Poèmes sélectionnés

A selection of poems from one of the nineteenth century's greatest French writers

For most of his life, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was the most famous writer in the world. His legacy includes celebrated works of drama, fiction, memoir, and criticism. But in his day Hugo was known foremost as a poet—indeed the greatest French poet of the age. He wrote with passion about history, sensual experience, familial love, philosophy, nature, social justice, art, and mysticism.

In this bicentennial edition, acclaimed poet and translator Brooks Haxton offers an exquisite selection of Hugo's finest work: love poems, historical tableaux, elegy, and idyll, including his incomparable "Boaz Asleep," which Marcel Proust praised as the most beautiful poem of the nineteenth century.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Selected PoemsIntroduction
A Note on the Translation

One-Year-Old
As I Have Set My Lip
Oceano Nox
Nights in June
Napoleon's Army After the Fall of Moscow
My Two Girls
Barefoot
Letter from Normandy
How It Happened (December 4, 1851)
All Souls' Day, 1846
When We Were Living (September 4, 1844)
Little Song (to Leopoldine, September 3, 1847)
The Graveyard at Villequier (September 4, 1847)
Word from the Dunes (August 4, 1854)
The Seven Oxen of the Northern Plough
Shepherds and Flocks
Mugitusque Boum
Flower
Dawn at the Edge of the Woods
Orpheus
Boaz Asleep
The Trumpet of Judgment
During Sickness
Et Nox Facta Est
The Plume of Satan
Whose Fault Is This? (June 25, 1871)
From The Art of Being a Grandfather: Lesson One: The Moon
To Théophile Gautier
Sonnet
Notes

Victor Hugo (1802-85) was a forceful and prolific writer. He became a committed social democrat and during the Second Empire of Napoleon III was exiled from France, living in the Channel Islands. His body is now buried in the Pantheon. 

Brooks Haxton's poetry translations include Dances for Flute and Thunder: Poems from the Ancient Greek, which was nominated for a PEN translation award, and Victor Hugo's Selected Poems for Penguin Classics.