The Spanish Dancer

By Victor Hugo

Book Overview

A gypsy girl who fascinated a king (old Philip IV) and swayed a crown - such is Maritana, the street singer of old Spain. But of course she was only a gypsy dancer, and his Queen thought it wise to study the vivacious young person that she might learn from her what so charmed her royal spouse. The king s own spies reported that he himself was being spied upon. Meanwhile the gypsy dancing girl had fallen in love with Don Caesar de Bazan, a dissolute nobleman. After she had danced in his gardens, she was completely captivated by this royal vagabond, and was willing to make any sacrifices that his life might be spared when he had incurred the royal displeasure and so she... The Spanish Dancer was a Paramount movie starring Pola Negri.Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a novelist, poet, and dramatist, and the most important of French Romantic writers. In his preface to his historical play Cromwell (1827) Hugo wrote that romanticism is the liberalism of literature. Hugo developed his own version of the historical novel, combining concrete, historical details with vivid, melodramatic, even feverish imagination. Among his best-known works are The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Mis rables. Victor Hugo was one of the greatest personalities of French literature. Though not without the faults and eccentricities which frequently characterize great geniuses, he never entered any field of literature without excelling in it. The novel, the lyric, the drama, criticism, all fell from his facile pen without apparent effort. Hugo died in Paris on May 22, 1885. He was given at his death a national funeral. It was attended by two million people. Victor Hugo is buried in the Panth on.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1589639669
• ISBN13: 9781589639669
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Fredonia Books (NL)
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Classic Hugo

To English readers, Victor Hugo is known almost entirely for his great novels. However, he was also a dramatist - France's most important through much of the nineteenth century and the preeminent force in Romantic drama generally. His plays are still widely admired in France, and anyone who reads Ruy Blas, often called his dramatic masterpiece, will see why. Much of Hugo's greatness is here in near full force: possibly unequaled emotion portrayal, stirring suspense, bittersweet tragedy, grandiloquent dialogue, etc. Anyone who loves these traits in Hugo's novels will enjoy them here. The real treat is his brilliant lyricism, which reaches truly sublime heights; the speeches are so beautiful and moving that the play is worth reading for them alone. This is in part a love story of the high-pitched kind that only Hugo can make but also a political allegory that sadly still rings true. A distinct move forward from Hugo's simpler prior plays, though not as ambitious, complex, or original as some of his other work, Ruy is a very fine drama that exemplifies Romantic plays and still stands up very well on its own. Those who have been through Hugo's best work and thirst for more would do well to seek out Ruy.

The English Tranlation of Victor Hugo's "Ruy Blas"

This is an interesting translation and I quote from the translator's preface.I have adopted the twelve syllable metre of rhyming verse, because it is the nearest approach possible to the great original, and carries out the design I had from the first, namely: to render into English the form, as well as, if possible, the spirit of the great French drama.End of quote.The story is of court intrigue in Spain in the late seventeenth century but Victor Hugo is writing about human nature in general. Not a pretty sight !It is strange for the modern reader to be presented with social attitudes of a bygone age and they are rather difficult for us to appreciate but that is, presumably what it was like in those days. How the world has changed !Rather frustratingly, we do not know the translator's name or when the work was done but I am impressed with his effort.In my opinion, this is certainly worth reading for it's own sake as well as being an excellent pre-cursor to reading it French.

I want to know the book introduction in spanish version.

Please, let me to read the Prologue and argument of the literary work Victor Hugo. Thanks very much.

Definetely close to real life.

I totally enjoyed reading Ruy Blas because it dramatically presents a situation that anyone could live. The character Ruy Blas himself and the relationship he has with the Queen, is one of the most realistic ones I have seen in a play. Not only because he is French, Hugo deserves a 5-star rating on this book!