Hugo was the initiator of the romantic battle in France, with historical dramas Hernani (1827) and Cromwell (1830). The preface of Cromwell became something of a literary manifesto for the French and contemporary statement by the author, an absolute faith in romance. In this preface, Hugo part of the concept of freedom of thought to get to define how the work of art should be: free of plans, from the constraints, the constraints of styles. The only laws that the artist can follow are those of nature, truth and inspiration, the artist as the bee extracts honey from the flower, inspired by what surrounds him and transforms him without that reality is raped by his work. The true artistic talent must guard against imitation of other artists, however great they are, because the genes are different even if they eat the same stuff. Everyone, therefore, must draw on their sources to express their personality. The rejection of the rules and models are not, however, ways to destroy art, but to rebuild it on new bases.
The fundamental value of the writer is correct language, expressed in a very poetic simile: "Languages \u200b\u200bare like the sea, constantly fluctuate," and must adapt to the thoughts that want to express. The classical tradition posed a strict hierarchy, so the highest nobility of genres such as tragedy, required to exclude from the themes and forms each item daily and trivial; style 'low' was reserved comedy. Hugo, this concept (which is no coincidence that speaks of 'drama and not of' tragedy ') opposes the idea of \u200b\u200ba mix of genres and levels, giving art the infinite variety of life in line with this concept, the artist can and must speak beyond the styles, according to the expressive needs: it can be vulgar, lyrical, dramatic, probing the higher lines as the most vulgar.
quote here a passage that I particularly enjoyed:
"Christianity leads poetry to the truth. Like that, the muse will see things from a modern point of view, higher and wider. Feel that not everything in creation is beautiful in the human sense, that there exists the ugly side of beauty, the uneven next to the beautiful, the grotesque as the other side of the sublime, evil with good, shadow with light. It asks whether the reason for limited and on artist can prevail over reason infinite, absolute creator, if it is for man to correct God, and if a mutilated nature will be best for this, if art has the right to duplicate, so to speak, man, life, creation, and if something will be better when the muscles are removed and energy, and if, finally, be incomplete is the way to be harmonious. And 'then, by fixing the eye on events with laughable and formidable, and under the influence of the Christian spirit of melancholy and philosophical criticism which we saw earlier, the poem would be an important step, a decisive step, a step that, like an earthquake, will change completely face of the intellectual world. It will do as nature, mixing his creations, without confusing, shadow and light, the grotesque and the sublime, in other words, the body and soul, and spirit of the beast, because the point of departure of religion is always the same poetry. Everything is held. "
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