Victor Hugo - Les voix intérieures (EO) - 1837

HUGO (Victor). Complete Works of Victor Hugo. Poetry. VI. The Inner Voices. [Follow-up to:] The Songs of Twilight. Paris, Eugène Renduel, 1837. Octavo, xiv, [1] f., 320 p., then The Songs of Twilight, 334 p., half-morocco tan, smooth spine decorated with garlands and gold friezes, leather title piece in black, marbled paper boards (binding from the period).

Original edition of The Inner Voices in its first printing: on page 20 one reads “Dans ces jours radieux” that a hand has corrected in pencil to “Dans ces temps radieux.” Only the very first copies contain this variant.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) published this collection in June 1837, two years after The Songs of Twilight (1835) whose vein he continues: poetry of family intimacy, of nature and the poet’s mission, at a moment when he establishes himself as the leader of the Romantic school. The two collections form, with The Rays and the Shadows (1840), the mature lyric cycle, published within the first collective edition of the works issued by Eugène Renduel (1798-1874).

The volume opens with the dedication to the poet’s father, General Joseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo (1773-1828), followed by the note NON INSCRIT SUR L’ARC DE L’ÉTOILE, then a preface dated June 24, 1837. The thirty-two pieces include notably At the Arc de Triomphe, To Albert Dürer (1471-1528), The Cow, Evening at Sea, To a Rich Man, To Fled Birds, After a Reading of Dante (1265-1321) and To Olympio, as well as April, to Louis B., addressed to the painter Louis Boulanger (1806-1867), Pensar, dudar, to Miss Louise B., for Louise Bertin (1805-1877), and To Eugene Vicomte H., an elegy to the poet’s brother, Eugene Hugo (1800-1837), who died a few months earlier.

The Songs of Twilight, bound in continuation under their own false-title, form Volume V of the same collection.

Binding slightly rubbed, heads worn, abrasions, start of cracked joints, broad widespread foxing and some stains, stamp on the title page, other minor defects, overall condition average but a relatively uncommon specimen of the first printing.

(Clouzot, 147; Carteret, I, 408.)