The present essay studies the aspectuality of mourning and despair in Victor Hugo’s Les Contemplations. It focuses, in particular, on the durativity of these affective contents, which are recurrent in this collection of poems. It also shows the domination of the retrospective dimension on the prospective dimension, and illustrates the opposition between two discordant aspectual regimes imposed on the actors. Furthermore, it points out that the experience of mourning is characterized by iterativity for the enunciator, and that the latter assumes the unfulfilled aspect of its affective state.