Les Chants du Crépuscule and Le Voix Intérieures were written by Victor Hugo (born Victor-Marie Hugo, 1802-1885), a French poet, playwright, novelist and intellectual regarded as one of the most important writers in French language who had a significant impact on lhistoire des lettres françaises.His creative oeuvre also comprised political writings and speeches, travel accounts, collections of notes and memoirs, literary criticism, abundant correspondence, designs of décors intérieurs as well as numerous ink washes and graphite drawings.
A committed parliamentarian under the July Monarchy, Second and Third Republic and exiled for nineteen years during the Second Empire, Victor Hugo was a staunch advocate of peace, freedom and social improvements, opposed to a death penalty, sensitive to human misery, and supportive of an idea of the unified Europe.
This volume was published in 1891 by Les éditions G. Charpentier et E. Fasquelle, a successor to la librairie Charpentier founded in 1827 by Gervais-Hélène Charpentier (1805-1871), a noted French bookseller and publisher best remembered for his convenient, elegant and portable ... in-18 grand-jésus vélin format and the first French collection la Bibliothèque Charpentier dedicated to fournir à l'histoire littéraire ses classiques modernes.
In 1872, la maison Charpentier was taken over by his son, Georges Charpentier (1846 -1905), léditeur des naturalistes and amateur d'art généreux, who created in 1876 la Petite Bibliothèque Charpentier, defined as une collection de chefs-d'œuvre and aimed at bibliophiles. Les éditions G. Charpentier et E. Fasquelle was established in 1890, after Ernest Flammarion had transferred rights of la société Marpon et Flammarion in 85% of Charpentier et Cie share capital to Eugène Fasquelle (1863-1952), a former associate of Georges Charpentier.
Author: Victor Hugo
Hardcover: 382 pages
Publisher: G. Charpentier et E. Fasquelle, Éditeurs, 11, rue de Grenelle, à Paris, 1891
Printing Company: Imprimerie de Charles Hérissey, Évreux
Language: French
Manufactured in France
Dimensions: 11.2 cm (4.41 in) x 7.9 cm (3.11 in) x 2.5 cm (0.98 in)
Weight: 185.0 g
The petit in-32 de poche volume is bound in a full polished veau grenat red garnet calf, covers blind-tooled with a single fillet border, five raised bands flanked by a one line pallet in blind divide spine into six compartments, second and third lettered in gilt: VICTOR HUGO and LES CHANTS DU CRÉPUSCULE, LES VOIX INTÉRIEURES, turn-ins finely gold-tooled with a floral scroll, pastedowns and facing free endpapers marbled with combed pattern, all edges gilt, a green, red and yellow silk marker, silk headband and tailband in red garnet and gold.
The Petite Bibliothèque Charpentier book is illustrated with two original etchings by L. Muller after drawings by H. Laurent-Desroussraux. Henri Laurent-Desrousseaux (1862-1906) was a French painter, ceramicist and illustrator known for his landscape watercolours and collaboration with Figaro Illustré, La Mode Pratique and Les éditions Charpentier, among others. A prolific French etcher Louis Jean Muller (1864-1919) studied under MM Adolphe Lalauze (1838-1906) and Émile Boilvin (1845-1899).
This luxury petit de poche edition was printed on papier de luxe by limprimerie de Charles Hérissey, Évreux, originally founded in 1829 by Jean Jacques Ancelle (b. 1787), a third generation of an old dynasty of printers and booksellers and printer to the King Charles X. A considerable expansion of business is credited to Charles Hérissey (1849-1909), a notable bookseller, typographer and lithographer who became a leading book printer and president of lUnion syndicale des maîtres-imprimeurs.
In 1835 Preface to Les Chants du Crépuscule Victor Hugo writes: "What is perhaps sometimes expressed in this collection, ... is this strange twilight state of the soul and the society in the century in which we live; it is this mist outside, this uncertainty within; it's this half-lit something that surrounds us", and further in Prelude:
"C'est peut-être le soir qu'on prend pour une aurore !
Peut-être ce soleil vers qui l'homme est penché,
Ce soleil qu'on appelle à l'horizon qu'il dore,
Ce soleil qu'on espère est un soleil couché !"
Introducing Le Voix Intérieures (1837), Victor Hugo quotes Shakespeares Portia verse about "music that every man has within himself" and applies the metaphor to his own poems: "This music, nature also has it in itself. If the book we are about to read is anything, it is the echo, very confused and very weakened no doubt, but faithful, the author believes, of this song which responds within us to the song which we hear outside ourselves." At the end, Hugo adds a touching personal note alluding to his fathers name not inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe de lÉtoile: "As for the dedication placed at the head of this volume, the author ... thinks he does not need to say how calm and religious the feeling which dictated it is. ... After all, France can, without too much worry, let one leaf drop from its thick and glorious crown; this leaf, a son must pick up. A nation is big, a family is small; what is nothing to one is everything to the other. France has the right to forget, the family has the right to remember."
Condition
The book is in excellent antiquarian condition with the exception of a light wear to covers and edges of spine and boards, slightly bent corners, minor rubbing to joints and occasional hardly noticeable brown spots on several pages. Oeuvres Poétiques appears to have never been read (please see the pictures). It comes from a smoke-free home.
Provenance
Private Antiquarian Book Collection. A half-title page has the inscription of an original owner Dr J. Déry dated 25/III 907. It is very likely that the book belonged to József Csalai Déry (1866-1937), the scion of a Hungarian noble Roman Catholic family Déry of Csala as well as a lawyer, court judge, painter, illustrator, editor, traveller, mountaineer, honorary president of the Magyar Turista Egyesület, and a knight of the Ferenc József Order. József Déry is also remembered as one of the best Hungarian mountain climbers of the turn of the 20th century - Déry peak in High Tatra Mountains was named in his honour.
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