Recommendations

Books Like L'Art d'être grand-père

Best books to read after L'Art d'être grand-père by Victor Hugo

Hugo's most surprising collection (1877) — lyric poems about his grandchildren Jeanne and Georges, combining domestic charm and humor with late philosophical depth. If this warmly human, unexpected collection moved you, these books explore similar territory.

  1. 1

    Les Contemplations

    by Victor Hugo

    The great preceding lyric collection — the elegiac world from which L'Art d'être grand-père emerges; the love for Jeanne and Georges is the regenerative resolution of the grief for Léopoldine.

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  2. 2

    Les Quatre Vents de l'esprit

    by Victor Hugo

    The great late collection written four years later — the philosophical continuation of the same late period; reading L'Art d'être grand-père alongside Les Quatre Vents gives the full range of the late Hugo's lyric work.

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  3. 3

    À la manière de plusieurs

    by Paul Verlaine

    Verlaine's most intimate poetry — the closest contemporary parallel in register and emotional directness to the playful, affectionate poems of L'Art d'être grand-père.

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  4. 4

    Les Fleurs du mal

    by Charles Baudelaire

    The dark contemporary parallel — reading Baudelaire's urban, anguished poetry alongside Hugo's domestic, joyful late poems shows the full range of what French nineteenth-century lyric poetry can contain.

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  5. 5

    Sagesse

    by Paul Verlaine

    Verlaine's collection of poems of faith and simplicity — the late nineteenth-century parallel to the emotional directness and acceptance that characterizes the best poems of L'Art d'être grand-père.

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  6. 6

    Tenderness

    by Rainer Maria Rilke

    Rilke's poems of everyday love and tenderness — the closest modern parallel in register to the playful, domestic, and philosophical love for the grandchildren that Hugo expresses in L'Art d'être grand-père.

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  7. 7

    Stardust

    by Pablo Neruda

    Neruda's Odes to Common Things — the closest mid-century parallel to Hugo's capacity to find philosophical weight in the most everyday domestic details of the grandchildren's lives.

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  8. 8

    La Légende des siècles

    by Victor Hugo

    The great epic continuation — the contrast between the vast philosophical sweep of La Légende des siècles and the tiny domestic tenderness of L'Art d'être grand-père shows the full range of the late Hugo's imagination.

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