The Power of Rhetoric: Hugo’s Metaphor and Poetics by Wendy Nicholas Greenberg (review)

B o o k R eview s Although not easy reading, Professor Avni’s book is certainly rewarding. For not only does it offer a major theoretical challenge (as witnessed by its illuminating use of Aristotle’s theory of the syllogism); it makes us see Lautreamont’s text anew. St e v e n W in s p u r Columbia University Wendy Nicholas Greenberg. T h e P o w e r o f R h e t o r ic : H u g o 's M e t a p h o r a n d P o e t ic s . New York: Peter Lang, 1985. Pp. xii + 143. $23.00. The appearance of a full-length study of Victor Hugo’s poetry, following hard upon the centennial commemoration of his death and anticipating by three years the two hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, is very timely. In the case of one who succeeded so completely in imposing on the community of letters “ sa doctrine littéraire révolutionnaire, ou plutôt rénovatrice” (in Baudelaire’s phrase), the second occasion is at least as important as the first; for it must give rise to reflections on the permanence of his achievement, rather than on the transitoriness of his personal being. As Professor Greenberg justly observes, it was no vain boast, but a classic example of the performative use of language, when Hugo wrote in Les Châtiments: “ J ’ai dit aux mots: Soyez république!” Few commonplaces of literary history are more firmly established than the one which asserts Hugo’s excellence in the “ power of indefinite poetical suggestion” (Saintsbury), his “ command of the vague” and ability to evoke what Baudelaire, with his fearless apprecia­ tion of the cliché, called “ le mystère de la vie.” On this point the official judgments of Brunetière and Lanson have been borne out with remarkable consistency by recent students of the work, many of whom seem to share Anthony Hartley’s impression that “ reading it is like looking into a fog.” We have all encountered the idée reçue that Hugo’s poetry works its effects by accumulation; that he is strongest in the larger forms; that his technique was never lapidary; that his stanzas are better than his lines. Professor Greenberg’s first chapter provides a valuable corrective to this superficial view. The tools of formal analysis enable her to make out—most strikingly in the dozens of detailed tabulations of frequencies and semiotic pairings that enrich her book—a convincing case for Hugo’s privileged use of the condensed metaphor, that most paratactic of figures. She demonstrates that Napoléon III, through various degraded avatars, is the tenor behind the tenor of “ Tom-Pouce A ttila,” “ Soufflard empereur” and the other métaphores appositions that add such force to the invective of “ Ce que dit la bouche d ’ombre” and “ On loge à la nuit.” By this means she does for Hugo what Ethel Seaton did, 60 years ago, for Christopher Marlowe: she makes it impossible henceforth to maintain that he used proper nouns merely as a sonorous (because empty) pedal-point for his vast orchestrations. On the contrary, they served as often as not an explicitly political purpose, as they did for Shelley in The Mask o f Anarchy (“ I met Murder on the way—He had a mask like Castlereagh—,” etc.). Professor Greenberg quotes Henri Meschonnic’s maxim, “ énoncer un nom, c’est dénoncer,” and concludes unanswerably: “ The role of these condensed metaphors made up of proper nouns is hostile —either to denounce past or present enemies” (p. 7). There follow chapters on Hugo’s use of extended metaphor, metonymy, and alatheia, “ the device for disclosure,” in such poems as the “ Réponse à un acte d’accusation,” “ Tristesse d’Olympio,” and “ À M. le D. de***.” The analysis is conducted throughout with Professor Greenberg’s customary penetration and finesse. Indeed, it is safe to say that no book in recent years has subjected the Hugolian corpus to such minute and exacting scrutiny, or yielded, in proportion to its length, so many valuable aperçus. The author also provides her own translations of five...