection. Drama, he is convinced, should be a concentrating mirror that does not weaken the colored rays, but, on the contrary, collects them, turning flickering into light, and light into flame: only in this case can drama be recognized as art. The opposition to the grotesque in Hugo's aesthetics is the banal, in which he sees a vice that kills art: "Banality is the lot of poets with weak eyesight and short breath. The optics of the scene requires that the brightest, most individual, most characteristic feature of it be highlighted in every figure. Even the vulgar and rude should be emphasized. Nothing can be neglected" ^{[6, p. 457]}. The antidote to the banal is a firm will combined with fiery inspiration.

 The theater appears to Hugo as an optical device that reflects everything that exists in history, in life, in man, but only with the help of the "magic wand of art". The artist fills in historical gaps with the creations of his imagination, colored by the color of the epoch, "puts it all in a form both poetic and natural, and gives everything that truthful and relief vitality that generates an illusion – a wonderful sense of reality ..." ^{[6, p. 456]}. 

According to Hugo, the poet has no right to lie and to fiction, but the truth in art can never be a complete reproduction of reality, it cannot give the subject itself. It is ridiculous to demand that the theater ramp be replaced with the sun, and the scenery with real trees and houses. "Because once we have embarked on this path, logic drags us by the scruff of the neck and we cannot stop. Therefore, in order to avoid absurdity, we must admit that the realm of reality and the realm of art are completely different. Nature and art are two different things, otherwise either one or the other would not exist. Art, in addition to its ideal side, also has an earthly and positive side. Whatever it does, it is limited by grammar and prosody... For its most bizarre creations, it must use various forms, techniques of execution, a whole arsenal of various means. For genius they are tools of art, for mediocrity they are tools of craft" ^{[6, p. 455][6]}.

Hugo warns against direct imitation in the theatrical art of other playwrights – be it Shakespeare or Moliere, Schiller or Corneille, as well as against the processing of novels for the stage, even if they were written by Walter Scott: this leads only to the replacement of one imitation by another, the reproduction of form without spirit, bark without juice. Like most French Romantics, he distances himself from the aesthetics of classicism, subjecting it to principled criticism. For Hugo, the division of genres into high and low is unacceptable; he proposes to remove the unity of place and time from the rule of three unities, preserving only the unity of action, or the whole, as the only true and justified one. He considers this withdrawal to be evidence that at the first push of the classicist rules, "this pillar of the old scholastic building" cracked – it is so rotten, and to lock these rules, and "there are not too many six locks". In the manifesto spirit, Hugo calls: "Let's hit theories, poetics and systems with a hammer. Let's knock down the old plaster that hides the facade of art! There are no rules, no patterns: or rather, there are no rules other than the general laws of nature that rule over all art, and the particular laws for each work that follow from the requirements inherent in each plot. The former are eternal, contained in the nature of things and unchangeable; the latter are changeable, depend on external conditions and serve only once. The first is the log house on which the house is based, the second is the scaffolding that serves during construction and is being built anew for each building. In a word, one is the backbone of the drama, the others are its clothes" ^{[6, pp. 453-454]}. Genius guesses these rules rather than learns them, extracting the first from the general order of things for each of his works, the second from the isolated unity of the content he develops. Hugo poetically compares the playwright to a bee that flies on its golden wings, sits on each flower and sucks honey out of it, and at the same time the cup of the flower does not lose its freshness, and the corolla of its fragrance – in contrast to the actions of a chemist who floods his furnace, inflates the fire, heats the crucible, analyzes and decomposes. And he concludes: the poet should consult only with nature, truth and his inspiration, which is also truth and nature: "So, nature! Nature and truth! The new direction, without destroying art in the least, only wants to build it anew, more firmly and on better foundations" ^{[6, p. 454]}.

Hugo assigns a special role in the formation of romantic art to criticism. In 1827-1830, he headed the second Cenacle, more actively and consistently than the first, which advocated the new romantic art (this literary circle included Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Emile Deschamps, Charles Nodier, Gerard de Nerval, Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset, Theophile Gautier, Prosper Merimet, Alexandre Dumas, Honore de Balzac; famous artists joined poets and prose writers  Delacroix, David d'anger, the Deveria brothers, as well as the composer Berlioz)^[7]. Hugo, like many of his supporters, proceeded from the fact that the existence of the literary old regime, as well as the political old regime, indicates that in the XIX century, the previous century still weighs on the new in almost everything, especially suppressing it through the old school of criticism, which he considers frivolous and ignorant. It should be replaced by a new criticism – powerful, frank, scientific, serious, scientific. United with everything that is best and boldest in literature, young criticism is called upon to free art from two scourges, by which Hugo means "decrepit classicism" and "false romanticism", boldly raising its head next to true romanticism, being its bad copy, parasitizing it, making up for it, taking its colors, in fact, acting as a new classicism. And he develops the credo of such criticism: "The hour is near when a new criticism, based on a broad, solid and deep foundation, will triumph. Soon everyone will understand that writers should be judged not from the point of view of rules and genres that are outside of nature and outside of art, but according to the immutable laws of this art and special laws related to the personality of each of them. <...> ... it is possible to understand a work only by accepting the point of view of its author, looking at things through his eyes" ^{[6, p. 458]}. Fending off possible critical jabs, Hugo notes that flaws in art are often a natural, necessary, inevitable condition of virtues and calls for catching a thread that often connects what a critic, on a personal whim, calls a flaw with what is perhaps beauty. And refers in this regard to the work of Shakespeare: "There are such mistakes that take root only in masterpieces. Only a few geniuses are gifted with some shortcomings. Shakespeare is reproached for the abuse of metaphysics, for the abuse of witticisms, for unnecessary scenes, for obscenities, for the use of mythological trinkets fashionable in his time, for extravagance, in obscurity, in bad taste, in pomposity, in the roughness of the syllable. The oak, this giant tree that we have just compared with Shakespeare, has a lot of similarities with it; it has such a bizarre appearance, gnarled branches, dark foliage, tough and rough bark; but it is an oak. And it is for these reasons that he is an oak. If you prefer a smooth trunk, straight branches, satin leaves – go to the pale birch, to the hollow elder, to the weeping willow; but do not touch the great oak. Do not throw a stone at someone who gives you a shadow" ^{[6, pp. 458-459]}. These words can also be applied to the work of Hugo himself.

Hugo considered Shakespeare's work, organically fusing the terrible and the buffoonish, the grotesque and the sublime, tragedy and comedy in his dramas, the pinnacle of modern poetry, the prototype of modern literature. He saw in the English playwright the god of the stage, whose creations allow us to conclude that a genuine poet, like God, is present everywhere in his creation at the same time, and the purpose of art is almost divine – "to resurrect when it is engaged in history, to create when it is engaged in poetry" ^{[6, p. 456][8]}.

The aesthetic credo, formulated in a concentrated form in the Preface to the drama "Cromwell", Hugo embodied in his work. The quintessence of the grotesque appears Quasimodo in the novel "Notre Dame de Paris" (conceived by the author in 1828, published in 1831) – the ugly hunchback is internally transformed by love for the beautiful Esmeralda; the conflict between the heartless selfish handsome King Francis and the buffoon Triboulet, a hunchbacked freak, in the drama "The King is amused" (1832) acquires grotesque proportions [see: 39].

A convincing artistic confirmation of the principles that formed the basis of Hugo's theatrical aesthetics was the drama "Ernani" (1830), staged on the stage of the "Thtre-Fran?aise" on the eve of the July revolution and caused not only in the auditorium, but also in wide public circles a prolonged acute controversy, known as the "Battle for "Ernani". Its essence was the confrontation of the old, classical, and new, romantic theatrical concepts.

"Ernani" is a truly romantic work. It is implicated in an uncompromising clash of polar forces – a tragic conflict between an all-powerful ruler and a man of the people. The play has all the attributes of a romantic style – a craving for the Middle Ages and its history, local Spanish flavor, passionate love, intensity of emotions, uncompromising characters, upholding ideas about honor and duty, palace conspiracies, tragic denouement. From the rule of three unities, only the unity of action is observed here, and this action develops rapidly, marked by unexpected plot twists built on contrasts. Endowed with a tender heart and a firm will, impetuous Hernani is a truly romantic hero, a freedom–loving mysterious exile, ready to do anything for the love of the infinitely devoted Dona Sol, the assertion of his dignity and the struggle for justice. These internal impulses consistently result in a love rivalry with King Don Carlos, in a conflict with the Duke de Silva, associated with a difference in ideas about Spanish honor, then – in joint participation with the latter in a conspiracy against the king, threatening Hernani with the death penalty. The line associated with the ambiguous figure of the king embodies Hugo's ideas about the embodiment of historical themes in art, the strengthening of humanistic tendencies in his work. Don Carlos is a cruel tyrant, but he is not hopeless. On the eve of his election as emperor, he is tensely waiting at the tomb of Charlemagne to see if this event will happen, and suddenly he sees clearly, turns from a treacherous egoist into a wise ruler who realized that his duty is to take care of national interests, show mercy to the people as the basis of the nation.

 The denouement of the tragedy resembles the finale of Pushkin's "Shot" ^[9]: Ernani is pardoned, nothing prevents the wedding, but suddenly de Silva appears and demands to return his debt of honor – to fulfill the oath once given to him by Ernani to part with his life on demand. Hernani and his fiancee take poison, and de Silva commits suicide.

The play caused fierce disputes between adherents of classicism and romanticism in art and aesthetics, conservatives and liberals in the political sphere [see: 29; 44]^[10]. Even before the premiere, which took place on February 25, 1830, Hugo took care to dilute the usual theatrical klaka (its members received personalized red invitation cards with the Spanish word "Hierro" – "iron"), traditionally applauding classical–style performances, with his supporters - the "romantic army" (T. Gautier's term), consisting of several hundred young painters, sculptors, writers, musicians: the eccentric behavior of the young rebels, including their manners, attire and hairstyles, contrasted sharply with the habits of the well-intentioned premiere audience. Among Hugo's ardent supporters at the premiere were Theophile Gautier, who shared his aesthetic and social positions (his defiant red vest became legendary), Gerard de Nerval, Hector Berloz, Petrus Borel. The theater was crowded – there was a rumor that the play would withstand only one production. However, it was a great success, the author and the actors were given a standing ovation. After the passage of time, T. Gautier will write: "February 25, 1830! This date is recorded in the history of our past in flaming letters: the very first performance of Hernani! This evening decided our fate. We received an impulse that moves us so many years later, prompting us to endless devotion to him" ^{[35, p. 426]}.

Meanwhile, the matter was not limited to the premiere. By the fourth performance, the success began to subside. Hugo's opponents knew the text of the play well, whistled exactly in those parts of it that did not suit them: it was not so much a romantic "broken verse" that violated the classical Alexandrian versification, as the absence of classical periphrases in remarks like "Are you cold?" or "Midnight is coming." In addition, in klak, due to the limited number of free places, the ratio of supporters and opponents of Hugo was no longer one to three, but one to sixteen ^{[35, p. 428]}. The situation became increasingly tense, mutual insults began between supporters and opponents of Hugo. Whistling, shouting, mocking laughter interrupted each performance on average 150 times ^{[35, p. 429]}. At the performance on March 10, it came to a brawl, police intervention was required. In addition, both the reactionary and liberal press took up arms against "Hernani" and its author: the first is for political reasons, the second is mainly for aesthetic reasons. Thus, A. Karel, the author of articles in Le National, was not satisfied with the mixing of genres in Hugo's theory of drama; in the spirit of classicist aesthetics, he considered tragedy a high theatrical genre addressed to the elite, while for the education of the people he intended a lower and less demanding from an aesthetic point of view "small genre" – melodrama. Hugo's idea of an elite theater for everyone, both for the elite and for the people, seemed dangerous to him [see: 38, pp. 144-145].

Over the next months, until July, all the shows of "Ernani" were invariably accompanied by scandals. The events of the July revolution prompted later to see in the "battle for Hernani" its dress rehearsal. As T. Gautier noted, it was "a battle for the ideal, poetry and freedom of art" ^{[33, p. 1]}.

By the time Hugo had already gained great fame thanks to the "battle for Hernani", the premiere of his romantic drama "Marion Delorme" took place, and the auditorium was again divided into uncompromising supporters and opponents of the play. In this drama, in contrast to the "brilliance" of the famous courtesan shown in the novel "Saint-Mar, or the Conspiracy in the Time of Louis XIII" (1826) by A. de Vigny, who plays not the last, and by no means a positive role in the court intrigues of the XVII century, Hugo immerses Marion^[11], who broke with her shameful in the past, in the "poverty" of an unhappy young woman condemned by society, who passionately fell in love with the poor, but proud rebel Didier, going to execution for the sake of his ideas. The main characters here are extremely romanticized and idealized, the image of Marion in the drama is far from its historical prototype; along with fictional characters, real historical figures, as well as "behind-the-scenes" figures act in it. Cardinal Richelieu belongs to the latter: if de Vigny describes in detail the sinister role of the first minister of Louis XIII, then in Hugo he remains an invisible puppeteer, an evil genius who directs everything that happens and reveals himself with only one phrase that condemns Didier to death: "Not a word about mercy!".

"Marion Delorme" was supposed to be staged at the Comedie Francaise in 1829, the year it was written, but was banned for censorship reasons: in the description of Richelieu's dictate, the authorities felt an allusion to the despotism of the reign of Charles X. The premiere took place only after the July revolution of 1830, after the liberation of French theaters from royal censorship.

However, Hugo was not sure of the durability and long–term results of the July revolution, especially in the sphere of the freedoms proclaimed by it, which was reflected in the preface to the drama "The King is Amused" (1832) - in it he expressed fear for the preservation of the values of freedom of thought, reason and art. The premiere took place after the establishment of the monarchical rule of Louis Philippe. The vicissitudes of this romantic drama, which later became widely known largely thanks to Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto (1850-1851) written based on it, alerted the authorities, traumatized by the events of the republican uprising directed against the royal dynasty. Behind the description of some real unseemly acts of King Francis I (the only historical person in this play, all other characters and events are fictional), the author's rejection of monarchical rule as such shone through. And here Hugo's creative attitude to the grotesque clash of the sublime and the base is felt with special relief: the aestheticized image of the young ardent king is destroyed by his cruel immoral deeds. Immediately after the premiere at the Comedie Francaise, at which oppositional youth sang "La Marseillaise" and "Carmagnola", the performance was banned by order of the government and removed from the repertoire. But as a literary work, the play aroused increasing public interest, which predetermined the success of Hugo's next drama, Lucrezia Borgia (written in 1832-1833, premiered in 1833 at the Port Saint Martin Theater), which inspired Gaetano Donizetti to create an opera of the same name (1833). In the preface to it, the author bluntly wrote that in spite of the rough foot that tramples on art and freedom, they are able to be reborn. From now on, the theater was conceived by him as a tribune, a pulpit; drama – as a carrier of national, social, human mission. Anti–monarchical, growing democratic pathos permeated both this and the following plays by Hugo - "Maria Tudor" (1833) and "Angelo, tyrant of Padua" (1835). In "Angelo ...", a cruel tyrant is again brought to the forefront, instilling an atmosphere of fear and violence in his principality. His antagonist is the proud, brave, freedom-loving romantic heroine Tizbe, who sacrifices herself to save the life of Angelo's wife Katarina, who fell in love with the exile Rodolfo (this plot inspired Caesar Cui to create the opera Angelo (1876).

In the preface to the drama "Angelo, tyrant of Padua", the aesthetic principles proclaimed by Hugo in his first manifesto, the preface to the drama "Cromwell", were not only developed, but also enriched with ideas of public sound. An innovation was the idea of the theater as a magnifying glass embodied in this romantic drama, which marked a turn in its artistic method. Speaking about the high duties of a dramatic poet, in whose creations there should always be a strict thought, Hugo calls for imposing on a useful thought "theater, like a magnifying glass. In our age, the horizons of art have expanded enormously. Before, the poet said: the public. Today the poet says: the people" ^{[9, p. 461]}. A new turn in the development of his aesthetic thought is also connected with the idea of art matching the needs of society, an emphasis on its educational role, updating in a new romantic context the classical principle of "entertaining – instructing". The theater, Hugo emphasizes, is designed to please and teach: "... drama should give philosophy to the crowd, ideas – a formula, poetry – muscles, blood and life, those who think about it – an impartial explanation, thirsty souls – a drink, invisible wounds – a balm, everyone – advice, everyone - the law. <...> Let the drama fascinate you, but let there be a lesson in it ... <...> In the most beautiful of dramas, there should always be a strict thought, as the most beautiful of women has a skeleton" ^{[9, p. 460]}. At the same time, the drama is called upon to depict in an artistic form a genuine, lively, trembling incident that hides thought, just as flesh hides bone. Drama requires a combination of greatness and truthfulness (grandeur and domesticity, in Hugo's terminology), eternal and human, historical and social, it should reflect the age, climate, civilization, people. And all this is in a symbolic and romantic way, showing the symbol of God who died on the cross as an intercessor, adviser: "To nail all this human torment to the reverse side of the crucifixion" ^{[9, p. 460]}.

Deepening and sharpening these views in terms of historicism, giving them an increasingly distinct journalistic character in the preface to the drama "Ruy Blas" (1838; the premiere took place in the same year at the Renaissance Theater, created on Hugo's initiative, aimed at staging romantic plays), Hugo sets out to determine the essence, law and purpose of the drama, turning, in essence, to questions of the sociology of art. He says that different categories of viewers (women, thinkers, the crowd) are looking for action, passion, characters in the drama – impressions, feelings, reflections; pleasure for the eyes, feelings, mind. Passion and characters are expressed in words, and the word in the theater is style. Melodrama is most suitable for the crowd, it entertains: for women, it is a tragedy that depicts passions, it excites; for thinkers, it is a comedy that reveals the essence of human nature, it teaches, edifies, moralizes. The theater seems to Hugo to be a kind of ideal world: drama and tragedy in it are brought together by passions, drama and comedy – characters. Thus, "Drama is the third great form of art, embracing, enclosing and fertilizing both tragedy and comedy. <...> This is how both the opposite electricity of comedy and tragedy converge, and the spark that flares up from this is drama" ^{[7, p. 462]}.

In "Ruy Blaze", which Hugo himself considered the Mont Blanc of his theater, his ideas of romantic theatrical aesthetics of the 1830s reach the culmination. The action again, as in "Hernani", takes place in Spain of the XVII century, but this time the period of decline, and not the formation of absolutism. The drama is replete with unexpected plot moves, court intrigues are intertwined in it with burning love passions. As a result of a series of qui pro quo, the lackey of Ruy Blas, on the orders of his master, Don Sallust de Bazan, eager to take revenge on the young queen Dona Maria of Neuburg, who sent him into exile for a dishonorable act, takes the name of his cousin, the nobleman Don Cesar de Bazan, in order to seduce the queen in this guise, with whom Ruy Blas is hopelessly in love. The plan succeeds (a touching bouquet of violets, Maria's favorite flowers, left by him on the bench plays a significant role here), the queen falls in love with the footman, favors him in every possible way and appoints him a minister. However, their happiness does not last long: the treacherous Don Sallust, who has returned to Madrid, starts another intrigue: revealing to the queen the low origin of Ruy Blas and the role imposed on him, he humiliates them both, threatens to make their relationship public, thereby trying to take revenge on Maria – to achieve her abdication. Unable to bear the insults of his beloved, Rui Blas kills him and begs the queen for forgiveness, but she is adamant. Having lost all hope, he takes poison and in the dying moment learns of the queen's forgiveness, confirming her love and calling him by his real name – Rui Blas.

The key scene of the tragedy is the speech of Ruy Blas, who carried out political reforms approved by the people, but causing acute dissatisfaction of the nobility, at the Council of Ministers, in which he passionately accuses those in power, calling them pitiful servants robbing the house, in their selfish interests dooming Spain to the decline of its power. This monologue serves as a kind of mouthpiece for Hugo's ideas, rhyming with his words from the preface to the play about the near-death relaxation of a monarchy close to collapse, in which the law is collapsing, political unity is fragmented, and high society is running wild and degenerating. The author's hopes are pinned on the people who have no present, but there is a future. The drama as a whole is imbued with democratic pathos.

Hugo's dramas of the 30s serve as a confirmation of his romantic aesthetic credo, according to which the theater turns flickering into light, and light into flame. In each of them, the social opposition between the upper and lower levels of society, a powerful tyrant and an obscure plebeian, turns into an acute conflict, in which the moral victory is won by the poor, but brave and noble natives of the people [see: 43]. This dramaturgical cycle includes the most significant plays of Hugo^[12]. A touch of melodramaticism in their plots does not obscure the main plot lines associated with their humanistic orientation.

Victor Hugo's creative legacy includes not only prose, drama, poetry, but also other artistic pursuits. He was an interesting draughtsman, about 4000 of his works are known, created on paper with a pen and black ink [see: 40]. According to E. Delacroix, if Hugo had become an artist, he would have eclipsed all the painters of our time. During the years of exile (1851-1870), caused by Hugo's active opposition to the coup d'etat, as a result of which Napoleon III was at the head of France (the writer was the author of the declaration of Louis Napoleon outlawed, fought on the barricades, barely escaped from his country by flight), during his stay on the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, the French romantic achieved considerable success in decorative and applied art, became interested in photography [see: 30; 34; 36].

Whatever Hugo was engaged in – literature, fine art or socio-political activity – his stormy temperament, the truly romantic nature of his active actions in all spheres of life were manifested in everything. This is evidenced by his aesthetic views, which had a significant impact on the creative image of French Romanticism.

Notes

^[1] The leader of the rebels, Byug-Jargal, is brave, wise and just. Among the heroes of the novel are both fictional and real characters: the leader of the Negro army Biasu, the leaders of the mulatto Auger and Rigaud. The author reflects in it on good and evil, honor and pride. Hugo conceived this book as one of the links of a larger work, which was to be called "Stories in a camping tent", dedicated to stories about his life and the military exploits of French officers who spent long nights in bivouacs during the wars of the Revolution era. However, this idea was not realized.

2 It is characteristic that another famous French romantic, Alfred de Vigny (b. 1797), "the first attacks of a passionate craving for history" prompted him to try his hand at the age of fifteen in the historical genre. Later, the "epic muse" attracted him more and more, de Vigny wanted to create something extensive in prose, comparable in composition to the great epic poems, different from the historical poems and novels of other French romantics – both at the beginning of the XIX century (the epic poem "Martyrs" by Rene de Chateaubriand) and contemporary to him (the novel "Gan The Icelander" by Victor Hugo), as well as from historical novels by the Scotsman Walter Scott, such as Ivanhoe. De Vigny was personally acquainted with Walter Scott, paid tribute to his human qualities – first of all, sensitivity, simplicity, but at the same time did not appreciate his historical novels too much due to the fact that their action is played out among fictional characters whom the author forces to act at will, while real outstanding historical figures are on the periphery narratives. De Vigny sought to create a synthetic historical novel in which a balance between truth and fiction would be observed, the epic, lyrical and dramatic beginnings of literature would be combined together. See more: ^[19].

3 Making philosophical and aesthetic judgments about classical and romantic poetry, de Stael proceeded from the fact that the entire field of literature was divided between paganism and Christianity, North and South, Antiquity and the Middle Ages, chivalry and Greco-Roman institutions. By classical, she meant the poetry of ancient antiquity, while she considered romantic the one that is somehow connected with the traditions of chivalric times. In this regard, her position echoed the aesthetic views of Rene de Chateaubriand, who was characterized by an in-depth attention to the spirit of Christianity, an increased interest in medieval art. She attributed the division into classical and romantic poetry to two world eras: pagan and Christian. She saw their fundamental difference in the transition from the spontaneous materialism of the ancients, who find artistic embodiment in sculpture, to mystical beliefs that inspire romantic poetry and painting – this is the way from nature to God. With such fundamental differences, she connected the specifics of the artistic techniques of classical and romantic poetry: in one, fate rules, indifferent to human feelings, in the other, Providence, judging people's affairs only by their feelings: these are two essentially different poetic worlds. Unlike the simplicity of the art of the ancients, Christian poetry needs the entire color palette to depict the diversity of deep human feelings and secret experiences, the life of the soul. Honor and love, courage and compassion, manifested in exploits, dangers, love stories, disasters – feelings that predetermine the romantic entertainment of Modern literature, requiring diverse means of artistic expression for the full disclosure of the infinite shades of the inner life of the human soul. See more: ^[27]. See also: ^[20].

4 The most complete canonical edition of "Odes and Ballads", combining poems written between 1822 and 1828, was published in 1828. It includes five books of odes and one book of ballads.

5 The drama "Cromwell" was written by Hugo specifically for the great French actor Francois-Joseph Talma, but it was not staged during the author's lifetime.

6 These remarks by Hugo sound very relevant. Naturalism "from the soles" has become widespread in the XX-XXI theater, and modern art has long neglected the rules of grammar and prosody.

7 Romantics expounded their aesthetic principles in the form of manifestos, prefaces, and critical articles. Following Hugo's "Preface to Cromwell", there is a preface to the poetry collection of E. Deschamps "French and Foreign Studies" (1827), the program work of Sh. Sainte-Beuve "Review of French poetry of the XVI century" (1828), the poetic credo of A. de Vigny "Letter to Lord*** about the premiere held on October 24, 1829, and about the dramatic system" (1829), critical articles by A. de Musset "Fantastic Reviews" (1831), "A few words about contemporary art" (1833), "About tragedy. Concerning the debuts of Madame Rachel" (1838) his satirical pamphlet "Letters of Dupuy and Cotonet" (1836-1837).

8 Hugo's reverence for Shakespeare's work is manifested, among other things, in some plot references to his plays. So, in "Marion Delorme" they are connected with the "Hamlet" arguments of the romantic hero Didier about the meaning of life; with the image of Langeli, reminiscent of the jester from "King Lear"; with the nature of mass scenes.

9 The story was written by A.S. Pushkin in the same 1830 as "Ernani", published in 1831. It is significant that the name of Pushkin's romantic hero, a retired hussar – Silvio. In the finale of the story, he did not shoot at his recently married abuser, and later died in the war for the independence of Greece.

For Pushkin's highly critical attitude to Hugo, whom he meanwhile carefully read, see: ^[21]. In chapter I "On people and reputations. Pushkin and Victor Hugo. Vindictive translation from "Cromwell" and "lion's roar" Mirabeau" by V. Milchin, in particular, writes about the motive of delayed revenge in "The Shot", dating back to "Ernani".

10 "The Battle for Hernani" is the most famous in France, but it is far from the first fierce dispute over theatrical productions. One of the first is the battles over the play by Ms. Chenier's "Charles IX, or St. Bartholomew's Night" (1789), which were not so much aesthetic as political and ideological in nature: adherents of the revolution and counter-revolution clashed. The revolutionary-minded author prefaced his play with the words that "if at first the mores of a nation form the spirit of its dramatic works, then soon dramatic works will form its spirit" [cit. according to: 42, p. 142]. Danton, who was present at the premiere, gave his verdict: "If Figaro killed the aristocracy, then Charles IX will kill the royal power" [cit. according to: 42, p. 141]. If the work of J. Chenier did not violate the classical rules, then N. Lemercier in his play "Christopher Columbus" dispensed with the unity of time and place and genre purity: the comic was mixed with the pathetic in it, the classical rules of versification were violated. At the premiere (1809), the audience reacted sluggishly, but at the second performance, students who did not agree with such a free violation of classicist rules staged such a violent brawl that armed grenadiers were called: one of the spectators was killed, three hundred students were arrested and forcibly sent to military service. However, over time, performances based on plays by playwrights who violate the norms of the aesthetics of classicism began to be accepted by the public and critics more favorably, as evidenced by the melodrama "Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler" by V. Ducange (1827), romantic in spirit "Henry III and his Court" by A. Dumas (1829) and "Marino Faliero" by K. Delavigne (1829).

11 Her role was played by the famous actress of that time Marie Dorval, beloved of A. de Vigny, who played the main roles in his plays "Chatterton", "Got off with a fright". Vigny also intended for her the title role in the drama "The Wife of Marshal D'Ankra", but it was given to another actress.

12 His later plays – "Burgraves" (1842), "Grandmother", "Sword", "Will they eat", "Beggars", included in the collection "Theater at Liberty" (1869), "Torquemada" (1882), did not enjoy noticeable success.