"I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary"
About this Quote
A Phrygian cap is the French Revolution in wearable form: the red, floppy bonnet of liberated slaves and, later, Parisian radicals. So when Victor Hugo says he "put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary", he turns a reference book into a barricade. The image is mischievously blunt: language itself gets drafted into the uprising.
Hugo is sketching his own literary project in miniature. He isn’t merely decorating French with a few colorful neologisms; he’s staging a coup against what the "old dictionary" represents - inherited authority, polished taste, the Academy’s gatekeeping. To cap the dictionary is to dethrone it. The phrase carries the writerly swagger of someone who believes novels can do what parliaments often won’t: redistribute attention and dignity. Hugo’s canon is full of that impulse, from the street argot and moral thunder of Les Miserables to his broader Romantic war on Classical restraint. He wants the full city in the sentence, not just the salon.
The subtext is political but also aesthetic. Revolutionary symbols promise not only freedom, but messiness: crowds, noise, improvisation. Hugo is claiming that messiness as a virtue. He’s saying the living language of ordinary people - slang, mispronunciation, metaphor, rage - deserves citizenship.
It’s also a sly admission of power. Only a writer confident in his stature can joke about "revolutionizing" the dictionary. Hugo’s wit lands because it fuses two kinds of authority - the lexicon and the legislature - and dares you to notice they’ve always been related.
Hugo is sketching his own literary project in miniature. He isn’t merely decorating French with a few colorful neologisms; he’s staging a coup against what the "old dictionary" represents - inherited authority, polished taste, the Academy’s gatekeeping. To cap the dictionary is to dethrone it. The phrase carries the writerly swagger of someone who believes novels can do what parliaments often won’t: redistribute attention and dignity. Hugo’s canon is full of that impulse, from the street argot and moral thunder of Les Miserables to his broader Romantic war on Classical restraint. He wants the full city in the sentence, not just the salon.
The subtext is political but also aesthetic. Revolutionary symbols promise not only freedom, but messiness: crowds, noise, improvisation. Hugo is claiming that messiness as a virtue. He’s saying the living language of ordinary people - slang, mispronunciation, metaphor, rage - deserves citizenship.
It’s also a sly admission of power. Only a writer confident in his stature can joke about "revolutionizing" the dictionary. Hugo’s wit lands because it fuses two kinds of authority - the lexicon and the legislature - and dares you to notice they’ve always been related.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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