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A Tribute to Victor Hugo's Bug-Jargal by Julien J. Lafontant* Say Notre-Dame de Paris, almost everybody thinks of Victor Hugo; say Bug-Jargal, few people know that it is a work by the same author. The protagonist carries the name of this novel. Victor Hugo was sixteen when he wrote Bug-Jargal; it took him fifteen days to finish it. Seven years later, in 1825, the author made some important changes in his work. But in spite of that, the contents remain the same; the exterior has been embellished, the interior is, to a very great extent, untouched: the historical background is the same; Bug-Jargal is still the type of Negro loved by his brothers and respected by anyone, anywhere, who attributes values not to the color of the skin but to the general qualities found sometimes in one human being. ... Mais un grand caractère, fermement dessiné, arrête les regards et force l'admiration: Bug-Jargal, prince, esclave, prisonnier, soldat, chef des révoltés, intéresse toujours. Il y a du talent et peut-être plus dans cette figure toute africaine, bien posée, bien tracée, bien colorée. C'est l'idéal de l'héroïsme chez un enfant des tropiques; on y retrouve cette impulsion irrésistible et violente, ces germes de vertus, ces idées généreuses sans culture et sans art, cette farouche grandeur, que la civilisation n'a pu ni développer, ni anoblir. C'est un beau caractère et un nouveau caractère.1 It is very interesting to note that Hugo did not create this type. In fact, years before the author's birth, we find scattered, mainly in the memoirs of those who have been in contact with Negroes and their activities, the physical and moral qualities that Bug-Jargal possesses. The Histoire Générale des A milles Habitéespar les François ( 1667-7 1) by Father Dutertre, the Memoirs of Father Labat (1693-1705), the work of Captain William Snelgrave: A New Account ofSome Parts of Guinea, and the Slave-Trade (1734), and above all the significant •Julien J. Iafontant was born in Porl-au-Princc. Hani. He speni a little more lhan twelve years in Liberia. West Africa leaching mainly al Cull ingion College and Divinity School. Hecameloihe United Stales in 1973 for his Ph.D. which he received in 1976 from the Stale University of New York at Binghamlon. He has been leaching for more lhan two years al the University of Nebraska both al Lincoln in the Modern Language Department and Omaha as an Associate Professor and Chairman of the Black Studies Department. ' Revue de la critique: L'opinion, in Victor Hugo. Oeuvres Complètes, ?. 27 ( Paris, Librairie Ollendorff, 1910), ? 567 This volume contains the two versions of Bug-Jargal; the one published in 1819 in Le Conservateur littéraire, and the other published in 1826 in a separate volume. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW195 Bug-Jargal Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes ( 1 78 1 ) by Abbé Raynal, constitute some of the sources from which the necessary elements can be drawn to portray the type of Negro found in Hugo's novel. More than that, Bug-Jargal, under different names, existed in many novels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Oroonoko, in Oroonoko or the Royal Slave (1696) by Aphra Behn; Ximéo, Mirza's lover, in Mirza (1795) by Madame de Staël; Ziméo, in Ziméo (1770) by SaintLambert , are nothing but the Negro hero found in Bug-Jargal. As Servais Etienne explains: "Son héros s'appelle donc Ziméo, mais c'est un pseudonyme; vous reconnaissez Oroonoko, le capitaine Tomba, les nègres généreux du P. Dutertre et de Victor Hugo."2 Consequently, it was not Hugo's intention to create the theme of the kind, generous and brave Negro; the author of Bug-Jargal simply wanted to relate an episode taken from the revolt of the slaves ofSaintDomingue , now Haiti, in 1791. Such was his unique aim and we can explain why. The young Hugo was very...

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