Victor Hugo Travel of 1843 Victor Hugo in Pasaia

Victor Hugo in Pasaia

In summer of 1843, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) did not decide to visit us, he happened to be here. He was travelling through the occidental area of the Pyrenees, and walking for San Sebastian, through the Ulia Mountain, he arrived to San Pedro. The « bateleras », the brave women in charge the communication between « the new and the old Pasaia », brought him up to here. He was so charmed with everything he contemplated that he decided to stay here for a time, exactly in the house which actually is known as Victor Hugo's House. As he was a good observer, he did not waste the chance to do a great description of the scene, involving realism with respect, humanism, enthusiasm and even with irony. Every writings and notes he took during his journey are written like a diary in the book « The Pyrenees », published by Fredonia books. It includes Hugo's some illustrations.

Numerous illustrious personages wrote about Victor Hugo's stay in Pasaia and Basque Country, such as Humboldt, Flaubert, Navagiero, Taine, Sthendal, Gautier and Mérimée made great descriptions. Hugo did it besides with humbleness and preciseness:

" A curtain of tall green mountains, their summits standing out against a brilliant sky ; at the foot of the mountains a row of houses placed closely together; all the houses painted white, saffron, and green, with two or three tiers of large balconies shaded by the prolongation of their great, red, hollow-tiled roofs; on all the balconies a thousand fluttering things, linen drying, nets, rags-red, yellow, and blue; beneath the houses, the sea; half-way up the hill on my right, a white church; on my left, in the foreground, at the foot of another mountain, another group of balconied houses terminating in an old dismantled tower; vessels of every kind and boats of every size ranged before the houses, moored beneath the tower, gliding over the bay; about the ships, the tower, the houses, the church, the rag on the mountains and in the sky, a life, a movement, a warmth, a blueness, an atmosphere, a gaiety inexpressible,-this was what I had before my eyes.

This, spot, magnificent and charming like everything possessing the double character of joyousness and grandeur, this unchronicled place which is one of the loveliest I have ever seen and which no tourist visit, this humble corner of land and water which would be admired if it were in Switzerland and celebrated if it were in Italy, but which is unknown because it is in Gipuzkoa, this little radiant Eden into which I had been led by chance, not knowing whither I was going, not knowing, even, where I was, is called in Spanish Pasajes, an in French Le Passage."

Victor Hugo, besides having an extraordinary literary talent, was a great upholder of the Universal Causes. His biography reflects the caress of tenderness, his sharp sensitiveness, his visionary idealism... ; he did not give us just beautiful words, he showed us his « contemplation », how to observe with the spirit, and that is what the great descriptions about this house an its residents demonstrated.

« The house in which I am living is one of the most dismal overlooking the street, and at the same time one of the brightest overlooking the bay. (...). The house has two floors and two entrances. It is strange and striking even among all the others, and carries to the highest pitch that two-fold character of the houses of Pasajes which is so original. It is the monumental patched with the rustic. It is a cottage mixed with and soldered into a palace. (...). But it would seem that all this must one day crumble away. There are crevices in the walls which let one see the landscape. Between the bricks of the upper balcony one can see the lower balcony, and the floors of the rooms bend beneath one's feet. (...). It is made of great beams, planks, and nails, rudely fashioned and fitted together three hundred years ago, which, although trembling with age, have still something robust and formidable about them. It is threatening in a double sense. There is no skylight, only an oblique ray of light from above. The steps, which have been rudely, repaired by means of planks places across and thrown as if at random, have the appearance of wolf-traps. It is at once decrepit and imposing. Immense spiders come and go amid the gloomy medley. An oaken door four inches in thickness, garnished with massive, but rust-eaten, iron bars, closes the staircase and isolates the second floor from the first at will. Ever the fortress within the cottage.
What do you think of all this? It is gloomy, repulsive, terrible, you think? Why, no; it is charming.
First of all, nothing could be more full of surprises. This is a house such as could be seen nowhere else. Just as you are thinking yourself in a hovel, some piece of sculpture, some fresco, some useless but exquisite ornament, reminds you that you are in a palace. You go into raptures over some such luxurious and grateful detail, when the harsh of a bolt tells you that you are living in a prison. You go to the window; there is the balcony, there is the lake, and you are in one of the chalets of Zug or Lucerne.
And then this mysterious house is penetrated and filled by a dazzling sunlight. Its distribution is pleasant, convenient, and original. The salt air from the sea purifies it, and the pure southern sun dries, warms, and vivifies it. Everything becomes joyous in this joyous light."

We may point up the circumstances that took him back from his journey in 1843, the decease of his daughter Léopoldine and his son-in-law Charles in September, which he had new a few days later. This event produced, moreover, an inflexion point in his life and his work (it took him 10 years to publish new works, more tragically).