Victor Hugo: the ghost in the pantheon

Victor Hugo was born two hundred years ago this year and his countrymen have been trying ever since to contain him. They resorted first to the tried-and-true: ostracism and outrage at his brazen Romanticism followed by acclaim and fervid acceptance. When this failed to muzzle him, they elected him to a position in the Assemblée; the transcripts of his speeches there are punctuated with such exclamations as “great sensation among the audience” and “tumults of applause.” They then accorded him a seat beneath the monumental cupola of the Immortals at the Académie Française.

Hugo, avid if not insatiable, gulped down outrage and prestige equally with the alacrity of a tomcat swallowing minnows. As his fame grew, he continued to overspill all bounds: manuscripts in every genre (as well as drawings and paintings) flowed so copiously from his fluent pen that his publishers fell into permanent...