Archaic Features of Oriental Poetry and Innovation in Romantic Lyrical Poetry

Around 1829, Victor Hugo tried to find a new aesthetic paradigm in response to a crisis of Romantic lyrical poetry. This paradigm is based on the archaic poetry of the Arabs, examples of which are included in one of the notes added to the edition of Les Orientales. This aesthetic implies a modification of the Romantic concept of genius. As a result, capricious ideas of the imagination as well as artistic virtuosity replace the traditional biographic experience, previously seen as the essence of genius. This new aesthetic was first put into practice in the poesie d'images of Les Orientales. In contrast, in the poesie de sentiment of Les Feuilles d'Automne, written almost simultaneously, the contingency of biographical events and occasions, supposed to be at the origin of the texts, corresponds to the caprice of ideas.