Part 5 (1/2)
THE ROMANTIC ESCAPADE
THE VENICE ADVENTURE
George Sand did not have to wait long for success She won fame with her first book With her second one she became rich, or what she considered rich She tells us that she sold it for a hundred and sixty pounds! That seemed to her the wealth of the world, and she did not hesitate to leave her attic on the Quay St Michel for a ave up to her
There was, at that tiun to exercise a sort of royal tyranny over authors Francois Buloz had taken advantage of the intellectual effervescence of 1831 to found the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ He was venturesoh, obliging, in spite of his surly manners He is still considered the typical and traditional review er He certainly possessed the first quality necessary for this function He discovered talented writers, and he also kne to draw from them and squeeze out of the, he has been known to keep a contributor under lock and key until his article was finished Authors abused hiain A reviehich had, for its first nu many others, as contributors, e Sand tells us that after a battle with the _Revue de Paris_ and the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, both of which papers wanted her work, she bound herself to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, which was to pay her a hundred and sixty pounds a year for thirty-two pages of writing every six weeks In 1833 the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ published Lelia, and on January 1, 1876, it finished publishi+ng the _Tour de Perce over a period of forty-three years
The literary critic of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ at that time was a man as very much respected and very little liked, or, in other words, he was universally detested This critic was Gustave Planche
He took his own _role_ too seriously, and endeavoured to put authors on their guard about their faults Authors did not appreciate this
He endeavoured, too, to put the public on guard against its own infatuations The public did not care for this He sowed strife and reaped revenge This did not stop hi his executions His ined, and this is the curious side of the story He suffered keenly from the storms of hostility which he provoked He had a kindly disposition at bottoiven to melancholy and intensely pessiave hihly devoted to art In order to comprehend this portrait and to see its resereat Brunetiere, have only to think of hiht in his exclusive devotion to literature a diversion froloomy pessimism, underneath which was concealed such kindliness It see a whole crowd of enemies, whilst in reality the discovery of every fresh adversary caused hi
When _Lelia_ appeared, the novel was very badly treated in _L'Europe litteraire_ Planche challenged the writer of the article, a certain Capo de Feuillide, to a duel So much for the impassibility of severe critics The duel took place, and afterwards there was a e Sand and Planche Fro duels for the sake of authors
About the sae Sand made use of Sainte-Beuve as her confessor He seemed specially indicated for this function In the first place, he looked rather ecclesiastical, and then he had a taste for secrets, and e Sand had absolute confidence in hielic nature In reality, just about that tiraces of the wife of his best friend, and riting his _Livre d'A to the world a weakness of which he had taken advantage This certainly was theaand praying George Sand declares her veneration for hiins her confession by an avowal that must have been difficult for her She tells of her intimacy with Merimee, an intimacy which was of short duration and very unsatisfactory She had been fascinated by Meriht he had the secret of happiness” At the end of the week she eeping with disgust, suffering and discouragement” She had hoped to find in hi but cold and bitter jesting”(16) This experiment had also proved a failure
(16) Compare _Lettres a Sainte-Beuve_
Such were the conditions in which George Sand found herself at this epoch Her position was satisfactory; she ht have been calm and independent Her inner life was once ed She felt that she had lived centuries, that she had undergone torture, that her heart had aged twenty years, and that nothing was any pleasure to her now Added to all this, public life saddened her, for the horizon had clouded over The boundless hopes and the enthusiass of the past ”The Republic, as it was dreamed of in July,” she writes, ”has ended in the massacres of Warsaw and in the holocaust of the Saint-Merry cloister The cholera has just been raging Saint Sireat question of love”(17)
(17) _Histoire de ma vie_
Depression had come after over-excitement This is a phenomenon frequently seen iht be called the perpetual failure of revolutionary proe Sand wrote _Lelia_ She finished it in July, and it appeared in August, 1833
It is absolutely iive an analysis of _Lelia_ There really is no subject The personages are not beings of flesh and blood They are allegories strolling about in the garden of abstractions Lelia is a woman who has had her trials in life She has loved and been disappointed, so that she can no longer love at all She reduces the gentle poet Stenio to despair He is er than she is, and he has faith in life and in love His ingenuous soul begins to wither and to lose its freshness, thanks to the scepticism of the beautiful, disdainful, ironical and world-weary Lelia This strange person has a sister Pulcherie, a celebrated courtesan, whose insolent sensuality is a set-off to the other one's ence and of the Flesh, of Mind and Matter Then conus, the priest, who has lost his faith, and for whom Lelia is a tereat friend, TrenHe had knohat it was to be only twenty years of age ”The only thing was, he had known this at the age of sixteen” (!!) He had then becoyric on the fatal passion for ga back, and finally swindles ”an old millionaire as himself a defrauder and a dissipated man” out of a hundred francs Apparently the bad conduct of theHe is condeoes his punishenerated ”What if I were to tell you,” writes George Sand, ”that such as he now is, crushed, with a tarnished reputation, ruined, I consider hiards theto bear it He bore it, living for five years bravely and patiently a his abject companions He has co his head up, calm, purified, pale as you see him, but handsome still, like a creature sent by God”
We all kno dear convicts are to the hearts of romantic people
There is no need for me to remind you how they have co and of purity We all remember Dostoiewsky's _Crime and Punishment_ and Tolstoi's _Resurrection_ When the virtue of expiation and the religion of hureeted them as old acquaintances, if certain essential works in our own literature, of which these books are the issue, had not been unknown to us
The last part of the novel is devoted to Stenio Hurt by Lelia's disdain, which has thrown hiives hiy in Pulcherie's house Later on he is in a nus In such books wespeech by Stenio, addressed to Don Juan, whoas the author evidently prefers that mode of suicide Lelia arrives in ti nus then appears on the scene, exactly at the right le Lelia Pious hands prepare Lelia and Stenio for their burial They are united and yet separated up to their very death
The suinal version of _Lelia_
In 1836, George Sand touched up this work, altering , what she altered It is a pity that her new version, which is longer, heavier and more obscure, should have taken the place of the former one In its first form _Lelia_ is a work of rare beauty, but with the beauty of a poem or an oratorio It is made of the stuff of which dreams are composed It is a series of reveries, adapted to the soul of 1830 At every different epoch there is a certain frame of mind, and certain ideas are diffused in the air which we find alike in the works of the writers of that tih they did not borrow the up of the theue in the personal novel and in lyrical poetry The the is contained in the folloords: ”Corief alone that reat” This is worthy of Chateaubriand The theme of melancholy is as follows: ”The moon appearedWhat is the ic to ht very well be Lamartine We then have the malediction pronounced in face of inificent Nature, for it was there before aze on, believing that it was enough to ny in his _Maison du berger_ Then we have the religion of love: ”Doubt God, doubt men, doubt me if you like, but do not doubt love” This is Musset
But the theme which predoht say the _leit-motiv_ of all, is that of desolation, of universal despair, of the woe of life It is the same lahout all literature It is the identical suffering which Rene, Ober to all the echoes The elements of it were the sa ourselves to the conditions of universal life, an abuse of self-analysis which opens up our wounds again and ination which presents to our eyes the deceptive e of Promised Lands from which we are ever exiles Lelia personifies, in her turn, the ”_rief and doubt ”How many, times,” he says, ”have you appeared toin which ed by the spirit of inquiry! With your beauty and your sadness, your world-weariness and your scepticisrief produced by the abuse of thought?” He then adds: ”There is a great deal of pride in this grief, Lelia!” It was undoubtedly a malady, for Lelia had no reason to complain of life any eneral conditions of life which all people have to accept seem painful to them When we are well the play of our muscles is a joy to us, but e are ill we feel the very weight of the atht
When _Lelia_ appeared George Sand's old friends were stupefied ”What, in Heaven's naache_ ”Where have you been in search of this? Why have you written such a book?
Where has it sprung from, and what is it for?This woman is a fantastical creature She is not at all like you You are lively and can dance a jig; you can appreciate butterflies and you do not despise puns