Abstract
George Sand is essentially our contemporary.
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Notes
- 1.
‘For Charles Baudelaire the ideal woman was a purely male creation, which men immersed in a voluptuous artifice (...). Beyond this “sublime” creation of the poet, the common or “naturelle” woman was abominable, always prey to her own physiological needs that she was unable to control, like a “beast” actually.’ See A. Lo Giudice, George Sand. Romenticismo e modernità, Bulzoni Editore, Rome, 1990, p. 5.
- 2.
‘Flaubert and Sand had known each other since 1857, though their friendship developed in February 1864, when the hermit left Croisset to go to Paris where he attended and was profoundly by a play written by Sand, Villemer. (…). George Sand understood the originality and literary stature of Flaubert. When Salambo, received unanimpously negative criticism, Sand defended the author. The dialogue between Flaubert and Sand assumed every form of writing, even their works. Le dernier amour, one of the most prestigious novels written by Sand in her later years, was a reply to the problem of female adultery as presented in Madame Bovary…’. Ibidem. pp. 13–15.
- 3.
In 1888, the writer wrote the novel Consuelo: ‘le livre est un chef-d’oeuvre, un vrai chef-d’oeuvre: l’ouvrage le plus noble lisssé par George Sand, la plus noble au plusieurs égards, sur son propre terrai net dans toute la littérature [the book is a masterpiece, a true masterpiece: the noblest work produced by George Sand, the noblest in many respects, on its own merits alone, in the whole of literature].’ See F. Mallet, George Sand, Grasset, Paris, 1976, p. 409.
- 4.
Ibidem, p. 301.
- 5.
Descended from a Saxon king of Poland. George Sand’s great-great-grandmother, Maria Aurora of Koenigsmark, had had an affair, in 1695, with the elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus, who later became king of Poland under the name of Augustus II. The two lovers broke up at the birth of their son Maurizio, who was nominate Count of Saxony. He embarked on a military career serving his father, then Tsar Peter I, and France, becoming a marshal and distinguishing himself in the War of the Austrian Succession, during which he commanded the French troops in the victorious battle of Fontenoy in 1745. The lover of numerous women, both actresses and aristocrats, in 1748, he had a daughter by the lover of his latter years, the actress Marie Rinteau. He gave the name Marie-Aurore de Saxe to this daughter who became George Sand’s grandmother. She was able to bear her father’s name thanks to a decree passed by the Parliament of Paris.
- 6.
In Histoire de ma vie (1854), in Œuvres autobiographiques, Gallimard’s ‘Biblioteque de la Pléiade’, Paris, 1970, George Sand attributed considerable importance to the genealogical reconstruction of her family, the transmission of the genes she believed had moulded not only her physiognomy but her character and temperament too. It was impossible to trace her maternal origins because the poor had no genealogy. Her mother was the daughter of a breeder of birds and George Sand developed a strong passion for birds, so much so that she tamed sparrows, blackcaps and finches.
- 7.
J. Barry, George Sand, Dall’Oglio editore, Milan, 1976, p. 55. Sophie Delaborde aveva avuto una figlia illegittima prima di incontrare il padre di Aurore.
- 8.
G. Sand, op. cit., p. 71.
- 9.
‘Alors je lisais Chateaubriand et Rousseau, je passais de l’Evangile au Contrat social.’ See Lettera di George Sand a Gustave Flaubert, 25 ottobre 1871, Correspondance, ed. Georges Lubin, 11 vols. Paris, 1964–76, p. 595.
- 10.
J. Barry, George Sand, Dall’Oglio editore, Milan, 1976, p. 78.
- 11.
Ibidem, p. 80.
- 12.
Ibidem, p. 84.
- 13.
In the first edition of Lélia, the monastic life became the last resort, however unsuccessful, of her restless heroine.
- 14.
After the years of convent life, her encounter with the thinking of J. J. Rousseau (to whom she dedicated, in 1841, an essay published in the Revue de deux mondes, titled ‘Quelques refléxions sur Jean-Jaques Rousseau’) definitively separated Aurore from Catholic orthodoxy. The writer’s religiosity tended more and more towards deism and pantheism, preferring the religiosity of the peasants as more naïve, therefore more authentic. See A. Lo Giudice, George Sand. Romenticismo e modernità, op. cit. p. 104.
- 15.
G. Sand, Impressions et souvenirs, Paris, 1896, p. 132.
- 16.
Ibidem, p. 1056.
- 17.
G. Sand, Histoire de ma vie, in Œuvres autobiographiques, Gallimard, ‘Biblioteque de la Pléiade’, Paris, 1970, p. 212.
- 18.
G. Sand, Correspondance, ed. Levy, Paris, 1884, p. 783.
- 19.
Ibidem, p. 145.
- 20.
Ibidem, p. 825.
- 21.
G. Sand, Histoire de ma vie, in Œuvres autobiographiques, Gallimard, ‘Biblioteque de la Pléiade’, Paris, 1970, p. 140.
- 22.
Indiana is the story of a woman in an unhappy marriage, who leaves the place where she lived with her husband, the island of Bourbon off Madagascar, passing from one lover to another and travelling between Europe and the African continent, on a wave of passion and the pursuit of happiness. The book was translated into Italian by Donzelli editore, 2009, with the title Indiana, le passioni di Madame Delmare, accomananied by a commentary by Henry James.
- 23.
J. Barry, George Sand, Dall’Oglio Ed., Milan, 1979, p. 167.
- 24.
Ibidem, p. 161.
- 25.
G. Sand, Correpondance, ed. Georges Lubin, 11 vols. Paris, 1964–76, p.135.
- 26.
Originally a member of a Bonapartist family, though she had never manifested specific political positions previously, her meeting with Jules Sandeau and the events of the Revolution of 1830 caused her to assume republican positions. She showed an appreciation of the liberal positions of Lamennais, repudiated the clerical conceptions of her youth to embrace a very radical form of democratism. collaborating with Le Monde, publishing Lettres à Marcie, where she took a stand for women’s emancipation and revealed a strong sympathy for socialist ideas, so much so that she went beyond Lamennais’ reform programmes.
- 27.
These also acted as models for some characters in the novels by George Sand; in La mare au diable and Les maîtres sonneurs used to portray the slothful idleness and immorality of the grand landowners in strident contrast with the dignified industriousness of modest artisans.
- 28.
G. Sand, Souvenirs de 1848, Calmann Lévy Fréres, Paris, 1880, p. 201.
- 29.
See George Sand, Correspondance, op. cit. Vol. VIII, p. 549.
- 30.
Ibidem, p. 401.
- 31.
Ibidem, p. 407.
- 32.
The revolutionary feminists and former Sansimonists who published ‘La Voix des femmes’ tried to exploit Sand’s authority in favour of universal suffrage for women and publicly proposed her candidacy for election to the National Assembly. However, George Sand, who had already considered the universal suffrage of 1848 too precocious, refused the candidacy because she had not been consulted and because she believed the fight against the poverty of women and men to be more urgent. For Sand, the premise upstream of the right to vote independently of constraint was personal autonomy which might be achieved through education and rights. She held that the reverse procedure would only have delayed and damaged the interests of women. The right to vote for women proposed in 1849 by deputy Victor Considérant (like John Mill’s proposal of 1867) referred exclusively to single women who were legally independent.
- 33.
G. Sand, Indiana, op.cit. p. 220.
- 34.
‘C’est une série de souvenirs, de professions de foie et de meditations dans un cadre dont les détails auront quelque poesie et beaucoup de semplicité [It is a series of recollections, professions of faith and meditations in a setting whose details will have some degree of poetry and a lot of simplicity.’ ‘Lettera a Charles Poncy’, 14 December 1847, in Correspondances, ed. George Lubin, Vol. VII, p. 188.
- 35.
G. Sand, Histoire de ma vie, in Œuvres autobiographiques, Gallimard, « Biblioteque de la Pléiade », Paris, 1970, p. 306.
- 36.
G. Sand, Correspondance, ed. Georges Lubin, 11 voll. Paris, 1964-76, p. 171.
- 37.
P. Merimée. Correspondance générale, 12 vols., Paris, 1941-58, V, p. 303.
- 38.
Ibidem, p. 304.
- 39.
Ibidem, p. 173.
- 40.
G. Sand, Correspondance, op. cit., p. 593.
- 41.
J, Barry, George Sand, op. cit., p. 179.
- 42.
G. Sand, Question d’art et de litterature, Paris, 1842, pp. 62–63.
- 43.
George Sand and Alfred de Musset met in June 1833 with some mutual friends, when Musset, having read Lélia, wrote to her that he was in love with her. They left together for Italy. In Genoa, George Sand fell ill with an illness that dragged on until they arrived in Venice, where she spent her days in bed, treated by the young Venetian doctor Pietro Pagello. However, the poet also contracted typhus, which gave him a very high fever and hallucinations. He was nursed by George and Pagello who, in the meantime, had become lovers.
- 44.
G. Sand, Correspondance, op. cit. pagg. 501-03.
- 45.
See G. Sand’s works in the reference section.
- 46.
G, Sand, Lettres à Alfred de Musset et à Sainte-Beuve, Paris, 1897, p. 69.
- 47.
Ibidem, p. 70.
- 48.
G. Sand, Correspondance, op. cit. p. 637.
- 49.
J. Barry, op. cit., p. 251.
- 50.
G. Sand, Correspondance, op. cit., p. 847.
- 51.
Ibidem, p. 477.
- 52.
Sand confessed having had ‘a kind of maternal adoration’ for the artist, and their life together saw the constant presence of her two children in both Nohant and Paris. Chopin was not at ease with Sand’s friends of the time, mostly Republicans and Socialists, and his delicate health made him unstable. The difficult relationship between Maurice and Chopin and their ill-concealed attraction towards Sand’s daughter, Solange, helped put an end to the relationship. When her son threatened to leave the family, his mother objected strongly: ‘This could not and should not happen. Chopin did not accept my legitimate and necessary intervention. He lowered his head and said I didn’t love him anymore. Chopin left Nohant in November 1846 to return to Paris; the relationship with Sand however lasted until Solange married the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Clésinger in the spring of 1847: Clésinger himself was the author of the funeral monument erected over Chopin’s grave in the cemetery of Pére-Lachaise. Sand saw the musician for the last time in March 1848: ‘I squeezed his hand, trembling and frozen. I wanted to talk to him, he ran away.’ The letters the two lovers exchanged were destroyed by Sand. See G. Sand, Histoire de ma vie, in Œuvres autobiographiques, Gallimard, ‘Biblioteque de la Pléiade’, Paris, 1970.
- 53.
Consuelo, ed. L. de Potter, Paris, 1843 al quale seguì l’evoluzione della storia della protagonista che si sposa e diviene: La comtesse de Rudolstadt, L. de Potter, Paris, 1844.
- 54.
See A. Lo Giudice, George Sand, Romenticismo e modernità, Bulzoni, Rome, 1990, p. 114.
- 55.
See S. Aleramo, Amo dunque sono, Milan, Mondadori, 1927.
- 56.
J. Barry, op.cit., p. 459.
- 57.
See J. M. Bailbé, Le théatre et la vie dans le Chateau des desertes, ‘Revue Histoire litteraire de la France’, 1979, n. 4, p. 4. George Sand called the stage ‘Chateau des desertes’.
- 58.
See G. Fauré, ‘Un paysage musical de George Sand’, in Paysages litteraires, Fasquelle, ed., Paris, 1918.
- 59.
See W. Karenine, George Sand. Sa vie et ses ouvres, Libraire Paul Elbendoff, Paris, 1899, p. 18, trad. a.
- 60.
V. Hugo, Oeuvres completes, ed. Massin, XV, p. 1381.
- 61.
Ibidem.
- 62.
For Marcel Proust, the reading of the novel François le Champi, with its theme of incest, read by the mother on the fateful night when the morbid attachment of the child manifested itself, became emblematic, like the episode of the Madeleines and the ‘dalle’. George Sand’s rural novels were, therefore, the first readings of the narrator–protagonist of the Recherche du temps perdu. See A. Lo Giudice, George Sand. Romanticismo e modernità, Bulzoni Editore, Rome, 1990, p. 19.
- 63.
Francesco Orlando reiterated the criticism of Baudelaire and Nietzsche (see La figlia della Mesalliance, Liviana editrice, Padua, 1966), Benedetto Croce did not mention it, Massimo Colesanti declared it illegible (see Romanzo e impegno: Eugene Sue e George Sand, Sansoni Accademia, Milan, 1974).
- 64.
A. Lo Giudice, op. cit., p. 133.
- 65.
C. Bo, George Sand dentro al cristallo. Un viaggio metaforico nel regno minerale, Il Corriere della Sera, 12th of February, 1989.
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Gammaitoni, M. (2022). George Sand. In: The History and Life Stories of European Women in the Arts. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94456-8_5
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