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| Sunday, 2 May 2004 |
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Celebrating George Sand Recognised in France and abroad for her literary work and her political and social commitment, the writer George Sand, born in 1804, will be celebrated throughout 2004. Possessed of an extraordinary energy and capacity for work, brilliant and generous, she never ceased to put her ideals in practice. Her credo? Love, in all its forms.
Aurore Dupin de Francueil started life on July 5, 1804, in Paris. She was to end it in 1876, at Nohant in Berry (Centre). Between these two dates she made her way constantly from one place to the other - taking her work with her. Brought up in Nohant by her grandmother, Aurore Dupin was married at the age of eighteen to Baron Casimir Dudevant, by whom she had two children. But nine years later she left him and settled in Paris to live with the novelist Jules Sandeau. Aurore then became George, borrowed the first part of the name Sandeau, dressed as a man and smoked cigars. A journalist, she lived by her pen, and her first novel, Indiana (1832), was a success. It was followed by Valentine, Lelia (1833), Jacques (1834) and Mauprat (1837), romantic and lyrical works tinged with rebellion which, according to the Directionnaire encyclopedique de la litterature francaise (Encyclopedic Dictionary of French Literature), "inexhaustibly celebrate a passion that is both sensual and idealistic, but always spoiled and excessive, love in conflict with prejudices and society", reflecting the author's life at that time. For a "revolution in hearts and minds" Indeed, Sand came up against prejudice many times - not only because of her succession for love affairs - particularly with the poet Alfred de Musset, then with the Polish composer and pianist, Frederic Chopin, with whom she stayed ten years - but also because of what she was - "Neither aristocrat nor bourgeoise", writes Michelle Perrot in Les Femmes ou les silences de l'Histoire (Women or the Silences of History). "Sand was a social hybrid. she was aware of it, she accepted it and she was proud of it, even though she sometimes suffered because of it". A republican in Restoration France (restoration of the monarchy), after 1830, George Sand defends the rights of the people and individual freedoms while proclaiming the necessity for solidarity between human beings", explains Reine Prat, in charge of "George Sand Year". In the 1840s influenced by the humanitarian mysticism of the thinker Felicite de Lamennais and still more by the philosopher Pierre Leroux, she published novels inspired by socialism. "The social revolution now seemed to her an indispensable complement to the political revolution. But both would have to be based on an essentially religious 'moral revolution' of hearts and minds", is Michelle Perrot's analysis. This was the period of Compagnon du tour de France (The Journeyman Joiner or the Companion of the Tour of France) (1840), Horace (1841), Consuelo (1842) and Le Meunier d'Angibault (The Miller of Angibault) (1845), in which criticism of society is combined with the theme of love supreme and her admiration for the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is evident. In 1848 with the fall of King Louis-Philippe, Sand increased her political writing. She contributed to the Bulletin de la Republique (Bulletin of the Republic) and launched an ephemeral newspaper, La Cause du peuple (The People's Cause). But disappointed after the failure of the revolution, she decided to "distract her imagination by turning to an ideal of calm, innocence and daydreaming", as she relates in the preface to La Petite Fadette (1849). "La bonne dame de Nohant" At Nohant, George Sand was always interested in the peasants. She made them the characters of a series of "rustic novels": La Mare au diable (The Devil's Pool) (1846), Francois le Champi (The Country Wait) (1848), Les Maitres sonneurs (The Master Pipers) (1853) and others, and pioneered regional narrative. In them she describes the landscape and people dear to her, and idealises them, sometimes to excess. She later explained herself. "They appeared to me as I depicted them. Perhaps too, I have met too many good souls in real life and I believed in rectitude, in friendship, in unselfishness ... My honest and pure characters are not abstractions (...)". In any case, for her "art is not a study of positive reality; it is a search for 'ideal' truth". During the Second Empire of Napoleon III (1852-1870), Sand embarked on an internal exile. Indeed, in 1854 she published a long autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life). Nevertheless, Nohant continued to be as much a Mecca of artistic meetings as before. There were guests as distinguished as the musician Franz Liszt, the painter Eugene Delacroix and the writers Honore de Balzac, Theophile Gautier, Gustave Flaubert and Eugene Formentin. Sand also shared the life of the peasants, who dubbed her "la bonne dame de Nohant". She taught their children to read and distribute alms. She took an interest in the arts and natural sciences. "She upset hierarchies and the traditional barriers between disciplines, studied and demonstrated a talent for music, drawing, botany, mineralogy, on occasion made herself doctor or ethnologist, collected the songs and beliefs of the Berry district, set up a puppet theatre at Nohant, excelled in needlework and jam-making, rode and went pistol shooting ..." says Reine Prat. These activities did not curb her frenzied writing. Right up until her death, she produced a constant stream of articles, novels, essays and plays, including Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dore (The Gallant Lords of Bois Dore) (1858), Le Marquis de Villemer (1861) and Mademoiselle de la Quintinie (1862). She also left one of the finest and most abundant collections of correspondence in French literature (twenty-five volumes). An exceptional woman, Sand always had "an obsession with injustice and misfortune, combined with the conviction that it is possible to change things and that intervention is a duty", says Michelle Perrot, who is nevertheless astonished at the contrast in her "between boldness of individual action and timidity, indeed ineffectualness, over the collective demand for political equality for women". However, she accepts that George Sand "constantly protested against the unfounded and so often unjust power of the 'bearded sex". In her life as in her work, women's liberation is a dominant issue that was for a great many French and other European women, "a message and a lever". More broadly, Reine Prat considers that "crossing frontiers, her work served as a benchmark for a great many popular emancipation movements an exerted an acknowledged influence over the greatest writers: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Henry James, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, the Bronte sisters and George Eliot". A Meeting with George Sand "George Sand Year" will begin on February 3, 2004 with a learn-about-the-author day. All the cultural and educational networks in France and worldwide are invited to take part. On this occasion a reading-performance at the Assemblee Nationale of political and fictional selections from the writer's work will be performed by actors and high-school students in a production by Jeanne Champagne. This event will end on 9 and 10 December at the Senate with an international symposium: "George Sand, literature and politics". Between these two dates, the year will be punctuated with a very wide variety of tributes. Moreover, in order to relaunch the publication of Sand's work, the Centre National de Livre (the national book centre) will support publishers' initiatives in this direction and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (France's national library) will increase the number of documents accessible on line (http://gallica.bnf.fr/). (Label France) |
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