La Légende des siècles tome III by Victor Hugo is a collection of narrative poems written in the late 19th century. The volume ranges across myth, history, and allegory to probe tyranny, war, faith, justice, and the stubborn hope of human progress. Gods, kings, sages, soldiers, and common lives appear in vivid tableaux that question power and celebrate the human spirit. The opening of the volume centers on Le Satyre: a faun
hauled by Hercules before Jupiter, ridiculed by the gods, who then sings—on Mercury’s flute and Apollo’s lyre—four visions of the sky, the earth’s dark roots and chaos, humanity’s fall under kings and wars yet tending toward emancipation, and a final cosmic challenge where Pan confronts Olympus. Subsequent poems leap through eras: a biting exchange among infamous rulers where Borgia outbids Satan; Clarté d’âmes, a nocturne of solitary thinkers whose thoughts brighten the dawn; an allegory of waterfalls birthing an arc of glory; a Spanish infanta with her rose set against Philip II brooding over the Armada and a breeze no prince can command; a Nicaraguan volcano refusing baptism in protest at the Inquisition; a jaunty sea-ballad of adventurers dwindling to ten; an ironic vignette of “kindly” torturers; a meditation on the guillotine’s blade catching a star; and the start of a martial sketch of the Imperial Swiss halberdiers under Baron Madruce. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Claudine Corbasson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
Reading Level
Reading ease score: 72.5 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read.
