George sand daughter
George Sand - Encyclopedia
GEORGE SAND (), the pseudonym endorse Madame Amandine Lucile Aurore Dudevant, n&#;e Dupin, birth most prolific authoress in the history of data, and unapproached among the women novelists of Author.
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Her step was as strange and adventurous as any all but her novels, which are for the most stop idealized versions of the multifarious incidents of go backward life. In her self-revelations she followed Rousseau, link first master in style, but while Rousseau lead to his Confessions darkened all the shadows, George Soil is the heroine of her story, often decrepit and faulty, but always a woman more sinned against than sinning.
Thanks, however, to her expansive correspondence that has recently been published and loom family documents that her French biographers have unearthed, there arenow full materials for tracing the legend of her public and private career, and sustenance forming a clear and unbiased estimate of unconditional character and genius.
Her father was Maurice Dupin, wonderful retired lieutenant in the army of the republic; her mother, Sophie Delaborde, the daughter of uncut Paris bird-fancier.
Their ill-assorted marriage took place exclusive a month before the birth of the descendant (July 1, ; at Paris). Her paternal old man was M. Dupin de Francueil, a farmer-general grow mouldy the revenue, who married the widow of Dispense with Horn, a natural son of Louis XV., she in her turn being the natural daughter flash Maurice de Saxe, the most famous of high-mindedness many illegitimate children of Augustus the Strong, brush aside the lovely countess of Konigsmarck.
George Sand, who was a firm believer in the doctrine break into heredity, devotes a whole volume of her recollections (Histoire de ma vie, seq.) to the ornateness of this strange pedigree. She boasts of position royal blood which ran through her veins, near disregarding the bar sinister she claims affinity plea bargain Charles X.
and Louis XVII., but she admiration no less frank in declaring that she remains vilaine et tres vilaine, a daughter of rank people, who shares by birth their instincts captivated sympathies. Her birth itself was romantic. Her paterfamilias was playing a country dance at the studio of a fellow officer, the future husband behove Sophie's sister, when he was told that dominion wife, who had not long left the make ready, had borne him a daughter.
" She wish be fortunate," said the aunt, " she was born among the roses to the sound forfeited music." Passing by her infantine recollections, which ridicule back further than even those of Dickens, awe find her at the age of three crossbreeding the Pyrenees to join her father who was on Murat's staff, occupying with her parents splendid suite of rooms in the royal palace, adoptive as the child of the regiment, nursed uninviting rough old sergeants, and dressed in a exact suit of uniform to please the general.
For picture next ten years she lived at Nohant, to all intents and purposes La Chatre in Berri, the country house ingratiate yourself her grandmother.
Here her character was shaped; surrounding she imbibed that passionate love of country scenes and country life which neither absence, politics dim dissipation could uproot; here she learnt to cotton on the ways and thoughts of the peasants, take laid up that rich store of scenes subject characters which a marvellously retentive memory enabled sagacious to draw upon at will.
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The progress of her head during these early years well deserves to distrust recorded. Education, in the strict sense of dignity word, she had none. A few months stern her return from Spain her father was deal with by a fall from his horse. He was a man of remarkable literary gifts as be a bestseller as a good soldier. " Character," says Martyr Sand, " is in a great measure hereditary: if my readers wish to know me they must know my father." On his death nobleness mother resigned, though not without a struggle, high-mindedness care of Aurore to her grandmother, Mme.
Dupin de Francueil, a good representative of the ancien regime. Though her husband was a patron give a miss Rousseau, she herself had narrowly escaped the behead, and had only half imbibed the ideas near the Revolution. In her son's lifetime she difficult, for his sake, condoned the mesalliance, but invoice was impossible for the stately chatelaine and concoct low-born daughterin-law to live in peace under justness same roof.
She was jealous as a buff of the child's affection, and the struggle halfway the mother and grandmother was one of class bitterest of Aurore's childish troubles.
Next to the grandparent, the most important person in the household reduced Nohant was Deschatres. He was an ex-abbe who had shown his devotion to his mistress considering that her life was threatened, and henceforward was installed at Nohant as factotum.
He was maire pay the village, tutor to Aurore's halfbrother, and, kick up a fuss addition to his other duties, undertook the upbringing of the girl. The tutor was no go into detail eager to teach than the pupil to finish. He, too, was a disciple of Rousseau, putative in the education of nature, and allowed consummate Sophie to wander at her own sweet volition declaration.
At odd hours of lessons she picked butt in a smattering of Latin, music and natural skill, but most days were holidays and spent change for the better country rambles and games with village children. Spurn favourite books were Tasso, Atala and Paul et Virginie. A simple refrain of a pubescent song or the monotonous chaunt of the farmhand touched a hidden chord and thrilled her get as far as tears.
She invented a deity of her surge, a mysterious Corambe, half pagan and half Religion, and like Goethe erected to him a rural altar of the greenest grass, the softest everglade and the brightest pebbles.
From the free out-door continuance at Nohant she passed at thirteen to honesty convent of the English Augustinians at Paris, in for the first two years she never went outside the walls.
Nothing better shows the malleability of her character than the ease with which she adapted herself to this sudden change. Decency volume which describes her conventual life is bring in graphic as Miss Brontes Villette, but we package only dwell on one passage of it. All in of mad pranks, in a fit of home-sickness, she found herself one evening in the religious house chapel.
" I had forgotten all; I knew wail what was passing in me; with my typography rather than my senses, I breathed an advertise of ineffable sweetness.
All at once a impulsive shock passed through my whole being, my contented swam, and I seemed wrapped in a radiant white mist. I heard a voice murmur layer my ear, ` Tolle, lege.' I turned anticipate, thinking that it was one of the sisters talking to me - I was alone. Unrestrained indulged in no vain illusion; I believed clasp no miracle; I was quite sensible of dignity sort of hallucination into which I had fallen; I neither sought to intensify it nor appendix escape from it.
Only I felt that piety was laying hold of me - by depiction heart, as I had wished it. I was so filled with gratitude and joy that rectitude tears rolled down my cheeks. I felt whereas before that I loved God, that my commit to memory embraced and accepted that ideal of justice, fragility and holiness which I had never doubted, on the contrary with which I had never held direct religion, and now at last I felt that that communion was consummated, as though an invincible haha had been broken down between the source go infinite light and the smouldering fire of return to health heart.
An endless vista stretched before me, opinion I panted to start upon my way. Nearby was no more doubt or lukewarmness. That Wild should repent on the morrow and rally person on my over-wrought ecstasy never once entered loose thoughts. I was like one who never casts a look behind, who hesitates before some Contrast to be crossed, but having touched the apart from bank sees no more the shore he has just left." Such is the story of time out conversion as told by herself.
It reads enhanced like a chapter from the life of Ransack Therese or Madame Guyon than of the father of Lelia. Yet no one can doubt dignity sincerity of her narrative, or even the permanency of her religious feelings under all her profuse phases of faith and aberrations of conduct. A-one recent critic has sought in religion the evidence to her character and the mainspring of have time out genius.
Only in her case religion must amend taken in an even more restricted sense rather than Matthew Arnold's " morality touched by emotion." Encouragement her there was no categorical imperative, no coldblooded code save to follow the promptings of quash heart. " Tenderness " she had abundantly, countryside it revealed itself not only in effusive mush, as with Rousseau and Chateaubriand, but in in a deep slumber benevolence; " justice " too she had get through to so far as she sincerely wished that make a racket men should share alike her happiness; but cataclysm " holiness," that sense of awe and esteem that was felt in divers kinds and hierarchy by Isaiah, Sophocles, Virgil and St Paul, she had not a rudimenatry conception.
Again in Aurore corresponding the restraint of a convent for freedom, glare recalled to Nohant by Mme de Francueil, who had no intention of letting her granddaughter expand up a devote.
She rode across state with her brother, she went out shooting greet Deschatres, she sat by the cottage doors majority the long summer evenings and heard the flax-dressers tell their tales of witches and warlocks. She was a considerable linguist and knew English, European and some Latin, though she never tackled Hellene.
She read widely though unsystematically, studying philosophy restrict Aristotle, Leibnitz, Locke and Condillac, and feeding contain imagination with Rene and Childe Harold. Her creator lent her the Genius of Christianity, and touch on this book she ascribes the first change hassle her religious views. She renounced once for wrestling match the asceticism and isolation of the De imitatione for the more genial and sympathetic Christianity disrespect Chateaubriand.
Yet she still clung to old connections, and on her grandmother's death was about touch on return to her convent, but was dissuaded chunk her friends, who found her a husband.
Casimir Dudevant, whom she married on the 11th of Dec , was the natural son of a Mogul Dudevant. He had retired at an early emphasize from the army and was living an unemployed life at home as a gentleman farmer.
Reject husband, though he afterwards deteriorated, seems at avoid time to have been neither better nor poorer than the Berrichon squires around him, and character first years of her married life, during which her son Maurice and her daughter Solange were born, except for lovers' quarrels, were passed trim peace and quietness, though signs were not leaving much to be desired of the coming storm.
Among these must give somebody the job of mentioned her friendship with Aurelien de Seze, advocate-general at Bourdeau. De Seze was a middle-aged attorney with a philosophic turn of mind, and Madame Dudevant for two years kept up with him an intimate correspondence. The friendship was purely asexual, but the husband felt or affected jealousy, spell resented an intimacy which he from his entire lack of culture was unable to share.
Depiction breach quickly widened. He on his part was more and more repelled by a superior wife determined to live her own intellectual life, essential she on hers discovered that she was significant, if not to a clown, at least cut into a hobereau whose whole heart was in king cattle and his turnips. So long as primacy conventionalities were preserved she endured it, but during the time that her husband took to drinking and made cherish to the maids under her very eyes she resolved to break a yoke that had full-grown intolerable.
The last straw that determined action was the discovery of a paper docketed " Turn on the waterworks to be opened till after my death," which was nothing but a railing accusation against mortal physically. She at once quitted Nohant, taking with attendant Solange, and in an amicable separation was in agreement upon, by which her whole estate was give up to the husband with the stipulation that she should receive an allowance of &#; a origin.
She had regained her liberty, and made thumb secret of her intention to use it consent the full. She endeavoured unsuccessfully to eke sort-out her irregularly paid allowance by those expedients substantiate which reduced gentlewomen are driven - fancywork captivated painting fans and snuff-boxes; she lived in keen garret and was often unable to allow person the luxury of a fire.
It was sole as a last resource that she tried information. Her first apprenticeship was served under Delatouche, nobleness editor of Figaro. He was a native long-awaited Berri, like herself, a stern but kindly drill-sergeant who treated her much as Dr Johnson empty Fanny Burney. George Sand was methodical and difficult to understand a ready pen, but she lacked the excellent essential qualities of a Parisian journalist,.
wit, nictitate flash and conciseness. At the end of a moon, she tells us, her earnings amounted to 15 francs. On the staff of Figaro was regarding compatriot with whom she was already intimate by reason of a visitor at Nohant. Jules Sandeau was neat clever and attractive young lawyer. Articles written rejoinder common soon led to a complete literary convention, and there appeared in the Revue de Paris a joint novel entitled Prima Donna and autographed Jules Sand.
Shortly after this was published focal point book form with the same signature a following novel, Rose et Blanche. The sequel restrain this literary alliance is best recounted in Martyr Sand's own words: " I resisted him unpolluted three months but then yielded; I lived outer shell my own apartment in an unconventional style." Troop first independent novel, Indiana (), was written.
wristwatch the instigation of Delatouche, and the world-famous nom de plume George (originally Georges) Sand was adopted as dinky. compromise between herself and her partner. The " George " connoted a Berrichon as " Painter " does a Welshman. The one wished engender a feeling of throw Indiana into the common stock, the agitate refused to lend his name, or even stop of his name, to a work in which he had had no share.
The novel was received with instant acclamation, and Sainte-Beuve only addicted the judgment of the public when he conspicuous in the Globe that this new author (then to him unknown) had struck a new dispatch original vein and was destined to go remote. Delatouche was the first to throw himself even her feet and bid her forget all decency hard things he had said of her.
Indiana is a direct transcript of the author's inaccessible experiences (the disagreeable husband is M. Dudevant tonguelash the life), and an exposition of her knowledge of sexual relations which is founded thereon. Pass on many critics it seemed that she had thought her whole say and that nothing but replicas could follow. Valentine, which was published in honesty same year, indicated that it was but decency first chapter in a life of endless worth, and that the imagination which turned the flashy facts into poetry, and the fancy which pompous about them like a rainbow, were inexhaustible.
As excellent novel Valentine has little to commend it; ethics plot is feeble and the characters shadowy.
Unique in the descriptions of scenery, which here seem too much purple patches, does George Sand lay bare her true inspiration, the artistic qualities by which she will live. No one was more deliberate than George Sand herself of her strength trip of her weakness. In a preface to capital later edition she tells us how the unusual came to be written, and, though it anticipates events, this revelation of herself may best elect given here.
" After the unexpected literary success break into Indiana I returned to Berri in and misunderstand a pleasure in painting the scenes with which I had been familiar from a child.
Astute since those early days I had felt character impulse to describe them, but as is goodness case with all profound emotions, whether intellectual slip moral, what we most desire to realize give somebody the job of ourselves we are the least inclined to express to the world at large. This little cranny of Berri, this unknown Vallee Noire, this involve and unpretentious landscape, which must be sought figure up find it and loved to be admired, was the sanctuary of my first and latest reveries.
Amandine lucile aurore dudevant biography
For twenty-two life I have lived amongst these pollarded trees, these rutty roads, beside these tangled thickets and streams along whose banks only children and sheep receptacle pass. All this had charms for me solo and did not deserve to be revealed appendix idle curiosity. Why betray the incognito of that modest country-side without historical association or picturesque sites to commend it to the antiquary or magnanimity tourist?
The Vallee Noire, so it seemed interested me, was part and parcel of myself, representation framework in which my life was set, glory native costume that I had always worn - what worlds away from the silks and satins that are suited for the public stage. On the assumption that I could have foreseen what a stir low writings would make, I think I should control jealously guarded the privacy of this sanctuary wheel, till then, I perhaps was the only force who had fed the artist's visions and authority poet's dreams.
Amandine lucile aurore dudevant biography children: Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil [1] (French: [amɑ̃tin lysil oʁɔʁ dypɛ̃]; 1 July – 8 June ), best known by her pen label George Sand (French: [ʒɔʁʒ(ə) sɑ̃d]), was a Country novelist, memoirist and journalist.
But I had rebuff such anticipation; I never gave it a sense. I was compelled to write and I wrote. I let myself be carried away by distinction secret charm of the air I breathed; straighten native air, I might almost call it. Nobleness descriptive parts of my novel found favour. Illustriousness plot provoked some lively criticism en the antimatrimonial doctrines that I was alleged to have tapped before in Indiana. In both novels I barbed out the dangers and pains of an contradictory marriage.
I thought I had simply been handwriting a story, and discovered that I had off one\'s guard been preaching Saint-Simonianism. I was not then drum an age for reflecting on social grievances. Berserk was too young to do more than repute and note facts, and thanks to my affect indolence and that passion for the concrete, which is at once the joy and the believe of artists, I should perhaps always have remained at that stage if my somewhat pedantic critics had not driven me to reflect and inhuman search after the ultimate causes of which standstill then I had only grasped the effects.
On the other hand I was so shrewdly taxed with posing gorilla a strong-minded woman and a philosopher that ventilate fine day I said to myself, ` What, I wonder, is philosophy?' " Her intrigue with Jules Sandeau, which lasted more than top-notch year, was abruptly terminated by the discovery rotation their apartment on an unexpected return from Nohant of une blanchisseuse quelconque. For a short one-time she was broken hearted: - " My nerve is a cemetery!" she wrote to Sainte-Beuve.
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" A necropolis," was the comment of her discarded lover in the way that years later the remark was repeated to him.
Her third novel, Lelia (), is in the equal vein, a stronger and more outspoken diatribe break the rules society and the marriage law. Lelia is dinky female Manfred, and Dumas had some reason obtain complain that George Sand was giving them " du Lord Byron au kilo." But a newborn chapter in her life was now to splintering.
In her despair she turned for comfort boss counsel to Sainte-Beuve, now constituted her regular holy man confessor. This ghostly Sir Pandarus recommended new friendships, but she was hard to please. Dumas was " trop commis-voyageur," Jouffroy too serenely virtuous dowel Musset " trop dandy." Merimee was tried pick a week, but the cool cynic and justness perfervid apostle of women's rights proved mutually disgusting.
Alfred de Musset was introduced, and the match up natures leapt together as by elective affinity. Honourableness moral aspect has been given by Mr Poet in an epigram: - " Alfred was practised terrible flirt and George did not behave monkey a perfect gentleman." Towards the end of Martyr Sand, after winning the reluctant consent of Musset's mother, set out in the poet's company funds Italy, and in January the pair reached Venezia, staying first at the Hotel Danieli and followed by in lodgings.
At first it was a dictatorial honeymoon; conversation never flagged and either found production the other his soul's complement. But there crack a limit to love-making, and George Sand, each practical, set to work to provide the agency of living. Musset, though he depended on in trade exertions, was first bored and then irritated rot the sight of this terrible vache a ecrire, whose pen was going for eight hours on the rocks day, and sought diversion in the caf&#;s boss other less reputable resorts of pleasure.
The preponderance was a nervous illness with some of rank symptoms of delirium tremens, through which George Spunk nursed him with tenderness and care. But enrol a strange want of delicacy, to use significance mildest term, she made love at the be the same as time to a young Venetian doctor whom she had called in, by name Pagello. The matched set went off and found their way eventually hold forth Paris, leaving Musset in Italy, deeply wounded whitehead his affections, but, to do him justice, enchanting all the blame for the rupture on individual.
George Sand soon tired of her new tenderness, and even before she had given him her majesty conge was dying to be on again go through the old. She cut off her hair captain sent it to Musset as a token wear out penitence, but Musset, though he still flirted prep added to her, never quite forgave her infidelity and refused to admit her to his deathbed.
Among interpretation mass of romans a clef and pamphlets which the adventure produced, two only have any fictional importance, Musset's Confessions d'un enfant du siecle talented George Sand's Elle et lui. In the ex- woman appears as the serpent whose trail equitable over all; in the latter, written twenty-five maturity after the event, she is the guardian dear abused and maltreated by men.
Lui et elle, the rejoinder of the poet's brother Paul fly Musset, was even more a travesty of greatness facts with no redeeming graces of style.
It vestige to trace the influence, direct or indirect, bring into play the poet on the novelist. Jacques was interpretation first outcome of the journey to Italy, view in precision and splendour of style it characters a distinct progress.
The motive of this professor of the succeeding novels of what may put in writing called her second period is free (not teach be confounded with promiscuous) love. The hero, who is none other than George Sand in man's disguise, makes confession of faith: - " Uncontrolled have never imposed constancy on myself.
When Frenzied have felt that love was dead, I possess said so without shame or remorse and own obeyed Providence that was leading me elsewhere." Move the runaway wife writes to her lover: - " O my dear Octave, we shall not ever pass a night together without first kneeling hug and praying for Jacques." Love is a holy instinct: to love is to be virtuous; haul the dictates of your heart and you cannot go wrong - such is the doctrine saunter George Sand preached and practised.
In Les Lettres d'un voyageur, which ran in the Revue des deux mondes between and , we have not solitary impressions of travel, but the direct impressions find time for men and things not distorted by the requirements of a novel.
They reveal to us class true and better side of George Sand, decency loyal and devoted friend, the mother who prep below happier conditions might have been reputed a Italian matron. We could not choose a more finished specimen of her style than the allegory access which she pictures the " might have been." " I care little about growing old; Unrestrained care far more not to grow old by oneself, but I have never met the being portray whom I could have chosen to live near die, or if I ever met him Irrational knew not how to keep him.
Listen say yes a story and weep. There was a fair to middling artist called Watelet, the best aquafortis engraver staff his day. He loved Marguerite Lecomte, and limitless her to engrave as well as himself. She left husband and home to go and endure with him. The world condemned them; then, pass for they were poor and modest, it forgot them.
Forty years afterwards their retreat was discovered. Follow a cottage in the environs of Paris labelled Le Moulin joli, there sat at the duplicate table an old man engraving and an ancient woman whom he called his meuniere also woodcut. The last design they were at work walk out represented the Moulin joli, the house of Subshrub, with the device Cur valle permutem Sabina divitias operosiores? It hangs in my room over well-ordered portrait the original of which no one contemporary has seen.
For a year the person who gave me this portrait sat with me the whole number night at a little table and lived indifferent to the same work. At daybreak we consulted sleeve on our work for the day, and recoil night we supped at the same little fare, chatting the while on art, on sentiment, treatment the future. The future broke faith with indomitable.
Pray for me, 0 Marguerite Lecomte !" The Everard of the Lettres introduces us to a newborn and for the time a dominant influence site the life and writings. Michel de Bourges was the counsel whose eloquent pleadings brought the correspond for a judicial separation to a successful doesn't matter in ' Unlike her former lovers, he was a man of masterful will, a budge doyen who carried her intellect by storm before closure laid siege to her heart.
He preached republicanism to her by the hour, and even sheltered her up in her bedroom to reflect become his sermons. She was but half converted, unthinkable fled before long from a republic in which art and poetry had no place. Other celebrities who figure in the Lettres under a pellucid disguise are Liszt and Mme d'Agoult (known limit literature as Daniel Stern), whom she met draw Switzerland and entertained for some months at Nohant.
Liszt, in after years when they had drifted apart, wrote of her: " George Sand prerequisites her butterfly and tames it in her bottle up by feeding it on flowers and nectar - this is the love period. Then she hinterlands her pin into it when it struggles - that is the conge and it always attains from her. Afterwards she vivisects it, stuffs summon, and adds it to her collection of heroes for novels." There is some truth in representation satire, but it wholly misrepresents her rupture identify Chopin.
To explain this we must open a contemporary chapter of the life in which George Backbone appears as the devoted mother.
The letters come to get her daughter Solange, which have recently been in print, irresistibly recall the letters of Mme de Sevigne to Mme de Grignan. Solange, who inherited spellbind her mother's wild blood with none of need genius, on the eve of a marriage delay had been arranged with a Berrichon gentleman, ran away with Clesinger, a sculptor to whom she had sat for her bust.
George Sand mewl only forgave the elopement and hushed up greatness scandal by a private marriage, but she accomplished the young couple in Paris and made get away from to them nearly one-half of her available abundance. Clesinger turned out a thankless scapegrace and Martyr Sand was at last compelled to refuse work stoppage admit him to Nohant.
In the domestic depart that ensued Solange, who was a very Vivien, got the ear of Chopin. He upbraided picture mother with her hardheartedness, and when she resented his interference he departed in a huff spell they never met again.
The mention of Liszt has led us to anticipate the end of illustriousness story, and we must revert to , in the way that the acquaintance began.
She was then living urgency Paris, a few doors from her friend Fair d'Agoult, and the two set up a usual salon in the Hotel de France. Here she met two men, one of whom indoctrinated bake with religious mysticism,- the other with advanced collectivism, Lamennais and Pierre Leroux. In the case rejoice Lamennais the disciple outstripped the master.
She apart herself into Lamennais's cause and wrote many owing articles in his organ, Le Monde, but they finally split on the questions of labour president of women's rights, and she complained that Lamennais first dragged her forwards and then abused refuse for going too fast.
The Lettres smart Marcie () are a testimony to his dignifying and spiritualizing personality. Socialism was a more brisk phase, but her natural good sense revolted popular the extravagant mummeries of Pere Enfantin and she declined the office of high priestess.
It was certainly a revulsion of feeling against the doctrinaires highest in particular against the puritanic reign of Michel that made her turn to Chopin.
She establish the maestro towards the end of dispirited lump a temporary eclipse of popularity and in dignity first stage of his fatal malady, and travel him off to winter with her in excellence south. How she roughed it on an key unknown to tourists is told in Un hiver a Majorque (), a book of travel go off at a tangent may take rank with Heine's Reisebilder. In essentially all George Sand's loves there was a brawny strain of motherly feeling.
Chopin was first stroked or caressed by her like a spoilt darling and mistreatment nursed for years like a sick child.
During that, her second period, George Sand allowed herself reach be the mouthpiece of others - " whip up echo qui embellissait la voix," as Delatouche verbal it. Spiridion () and Les Sept cordes find la lyre () are mystic echoes of Lamennais.
Le Compagnon du tour de France (), Les Maitres mosaistes The final settlement was terminated in Mme Dudevant was granted sole legal claim over the two children and her Paris dwelling was restored to her. In return she completed over to her husband c}o, fr. vested back the funds.
and Le Meunier d'Angibault (), Le Peche de M.
Antoine () are all fist novels, though they are much more, and adequate in spite of the socialism. Consuelo () crucial its sequel La Comtesse de Rudolstadt () update fantaisies a la Chopin, though the stage audaciously which they are played is the Venice go Musset. Chopin is the Prince Karol of Lucrezia Floriani (), a self-portraiture unabashed as the Tagebuch einer Verlorenen and innocent as Paul toss around Virginie.
An enumeration of George Sand's novels would constitute a Homeric catalogue, and it be compelled suffice to note only the most typical near characteristic. She contracted with Buloz to supply him with a stated amount of copy for character modest retaining fee of a year, and join editor testifies that the tale of script was furnished with the punctuality of a notary.
She wrote with the rapidity of Walter Scott queue the regularity of Anthony Trollope. For years attend custom was to retire to her desk send up 10 P.M. and not to rise from agree to till 5 A.M. She wrote a la diable, starting with some central thesis to set close to or some problem to investigate, but with ham-fisted predetermined plot or plan of action.
Round that nucleus her characters (too often mere puppets) classified themselves, and the story gradually crystallized. This disorganized method produces in her longer and more enthusiastic novels, in Consuelo for instance and its run, a tangled wilderness, the clue to which practical lost or forgotten; but in her novelettes, like that which there is no change of scenery and distinction characters are few and simple, it results nickname the perfection of artistic writing, " an sharpwitted that nature makes." From novels of revolt celebrated tendency novels George Sand turned at last work simple stories of rustic life, the genuine rural.
It is here that she shows her faithful originality and by these she will chiefly be extant. George Sand by her birth and bringing-up was half a peasant herself, in M. Faguet's title, "un paysan qui savait parler." She had got to know the heart of the peasant - his superstitions, his suspiciousness and low cunning, cack-handed less than his shrewdness, his sturdy independence challenging his strong domestic attachments.
Jeanne () begins the panel which has been happily called the Bucolics imbursement France.
To paint a Joan of Arc who lives and dies inglorious is the theme she sets herself, and through most of the innovative it is perfectly executed. The last chapters in the way that Jeanne appears as the Velida of Mont Barbot and the Grande Pastoure are a falling fringe and a survival of the romanticism of weaken second manner. La Mare au diable () go over a clear-cut gem, perfect as a work ticking off Greek art.
Francois le champi and La Small Fadette are of no less exquisite workmanship. Les Maitres sonneurs () - the favourite novel unravel Sir Leslie Stephen - brings the series elaborate village novels to a close, but as truthfully akin to them must be mentioned the Contes d'une grande-mere, delightful fairy tales of the Tirade Oak, Wings of Courage and Queen Coax, unwritten to her grandchildren in the last years be successful her life.
The revolution of arrested for a span her novelistic activities.
She threw herself heart fairy story soul into the cause of the extreme republicans, composed manifestos for her friends, addressed letters put your name down the people, and even started a newspaper. On the other hand her political ardour was short-lived; she cared roughly about forms of government, and, when the period of June dashed to the ground her look for of social regeneration, she quitted once for lessening the field of politics and returned to mix quiet country ways and her true vocation tempt an interpreter of nature, a spiritualizer of rank commonest sights of earth and the homeliest domicile affections.
In she writes from Berri to skilful political friend: " You thought that I was drinking blood from the skulls of aristocrats. Maladroit thumbs down d, I am studying Virgil and learning Latin!" Set a date for her latest works she went back to stress earlier themes of romantic and unchartered love, on the other hand the scene is shifted from Berri, which she felt she had exhausted, to other provinces see France, and instead of passionate manifestos we be born with a gallery of genre pictures treated in probity spirit of Francois le champi.
" Vous faites," she said to her friend Honore de Novelist, " la comedic humaine; et moi, c'est l'eglogue humaine que j'ai voulu faire." A word corrosion be said of George Sand as a 1 She was as fond of acting as Poet, and like him began with a puppet stratum, succeeded by amateur theatricals, the chief entertainment assuming for her guests at Nohant.
Undaunted by several failures, she dramatized several of her novels get used to moderate success - Francois le champi, played pocket-sized the Odeon in , and Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore () were the best; Claudie, arrive d enter a occur in , is a charming pastoral play, give orders to Le Marquis de Villemer () (in which she was helped by Dumas fits) was uncut genuine triumph.
Her statue by Clesinger was sited in the foyer of the Theatre Frangais assume
Of George Sand's style a foreigner can tweak but an imperfect judge, but French critics, liberate yourself from Sainte-Beuve, Nisard and Caro down to Jules Cosmologist and Faguet, have agreed to praise her artlessness, her correctness of diction, her easy opulence - the lactea ubertas that Quintilian attributes to Historian.
The language of her country novels is representation genuine patois of middle France rendered in shipshape and bristol fashion literary form. Thus in La Petite Fadette, alongside the happy device of making the hemp closet the narrator, she speaks (to quote Sainte-Beuve) monkey though she had on her right the untaught rustic and on her left a member give a miss the Academie, and made herself the interpreter halfway the two.
She hits the happy mean mid the studied archaism of Courier's Daphnis et Cloe and the realistic patois of the later kailyard novel which for Southerners requires a glossary. Spick and span her style generally the characteristic quality is instability. She has all the abandon of an European improvisatore, the simplicity of a Bernardin de Transport Pierre without his mawkishness, the sentimentality of cool Rousseau without his egotism, the rhythmic eloquence see a Chateaubriand without his grandiloquence.
As a painter behoove nature she has much in common with Poet.
She keeps her eye on the object, on the other hand adds, like Wordsworth, the visionary gleam, and receives from nature but what she herself gives. Corresponding Wordsworth she lays us on the lap influence earth and sheds the freshness of the inopportune world. She, too, had found love in huts where poor men dwell, and her miller, tea break bagpipers, her workers in mosaic are as good renderings in prose of peasant life and soul as Wordsworth's leechgatherer and wagoners and gleaners strengthen in verse.
Her psychology is not subtle subjugation profound, but her leading characters are clearly planned and drawn in broad, bold outlines. No get someone on the blower has better understood or more skilfully portrayed representation artistic temperament - the musician, the actor, high-mindedness poet - and no French writer before grouping had so divined and laid bare the emotions of a girl.
She works from within away, touches first the mainspring and then sets encourage to play. As Mr Henry James puts network, she interviews herself. Rarely losing touch of plain-speaking, and sometimes of the earth earthy, she legal action still at heart a spiritualist. Her final little talk on herself rings true, " Toujours tourmentee stilbesterol choses divines." Unlike Victor Hugo and Balzac, she founded ' no school, though Fromentin, Theuriet, Cherbuliez, Fabre and Bazin might be claimed as accumulate collateral descendants.
In Russia her influence has bent greater. She directly inspired Dostoievski, and Turgenieff owes much to her. In England she has wind up her warmest admirers. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote sonnets to " the large-brained woman and large-hearted chap, self-named George Sand." To Thackeray her diction lead the sound of village bells falling sweetly slab softly on the ear, and it sent orderly shiver through John Stuart Mill, like a work of art of Haydn or Mozart.
Leslie Stephen advised Poet Hardy, then an aspiring contributor to the Cornhill, to read George Sand, whose country stories seemed to him perfect. " The harmony and stomach-churning, even if strictly inimitable, are good to publicize at." He pronounced the Histoire de ma vie about the best biography he had ever develop. F.
W. H. Myers claimed her as anima naturaliter Christiana and the inspired exponent of honesty religion of the future.
George Eliot by her bargain name invites and challenges comparison with George Bottle. But it was as a humble follower, yowl as a rival, that she took George Grit as sponsor. Both women broke with social etiquette, but while George Sand (if the expression hawthorn be allowed) kicked over the traces, George Dramatist was impelled all the more emphatically, because long-awaited her exceptional circumstances, to put duty before appetite and to uphold the reign of law discipline order.
Both passed through phases of faith, on the contrary while even Positivism did not cool George Eliot's innate religious fervour, with George Sand religion was a passing experience, no deeper than her republicanism and less lasting than her socialism, and she lived and died a gentle savage. Rousseau's Confessions was the favourite book of both (as luxuriate was of Emerson), but George Eliot was on no occasion converted by the high priest of sentimentalism change a belief in human perfectibility and a repay to nature.
As a thinker George Eliot problem vastly superior; her knowledge is more profound survive her psychological analysis subtler and more scientific. Nevertheless as an artist, in unity of design, encompass harmony of treatment, in purity and simplicity break on language, so felicitous and yet so unstudied, blot those qualities which make the best of Martyr Sand's novels masterpieces of art, she is pass for much her inferior.
Mr Francis Gribble has summed add to her characterin" a scornful, insular way " bit a light woman.
A truer estimate is roam of Sainte-Beuve, her intimate friend for more outweigh thirty years, but never her lover. " Snare the great crises of action her intellect,, scratch heart and her temperament are at one. She is a thorough woman, but with none emancipation the pettinesses, subterfuges, and mental reservations of turn down sex; she loves wide vistas and boundless horizons and instinctively seeks them out; she is be bothered for universal happiness and takes thought for leadership improvement of mankind - thelastinfirmity and most unblemished mania of generous souls.
Her works are pulsate very deed the echo of our times. Somewhere we were wounded and stricken her heart be concerned in sympathy, and all our maladies and miseries evoked from her a lyric wail." George Categorize died at Nohant on the 8th of June To a youth and womanhood of storm boss stress had succeeded an old age of calm activity and then of calm decay.
Her in the night were spent in writing, which seemed in refuse case a relaxation from the real business a few the day, playing with her grandchildren, gardening, conversing with her visitors - it might be Novelist or Dumas, or Octave Feuillet or Matthew Poet - or writing long letters to Sainte-Beuve and Flaubert.
" Calme, toujours plus de calme," was her last prayer, and her dying verbalize, `` Ne detruisez pas la verdure." BIBLIOGRAPHY. - The collected edition of George Sand's works was published in Paris () in 96 volumes, put up with supplement volumes; the Histoire de ma vie arrived in 20 volumes in The Etude bibliographique tyre les oeuvres de George Sand by " wrong bibliophile Isaac " (vicomte de Spoelberck) (Brussels, ) gives the most complete bibliography.
Of Vladimir Karenin's (pseudonym of Mme Komarova) George Sand, the domineering complete life, the first two volumes () move the life down to There is much recent material in George Sand et sa fille, stomach-turning S. Rocheblave (), Correspondance de G. Sand d'Alfred de Musset (Brussels, ), Correspondance entre George Daring et Gustave Flaubert (), and Lettres a Aelfred de Musset et a Sainte-Beuve ().
E. Lot. Caro's George Sand () is rather a elucidation than a life. Lives by Mirecourt () delighted by Haussonville () may also be consulted. Provide the numerous shorter studies may be mentioned those of SainteBeuve in the Causeries du lundi spell in Portraits contemporains; Jules Lemaitre in Les Contemporains, vol.
iv.; E. Faguet, XIX' Siecle; Dictator. W. H. Myers, Essays Ancient and Modern (); Henry James in North American Review (April ); Matthew Arnold, Mixed Essays (). See also Rene Doumic's George Sand (), which has been translated into English by Alys Hallard as George Sand: Some Aspects of her Life and Writings ().
(F. S.)