The dreaming poet contemplates the "wall of the centuries," indistinct and terrible, on which scenes of the past, present and future are drawn, and along which the whole long procession of humanity can be seen.

Its beginning, the original seed, was in a vague project entitled Petites Epopées ("Little Epics"), which features in the notes and jottings of Hugo from 1848, and which gives no indication of so vast an ambition.

Even though these "epics" were still no more than sketches, in March 1857 Hetzel wrote to Hugo, rejecting Fin de Satan and Dieu, but accepting with enthusiasm the Petites Epopées.

This inspiration normally led him to write a large number of poems, more or less brief, which would finally be published as components in projects which were constantly shifting and evolving.

Later, Hetzel pronounced himself willing to publish La Fin de Satan and Dieu; but Hugo, perhaps conscious of the difficulties of completing either to his satisfaction, had by that time thrown himself entirely into the new project.

Hetzel followed this evolution with alarm, and, fearing that the great philosophical questions would turn these little epics into towering giants, endeavoured to temper Hugo's ardour.

Work on the second series began immediately after the first, but Hugo was soon busy with Les Misérables and with completing La Fin de Satan and Dieu.

Critics who claimed that the "anticlericalism" and "glibness" were evidence of the bitterness of age were mistaken: in fact, Hugo's cerebral edema of June 1878 had already essentially put an end to his work as a writer, and most of the contents dated from long before.

This assemblage of poems with little narrative drive, alternating dark and bright visions, gives the impression of a contemplative and intemporal epilogue, very different from what came before.

It is not impossible that Hugo, physically and intellectually enfeebled, and greatly affected by the death of Juliette Drouet, allowed himself to be overly influenced by friends and by the executors of his estate.