Victor Hugo-Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve: Correspondance (review)

This is a most welcome and overdue addition to Hugo scholarship. Not only is it woefully difficult to find any editions of Hugo's correspondence (the last 'Bouquins' edition is currently out of print), but the effect of confining the letters to those exchanged between Hugo and Sainte-Beuve effectively re-animates one of the stormiest literary friendships of any age. One of the many achievements of this edition is to remind us, through small but frequent examples, of just how formative Sainte-Beuve's views were to Hugo as a writer and quite how extensive his influence was. The absence of any other voices in the volume allows us to hear more acutely the shifts in the power struggles and manipulations that characterized their long relationship. These, of course, came to a head over the scandal of Sainte-Beuve's love for and affair with Adèle, Hugo's wife. Unsurprisingly the letters that refer to his passion are among the most fascinating, not least because neither of them actually addresses the situation explicitly. Hugo appears to be at his most generous and forbearing when he suggests to Sainte-Beuve that they should no longer see each other until the situation is resolved: 'Nous ne sommes plus libres l'un avec l'autre, voyez-vous? Nous ne sommes plus ces deux frères que nous étions. Je ne vous ai plus, vous ne m'avez plus, il y a quelque chose entre nous' (6 July 1831). He goes on to express the hope that they shall recover their erstwhile perfect union in an idealized future. But what is most interesting is the imagery of fraternity, especially when we see that Hugo, at this time, is signing his letters to Sainte-Beuve as 'votre frère', while Sainte-Beuve responds more distantly with 'votre ami'. It is hard to resist the idea that Hugo is replaying in his mind another terrible love triangle, that between himself, Adèle and his brother Eugène, a situation that ultimately drove Eugène into insanity. That both Hugo and Sainte-Beuve should be constructing their own narratives of the situation is both obvious and inevitable, but this volume makes them more visible. Glinoer's painstaking consultation of the manuscripts results in immensely valuable additions via footnotes of elements such as Sainte-Beuve's angry responses written in the margins of one of Hugo's letters to him. 'De la main de Sainte-Beuve au-dessous de la ligne soulignée: "Faux; il s'en était prévalu près d'Elle, en me prêtant ce que je n'avais pas dit." . . . Il me mentait dans le moment même et jouait jeu double.' It is rare to be given so intimate a view of impotent frustration and humiliation, all the more eloquent for being written as private marginalia, rather than as one of the many complaints that Sainte-Beuve levelled openly against Hugo in their letters at this time. Glinoer's editorial additions are never intrusive, although the book is nevertheless fully and clearly documented. His Introduction to the volume, charting the ebbs and flows of this friendship, is sensitive and thoughtfully written. In sum, this volume is a solid and illuminating edition, that will offer researchers a number of new insights into both Hugo and Sainte-Beuve.