When The Dead Speak in Verse: Collective Writing and Hauntological Rhythms at Victor Hugo’s Jersey Séances

Abstract: While Victor Hugo’s infamous Jersey séances (1853–55) 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 reanimating 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.