La Légende des siècles tome II by Victor Hugo is a collection of poems written in the late 19th century. The work ranges across myth, history, and allegory to stage humanity’s struggle with fate, evil, and justice. It blends visionary meditations with narrative episodes, often casting towering figures—saints, tyrants, and knights—as emblems in a vast moral panorama. The opening of the collection sets a stark contrast between nihilism and hope before plunging
into epic action. In L’Épopée du Ver, the Worm speaks as the voice of decay and annihilation, boasting its power over kings, religions, and even the stars; Le Poëte au Ver de Terre answers that the soul, truth, and virtue elude its grasp. Les Chevaliers Errants summons the austere grandeur of wandering paladins who defend right in ages of fear. The narrative Le Petit Roi de Galice follows ten Asturian uncles who abduct the boy-king Nuño to kill or confine him; Roland arrives, rebukes them, cuts down several (including Pacheco, Froïla, and Rostabat), holds a mountain pass alone, and sends the child safely back to Compostela, where the boy vows to rule justly, while Ruy le Subtil flees. The section Eviradnus then begins: the Alsatian knight overhears a dark plot by Sigismond and Ladislas, mounts to intervene, and is introduced as a relentless champion of the oppressed, alongside a vivid evocation of the storm-ravaged ruin of Corbus. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Claudine Corbasson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
Reading Level
Reading ease score: 73.9 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read.
