When the dead speak in verse: collective writing and hauntological rhythms at Victor Hugo's Jersey séances

While Victor Hugo’s infamous Jersey séances (1853-1855) have long inspired curiosity, bafflement or derision, the central role played by verse in these sessions has escaped critical attention. I argue that the tensions inherent in séance practice also underpin anxieties around poetic production in nineteenth-century France. The transcripts show verse composition to be a kind of séance, or intergenerational writing project, in which rhythm performs a hauntological function, producing a singular, original text while re-animating textual antecedents. By making visible what is usually an internal creative process, the séances reveal how poetry occupies a liminal space between individual and collective act.