A reading of the sonnets “À l’auteur d’Hernani” and “À Victor Hugo, poète”

Six versions of the sonnet to Hugo are known. They bear witness to two stages corresponding to two historical contexts, separated by July 1830, which may in part explain the repeated amendments of the records that have come into our hands. Far from being merely a tribute, they call into question the limits of the liberalism displayed by Hugo in 1829–1830 before he came to terms with the July Monarchy in 1831. Bertrand’s ambivalent portrayal of Hugo in these sonnets is also apparent in his other works.