FRANCE: The Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, launched France's year-long celebration of the country's favourite writer last night in Besancon, the eastern French town where Victor Hugo was born 200 years ago today.
Victor Hugo might have relished being used as a prop for a socialist's presidential campaign. "His political behaviour was strongly poetic, and his poetry is political," said Prof Jacques Seebacher, who has just supervised a new edition of the complete works of Hugo.
Mr Jospin unveiled a plaque outside the house where Hugo was born at 140 Grande-Rue, then joined 350 prominent political and cultural figures who had travelled in a specially chartered TGV train with the Socialist culture minister, Mrs Catherine Tasca, for an evening of music and readings at Besancon's Nouveau théâtre.
Although last night's festivities were devoted to the theme of childhood, the Socialists will highlight Hugo's political vision in this year of presidential and legislative elections. Hugo's life spanned most of the 19th century and he was a tireless campaigner for equality, universal suffrage, freedom of the press, women's rights, free and compulsory education, European integration and an end to the death penalty. In old age, he pleaded for European intervention in the Balkans and amnesty for the Paris communards.
Radio France will devote hours of programming to Hugo today. The President of the French Senate, Mr Christian Poncelet, and orators from the main political groupings will make speeches about his oeuvre and personality. Hugo was a royal appointee to the Senate for three years in the 1840s, and returned as an elected member in 1876. In the interim, he spent nearly 20 years in exile in the Channel Islands, in opposition to the reign of Napoleon III.
Bicentennial organisers quote Hugo on the 1848 revolution. "Let us never forget memorable anniversaries. When the night tries to return, we must light up great dates, as one lights torches." But would Hugo have approved of the profusion of commemorations for his 200th birthday? "I dislike events without spontaneity, pre-planned ceremonies that found a sort of religion with annual feasts and transform the republic into a soporific pontificate," he said.