SOURCE: Cismaru, Alfred. “Victor Hugo as Defender of Liberal Causes.” Cimarron Review 81 (October 1987): 55-60.

In the following essay, Cismaru presents Victor Hugo as a writer preoccupied with the struggle for human liberty.

The year 1985 marked the centenary of Victor Hugo's death. In France, and significantly, in many other parts of the world, including Soviet-bloc countries, states in the Middle East, and China, numerous official observances were held, within and outside university campuses. To be sure, Hugo's reputation as one of the dominant literary giants of the nineteenth century earned him lasting respect and the memory of contemporaries everywhere. But it is especially his highly developed spirit of tolerance, love of fellow human beings, and defense of humanitarian causes that liberals throughout the world seem to appreciate, even if they are not too familiar with his poetry, novels, or plays.

There is a label of internationalism which is generally...