Soleils couchants ("Sunsets", or "Setting Suns") is a set of six poems, or a six-part poem, by Victor Hugo. The poems were written individually and grouped together later.[1] The first of the poems was written 1828, and grouped together in 1831 in the collection Les Feuilles d'automne.[2][3] According to his wife, he was inspired to write the poems by his experiences of watching the sunsets at Vanves and Montrouge with two of his friends; after nightfall, they would retire to the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs , where they would urge him to recite the verses he had composed in his head while taking in the sights.[4]
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References
edit- ^ John Andrew Frey A Victor Hugo Encyclopedia 1999 Page 99 "Furthermore, the six poems making up poem thirty-five, Soleils couchants (Setting suns), with its metamorphoses of clouds in the firmament as the sun goes down, turning meteorology into poetic fancy (clouds as alligators, clouds as palaces), ..."
- ^ "Written November 1828. The first of six separate poems later grouped together as "Soleils couchants" ("Sunsets"). "Tonight in clouds the sun has ..."
- ^ The Living Age Volume 168 1886 p.254 "But to give a single example of the exuberance with which his genius could pour forth a continued stream of rich and striking fantasies, take the following from a short poem entitled " Sunsets." "
- ^ Adèle Hugo. Victor Hugo: a life related by one who has witnessed it. W.H. Allen, 1863, p. 162.