Le Pape
Le Pape (French pronunciation: [lə pap], "The Pope") was a political tract in verse by Victor Hugo, supporting Christianity but attacking the rigid organization of the Catholic Church. Although written in 1874–5, it was not published until 29 April 1878, two months after the beginning of the papacy of Leo XIII. Leo's predecessor, Pius IX, had revealed deep divisions in the Church with his definition of the dogma of papal infallibility in July 1870. Hugo had long disliked Pius because of his support for Napoleon III, commenting in his diary:
Pope Pius IX is simple, mild-mannered, timid, fearful, slow-moving, negligent of his person. He usually goes around with two or three days' growth of beard, which gives him a disreputable appearance. Like Charles X, he emits more smiles than words. You'd think he was a country curé. [...] Just at present, Pius IX is spending his time writing a book on the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. [...] the immaculate conception of the Holy Virgin, grog with a pretty Englishwoman -- those are the things that occupy Pius IX in Rome and Louis Bonaparte in Paris. Those are the things that fill two brains on which the fate of Europe is hanging.
— Choses Vues, private notes from April 1850[1]
Pius IX placed Les Misérables (1862) on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1864, where it remained until 1959. Notre-Dame de Paris had been banned in 1834.
The work, a closet drama, depicts an unnamed pope falling asleep, and having a dream in which he participates in a pageant of scenes which represent generic situations in human history. Through a sequence of discussions and soliloquies, the Pope reevaluates his beliefs, and concludes by giving a speech in which he condemns war and capital punishment, endorses the Republican ideals of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and, in instructing the people to love one another, asserts that he abandons Rome for Jerusalem and Caesar for Christ.
The poem ends with an ironic envoi in which the Pope awakens and shakes off his momentary insight.
Notes
- ^ The essential Victor Hugo. Edited by A. M. Blackmore. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004.
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- Hans of Iceland (1823)
- Bug-Jargal (1826)
- The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829)
- The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831)
- Les Misérables (1862)
- Toilers of the Sea (1866)
- The Man Who Laughs (1869)
- Ninety-Three (1874)
- Inez de Castro (1820; published in 1863)
- Cromwell (1827)
- Amy Robsart (1828)
- Hernani (1830)
- Marion de Lorme (1831)
- Le roi s'amuse (1832)
- Lucrezia Borgia (1833)
- Marie Tudor (1833)
- Angelo, Tyrant of Padua (1835)
- La Esmeralda (1836; libretto only)
- Ruy Blas (1838)
- Les Burgraves (1843)
- Torquemada (1882)
- "Claude Gueux" (1834)
collections
- Odes et poésies diverses (1822)
- Nouvelles Odes (1824)
- Odes et Ballades (1828)
- Les Orientales (1829)
- Les Feuilles d'automne (1831)
- Les Chants du crépuscule (1835)
- Les Voix intérieures (1837)
- Les Rayons et les Ombres (1840)
- Les Châtiments (1853)
- Les Contemplations (1856)
- La Légende des siècles (Part One 1859)
- Les Chansons des rues et des bois (1865)
- L'Année terrible (1872)
- L'Art d'être grand-père (1877)
- La Légende des siècles (Part Two 1877)
- Le Pape (1878)
- La Pitié suprême (1879)
- L'Âne (1880)
- Les Quatre Vents de l'esprit (1881)
- Final part of La Légende des siècles (1883)
- La Fin de Satan (1886)
- Dieu (1891, 1941)
- Toute la Lyre (1888, 1893, 1897, 1935-1937)
- Les Années funestes (1898)
- Dernière Gerbe (1902, 1941)
- Océan, Tas de pierres (1942)
- Le Verso de la page (1960)
- Œuvres d'enfance et de jeunesse, 1814-20 (juvenilia, 1964)
- Le Rhin (1842)
- Napoléon le Petit (1852 pamphlet)
- William Shakespeare (1864 essay)
- Actes et Paroles (1875)
- The History of a Crime (1877)
- Religions et religion (1880)
- Léopoldine Hugo (daughter)
- Charles Hugo (son)
- François-Victor Hugo (son)
- Adèle Hugo (daughter)
- Jeanne Hugo (granddaughter)
- Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (father)
- Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale
- Hauteville House
- Maison de Victor Hugo
- Juliette Drouet
- Avenue Victor-Hugo (Paris)
- Bust of Victor Hugo
- La Soeur de la reine
- Hugo (crater)
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