Hugoliad : Or, The Grotesque and Tragic Life of Victor Hugo

A satirical depiction of the first forty years of Victor Hugo's life portrays him as a mediocre charlatan

"The only reason for the survival of Hugo's work is that it can't even be read once," writes Ionesco in this sardonic, debunking portrait. In the scathing view of the Rumanian-born playwright (who now lives in Paris), the great French novelist was a ham and an opportunist, a literary tyrant preoccupied with his image, who prized rhetoric over genuine feeling. "Speak less, I beg of you," Hugo's lady-friend implores him as they sojourn in the Pyrenees. Ionesco doesn't care for Hugo's poetry either; his Romantic lyrics are all hammer-blows and commonplaces, charges the author of Rhinoceros. Resurrected from a Rumanian literary journal of the 1930s, this short critical essay drips with sarcasm. Yet, as a polemic against the conservative artistic mentality, it offers valuable insights on sincerity in literature, the nature of genius, the whims of fashion.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This early work originally appeared in a Rumanian literary journal in the 1930s, and much of the mature Ionesco, famous for his Theatre of the Absurd, can be gleaned from it. This brilliant anti-biography, which concerns the eventful first half of Victor Hugo's life, is by turns acerbic, parodical, even poetic. Ionesco's portrayal of France's great romantic poet and supreme egomaniac is a work of comic genius; only Hugo's long-suffering wife and mistresses come out with our sympathy. The later Ionesco loathed dogmatism and absolute authority, something that the magnificently dogmatic and opinionated Victor Hugopioneer of the cult of Celebrity Authorcould be said to represent. In this delightful work, Hugo and his ilk receive a monstrous bashing. For academic libraries. Alphonse Vinh, Yale Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.