Soleils couchants ("Sunsets", or "Setting Suns") is a set of six poems, or a six-part poem, by Victor Hugo. The poems were written individually and grouped together later. The first of the poems was written 1828, and grouped together in 1831 in the collection Les Feuilles d'automne. According to his wife, he was inspired to write the poems by his experiences of watching the sunsets at Vanves and Montrouge with two of his friends; after nightfall, they would retire to the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs [fr], where they would urge him to recite the verses he had composed in his head while taking in the sights.
References
- John Andrew Frey A Victor Hugo Encyclopedia 1999 Page 99 "Furthermore, the six poems making up poem thirty-five, Soleils couchants (Setting suns), with its metamorphoses of clouds in the firmament as the sun goes down, turning meteorology into poetic fancy (clouds as alligators, clouds as palaces), ..."
- "Written November 1828. The first of six separate poems later grouped together as "Soleils couchants" ("Sunsets"). "Tonight in clouds the sun has ..."
- The Living Age Volume 168 1886 p.254 "But to give a single example of the exuberance with which his genius could pour forth a continued stream of rich and striking fantasies, take the following from a short poem entitled " Sunsets." "
- Adèle Hugo. Victor Hugo: a life related by one who has witnessed it. W.H. Allen, 1863, p. 162.
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