Ecstasy by Victor Hugo
"Ecstasy" is a twelve-line poem by Victor Hugo that encapsulates the poet's profound experience of nature as a reflection of the divine. Set against a starry night by the sea, the poem conveys a sense of solitary communion with the natural world, where the elements of nature—woods, mountains, and waves—seem to engage in a dialogue that acknowledges the presence of God. This work is indicative of the Romantic era's fascination with individual experience and emotional depth, contrasting with earlier Enlightenment views that prioritized rationalism and human nature.
In "Ecstasy," Hugo transcends the boundaries of mere observation, suggesting that nature is not just a backdrop but an active participant in a spiritual exchange. The poem resonates with themes common to 19th-century Romantic poets, who sought to find deeper meaning in their connection with the physical universe. In this lyrical expression, Hugo highlights the beauty of nighttime and the ecstasy derived from an intimate relationship with the natural world, presenting a vision where reason yields to spiritual and emotional fulfillment. This exploration of ecstasy reflects broader cultural movements that embraced subjective experience as a pathway to understanding the divine.
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Subject Terms
Ecstasy by Victor Hugo
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: “Extase,” 1829 (collected in Les Orientales: Or, Eastern Lyrics, 1879)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
The “Ecstasy” that Hugo describes in this twelve-line poem is his experience of himself in nature as nature identifies itself with God. The poem reads, in prose translation, as follows:
I was standing alone by the waves on a starry night, under a cloudless sky and by a sea unbothered by sails. My eyes saw more than the material world; and the woods and mountains and all of nature seemed to question, in mingled murmur, the waves of the sea and the fires of heaven. And the countless legions of golden stars were answering, in voices raised and lowered in a host of harmonies; and the blue waves, which nothing controls or hinders, were saying, as their crest foamed back in an arc, “It is the Lord, the Lord God!”
The solitary stance of the individual in an almost but not quite pantheistic communion with nature is a characteristic posture of nineteenth century Romantic poets in Germany and England, as well as in France. During the eighteenth century, “nature” was “human nature,” which could be improved by rationalism and enlightenment, and ecstasy was as suspect an irrational quality as it had been to Plato. With Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Wordsworth, and Hugo, however, “nature” was the terrestrial and physical universe with which an individual could establish a subjective relationship that was predispositional to spiritual gratification and religious satisfaction. Hugo intones that relationship in this short lyric, in which ecstasy and the night transcend reason and daylight.
Bibliography
Brombert, Victor. The Romantic Prison: The French Tradition. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Brombert, Victor. Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Grant, Richard B. The Perilous Quest: Image, Myth, and Prophecy in the Narratives of Victor Hugo. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1968.
Hugo, Victor. Victor Hugo’s Intellectual Autobiography (Being the Last of the Unpublished Works and Embodying the Author’s Ideas on Literature, Philosophy, and Religion). Translated by Lorenzo O’Rourke. New York: Haskell House, 1971.
Maurois, André. Olympio: The Life of Victor Hugo. Translated by Gerard Hopkins. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956.
Maurois, André. Victor Hugo and His World. Translated by Oliver Bernard. New York: Viking, 1966.
Porter, Laurence M. Victor Hugo. New York: Twayne, 1999.
Raser, Timothy. The Simplest of Signs: Victor Hugo and the Language of Images in France, 1850-1950. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004.
Richardson, Joanna. Victor Hugo. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976.
Robb, Graham. Victor Hugo. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.