10 -- Victor Hugo e la vertigine del racconto -- Umberto Eco

Full video available at https://www.eduflix.it Victor-Marie Hugo was born in Besançon on February 26, 1802, to Count Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie Trébuchet, the daughter of a shipowner from Nantes. During his childhood, he traveled to Italy and Spain following his father, a Napoleonic general, before finally settling in Paris. From adolescence, he devoted himself to poetry, and at just twenty years old, he received a royal annuity for his literary achievements. That same year, he married Adèle Foucher, whose infidelity prompted Hugo to find solace in the arms of actress Juliette Drouet. Despite some of the writer's infidelities, Juliette remained at his side for fifty years, until her death. After the publication of Notre-Dame de Paris in 1851 and the successful performance of several plays, Hugo was accepted into the Academy and named a Peer of France. Elected as a right-wing deputy, he initially supported Napoleon III, from whom he later distanced himself by delivering fiery speeches on the miseries of the people, freedom of the press, the abolition of the death penalty, and universal suffrage. His opposition earned him nineteen years of exile, first in Belgium and then in the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, where the poet took refuge with his family and a few friends, dedicating himself to literature, painting, and spiritualism. In 1862, he published Les Misérables (Les Misérables), which achieved extraordinary success. With the fall of the Empire in 1871, Hugo was able to return to Paris, where he was welcomed triumphantly. It was a difficult year; his fellow citizens' revolutionary attempt against the Prussian invaders was bloodily repressed, and his family also faced a painful period: after the tragic death of his second daughter, Léopoldine, another son, Charles, died, and his daughter, Adèle, who had fled to Canada with an English lieutenant, returned home suffering from a serious mental illness. In 1875, Hugo was elected senator for the left-wing republican party, and on his eightieth birthday, hundreds of thousands of people celebrated him by marching in front of his house, which was showered with flowers. On May 22, 1885, Hugo died, and for an entire night, all of Paris kept vigil over his remains at the Arc de Triomphe. On June 1, the poet was buried in the Panthéon, alongside the tombs of other great French figures.