Thus, for « LVIII – 2 Janvier 1870 » we find a group of lines (nos. 16 to 22 in the published version):
« On ne vend point Rouland comme on vendrait Lola.
Ferez-vous acheter bien cher par le Khédive
Suin mirant aux lacs bleus sa beauté ’maladive ?
Rouher en femme, certe, aurait beaucôup d’appas,
Mais faites-moi sultan ; et je n’en voudrai pas.
Faut-il mettre au sérail ou bien mettre à la broche
Cette grasse blancheur qui s’appelle Baroche ? »
Moreover, on the shavings one finds two isolated lines, situated after the fact in the middle of the poem, here in their final version:
« De jeunes belles point avares de leur sein » ; « Et Zangiacomi ne vaut pas Margoton »
Finally, we find the last two lines of the poem, the penultimate one being copied out twice:
« Certes, je donnerais, malgré leur teint bruni,
Certes, je donnerais, malgré leur teint bruni,
Goyon, Korte et Leboeuf pour Blanche d’Antigny. »
The title of the poem alludes to the Émile Ollivier ministry, which inaugurated what is conventionally called the Liberal Empire. This same ministry declared war on Prussia on 15 July 1870.
Following the same principle as the first shaving, Hugo worked in an identical way on the second, setting down scraps of rhymes, equally illegible and then crossed out with a vertical stroke. Here one can make out the second stanza of the very long poem « LXIII – Coups de clairon », forming four lines:
« Soufflez la huée !
Penchez-vous sur moi,
Venez, ô nuée.
Des faces d’effroi »
This poem should be read alongside « Sonnez, sonnez toujours, clairons de la pensée », published in Châtiments, in which Hugo uses the biblical metaphor of Jericho to evoke the delayed but inescapable power of poetic and satirical speech in the face of tyrannical authority, here that of Napoleon III.
« A satirical device [as] in Châtiments, the same theme and the same anger » (Poésies complètes IV, Jacques Seebacher et Guy Rosa)
The very title of the collection refers to the years of Hugo’s political exile following the coup d’état of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (the future Napoleon III) on 2 December 1851. Like Châtiments, Hugo makes his words a weapon to denounce the coup d’état. One finds in it political repression, exile in Jersey and then Guernsey, the denunciation of the Second Empire, and the struggles for freedom and the Republic. Les Années funestes was published posthumously by J. Hetzel in 1898.
Hugo’s fair copy of the collection is now preserved at the BnF (NAF 24773).
