Victor Hugo? Lorenzo O’Rourke? Agnès Pierron? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: A literary titan commented on the stylized representations employed in theatrical productions. I do not recall the precise phrasing, but this was the gist:
The stage does not embody realism. It employs cardboard trees, glass diamonds, gold tinsel, and painted faces. The sun rises from below the stage. Yet, the theater does embody truth; there are human hearts on the stage and human hearts in the audience.
This insight about theater has been ascribed to the prominent French novelist, dramatist, and poet Victor Hugo, but I am uncertain because I have never seen a solid citation. Would you please help me to find the accurate text in its original language?
Reply from Quote Investigator: When Victor Hugo died in 1885, he left his heirs with a collection of reflections which were eventually published under the title “Post-Scriptum de ma vie” (“Postscript to My Life”) in 1901. The section named “Tas de pierres III” (“Pile of stones III”) contained brief miscellaneous thoughts. Victor Hugo wrote the following about theatre and realism. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Le théâtre n’est pas le pays du réel : il ya des arbres de carton, des palais de toile, un ciel de haillons, des diamants de verre, de l’or clinquant, du fard sur la pêche, du rouge sur la joue, un soleil qui sort de dessous terre.
Le théâtre est le pays du vrai : il ya des cœurs humains sur la scène, des cœurs humains dans la coulisse, des cœurs humains dans la salle.
Here is one possible translation into English:
The theater is not the realm of the real: there are cardboard trees, canvas palaces, a sky of rags, glass diamonds, tinsel gold, makeup on the peach, rouge on the cheek, a sun that rises from beneath the earth.
The theater is the realm of the true: there are human hearts on the stage, human hearts in the wings, human hearts in the auditorium.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
The English translation given above was created recently. A different rendering appeared in 1907 when the book “Post-Scriptum de ma vie” was translated by Lorenzo O’Rourke and published under the title “Victor Hugo’s Intellectual Autobiography: Being the Last of the Unpublished Works and Embodying the Author’s Ideas on Literature, Philosophy and Religion”:2
The theater is not the country of the real: it has trees of pasteboard, palaces of linen, a heaven of rags, diamonds of glass, tinsel gold, paint on the peach, rouge on the cheek, a sun that issues from under the earth.
The theater is the country of truth: there are human hearts on the stage, human hearts in the greenroom, human hearts in the hall.
In 1998 Albert W. Halsall published “Victor Hugo and the Romantic Drama” which included another translation of Hugo’s words:3
… Hugo is here rejecting the notion of dramatic ‘realism’ of the ‘slice of life’ variety, in favour of the necessary ‘illusionism’ of the drama. He would continue to do so, for we find him writing between 1830 and 1833:
‘The theatre is not the real world: it has cardboard trees, cloth palaces, skies made from rags, diamonds of glass, gold made from tinsel, paint on the peach, rouged cheeks, underground suns. It is the world of truth: there are human hearts on the stage, human hearts in the wings, human hearts in the audience’.
The accompanying footnote pointed to page 948 of volume 4 of the 18-volume edition of Victor’s Hugo’s “Œuvres complètes” assembled by Jean Massin and published by Le Club Francais du Livre between 1967 and 1970.
In 2002 the French passage appeared in “Dictionnaire de la Langue du Théâtre” (“Dictionary of the Language of Theater”) compiled by Agnès Pierron. The words were credited to Victor Hugo’s work “Post-Scriptum de ma vie”.4
In conclusion, Victor Hugo deserves credit for this quotation. It appeared within a collection of notes which were published posthumously in the 1901 book titled “Post-Scriptum de ma vie” (“Postscript to My Life”). An English translation appeared in 1907 within “Victor Hugo’s Intellectual Autobiography”.
Image Notes: Stage curtain with three human figures in silhouette from Kyle Head at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Clarissa Pecchia whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1901, Œuvres posthumes de Victor Hugo (Posthumous works of Victor Hugo): Post-Scriptum de ma vie (Postscript to my life) by Victor Hugo, Section: Tas de pierres III (Pile of stones III), Quote Page 61, Calmann Lévy Éditeur, Paris, France. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1907, Victor Hugo’s Intellectual Autobiography: Being the Last of the Unpublished Works and Embodying the Author’s Ideas on Literature, Philosophy and Religion (Postscriptum de Ma Vie), Translated by Lorenzo O’Rourke, Chapter: Thoughts, Quote Page 372, Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1998 Copyright, Victor Hugo and the Romantic Drama by Albert W. Halsall, Chapter 3: Hugo’s Aesthetic Revolt (1), 1820-1827: Inez de Castro, Amy Robsart, Cromwell, and Its Preface, Quote Page 69, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Canada. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2002, Dictionnaire de la Langue du Théâtre, Compiled by Agnès Pierron, Topic: théâtre, Quote Page 541, Les Usuels : Dictionnaires Le Robert, Paris, France. (Verified with scans) ↩︎