HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY, HEMPSTEAD, NY 11550-UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR CULTURAL & INTERCULTURAL STUDIES

+ IN THIS ISSUE

GEORGE SAND AND GUSTAVE FLAUBERT: BOOK REVIEWS:

Comme c'est triste, l'histoire! George Lubin, Ed., Correspondance, Vol. XIV. Gerard Roubichou 3 By Joseph Barry 48

Gustave Flaubert and George Sand's Dan Hofstadter, Ed. and Tr., My Life. Reply to a Friend By Thelma Jurgrau 50

Francis Steegmuller 6 The Political Ideas of Gustave Flaubert CONFERENCES: and George Sand, (An extract from George Sand: Her Life, Her Works, Her Circle, Comme deux troubadours) Her Influence

Claude Tricotel 15 San Diego State University 34 Histoires, Memoires and Confessions: George Sand Workshop Sand, Flaubert and Jean JacquesRousseau University de Tours 58

Sherry A. Dranch 19 Colloque George Sand

The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Cerisy-la-Salle 59 Correspondence — Extracts

Isabelle Naginski 22

SPECIAL ARTICLES:

An Interview with Fransoise Gilot Alex Szogyi 37 Conference Reports 60

George Sand and Women's Rights Conference Schedule 64

Georges Lubin 43 New Members 47 Newsnotes 61

Translation of an Extract from Next Issue 65 Histoire de ma vie Overseas 62

Thelma Jurgrau 51 Publication News 62 Chronologie Subscription Information 68

Georges Lubin 56 Works in Progress 61

VOL 111 tA0.1

BOY ST RA• kSSW, ()%14544

I SIT FALLIWNTER 19110

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 1821-1880

Gustave Flaubert by Paul Baudouin (Radio Times Hulton Picture Library)

THE FRIENDS OF GEORGE SAND was founded at Hofstra University in November 1976.

FOUNDING MEMBERS Joseph C. Astman, //o/stm U. Paul G. Blount, Georgia State tr. Marie M. Collins, Rutgers Ir. Natalie Datlot, Hofstra U. Edwin L. Dunbaugh, Hofstra U. Lesley S. Henmann, Manhattan C. Thelma L. Jurgrau, Empire State C. Frank S. Lambasa, Hofstra U. Dennis O'Brien, West Virginia U. Marie-Jeanne Pecile, Maisons-Laf fine, France William Shiver, Hofstra U. Enid Standring, Montclair State U. Germaine Stilson, SPFA Alex Szogyi, Hunter C. 'CUNY

MANAGING EDITOR Natalie Datlof

EDITORIAL BOARD Marie M. Collins Lesley S. Herrmann Thelma Jurgrau Nancy Rogers Alex Szogyi

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Bernadette Chovelon, Paris, France Marie-Jacques Hoog, Douglass C.—Rutgers U.,

New Brunswick, NJ Alvin Lundquist, Oxford, England Ryuji Nagatsuka, Tokyo, Japan Isabelle Naginski, Bard C., Annandale-on-Hudson Marie-Jeanne Pecile, Maisons-Laffitte, France Annarosa Poli, Bologna, Italy Francoise van Rossum-Guyon, Amsterdam, Holland Patricia Thomson, Brighton, England

HONORARY MEMBERS Joseph Barry Jacques Barzun Martine Beaufils Germaine Bree Eva Figes Ancice Gadaud .

Fraricoise Gilot Germaine Greer Rosemary Harris Byron Janis Doris Lessing Andre-Jean Libourel Georges Lubin Francoise Mallet-Joris Jeanne Moreau Mary McCarthy Iris Murdoch Henri Peyre Gerard Roubichou Franeoise Sagan Christiane Sineets-Sand Nathalie Sarraute John Simon Gloria Steinem Evelyne Su I lerot Rebecca West

Subscriptions: The Friends of George Sand Newsletter is published at Hofstra University twice a year. Subscriptions in the United States and Canada are $5.00 for individuals, $3.00 for students and $8.00 for institutions. Foreign subscribers add $3.00 for postage. Each back issue is $2.00. (Checks should be made payable to: Friends of George Sand and sent to UCCIS, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11550)

Submission of articles: Prof. Marie M. Collins, Dept. of Foreign Lit. & Langs., Rutgers Univ., Newark, NJ 07102. All other communications: Natalie Datlof, Friends of George Sand, UCCIS, Hofstra University, Hempstead. NY 11550.

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The Friends of George Sand Newsletter is designed did printed at Hofstra University.

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"COMME C'EST TRISTE, L'HISTOIRE I"

Gerard Roubichou

Le dialogue gpistolaire qui s'instaure en 1863 entre George Sand et Gustave Flaubert et qui ne s'achevera qu'avec la mort de la "Dame de Nohant," en 1876, a etg, pour chacun d'eux, l'occasion d'approfondir une amitie, de confronter ses vues A celles de l'autre, de tenter parfois de la convaincre ou lame de le corriger Malgre la rgelle tendresse et l'estime reciproque que l'on sent percer tout au long de cette correspondance, on ne peut toutefois manquer d'être egalement sensible a tout ce qui, dit ou non dit, ex-plicitement ou non, les separe, voire les oppose. Ni Page, ni le sexe, ni le mode de vie social ne peuvent suffire a expliquer ces distances; le fosse entre eux est d'abord et principalement creusg par leurs ideologies et leurs personnalites.

Au nombre des questions qui ont preoccupe George Sand et Flaubert, it en est deux qui sont primordiales: la litterature et la politique. Terrains d'election de la con-troverse, plus que d'un dialogue veritable, lieux de l'echange de coups, de pointes, plus que d'un debat, parce que touchant a la fois ce que les deux partenaires ont le plus a coeur et ce sur quoi ils ne peuvent pas s'"entendre," terrains qui ne sont pas d'entente, ces deux sujets - la litterature et la politique - agissent en revglateurs exemplaires: George Sand et Flaubert y reviennent sans cesse, tournent autour, s'en saisissent pour livrer assaut a l'autre, decocher sa fleche, faire mouche - et chaque fois, immanquable-ment, chacun reste sur ses positions. On faiblit, parfois, mais on ne bouge pas. "Tu peux m'emouvoir, mais non me mouvoir." Ainsi Flaubert ecrit-il a George Sand: "Le milieu de votre lettre m'a fait verser un pleur, sans me convertir, bien entendu. J'ai ete emu, voila tout, mais non persuade."

De la litterature, it ne sera point ici question. Elle pourrait faire l'objet d'un autre debat, d'un autre texte. Quant a la politique, elle avait bien tout pour les opposer: leurs ideologies, leurs temperaments, et l'epreuve historique des faits.

C'est cette opposition que tente de decrire - paraphrase et commentaire de longs extraits a la fois - le chapitre VI du livre de M. Claude Tricotel, Comore deux troubadours. Histoire de l'amitie Flaubert-Sand (SEDES). Sous le titre de "Reponse A un ami," l'auteur, s'appuyant sur la lettre de George Sand publige dans Le Temps du 3 octobre 1871, soutient que, sous le double coup des evenements de la Commune et de l'attitude de Flaubert, "la foi en l'humanite est bien ebranlee chez George Sand en cet automne de 1871," mais que toute l'argumentation de lauReponse a un amfi montre qu' "elle lutte de toutes ses forces pour ne pas se renier, pour esperer malgrg tout." C'est aussi de cette lettre que Francis Steegmuller parle et son excellente traduction en anglais paralt pour la premiere fois ici.

Et, certes, un extraordinaire mouvement d'indignation ("l'humanitg est indign6e en moi et avec moi"), de conviction et de passion traverse cette belle lettre ou l'on croit saisir, dans un de ces moments d'intensite oil tout le sens d'une vie est en jeu, la vi-brante personnalitg de George Sand. Face au sarcasme flaubertien, a sa"croyance a rien" (Sartre), George Sand marque les distances, souligne les differences ("Ah! nous differons bien!"), mais s'efforce de maintenir le dialogue; le ton direct, l'argumentation (lit-teralement) ad hominem indiquent clairement un d6sir de se definir, de s'affirmer face a l'autre, tout en lui donnant la chance de se rapprocher, de comprendre. C'est d'elle qu-elle parle: et c'est un plaidoyer pour l'amour, l'humanite, le bien de l'homme/en l'homme; mais c'est a lui, pour lui qu'elle parle aussi. De la vient ce caractere a la fois ambigu et contradictoire de la lettre qui la designe a notre attention: elle est le fruit de la "raison et [du) sentiment" (les deux termes reviennent au moins deux fois ensemble a quelques lignes de distance), en d'autres termes, reflexion, dillouvante, lyrique, passionnee, passionnelle et rgflexion intellectuellement solide, articulge, logique, cohgrente.

Le drame de la Commune et ses atrocites ont cause chez elle un choc emotif, un ebranlement de position qui a pu passer pour un revirement ideologique; Flaubert s'y est d'ailleurs laisse prendre; elle le reprend: "Tu me disque to as lu dans les journaux des fragments de moi [l'expression ne manque pas de malice!) qui indiquent un revirement d'idees, et ces journaux qui me citent avec bienveillance s'efforcent de me croire eclaire

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d'une lueur nouvelle, tandis que d'autres qui ne me citent pas croient peut-etre que je deserte la cause de l'avenir t...] . Laissons-les a leurs appreciations critiques."

Flaubert n'a pas compris qu'en condamnant certaines atrocites mettre au compte de la "canaille," George Sand distinguait entre "ce proletariat enferme dans Paris" et "le peuple de France" ou "le peuple de Paris." Et voici, de fait, le coeur du d6bat: alors que pour Flaubert la notion de "peuple"est associee par nature, 'a l'idee de canaille a l'ignorance, ). la betise, elle est chez George Sand plus subtile et surtout plus "humaine": le peuple est "honnete par instinct ou par habitude" dira-t-elle. S'il se devoie, comme it l'a fait, la cause en est conjoncturelle, mais elle ne met pas en peril son essence, son fond: "Tu veux que je dise: l'homme est ainsi fait; le crime est son expression, l'infAmie est sa nature? Non, cent fois non."

Paradoxalement, toutefois, la condamnation des atrocites et des deviations de la Commune se retrouve en fin de compte chez l'un et l'autre. Chez lui, elles constituent l'apotheose de la mauvaise nature des hommes, l'aboutissement d'un mouvement appele democratie; chez elle, au contraire, elles ne doivent pas faire oublier le principal, un ideal de "fraternisation" (le terme apparait plusieurs fois dans la Reponse ...), de reconciliation des classes, seule garantie d'un ordre social sain et efficace, ou se retrouvent l'ouvrier et le marchand: "il ne faut plus songer, ecrit-elle, a autre chose dans la pratique de la vie qu'a l'amelioration des moeurs et 1 la reconciliation des interets." Tout est done encore possible.

Le spectacle de l'histoire conforte Flaubert en sa tour d'ivoire ("Qu'est-ce que cela nous fout?, ecrivait-il en 1854 a Louise Colet. Faisons notre devoir, nous autres. Que la Providence fasse le sien (...) L'artiste est en dehors, dans sa tour d'ivoire").

faut laisser aux "mandarins," comme it les nomme, la conduite du monde. Le reste n'est qu'un "ramassis de blagues ecoeurantes" (A George Sand, 8 sept. 1871).

Or c'est preciseinent contre quoi s'insurge George Sand; et elle le fait autant au nom d'un sens spontane, inn6, de la responsabilite collective et, disons-le, politique ("Je prefere cela [tenter de sauver ce qui peut lettre] a un hivernage dans les glaces, a ma mort anticipee. Et d'ailleurs, moi - ajoute-t-elle, je ne pourrais pas faire autre-ment") qu'au nom d'un ideal effectif de fraternite ou coexistent, d'une facon etonnante, "la pitie (...) pour le parti du faible," la confiance en l'avenir, "la charit6 patri-otique, l'amour."

L'hommage rendu, (en contrepoint des critiques de Flaubert), h l'Internationale, "grande et legitime association fraternelle" explicite mieux encore le projet politique sandien: reformer le monde par l'amour, la comprehension, l'unitg, hors de toute violence. Et tout en etant consciente que "trouver un rem-6de infaillible 'a nos maux est illusoire," qu' "il faut que nous cherchions tous au jour le jour tous les moyens immediatement pos-sibles" (belle formule de realisme politique), George Sand proclame qu'il faut faire confiance envers et contre tout (tous) 1 la nature de l'homme, croire au "progres."

Cri du coeur, souhaits passionnes pour un monde meilleur et nouveau, mais aussi tentative de definition de l'action politique, cette Reponse (lettre devenue article -et peut-ttre article de foi) nous dit que George Sand a voulu s'engager toute entire -intelligence et passion melees - pour proclamer devant Flaubert que malgre tout, elle ne se rgsigne pas.

"Comme c'est triste, l'histoire!" notera-t-elle dans un de ses carnets quelques semaines plus tard, en octobre 1871. "Je voudrais lire l'histoire d'une meilleure ete." Face 1 la dure lepn du reel qui peut faire nature des doutes, face au triomphe des "negatifs" qui, comme Flaubert, ont souvent raison, 1. la fin (puisque, comme le disait un humoriste, "tout s'arrange, mais mad"), George Sand tgmoigne dans cet episode de la correspondance de la gengrosite de son genie et du prix qu'elle est prete 1 payer pour mener son constant combat pour la "cause de l'avenir." Ce prix, c'est un acte de foi, un acte d'amour: "L'Humanite n'est pas un vain mot. Notre vie est faite d'amour et ne plus aimer c'est ne plus vivre."

French Cultural Services of the French Embassy

New York, NY

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"COMME C'EST TRISTE, L'HISTOIRE!"

PRECIS

The Sand-Flaubert correspondence is both a monument of their friendship and a testimony of their irreconcilable differences, in ideology and personality.

Their opposition in these two respects is most frequently and vividly exemplified in the discussions of literature and politics which pervade the correspondence. Despite repeated efforts on each side to convert the other, and despite each one's ability to touch the other with his/her arguments, neither Sand nor Flaubert manages finally to shake the other from his/her convictions. As Flaubert writes, "I was moved, but not persuaded."

Their exchange in October 1871 concerning the recent events of the Paris Commune is a telling case in point. (It is this exchange which forms the subject of the chapter from Claude Tricotel's Comme deux troubadours, presented in English translation in this issue.* Sand's famous letter from this exchange, in a fine new translation by Francis Steegmuller, is also presented here.**

Sand's reaction to the atrocities of the Commune were taken and quoted by some people as a reversal, if not a renunciation, of her former views. Flaubert uncritically let himself believe this interpretation, since it suggested the triumph of his long-stand-ing campaign to persuade Sand to adopt his cynical point of view. But Flaubert and the others were mistaken. Sand's shock over, and condemnation of the inhuman acts of some of the communards in no way altered or diminished her earlier faith in the honesty, the human-ity of the people. "Do you want me to say," she writes Flaubert, "thus is mankind made; crime is its expression, infamy its nature? No, a thousand times no."

Paradoxically, the atrocities of the Commune served to strengthen each writer in• his/her contrary opposition. For Flaubert, they are the apotheosis of man's evil nature; for Sand, they are contemptible aberrations which only cast into sharper relief the central ideal of "fraternisation" (the term is Sand's) and reconciliation.

Her letter to Flaubert is a cri du coeur, an outpouring of passionate desire for a better world, a new order; but it is also, and equally, an attempt to define a position of political action. In a characteristic movement of conjoined intelligence and passion, Sand asserts with her entire being that despite everything, she has not and will not give in. To the end, she commits herself to the future, putting her trust in progress and the nature of mankind.

Translated by Gaylord Brynolfson Princeton University Princeton, NJ

* see pp. 15. ** see pp. 6,

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GUSTAVE FLAUBERT and GEORGE SAND's REPLY TO A FRIEND

Francis Steegmuller

On June 14, 1871, George Sand, who during the days of 1848 had been a "revolutionary," a "socialist," a "communist" (to use the terms of the day), wrote to her constant corres-pondent Gustave Flaubert, expressing the dismay caused her by the Paris Commune, which had recently ended, and by its aftermath:

"What sort of backlash may we expect to follow from this infamous Commune? Isadore,1 or Henri V2, of the kingdom of the petroleuses3 restored by anarchy? I, who have had such patience with my species, and have looked so long on the bright side, now see nothing but darkness. I judge others by myself. I had achieved relative mastery of my inborn character, having rid myself of useless and dangerous enthusiasms: I had sown grass and flowers on my volcanos and they were growing well; and I imagined that all the world could become enlightened, could correct itself, or restrain itself: that the years I had passed with my fellows could not be lost to reason and experience: and now I wake from a dream to find a generation divided between idiocy and delirium tremens! Everything is possible at present. However, it is wrong to despair. I'll make a great effort, and perhaps I'll become equitable and patient again. But at present I cannot. I'm as troubled as you are, and I don't dare talk, think, or write, I'm so afraid of reopening the gaping wounds in every soul."

On September 6 she wrote him again:

"I am thoroughly perturbed, down to the deepest depths of my soul. This will pass, I hope, but I am infected with the sickness of my people and of my gener-ation. I cannot isolate myself, cannot take refuge in my rationality and my innocence. I feel that great ties have been loosened, almost broken. It seems to me that we are setting out for some unknown destination. Do you have more courage than I? Give me some of it."

Those letters, and others like them that George Sand had written Flaubert during the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, afforded their recipient a certain satisfaction. The two writers were affectionate friends, but the misanthropic Flaubert was far from sharing the love of one's fellow-beings and the belief in "progress" that George Sand was accustomed to express, and her present unhappiness he saw as evidence that she was "coming to her senses." In May he had written to Princesse Mathilde Bonaparte: "George Sand has written me a desperate letter. She sees now that her old idol was hollow, and her repub-lican faith seems to me to be completely extinguished." And in September: "Have you read an article by Mme Sand (published in Le Temps) on the workers? She is very gradually coming to see the most difficult thing of all to see: the truth. For the first time in her life she calls the rabble by its name."

On September 8 he replied to George Sand's letter of the 6th:

"Why are you so sad? The things we are witnessing are not new aspects of man-kind. Its irremediable wretchedness has embittered me every since my youth. So I'm not disillusioned now. I believe that the crowd, the mass, the herd, will always be detestable. Nothing is important save a small group of minds, always the same, which pass on the torch. As long as no deference is paid to mandarins, as long as the Academy of Sciences doesn't take the place of the Pope, all politics and society down to its very roots will be nothing but an assortment of disheartening humbugs. We are floundering in the afterbirth of the Revolution, which miscarried -- which was a failure, a misfire, no matter what may be said about it.

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"... As for the good People, 'free and compulsory' education will be the coup de grace. When everybody is able to read Le Petit Journal and Le Figaro, they won't read anything else, because the bourgeois, the rich gentleman, doesn't read anything else. The press is a school which serves to turn people into brutes, because it relieves them from thinking. Say that! It will be coura-geous of you, and if you prevail you'll have performed a noble service.

"The first step toward sanity would be to abolish universal suffrage, this insult to human intelligence. As it is constituted, one single element pre-vails to the detriment of all the rest: Number prevails over mind, education, ancestry, and even over money, which is preferable to Number.

"... Ah! chere [sic) bon maitre, if you could only hate! That is what you lack: hate. Despite your great sphinx eyes, you have seen the world through a golden haze. That comes from the sun in your heart: but so many shadows have arisen that you no longer recognize things. Come now! Cry out! Thunder! Take your great lyre and touch the brazen string: the monsters will flee. Sprinkle us with the blood of the wounded Themis.4

"...Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times. Mankind has always been like this. A few years of quiet fooled us, that's all. I too used to believe in the progressive 'civilizing' of the human race. We must wipe out that mistake, and think no more highly of ourselves than people did in the age of Pericles or Shakespeare, dreadful periods in which great things were done..."

George Sand's response to Flaubert's summons to "cry out" was immediate, but scarcely what Flaubert can have hoped for. His call for hatred revolted her. On September 16 she wrote him:

"I was answering you the day before yesterday, and my letter grew so long that I have sent it as an article to Le Temps -- I have promised to give them two a month. This letter 'to a friend' makes no mention of you even by initials: I don't want to argue with you in public. In dt I give you my reasons for suf-fering and for continuing to speak and act, I will send it to you, and it will be like talking with you again..."

George Sand's famous "Reply to a Friend" appeared in Le Temps on October 3, 1871.

REPLY TO A FRIEND

1871. September 14. Nohant

What! You want me to stop loving? You want me to say I have been mistaken all my life, that mankind is contemptible, hateful, has always been so and always will be? And you reproach me for my anguish, calling it weakness, childish regret for a lost illusion? You say that the populace has always been savage, the priest always a hypocrite, the bourgeois always craven, the soldier always a brigand, the peasant always stupid? You say you have known all this since youth, and you rejoice in never having doubted it because that has spared you disillusionment in later life. You have never been young, then. •Ah! You and I are very different, for I have never stopped being young -- if to persist in loving is a sign of youth.

How should I isolate myself from my fellow-beings, from my fellow-countrymen, from my race, from the great family in whose bosom my private family is merely as one ear of corn in the earthly field? And if only this ear could ripen in a safe place, if only one might, as you say, live for a few privileged beings

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and withdraw from all the rest! But that is impossible, and your fine intel-ligence is adapting itself to a supremely unreal Utopia. In what Eden, in what fantastic El Dorado, will you hide your family, your little group of friends, your intimate happiness, so that the lacerations of society and the disasters of the country will not reach them? If you want to be happy through a few, then those few, your heart's elect, must be happy in themselves. Will they be? Can you guarantee them the slightest security?

Will you find me some refuge in my old age, which is drawing to its close? What do I care now about death or life for myself? Supposing that we die entirely, that love does not follow us into the other life, are we not tormented until our last breath by the longing, the imperious need, to assure the greatest possible happiness of those we leave behind? Can we go serenely to our rest when we feel the earth quaking, ready to engulf all those for whom we have lived?

To live along happily in the bosom of one's family despite everything is without doubt a great good, relatively speaking -- the sole consolation that one could, or would, enjoy. But even supposing that evil from without does not penetrate into our homes -- an impossibility as you well know -- I could never agree that we should reconcile ourselves to a source of public misery.

Everything that has come about was foreseen... Yes, of course. I had fore-seen it as clearly as anyone! I saw the storm brewing; I was aware, as were all thinking people, of the unmistakeable signals of the cataclysm. As you watch a sick man writhe in pain, is it any consolation that you are knowledge able about his disease? When lightening strikes, are we any the calmer for having heard the thunder long before?

No, no, one doesn't isolate oneself, one doesn't sever the ties of blood, one doesn't curse and despise one's kind. Humanity is not an empty word. Our life is made of love, and to stop loving is to stop living.

The populace, you say! The populace is you and I: there is no escaping that. There are not two races; nowadays inequalities due to class distinctions are only relative and usually illusory. I don't know whether you have ancestors who were in the upper reaches of the bourgeoisie; as for me, on the maternal side my roots spring directly from the people, and I feel them ever alive in the very depths of my being. We all have such roots, to whatever degree their memory may be obliterated: first men were hunters and shepherds, then farmers and soldiers. Brigandage crowned with success gave birth to the first social distinctions. There is perhaps no single title not acquired by the shedding of human blood. We must certainly endure our ancestors when we have them; but are those remote trophies of hate and violence a glory in which even the least philosophical mind can find a basis for presumption? "The populace is always savage," you say. I say, it is the nobility that is always ferocious.

Certainly, together with the peasant, the nobility is the class most obstinately set against progress, and thus the least civilized. Thinkers should congratu-late themselves on not belonging to it; but if we are bourgeois, if we are the descendants of serfs and forced laborers, can we love and make reverence before our fathers' oppressors? No! Whoever denies the people degrades himself and displays to the world the shameful spectacle of apostasy. Bourgeoisie! If we want to rise again and re-create ourselves,as a class, we have only one possi-bility: to proclaim ourselves the people, and struggle to the death against those who claim to be our superiors by divine right. For having failed to

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maintain the dignity of our revolutionary mandate, for having aped the nobility, usurped its insignia, adopted its playthings, for having been shamefully absurd and cowardly, we no longer matter, we are nothing: the people, who should be at one with us, spurn us, and would oppress us.

The populace savage? No: nor is it stupid. But at present it suffers from being ignorant and foolish. It is not the Parisian populace who massacred the prisoners, destroyed the monuments, and tried to set fire to the city. The Parisian populace comprises all who remained in Paris following the siege, since anyone with even the most modest means hastened to breathe the air of the provinces and embrace their absent families after the physical and moral hardships of the blockade. Those who stayed in Paris were the merchant and the workman, those two agents of labor and exchange without whom Paris would cease to exist. They are what directly constitutes the populace of Paris: a single, homogeneous family, whose relations and solidarity cannot be destroyed by political folly. It is now recognized that the oppressors in the turmoil were a minority. Thus the Parisian populace was not inclined to violence, for the majority displayed only weakness and fear. The movement was organized by men already inscribed in the ranks of the bourgeoisie and no longer sharing in the ways of life and the needs of the proletariat. These men were propelled by hatred, by thwarted ambition, deluded patriotism, fanaticism without an ideal, sentimental folly, or natural evil -- there was something of all that in them, and even certain tenets of doctrinal pride unwilling to back down in the face of danger. They certainly did not rely on the middle class, which trembled, fled, or hid. They were forced to summon the real proletariat, who had nothing to lose. Well, that proletariat eluded them for the most part, divided as it was into very different shades of opinion, some wanting disorder for their own profit, others dubious of the consequences of involvement, most ceasing to reason because troubles had grown extreme and lack of work forced them to march into battle for thirty sous a day.

Why should you think that this proletariat, confined within Paris, and numbering at most eighty thousand soldiers of hunger and despair, represents the French populace? It doesn't even represent the Parisian populace, unless you want to maintain the distinction I reject, between the performer and the exploiter.

But I want to persist, and ask you on what this distinction rests. On more--or less--education? The dividing line is illusory. If you find men of culti-vation and learning at the uppermost level of the bourgeoisie, and savages and brutes at the lowest grade of the proletariat: there nonetheless remains a vast number of people in between -- intelligent and wise proletarians on the one hand, and, on the other, bourgeois who are neither wise nor clever. The major-ity of civilized citizens dates from yesterday, and many who can read and write have mothers and fathers yet living who can barely sign their names.

So it would be simply a greater or lesser amount of acquired wealth that would classify men into two distinct camps? In that case one wonders where the populace begins and where it ends, because affluence shifts every day: one man goes down in ruin, another comes into a fortune; roles change; he.who was a bourgeois this morning will rejoin the proletariat this afternoon; and the proletarian of the moment will turn into a bourgeois if he finds a purse or inherits from an uncle.

Surely you see that these labels have become pointless, and that the task of classification, by whatever method, would be insoluble.

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Men are above or below each other only in possessing more or less reason and morality. An education that develops only self-indulgence is inferior to the ignorance of a proletarian who may be instinctively and habitually honest. Compulsory education, which we all desire out of respect for human rights, is nevertheless not a panacea whose miracles should be over-drawn. Evil natures will discover in it merely more ingenious and better disguised ways to do wrong. Like all things mis-used by man, it will be both poison and antidote. The search for an infallible remedy for our ills is illusory. We must all seek, day by day, every means at hand. Today our only thought in practical life must be for improving ways of life and reconciling interests. France is in her agony, that is certain; we are all sick, all corrupt, all ignorant, all dis-heartened: to say that this was fated, that it must be so, has always been and always will be, is to recite again the fable of the pedagogue and the drowning child. One might as well say, straight out: "It's all the same to me." But if you add: "It doesn't concern me," you are mistaken. The deluge approaches, and death is gaining on us. In vain will you be prudent, and withdraw: your refuge will be invaded in its turn, and as you perish with human civilization you will be no more philosophical for not having loved than those who threw themselves into the flood to save a few shreds of humanity. They are not worth the trouble, those shreds; so be it! They will perish in any case: that is possible; we shall perish with them: that is certain. But we at least shall meet death as warm and living beings. I prefer that to a hibernation in ice, to an anticipated death. Besides, I could not do otherwise. Love does not reason. If I asked you why you have a passion for study, you could explain it no better than those with a passion for idleness could explain their laziness.

So you think me shaken in my convictions, that you preach me detachment? You tell me that in the newspapers you read some fragments by me that reveal a change in my ideas; and those newspapers which quote me benignly do their best to think me newly enlightened; whereas others, who do not quote me, perhaps believe that I am deserting the cause of the future. Let politicians think and say what they will. Let us leave them to their critical assessments. I have no need to object, no need to answer. The public has other matters to discuss than my personality. I have a pen; I have an honorable place for free discussion in a great newspaper; it is rather for me, if I have been incorrectly interpreted, to explain myself more clearly when occasion presents itself. To speak of myself as an isolated individual is something I do as infrequently as possible; but if you think me converted to false notions, I must say this to you and to others who interest themselves in me: Read me as a whole, and do not judge me by detached fragments: a mind independent of party requirements necessarily sees the pros and cons, and the sincere writer tells both, without concern for the blame or approval of partisan readers. However, every rational being maintains some consistency, and I think I have not departed from mine. In me, reason and feelings are always at one in making me repulse whatever seeks our reversion to infancy -- in politics, in religion, in philosophy, in art. My feelings and my reason contest more than ever the concept of fictitious distinctions, the inequality of condition that is imposed as a right conferred on some, as a loss deserved by others. More than ever I need to raise what is low and lift what has fallen. Until my heart ceases to beat, it will be open to pity, it will espouse the weak, rehabilitate the despised. If today it is the populace who are under foot, I will hold out my hand to them; if they become the oppressor and the executioner, I will say they are cowardly and odious. What is this or that group of men to me, or those proper names that have become badges, or those personalities that are slogans? I recognize only wise men and fools, the innocent and the guilty. I need not wonder where my friends are, or my enemies. They are where the

maelstrom has cast them. Those who have earned my love, yet do not see with

my eyes, are no less dear to me for that. The thoughtless abuse of those who have abandoned me does not make me consider them my enemies. Any friendship unjustly withdrawn remains intact in the heart of the innocent. Such a heart is above empty pride; it knows how to await the rebirth of justice and affection.

Such is the rightful and simple role of a conscience not yoked by personal interest to the interests of a party. They who cannot say as much for them-selves will surely succeed in their chosen sphere if they have the skill to avoid everything inimical to it; and the greater their talent in that direc-tion, the more readily will they find means to requite their passions. But never summon them before history, to bear witness to absolute truth. From the moment they make a trade of their opinion, their opinion is worthless.

I know some tender, generous and timorous souls who at this terrible moment of our history reproach themselves for having loved and served the cause of the weak. They see but one point in space, they think that the populace they loved and served no longer exists, because in its place a horde of bandits, followed by a little army of frenzied men, has momentarily taken over the theatre of the struggle. These good souls must make an effort to tell themselves that what was good in the poor, and of concern in the forsaken, still exists; it is only no longer apparent, political turmoil having driven it from the stage. When such dramas are enacted, those who rush in recklessly are the vain or greedy members of the family, and those who let themselves be dragged in are the idiots. That the greedy, the idiotic and the vain exist by the thousand in France is some-thing that no one can doubt; but there are as many of them, and perhaps more, in other countries. Only let there arise one of those all too frequent occa-sions that give rein to evil passions, and you will see whether or not other nations are better than we. Wait and see the German nation at work -- that nation whose armies have just displayed brutal appetites in all their barbarous crudity, and you will see the nature of its unchained fury! The insurgent populace of Paris will strike you as sober and virtuous by comparison.

This must not be a so-called crumb of comfort: we shall have reason to pity the German nation for its victories, as we pity ourselves for our defeats, because for them this is the first act of their moral dissolution. The drama of their abasement has begun; they are working for it with their own hands, and matters will go very quickly. All those huge materialistic organizations in which right, justice, and respect for humanity go unrecognized are colossi made of clay, as we ourselves have discovered to our cost. Well, the moral abase-ment of Germany is not the future safety of France; and if we are called on to return evil for the evil she has done us, her defeat will not restore us our life! It is not by bloodshed that races are revitalized and rejuvenated. Some vital breath can still issue from the corpse of France; that of Germany will be a source of pestilence for all Europe. A nation whose ideals have died does not live on. Its death fertilizes nothing, and those who breathe its fetid emana-tions are struck down by the same pestilence that killed it. Poor Germany! The cup of Eternal wrath is spilt on you as on us; and while you reel in drunken joy, the philosophical spirit grieves for you and prepares your epitaph. This pale, torn, bloody thing called France still grasps a fold of the starry mantle of the future, while you drape yourself in a soiled flag that will be your shroud. Past grandeurs no longer belong in the history of men. It is all over with kings who exploit their peoples, all over with exploited peoples who con-sented to their own degradation.

That is why we are so ailing, and why my spirit is weary.

11

But it is quite without scorn that I survey the degree of our wretchedness. I do not wish to believe that this holy country, this cherished race, all of whose harmonious and conflicting chords vibrate within me, whose qualities and faults I love despite everything, all of whose responsibilities good and bad I choose to accept rather than disdain, no, I do not wish to believe that my coun-try and my race are stricken unto death. I feel it in my suffering, in my mourning, even in my hours of deepest melancholy; I love; therefore I am alive: let us love and live.

Frenchmen, let us love one another! My God, my God! Let us love one another or we are lost. Let us destroy, deny, annihilate politics, since politics divides us and sets us in arms against each other; let us ask none what he was, or what he wanted, yesterday. Yesterday, everyone was mistaken; we must know what we want today. If it is not liberty for all and fraternity toward all, then let us not seek to solve the problem of equality: we are not worthy to define it, we are incapable of understanding it. Equality does not impose itself; it is a free plant that grows only in fertile soil, in healthy air. It takes no root on the barricades: we know that now! There, it is at once trodden down by the victor, whoever he may be. Let us have the desire to establish it in our way of life, the will to consecrate it in our ideas. Let us give it, for a start patriotic charity, love! It is insane to think one can issue from a battle with respect for human rights. Each civil war has exacted and will exact its penalty.

Oh wretched International! Is it true that you believe the lie that force has primacy over right? If you are as multiple, as powerful, as one imagines, is it possible that you profess destruction and hatred as a duty? No: your power is then a phantom, born of fear. A great number of men of all nations could not deliberate and act on a principle of evil. If you are the savage arm of the peoples of Europe, something like the Anabaptists of Master, like them you will destroy yourself with your own hands. If, on the contrary, you are a great and legitimate fraternal association, your duty is to enlighten your adherents and denounce those who debase and compromise your principles. I yet would like to believe that your body includes many men who are hard-working and humane, and that these men suffer and are ashamed to hear bandits take your name. In that case, your silence is foolish and cowardly. Have you not a single mem-ber capable of protesting ignoble crimes, idiotic principles, mad frenzy? Your chosen leaders, your administrators, your inspirers -- are they all brigands and cretins? No! It is impossible! There are no groups, no clubs, no crossroads where the voice of truth could not make itself heard. Speak out! Justify your-selves! Proclaim your gospel! Disband and reconstitute, if there is discord among you. Hurl an appeal to the future, if you be something more than the barbarian invasions of antiquity. Tell those who still love the people what they must do on its behalf; and if you have nothing to tell, if you can utter no word of life, if the iniquity of your mysteries is sealed with fear, then renounce all hope of sympathy from noble souls, find your nourishment in the scorn of honest men, and have it out with the jailer and the police.

All France has been waiting for the word: the word of your destiny, which might well have decided her own. She has waited in vain. In my naivete I too waited. Even while censuring the means, I did not want to prejudice the goal. There has always been a goal in revolutions, and the revolutions that fail are not always those least well grounded. Patriotic fanaticism seemed the first senti-ment underlying this struggle. Those lost children of the democratic army would perhaps refuse to subscribe to an inevitable peace that they considered shameful: Paris had sworn to be buried in her own ruins. The democratic populace would

12

force the bourgeois populace to keep its word. They seized the cannon; they were going to turn them against the Prussians. It was mad, but it was splendid... But no! The Commune's first act is to adhere to the peace; and throughout its entire administration it voices not one protes; makes not the slightest threat, against the enemy. It conceives and commits the dastardly act of de-stroying, under the enemy's eyes, the column commemorating that enemy's defeats and our victories. What it hates is the power deriving from universal suffrage, and yet it invokes that suffrage in Paris, in order to establish itself. It is true that it does not obtain the vote: it dispenses with its desired appearance of legality and functions by brute force, invoking no right except that of hatred and scorn for everything other than itself. It preaches "positive social sci-ence," whose sole repository it claims to be, but not a word of which appears in its deliberations or decrees. It declares it has come to deliver man from his shackles and prejudices, and immediately it exercises unchecked power and threat-ens death to anyone not convinced of its infallibility. While claiming to re-vive the tradition of the Jacobins, it assumes the papacy of society and makes itself into a dictatorship. What kind of republic is that? I see nothing life-giving in it, nothing rational, nothing that is or could be constitutional. It is an orgy of self-styled renovators, who possess not an idea, not a principle; not the least solidarity with the nation or outlook to the future. Ignorance, cynicism and brutality -- that is all that emanates from this self-acclaimed social revolution. The unleashing of the lowest instincts, the debility of shameless ambitions and the scandal of flagrant usurpations -- that is the spec-tacle we have just witnessed. As a result, this Commune inspired the most ardent political men, those most devoted to democracy, with the uttermost disgust. After vain attempts, they realized that no conciliation was possible where prin-ciples did not exist; they withdrew from the Commune in distress and sorrow; and the next day the Commune declared them traitors and ordered their arrest. They would have been shot had they remained in its hands.

And you, my friend, you want me to see these things with stoical indifference! You want me to say: "Man is created thus: crime is his expression, infamy his nature?"

No, a hundred times no. Humanity is indignant with and within me. We must not dissimulate that indignation, which is one of the most passionate forms of love, nor must we attempt to forget it. We must make immense efforts of brotherhood to repair the ravages of hate. We must exorcise the scourge, wipe out infamy with scorn, and inaugurate by faith the resurrection of our country.

-- George Sand * * *

Flaubert's reaction was immediate. On October 4 or S he wrote her:

"I received your article yesterday, and would answer it at length were I not just getting ready to leave for Paris... The middle of your piece made me 'shed a tear' -- without convincing me, of course. I was moved, that was all, but not persuaded... Free compulsory education will do nothing but increase the number of imbeciles... Universal suffrage as it exists is more stupid than divine right... I'm expressing myself very badly. You deserve a different an- swer, but I'm very hurried -- which doesn't prevent me from kissing you heartily."

And he added, in a postscript:

"The silhouette of the 'friend,' as glimpsed by a reader of your article, is that of a not very amiable coco, a very un-pretty kind of egoist."

13

To that George Sand sent a reply a few days later:

"I reply to your postscript. If [in my article) I had answered Flaubert, I wouldn't have answered, knowing well that your heart doesn't always agree with your mind -- a discord that all of us, for that matter, are continually compelled to fall into. What I answered was part of a letter from some friend whom nobody can recognize, since I addressed myself to a portion of your reasoning that ss not the whole you... Your letter, written in haste, is full of well expressed truths against which I do not protest. But the connection and agreement between your truths of reason and my truths of sentiment must be found. France, alas! is neither on your side nor on mine; she is on the side of blindness, ignorance and folly. Oh! That, I do not deny -- it is precisely the reason for my despair."

Whereupon George Sand changed the subject, ending her letter with a discussion of the present condition of the Paris stage. She and Flaubert had recognized their fundamental differences from the beginning of their friendship, and her tact now helped even Flaubert to see that their recent letters should perhaps be the culmination of their current dis-agreement. In fact it was only from the early 1860's, when he began his researches for the background of L'Education Sentimentale, that Flaubert's letters had begun to include expressions of political opinion to any extent; and now he was perhaps not too sorry to call a halt. Not that he could stop his outbursts abruptly. "In my opinion the entire Commune should have been sentenced to hard labor," he wrote George Sand during the next few weeks. "The bloody fools should have been chained by the neck like common criminals and made to clean up the ruins of Paris." And, in a more generally Flaubertian reflec-tion, which he might have given vent to at any time in his life: "I'd like to drown my contemporaries in their latrines, or at least rain torrents of abuse, cataracts of in-vective, on their heads. Why is this? I ask myself."

George Sand replied only obliquely to those last blusterings. No one, except Flaubert himself, had revealed his inadequacies as political and social commentator -- the parti-san, that is, in contrast with the novelist depicting society through his characters --more clearly than she in her Reply to a Friend. One's admiration for the letter encom-passes gratitude for its rapid effect on Flaubert and his work. From now on, for the next year, he would spend his time not "giving himself meningitis" (as the French put it) over current events, but finishing La Tentation de Saint Antoine.

* * *

Footnotes

1. Napoleon III. 2. The Comte de Chambord, the Bourbon pretender. 3. Communard women incendiarists, who had set fire to public buildings. 4. In Greek mythology, the deity who personified divine justice.

New York, NY

Copyright Francis Steegmuller, 1980

THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT AND GEORGE SAND*

An Extract from COMME DEUX TROUBADOURS, HISTOIRE DE L'AMITIE FLAUBERT-SAND

Claude Tricotel

Chapter VI: "Reponse a un ami."

"How depressing history is! It is always concerned with stupid and wicked human-ity," George Sand noted in her diary. "I would like to read the history of a better plan-et and the newspapers of another planet."2

George Sand's faith in humanity was badly shaken, that autumn of 1871. Indeed, the Commune had done much to sow the seeds of doubt in her mind, and, for some time, Flaubert had relentlessly tried to shatter the illusions of his "chere maitre" [sic]. A month before, she had received a long letter from him in which he expressed the deepest pessimism for the future of mankind and absolute scepticism as to the ability of the mas-ses to rule themselves: "Humanity has nothing new to offer," he had written. "Its irre-mediable weakness has filled me with bitterness ever since my youth. So now, I have no disillusions. I think that the mob, the crowd, will always be hateful. The only people of any importance are a small group of intelligent men. As long as we don't bow to the mandarins, as long as the Academy of Sciences doesn't take the place of the Pope, politics and society, down to its very roots, will only be a sick joke. We are floundering in the afterbirth of the Revolution, which was an abortion, a failure, a misfire, whatever they may say. And the reason is that it proceeded from the Middle Ages and Christianity. The concept of equality (which is vital to modern democracy) is an essentially Christian idea which is opposed to that of justice... In order for France to rise up again, it must give up inspiration in favor of Science, abandon all metaphysics and enter into criticism, into the examination of all things... As for the people, free and compulsory education will kill it. When everyone is able to read Le Petit Journal or Le Figaro, they won't read anything else, because the bourgeois and the rich man read only these. The press is a school of stupidity, because it dispenses with thinking... The first remedy would be to suppress universal suffrage, the disgrace of the human mind. As it is constituted, one single element prevails to the detriment of all the others: numbers dominate over mind, education, race and even money, which is worth more than numbers... The International will be ruined because it is in the wrong. No ideas, nothing but greed. Ah, chere maitre [Sic], if you could only hate. But you can't hate. In spite of your large Sphinx eyes, you have seen the world through a golden haze. It came from the sun in your heart."3

George Sand could not read any longer. What! Her "cher troubadour" was asking her not to love! Immediately, she began a letter to her friend, but it was so long that she decided to send it to the newspaper, Le Temps, and Flaubert read the answer which was entitled "Reponse a un ami."

"The middle of your letter made me cry, without converting me, of course," Flaubert wrote to her. "I was moved, that's all, but not convinced."4

How, indeed, could George Sand persuade Flaubert? They were not simply different, they were total opposites; they represented two irreconcilable versions of the world; they lived two lives unfolding in two opposite directions. However, Flaubert thought that George Sand, like him, had come, little by little, to adopt a more realistic vision, that is a more pessimistic vision of things. "Have you read an article by Madame Sand (pub lished in Le Temps) on the workers," he wrote to Princess Mathilde. "It's a very good article, and a worthy and honest one. She manages little by little to see what is so difficult to see: the truth. For the first time in her life, she calls the mob by its name."5

But Flaubert's satisfaction was premature. If George Sand had made some pessimistic

*Translation by Line Tricotel 15

remarks, it was only because she was still under the influence of her grief, it was only because she was still shocked at the sight of such violence.

As to politics and literature, the two "troubadours" were two opposites. Flaubert was moved by the most profound contempt, even hatred for his generation. George Sand was moved by love of humanity. In these circumstances, how could they not be totally differ-ent, not only in their political opinions, but in the deep meaning they ascribed to their lives?

"I am choking with the hatred I feel against the folly of mankind," Flaubert said. "Shit rises to my mouth as in strangulated hernias."6 For him, "hate for the bourgeois is the beginning of virtue." But he included in this category "the bourgeois who wear overalls, as well as the bourgeois who wear frock-coats."7 What he despised most in the bourgeoisie was not the social class, but its stupidity, vulgarity and greed. "Ah! how sick I am of the ignoble workers, of the inept middle class, of the stupid peasants, and of the odious clergy!"8 he wrote to George, because for him the same stupidity reigned over every social class.

This is why he spares neither the bourgeois nor the democrats in his novels, in the name of this common stupidity. "I told you that I did not flatter the democrats in my book.9 But I must also say that the conservatives are not treated well either. I am now writing three pages on the abominations of the National Guard in June 1848, which will get me into the good graces of the bourgeoisie. I rub their noses in their turpitude as much as possible."10

For Flaubert, all these social classes put together form the mob, the ignorant rabble, out of which a few rare mandarins emerge and who are the only ones fit to assume power. This is why Flaubert considers universal suffrage to be the disgrace of civiliza-tion, because it is, according to him, the opposite of justice. This is why he hates "democracy (at least in its current meaning in France), that is to say the exaltation of grace to the detriment of justice, the negation of right, in a word, antisociability. ”11

And education will not help: "there is a depth of stupidity in humanity which is as eternal as humanity itself. The education of the masses and the morality of the poorer classes are, I believe, things of the future. But as for the intelligence of the masses, that is what I deny, whatever may happen, because the masses will always be the masses."12

"Moralize, make laws and plans! Reform the wild beast. Even if you could extract the tiger's canines so that it would be able to eat only pap, it would still retain the heart of a beast! The cannibal always appears beneath the worker's uniform, just as the Carib's skull is apparent beneath the bourgeois' black silk cap. What do we care! Let us do our duty. Let Providence do its duty... The artist remains on the outside, in his ivory tower.“13

For Flaubert, "what is vitally important in history is a small number of men (three or four hundred per century, perhaps), who, from Plato to the present day, have not changed; they are the ones who have done everything and who are the conscience of the world. You will never be able to elevate the base parts of the social body. When the mas-ses no longer believe in the Immaculate Conception, they will believe in table-turning. We must console ourselves and live in an ivory tower."14

In the name of this aristocratic conception of the world, Flaubert considers that "the only reasonable thing...is a government of mandarins, provided the mandarins know something and are even quite knowledgeable. The popular masses have the statute of a minor and will always be at the lowest rank (in the hierarchy of social elements), because they represent the many, the limitless. It does not matter if many peasants can read and no , longer listen to their priests, but it is essential that many men such as Renan or Littre should live and be listened to! Our salvation is now only possible in a legitimate aris-tocracy. By this I mean a majority which would be composed of men of quality rather than of quantity."15

When he wrote this to George Sand, how could Flaubert convince his "chre maitre" Isla, since she believed that "the masses are now the ones who enlighten great minds... You worship men of genius," she wrote to Louise Colet. "So do I, but above all, I worship humanity and I rely on the divine instinct that God placed in it... You can be sure that

16

the inequalities in the intellectual and moral value of men are not as great as all that."16

On the basis of her faith in humanity and her conviction in the natural equality of mankind, George Sand strongly believed in progress: "A wise politician, it seems to me, should first and foremost have faith in progress... But this faith rarely inspires the monarchy, and that is why I prefer the republic... When a republic falls, it falls hard, you will say; that is true, it falls faster than a monarchy, and always for the same rea-son, which is that it wants to arrest its movement forward, and when the human mind is arrested, it is shattered."17 And this indispensable progress is only possible, according to George Sand, if the masses are educated: "The masses will be inspired!" she said. "But what will the conditions be? Only if they are enlightened. What will they be en-lightened about? About everything: truth, justice, religion, equality, liberty, frater-nity, in a word, their rights and their duties."18

Indeed, as she grew older, George Sand became more cautious and observed that education was a double-edged sword: "Education which only develops selfish sensuality is not as good as the ignorance of the proletarian who is honest by instinct or by habit. This compulsory education which we all want out of respect for human rights is not a pana-cea, and we must not exaggerate the miracles it may perform. Evil natures will only find in it more ingenious and more hidden means to do evil."19 But nothing could shake her conviction that the masses are wise when they are kept informed. As she grew older, George Sand also grew cautious about the virtues of the revolution and, although she had once exhorted the masses to the barricades in 1848, she wrote in 1871, after the Commune: "Equality is a thing which cannot be imposed; it is a free plant which only grows on fer-tile ground, in healthy air. Its roots do not grow on the barricades, we know that now! It is immediately trampled at the conqueror's feet, whoever he may be."20 George Sand had come to desire progressive socialism, which would be accomplished without any violence.

But when George Sand talked to Flaubert about equality, liberty, the republic, socialism, he saw only words, "jokes," as he called them: "Experience proves, it seems to me, that no form of government contains good in itself," he wrote to George, "Orleanism, the republic, the Empire, no longer mean a thing, since the most contradictory ideas can infiltrate each of these systems. All the flags have been soiled by so much blood and s... that it is time to dispense with them. Down with words. No more symbols, no more fetishes! The great morality of this reign will consist in proving that universal suffrage is as stupid as divine law, though it is somewhat less hateful. The issue therefore has changed. The question is not to define the best form of government, because all govern-ments are the same, but to allow science to prevail. This is the most urgent thing. The rest will follow inevitably. Pure intellectuals have rendered more services to mankind than all the Saint-Vincent-de-Pauls in the world! And politics will be eternal nonsense as long as it does not depend on science. The government of a country must be a branch of the Institut, and in last place."21

When he read "Reponse un ami" in Le Temps, Flaubert replied to George Sand: "What we need, above all, is a natural aristocracy, that is to say, a legitimate one. The mas-ses, the numbers, are always idiotic...but we must respect the masses, however inept they may be, because they contain the germ of an extraordinary fecundity. Give them freedom, but not power... The dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of the stupidity of the bourgeois. That dream is partly accomplished... I hear today that the majority of the Parisians regrets Badinguet.22 Universal suffrage is such a wondrous thing that a plebiscite would be in favor of him, I am sure."23

And so, by the end of 1871, George Sand had been badly shaken in her convictions, but she struggled valiantly to remain true to her ideals and to hope pi spite of everything. A few months later, Flaubert wrote of her: "The capacity to hate, which is a virtue, is something which my friend George Sand lacks."24 No, certainly, George Sand could not hate.

17

NOTES 1 Paris: SEDES, 1978. This monograph was reviewed in the George Sand Newsletter,

see II, 2, pp. 21-22. 2 George Sand's Diary, Oct. 5, 1871. Unpublished ms., Bibliotheque Nationale; Manu-

scrits, N.A.Fr. 24 833. 3 Letter from Flaubert to Sand, Sept. 8, 1871, Correspondance entre George Sand et

Gustave Flaubert, Paris, Calmann-L6vy, 1904, pp. 263-264. 4 Letter from Flaubert to Sand, Oct. 4 or 5, 1871, Corr. G.S. et G.F., p. 283.

5 Letter from Flaubert to Princess Mathilde, Sept. 6, 1871, Correspondance de Gustave

Flaubert, Ed. Conard, Vol. VI. 6 Letter from Flaubert to Louis Bouilhet, Sept. 30, 1855, Corr. G.F., IV, 96.

Letter from Flaubert to Sand, May 1867, Corr. G.S. et G.F., p. 83.

Letter from Flaubert to Sand, Sept. 6, 1871, Corr. G.S. et G.F., pp. 261-262.

The book he refers to is L'Education Sentimentale. 10 Letter from Flaubert to Sand, Sept. 1868, Corr. G.S. et G.F., pp. 132-133.

11 Letter from Flaubert to Sand, April 30, 1871, Corr. G.S. et G.F., p. 250.

12 Letter from Flaubert to Mlle Leroyer de Chantepie, Jan. 23, 1866, Corr. de G.F.,

V, 196-197. 13 Letter from Flaubert to Louise Colet, Jan. 1854, Corr. de G.F., IV, 4-5.

14 Letter from Flaubert to Mlle Leroyer de Chantepie, Jan. 23, 1866, Corr. de G.F.,

V, 196-197. 15 Letter from Flaubert to Sand, April 30 16 Letter from Sand to Louise Colet, Feb.

VI, 71-72. 17 Letter from Sand to Edouard Rodrigues,

Levy, V, 10-11. 18 Letter from Sand to Charles Duvernet, Dec. 27, 1841, Corr. de G.S., Ed. Garnier,

V, 542 19 Letter from Sand to Flaubert, Sept. 14, 1871, Corr. G.S. et G.F., p. 272. 20 Corr. G.S. et G.F., p. 272. 21 Letter from Flaubert to Sand, end of June - beg. of July 1869, Corr. G.S. et G.F.,

p. 172. • 22 Badinguet was Napoleon III. 23 Letter from Flaubert to Sand, Oct. 4 or 5, 1871, Corr. G.S. et G.F., pp. 284-285.

24 letter from Flaubert to Mme Roger des Genettes, May 15, 1872, Corr. de G.F., VI, 378.

7

8

9

, 1871, Corr. G.S. et G.F., p. 251.

28 (?), 1843, Corr. de G.S., Ed. Garnier,

Feb. 8, 1864, Corr. de G.S., ed. Calmann-

18 Milly-sur-Therain, France

HISTOIRE, MEMOIRES AND CONFESSIONS:

SAND, FLAUBERT AND JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Sherry A. Dranch

When, in 1854, George Sand looked back over her seven years' work on Histoire de ma vie, she paused to consider the difference between her own enterprise and that of Jean-Jacques in his Confessions -- a difference which she saw as operating greatly in her favor. "Je ne sais pas si, lors meme qu'on est Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on a le droit de traduire ainsi ses contemporains devant ses contemporains," she wrote, "pour une cause toute personnelle. I1 y a la quelque chose qui rgvolte la conscience publique."1 There-fore Sand had decided to entitle her work neither Confessions nor Nemoires: "C'est dessin que je me suis servie de ces expressions: Histoire de ma vie, pour bien dire que je n'entendais pas raconter sans restriction celle des autres." (Hv II, 113)

Sand makes a point of not comparing a work where names are named, to those trans-parent romans a clef which she had authored, much to the indignation of some of her former friends and lovers. Be that as it may, this was perhaps the only criticism of Rousseau from the pen of his disciple and ardent defender, George Sand. It might be that Jean-Jacques' offense against "public conscience" was somehow reinforced by an affront to the Dupin side of George's family, directly. For Rousseau's insinuations, in Part Two of the Confessions, were that Dupin de Francueil was in fact (the whole time of Rousseau's musi-cal collaboration with him, and of his residency as research secretary with George's paternal great-grandparents) undermining the musical and intellectual reputation of Jean-Jacques in Parisian high society. This must certainly not have sat well with the honor of the Dupin family.2

Elsewhere in Histoire de ma vie, Sand devotes many pages to the importance of Jean-Jacques' ideas in her life, especially when she first read him, at age eighteen, in the midst of a passionate interrogation of her future as a Catholic. Rousseau was instrumental in bringing her away from "l'etroit sentier de la doctrine." (Hv I, 1053) He provided her, as Chateaubriand had not, with practical, social applications for her idealism, which would not lead her into conflict with her beloved grandmother's Voltairianism.

"Rousseau arriva, Rousseau l'homme de passion et de sentiment par excellence, et je fus enfin entamee." (Hy I, 1053) Which Jean-Jacques struck the chord in George Sand? Al-though she purposefully deletes any mention of the Confessions when telling of her first encounters with his works, the Jean-Jacques of the Confessions, whose Tante Suzon sang so sweetly and so serenely, the Jean-Jacques who would relentlessly pursue any animal-he caught tormenting a weaker one, the Jean-Jacques who felt so sorry at having to leave Mme Basile in Turin at the mercy of her brutal husband, the Jean-Jacques, finally, who main-tained that possession of a woman was precisely contrary to loving her, so that when he possessed Mme de Warens ("Maman") it was, for him, a sacrifice -- this must indeed have been the sensitive lover-child who excited George's imagination.

She was always to vibrate harmonically, in her artistic narcissism, with his martyr-doms -- his suffering in love, and his political suffering at the hands of an uncomprehend-ing, unjust society. She was often to turn back to Rousseau as an example, and, in fact, to incorporate him, intertextually, in her writings.

No wonder, then, that in September, 1871, at the heart of a very impassioned moment in the Sand-Flaubert correspondance, where Sand is struggling to maintain her idealism against the pessimism of the time, and against Flaubert's "confirmed" cynicism, she invokes Rousseau's concept of equality. "L'egalit6 est une chose qui ne s'impose pas, c'est une libre plante qui ne croit que sur les terrains fertiles, dans lair salubre. Elle ne pous-se pas de racines sur les barricades, nous le savons maintenant. . . ."3 To Flaubert's response, that he had searched in vain, in her letter, for the word, "justice," she answered with another invocation of Rousseau, reinforming Flaubert that the Social Contract had long ago given her principles, and that high among them was the notion that there was never any justice without love -- love, the first law upon which natural society is based.

It may be rather a commonplace, in criticism dealing with the Flaubert-Sand relation-ship, to state that "l'une, glev66 . . . dans la lecture de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, croit

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profondSment A la sagesse du peuple, et . . . l'autre, dSgoate" de la vie depuis sa jeunes-se, est profondement convaincu que, quoi que l'on fasse, 'la foule, le troupeau sera tou-jours haissable.'"4 However, it is not often remembered, in this context, that Flaubert, too, was brought up on Rousseau (on Rousseau, Hugo and Sand, as a matter of fact). Flaubert had passionately adored the Confessions, also, for the first time, at age seventeen.

"Je suis a moiti6 des Confessions de J-J. Rousseau," he writes to his friend Ernest Chevalier in October, 1838, "c'est admirable. VoilA la vraie ecole de style."5 In almost the same words, upon finishing it, he exhorts Ernest to read the work. And at the end of November, 1838: "Tu as lu Rousseau, dis-tu," writes Flaubert. "Quel homme! Je to recom-mande specialement ses Confessions. C'est la-dedans que son ame s'est montr6e A nu. Pauvre Rousseau qu'on a tant calomnie parce que ton coeur Stait plus Sieve' que celui des autres, it est des pages oil je me suis senti fondre en Telices et en amoureuses reveries!" (Corr., I, 32-33)

Just months later, Flaubert completed his very first novella, the "Memoires d'un fou," in which he tells of his childhood, and confesses, for the first time, his love for Elisa SchleSinger ("Maria" -- real names are not used in Flaubert's novella), the model for many a character, culminating in Marie Arnoux of the 1869 Education Sentimentale.

The Confessions of Rousseau are indeed the "vraie ecole de style" for the adolescent author, as Flaubert adopted Rousseau's literary device of the confession, particularly the confession of childhood experiences themselves. However, he did not believe, as Rousseau did, that he would arrive at any exemplary truth, either for himself or for his generation. In fact, every time Flaubert yields to his Rousseauist sentimental and passionate impulse in the "Memoires," he then counters directly afterwards, within the text, with the cyni-cal, choral voice of denial. The novella is dedicated, not to the tender Ernest Chevalier, but to Alfred Le Poittevin, admirer of Byron and of Petrus Borel. It is a short leap of the imagination to picturing Le Poittevin, along with his educated and well-td-do cronies, smoking their pipes and listening to Gustave read. And indeed, Flaubert inserts the story of his romantic attachment to a young girl (not that of his passion for the voluptuous, older "Maria," however) into the text as an oral "r6Cit." This "tale" of love is separated from the rest of the narration. Whenever the narrator-as-storyteller waxes poetic, the auditors, his pipe-smoking buddies, gathered to hear this "confession," jeer at him, encour- aging him rather to show his "maleness." "D'accord, le coeur est stupide," the story- teller admits.6

Nonetheless, in "MSmoires d'un fou," whole passages seem to be lifted from the Confessions. For example: "Je n'ai jamais aims une vie rSg16e, des heures fixes, une existence d'horloge . . . pour le pauvre enfant qui se nourrit de poSsie, de raves et de chimeres, qui pense A l'amour et A toutes les balivernes, c'est l'eveiller sans cesse de ce songe sublime . . ." (My emphases. "Wmoires," Oc I, 233.) Even while affirming his Rousseau-ness in Jean-Jacques' very words, the narrator of "M6moires d'un fou" is compelled to tack on a cynical denial.

Rousseau has left his stylistic mark upon Flaubertian prose in several other places. As an authorial persona, however, he must have particularly impressed the future martyr of "les affres du style." For Rousseau's honest description of the state of his manuscripts is striking: ". . . ratur6s, barbouillgs, me16s, indSchiffrables, [ ils] attestent la peine qu'ils m'ont cott6e." (Conf., I, 114)

It is perhaps a sign of conciliatory friendship that Flaubert, in 1866, conceded to Sand that what little good remained in him came from his "ridiculous" Romantic period.? At least we know that, unlike Th6ophile Gautier (if we are to believe the Goncourts), Flaubert never directly baited her by calling Rousseau the worst writer in the French lan-guage.8 But where the young Flaubert tacked cynicism onto every glimmer of idealism, the mature Flaubert of the Flaubert-Sand correspondance posed generally as the "good" Flaubert, who cared for his mother and played with Sand's grandchildren at Nohant. It seems that their differences were allowed free reign only when it came to social and political ques-tions, she remaining idealistic, he, ironic, and cynical about "the masses."

There are, however, moments of unresolved tension, as when Flaubert, responding in September, 1868, to her complaint about a woman-friend who had stopped seeing anyone but her confessor since her conversion, expounded to Sand upon the inferiority of womens

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intelligence (even invoking Proudhon!), and asked her what she, belonging as she did to the "third sex," thought of this. His question remained unanswered by Sand. Another tense moment occurred when Sand, in February of 1867, vituperated against hideous old men and their disgusting desires for young whores -- "a thing against nature," without liberty, reciprocity or love. It was Flaubert's turn, here, to remain silent.

To George Sand, disciple of Rousseau, happiest in the country and on the open road, author of many a pastoral novel, Flaubert writes, in a gently patronizing, philosophical mockery of her "naive enthusiasm" over nature:

La nature, loin de me fortifier, m'gpuise. Quand je me couche sur l'herbe, it me semble que je suis dgja sous terre et que les pieds de salade commencent

pousser dans mon ventre. Votre troubadour est un homme naturellement malsain. Je n'aime la campagne qu'en voyage, parce qu'alors l'indgpendance de mon individu me fait passer par-dessus la conscience de mon ngant."5

NOTES

George Sand, Histoire de ma vie in Oeuvres autobiographiques, gd. de la Plgfade (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), II, 113. All further references to this work will be indicated by Hv, in the text.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, les Confessions, in Oeuvres completes, 6d. de la Plgfade (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), I, 341. This work will be referred to as Conf., in the text. Interestingly, Dupin de Francueil was criticized by Rousseau, while Mme Dupin was exempted from this criticism. Ac-cording to Sand, Mme Dupin cultivated "les lettres et la philosophie sans ostentation et sans attacher son nom aux ouvrages de son mari." (Hv I, 42) Sand believed her great-grandmother could have taken the credit for most of their writings. At the time when Rousseau was their secretary, they were collaborating (with Jean-Jacques, who also received no credit?) on "un ouvrage sur le mgrite des femmes." (Ibid.)

3 George Sand, Correspondance entre George Sand et Gustave Flaubert (Paris: Calmann-

Lgvy, 1904), Lettre no. CXCVII. 4 Claude Tricotel, Comme Deux Troubadours. Histoire de l'amitig Flaubert-Sand (Paris:

C.D.U. + SEDES, 1978), pp. 105-106. 5 Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance, 6d. de la Plgfade (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), I, 29,

(1830-1851). Referred to as Corr., in the text. 6 Gustave Flaubert, "Mgmoires d'un fou," in Oeuvres completes (Paris: Editions du

Seuil, 1964), I, 242. Referred to as 0c, in the text. 7 Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance (Lausanne: Editions Rencontre, 1965), XII, 146,

(1865-1870). 8 Tricotel, p. 67. 9 Flaubert, Correspondance (Ed. Rencontre, 1965), XII, 408.

Wheaton College Norton, MA

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THE GEORGE SAND-GUSTAVE FLAUBERT CORRESPONDENCE -- EXTRACTS*

Isabelle Naginski

The extraordinary dialogue of opposites which the Flaubert-Sand correspondence represents is not restricted to the question of politics, although it is a crucial aspect of their difference. In fact, it is remarkable how consistently each writer's vision opposes the other.

Flaubert's agoraphobia and love of claustration is the exact opposite of Sand's need for movement and social intercourse:

To George Sand -- Bagneres de Luchon, 12th July, 1872

I have been here since Sunday evening, dear master, and am no happier than at Croisset, even a little less so, for I am very idle. They make so much noise in the house where we are, that it is impossible to work. Moreover, the sight of the bourgeois who surround us is unendurable. I am not made for travelling. The least inconvenience disturbs me. Your old troubadour is very old, decidedly! Doctor Lambron, the physician of this place, attributes my nervous tendencies to the excessive use of tobacco. To be agreeable I am going to smoke less; but I doubt very much if my virtue will cure me! . . .

To Gustave Flaubert Nohant, 19 July, 1872

Dear old troubadour,

We too are going away, but without knowing yet where we are going; it doesn't make any difference to me. I wanted to take my brood to Switzerland; they would rather go in the opposite direction, to the Ocean; the Ocean will do! If only we travel and bathe, I shall be out of my mind with joy. Decidedly our two old troubadourships are two oppo-sites. What bores you, amuses me; I love movement and noise, and even the tiresome things about travelling find favor in my eyes, provided they are a part of travelling. I am much more sensible to what disturbs the calm of sedentary life, than to that which is a normal and neces-sary disturbance in the life of motion. . . .

* * *

Flaubert's indifference to nature and Sand's vital need for it:

To George Sand Kalt-Bad. Righi. Friday, 3d July, 1874

. . . As you know Switzerland, it is useless for me to talk to you of it, and you would scorn me if I were to tell you that I am bored to extinction here. I came here obediently

*Source: The George Sand & Gustave Flaubert Letters, trans. A.L. McKenzie (1929; reprint ed., Chicago, IL: Academy Chicago Ltd., 1979).

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because they ordered me to, for the purpose of bleaching my face and calming my nerves! I don't think that the remedy will be efficacious; anyhow it has been deadly boring to me. I am not a man of nature, and I do not understand anything in a country where there is no history. I would give all these glaciers for the Vatican Museum. One can dream there. Well, in three weeks I shall be glued to my green table! in a humble refuge, where it seems to me you never want to come!

To Gustave Flaubert Nohant, 8th July, 1874

. . . You do not want to be a man of nature, so much the worse for you! therefore you attach too much importance to the details of human things, and you do not tell yourself that there is in you a natural force that defies the ifs and the buts of human prattle. We are of nature, in nature, by nature, and for nature. Talent, will, genius, are natural phenomena like the lake, the volcano, the mountain, the wind, the star, the cloud. What man dabbles in is pretty or ugly, ingenious or stupid; what he gets from nature is good or bad; but it is, it exists and subsists. One should not ask from the jumble of appreciation called criticism, what one has done and what one wants to do. Criticism does not know any-thing about it; its business is to gossip.

Nature alone knows how to speak to the intelligence in a language that is imperishable, always the same, because it does not depart from the eternally true, the absolutely beautiful. The hard thing, when one travels, is to find nature, because man has arranged it everywhere and has almost spoiled it everywhere; probably it is because of that that you are bored, it is because it is disguised and travestied everywhere. However, the glaciers are still intact, I presume. . . .

The "perpetual humming" of Nohant contrasts sharply with the "silence of a char-terhouse" at Croisset (Tricotel, Les Deux Troubadours, p. 66):

To Gustave Flaubert Nohant, 31 July, 1868

. . . We are very happy here. Every day a bath in a stream that is always cold and shady; in the daytime four hours of work; in the evening, recreation, and the life of Punch and Judy. A travelling theatrical company came to us; it was part of a company from the Odeon, among whom were several old friends, to whom we gave supper at La Chatre, two suc-cessive nights, with all their friends, after the play; --songs, laughter, with champagne frappe, till three o'clock in the morning to the great scandal of the bourgeois, who would have committed any crime to have been there. . . .

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To George Sand Croisset, January 1867

. . . I pass entire weeks without exchanging a word with a human being, and at the end of the week it is not possible for me to recall a single day nor any event whatsoever. I see my mother and my niece on Sundays, and that is all. My only company consists of a band of rats in the garret, which make an infernal racket above my head, when the water does not roar or the wind blow. The nights are black as ink, and a silence surrounds me comparable to that of the desert. Sensitiveness is increased immeasurably in such a setting. I have palpitations of the heart for nothing. . . .

Their very different opinions of the "artist":

To Gustave Flaubert Palaiseau, 30 November, 1866

. . . Try some day to write a novel in which the artist (the real artist) is the hero, you will see what great, but delicate and restrained, vigor is in it, how he will see everything with an attentive eye, curious and tranquil, and how his infatuations with the things he examines and delves into, will be rare and serious. You will see also how he fears himself, how he knows that he can not surrender him-self without exhaustion, and how a profound modesty in regard to the treasures of his soul prevents him from scattering and wasting them.

The artist is such a fine type to do, that I have never dared really to do him. I do not consider myself worthy to touch that beautiful and very complicated figure; that is aiming too high for a mere woman. But if it could cer-tainly tempt you some day, it would be worth while.

Where is the model? I don't know, I have never really known any one who did not show some spot in the sunlight, I mean some side where the artist verged on the Philistine. Perhaps you have not that spot; you ought to paint yourself. As for me I have it. I love classifications, I verge on the pedagogue. I love to sew and to care for children, I verge on the servant. I am easily distracted and verge on the idiot. And then I should not like perfection; I feel it but I shouldn't know how to show it. . . .

To George Sand 9th March, 1876

. . . You distress me a bit, dear master, by attributing aesthetic opinions to me which are not mine. I believe that the rounding of the phrase is nothing. But that writing well is everything, because "writing well is at the same time per- ceiving well, thinking well and saying well" (Buffon). The last term is then dependent on the other two, since one has to feel strongly, so as to think, and to think, so as to express.

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All the bourgeois can have a great deal of heart and delicacy, be full of the best sentiments and the greatest virtues, without becoming for all that, artists. In short, I believe that the form and the matter are two subtleties, two entities, neither of which can exist without the other.

This anxiety for external beauty which you reproach me with is for me a method. When I discover a bad assonance or a repetition in one of my phrases, I am sure that I am floundering in error; by dint of searching, I find the exact expression which was the only one and is, at the same time, the harmonious one. The word is never lacking when one possesses the idea. . . .

***** On authorial intrusions:

To George Sand 5th December, 1866

. . . I don't agree with you that there is anything worth while to be done with the character of the ideal Artist; he would be a monster. Art is not made to paint the exceptions, and I feel an unconquerable repugnance to putting on paper something from out of my heart. I even think that a novelist hasn't the right to express his opinion on any subject whatsoever. Has the good God ever uttered it, his opinion? That is why there are not a few things that choke me which I should like to spit out, but which I swallow. Why say them, in fact! The first comer is more interesting than Monsieur Gustave Flaubert, because he is more general and therefore more typical. . . .

To Gustave Flaubert, at Paris December, 1866

"Not put one's heart into what one writes?" I don't understand at all, oh! not at all! As for me, I think that one can not put anything else into it. Can one separate one's mind from one's heart? Is it something different? Can sensation itself limit itself? Can existence divide itself? In short, not to give oneself entirely to one's work, seems to me as impossible as to weep with something else than one's eyes, and to think with something else than one's brain.

What was it you meant? You must tell me when you have the time.

On their feelings about posterity:

To Gustave Flaubert Nohant, 8 December, 1872

. . . You were pleased with my two novels? I am repaid, I think that they are satisfactory, and the silence which has invaded my life ( it must be said that I have sought it) is full of a good voice that talks to me and is sufficient to me. I have not mounted as high as you in my ambition. You want to write for the ages. As for me, I think that in fifty years, I shall be absolutely forgotten and perhaps unkindly ignored. Such is the

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law of things that are not of first rank, and I have never thought myself in the first rank. My idea has been rather to act upon my contemporaries, even if only on a few, and to share with them my ideal of sweetness and poetry. I have attained this end up to a certain point; I have at least done my best towards it, I do still, and my reward is to approach it continually a little nearer. . . .

. . . I have had a good many compliments in my life, in the time when people were interested in literature. I have always dreaded them when they came to me from unknown people; they made me doubt myself too much. I have made enough money to be rich. If I am not, it is because I did not care to be; I have enough with what avy makes for me. What I should prefer, would be to abandon myself entirely to botany, it would be for me a Paradise on earth. But it must not be, that would be useful only to myself, and, if chagrin is good for anything, it is for keeping us from egoism, one must not curse nor scorn life. . . .

To George Sand 12 December 1872

Don't take seriously the exaggerations about my ire. Don't believe that I am counting "on posterity to avenge me for the indifference of my contemporaries." I meant to say only this: if one does not address the crowd, it is right that the crowd should not pay one. It is political economy. But, I maintain that a work of art (worthy of that name and conscientiously done) is beyond appraisal, has no commercial value, cannot be paid for. Conclusion: if the artist has no income, he must starve! They think that the writer, because he no longer receives a pension from the great, is very much freer, and nobler. All his social nobility now consists in being the equal of a grocer. What progress! As for me, you say to me "Let us be logical;" but that's just the difficulty.

I am not sure at all of writing good things, nor that the book of which I am dreaming now can be well done, which does not prevent me from undertaking it. I think that the idea of it is original, nothing more. And then, as I hope to spit into it the gall that is choking me, that is to say, to emit some truths, I hope by this means to purge myself, and to be henceforward more Olympian, a quality that I lack entirely. Ah! how I should like to admire myself! . . .

On the difficulty/facility of writing:

To George Sand Croisset, November 1866

. . . Whence come these attacks of melancholy that overwhelm one at times? They rise like a tide, one feels drowned, one has to flee. I lie prostrate. I do nothing and the tide passes.

My novel is going very badly for the moment. That fact added to the deaths of which I have heard; of Cormenin (a friend of

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twenty-five years' standing), of Gavarni, and then all the rest, but that will pass. You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word. Ideas come very easily with you, inces-santly, like a stream. With me it is a tiny thread of water. Hard labor at art is necessary for me before obtaining a waterfall. Ah! I certainly know the agonies of style.

In short I pass my life in wearing away my heart and brain, that is the real truth about your friend. . . .

To Gustave Flaubert Palaiseau, 29 November, 1866

. . . You always astonish me with your painstaking work; is it a coquetry? It does not seem labored. What I find difficult is to choose out of the thousand combinations of scenic action which can vary infinitely, the clear and striking situation which is not brutal nor forced. As for style, I attach less importance to it than you do.

The wind plays my old harp as it lists. It has its high notes, its low notes, its heavy notes -- and its faltering notes, in the end it is all the same to me provided the emotion comes, but I can find nothing in myself. It is the other who sings as he likes, well or ill, and when I try to think about it, I am afraid and tell myself that I am nothing, nothing at all.

But a great wisdom saves us; we know how to say to ourselves, "Well, even if we are absolutely nothing but instruments, it is still a charming state and like no other, this feeling oneself vibrate."

Now, let the wind blow a little over your strings. I think that you take more trouble than you need, and that you ought to let the other do it oftener. That would go just as well and with less fatigue.

The instrument might sound weak at certain moments, but the breeze in continuing would increase its strength. You would do afterwards what I don't do, what I should do. You would raise the tone of the whole picture and would cut out what is too uniformly in the light. .

Flaubert's pessimism versus Sand's optimism:

To George Sand 14 November, 1871

. . . Your old troubadour has an aching head. My longest nights these three months have not exceeded five hours. I have been grubbing in a frantic manner. Furthermore, I think I have brought my book to a pretty degree of insanity. The idea of the foolish things that it will make the bourgeois utter sustains me, or rather I don't need to be sustained, as such a situation pleases me naturally.

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The good bourgeois is becoming more and more stupid! He does not even go to vote! The brute beasts surpass him in their instinct for self-preservation. Poor France! Poor us!. .

. . . We suffer from one thing only: Absurdity. But it is for-midable and universal. When they talk of the brutishness of the plebe, they are saying an unjust, incomplete thing. Conclusion: the enlightened classes must be enlightened. Begin by the head, which is the sickest, the rest will follow.

You are not like me! You are full of compassion. There are days when I choke with wrath, I would like to drown my contemporaries in latrines, or at least deluge their cockscombs with torrents of abuse, cataracts of invectives. Why? I wonder myself. . . .

To Gustave Flaubert, at Paris Nohant, 23 July, 1871

No, I am not ill, my dear old troubadour, in spite of the sorrow which is the daily bread of France; I have an iron constitution and an exceptional old age, abnormal even, for my strength in-creases at the age when it ought to diminish. The day that I resolutely buried my youth, I grew twenty years younger. You will tell me that the bark undergoes none the less the ravages of time. I don't care for that, the heart of the tree is very good and the sap still runs as in the old apple trees in my garden, which bear, fruit all the better the more gnarly they are. Thank you for having worried over the illness which the papers have bestowed upon me. . . .

To George Sand Croisset, 10th May, 1875

A wandering gout, pains that go all over me, an invincible melan-choly, the feeling of "universal uselessness" and grave doubts about the book that I am writing, that is what is the matter with me, dear and valiant master. Add to that worries about money with melancholic recollections of the past, that is my condition, and I assure you that I make great efforts to get out of it. But my will is tired. I cannot decide about anything effective! Ah! I have eaten my white bread first, and old age is not announcing itself under gay colors. Since I have begun hydrotherapy, how-ever, I feel a little less like a cow, and this evening I am going to begin work without looking behind me. . . .

. . . But one does not arrange one's own destiny, one submits to it. I have always lived from day to day, without plans for the future and pursuing my end (one alone, literature) without looking to the right or to the left. Everything that was around me has disappeared, and now I find I am in a desert. In short, the element of distraction is absolutely lacking to me. One needs a certain vivacity to write good things! What can one do to get it again? How can one proceed, to avoid thinking continually about one's miserable person? The sickest thing in me is my humor: the rest doubtless would go well. You see, dear, good master, that I am right to spare you my letters. Nothing is as imbecile as the whiners.

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To Gustave Flaubert, at Croisset Nohant, 8th December, 1874

. . . You love literature too much; it will destroy you and you will not destroy the imbecility of the human race. Poor dear imbecility, that, for my part, I do not hate, that I regard with maternal eyes: for it is a childhood and all childhood is sacred. What hatred you have devoted to it! what warfare you wage on it!

You have too much knowledge and intelligence, you forget that there is something above art: namely, wisdom, of which art at its apogee is only the expression. Wisdom comprehends all: beauty, truth, goodness, enthusiasm, in consequence. It teaches us to see outside of ourselves, something more elevated than is in ourselves, and to assimilate it little by little, through contem-plation and admiration.

But I shall not succeed in changing you. I shall not even succeed in making you understand how I envisage and how I lay hold upon happiness, that is to say, the acceptation of life whatever it may be! There is one person who could change you and save you, that is father Hugo; for he has one side on which he is a great philos-opher, while at the same time he is the great artist that you require and that I am not. You must see him often. I believe that he will quiet you: I have not enough tempest in me now for you to understand me. As for him, I think that he has kept his thunderbolts and that he has all the same acquired the gentleness and the compassion of age. . . .

Flaubert's indignation versus Sand's serenity:

To George Sand May 1867

. . . It is true that many things exasperate me. On the day that I am no longer outraged, I shall fall flat as the marionette from which one withdraws the support of the stick.

Thus, the stake that has supported me this winter, is the indignation that I had against our great national historian, M. Thiers, who had reached the condition of a demi-god, and the pamphlet Trochu, and the everlasting Changarnier coming back over the water. God be thanked that the Exposition has delivered us momentarily from these great men.

To Gustave Flaubert Nohant, 14 June, 1867

. . . I know so well how to live outside of myself! It hasn't always been like that. I also was young and subject to indignations. It is over!

Since I have dipped into real nature, I have found there an order, a system, a calmness of cycles which is lacking in mankind, but which man can, up to a certain point, assimilate when he is not too directly at odds with the difficulties of his own life. When these difficulties return he must endeavor to avoid them; but if he has drunk the cup of the eternally true, he does not get too excited for

or against the ephemeral and relative truth.

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But why do I say this to you? Because it comes to my penpoint; for in considering it carefully, your state of overexcitement is probably truer, or at least more fertile and more human than my senile tranquillity. I would not like to make you as I am, even if by a magical operation I could. I should not be inter-ested in myself if I had the honor to meet myself. I should say that one troubadour is enough to manage and I should send the other to Chaillot. . . .

Flaubert's permanent discontent counterbalances Sand's belief in solutions of happiness:

To Gustave Flaubert Nohant, 26 October, 1872

. . . I am angry with you for becoming savage and discontented with life. It seems to me that you regard happiness too much as a possible thing, and that the absence of happiness which is our chronic state, angers you and astonishes you too much. You shun friends, you plunge into work, and reckon as lost the time you might employ in loving or in being loved. Why didn't you come to us with Madame Viardot and Tourgueneff? You like them, you admire them, you know that you are adored here, and you run away to be alone. Well, how about getting married? Being alone is odious, it is deadly, and it is cruel also for those who love you. All your letters are unhappy and grip my heart. Haven't you any woman whom you love or by whom you would be loved with pleasure? Take her to live with you. Isn't there anywhere a little urchin whose father you can believe you are? Bring him up. Make yourself his slave, forget yourself in him.

What do I know? To live in oneself is bad. There is intel-lectual pleasure only in the possibility of returning to it when one has been out for a long time; but to live always in this Moi which is the most tyrannical, the most exacting, the most fan-tastic of companions, no, one must not. -- I beg you, listen to me! You are shutting up an exuberant nature in a jail, you are making out of a tender and indulgent heart, a deliberate mis-anthrope, -- and you will not make a success of it. In short, I am worried about you, and I am saying perhaps some foolishness to you; but we live in cruel times and we must not undergo them with curses. We must rise above them with pity. That's it! I love you, write to me. . . .

To George Sand 28 October, 1872

. . . No, I don't think that happiness is possible, but certainly tranquillity. That is why I get away from what irritates me. A trip to Paris is for me now, a great business. As soon as I shake the vessel, the dregs mount and permeate all. The least conversa-tion with anyone at all exasperates me because I find everyone idiotic. My feeling of justice is continually revolted. They talk only of politics and in what a fashion! Where is there a sign of an idea? What can one get hold of? What shall one get excited about?

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I don't think, however, that I am a monster of egoism. My Moi scatters itself in books so that I pass whole days without noticing it. I have bad moments, it is true, but I pull myself together by this reflection: "No one at least bothers me." After that, I regain my balance. So I think that I am going on in my natural path; am I right?

As for living with a woman, marrying as you advise me to do, that is a prospect that I find fantastic. Why? I don't know. But it is so. Explain the riddle. The feminine being has never been included in my life; and then, I am not rich enough, and then, and then -- . . . I am too old, and too decent to inflict forever my person on another. There is in me an element of the ecclesiastical that people don't know. We shall talk about that better than we can write of it.

I shall see you in Paris in December, but in Paris one is disturbed by others. I wish you three hundred performances for Mademoiselle La Quintinie. But you will have a lot of bother with the Odeon. It is an institution where I suffered horribly last winter. Every time that I attempted to do anything they dished me. So, enough! enough! "Hide thy life," maxim of Epictetus. My whole ambition now is to flee from bother, and I am sure by that means never to cause any to others, that is much. . . .

Flaubert's "desolation making" calls forth Sand's "consolation making":

To Gustave Flaubert, in Paris --Nohant, 18th and 19th December, 1875

Then you are going to start grubbing again? So am I; for since Flamarande I have done nothing but mark time, while waiting for some-thing better. I was so ill all summer! but my strange and excellent friend Favre has cured me wonderfully, and I am taking a new lease on life.

What's our next move? For you, of course, desolation, and, for me, consolation. I do not know on what our destinies depend; you see them pass, you criticise them, you abstain from a literary appreci-ation of them, you limit yourself to depicting them, with deliberate meticulous concealment of your personal feelings. However, one sees them very clearly through your narrative, and you make the people sadder who read you. As for me, I should like to make them less sad. I cannot forget that my personal victory over despair was the work of my will and of a new way of understanding which is entirely opposed to what I had before.

I know that you criticise the intervention of the personal doctrine in literature. Are you right? Isn't it rather a lack of conviction than a principle of esthetics? One cannot have a philosophy in one's soul without its appearing. I have no literary advice to give you, I have no judgment to formulate on the author friends of whom you speak. I, myself have told the Goncourts all my thought; as for the others, I firmly believe that they have more education and more talent than I have. Only I think that they, and you especially, lack a definite and extended vision of life. Art is not merely painting. True painting, moreover, is full of the soul that wields the brush.

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Art is not merely criticism and satire: criticism and satire depict only one side of the truth.

I want to see a man as he is, he is not good or bad, he is good and bad. But he is something more . . . nuance. Nuance which is for me the purpose of art, being good and bad, he has an internal force which leads him to be very bad and slightly good, -- or very good and slightly bad.

I think that your school is not concerned with the substance, and that it dwells too much on the surface. By virtue of seeking the form, it makes the substance too cheap! it addresses itself to the men of letters. But there are no men of letters, properly speaking. Before everything, one is a man. One wants to find man at the basis of every story and every deed. . . .

To George Sand December, 1875

. . . I do not enjoy making "desolation," believe me, but I cannot change my eyes! As for my "lack of convictions," alas! I choke with convictions. I am bursting with anger and restrained indignation. But according to the ideal of art that I have, I think that the artist should not manifest anything of his own feelings, and that the artist should not appear any more in his work than God in nature. The man is nothing, the work is everything! This method, perhaps mistakenly conceived, is not easy to follow. And for me, at least, it is a sort of permanent sacrifice that I am making to good taste. It would be agreeable to me to say what I think and to relieve Mister Gustave Flaubert by words, but of what importance is the said gentleman?

I think as you do, dear master, that art is not merely criticism and satire; moreover, I have never tried to do intentionally the one nor the other. I have always tried to go into the soul of things and to stick to the greatest generalities, and I have purposely turned aside from the accidental and the dramatic. No monsters and no heroes! . . .

Speaking of my friends, you add "my school." But I am ruining my temperament in trying not to have a school! A priori, I spurn them, every one. The people whom I see often and whom you designate culti-vate all that I scorn and are indifferently disturbed about what torments me. I regard as very secondary, technical detail, local exactness, in short the historical and precise side of things. I am seeking above all for beauty, which my companions pursue but languidly. I see them insensible when I am ravaged with admiration or horror. Phrases make me swoon with pleasure which seem very ordinary to them. Goncourt is very happy when he has seized upon a word in the street that he can stick in a book, and I am well satisfied when I have when I have written a page without assonances or repetitions. I would give all the legends of Gavarni for certain expressions and master strokes, such as "the shade was nuptial, august and solemn!" from Victor Hugo, or this from Montesquieu: "the vices of Alexander were extreme like his virtues. He was terrible in his wrath. It made him cruel."

In short, I try to think well, in order to write well. .

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Their epistolary dialogue lasted more than a decade, from 1863 until Sand's death in 1876. It was interrupted intermittently by bouts of illness, by trips to Paris where they regularly met for dinner at the famous Magny restaurant, in the company of the Goncourt brothers, Th6ophile Gautier, Sainte-Beuve and other literati, and by visits to their respective country estates. Sand visited Flaubert at Croisset in August 1866, November 1866 and in May 1868. Flaubert spent Christmas at Nohant in 1869. During his second visit in April 1873, he read his Tentation de Saint Antoine to the Sand household. When George Sand died, Flaubert felt like an orphan: "It seemed to me that I was burying my mother for the secone time," he wrote to Maurice Sand.

Flaubert had also lost a literary counselor. If the most remarkable feature of the Sand-Flaubert correspondence is the immutability of their respective positions -- neither budges an inch -- it is also paradoxically accompanied by a profound respect for each other's polar opinions. But Sand, in a sense, did have the last word. In a letter to Flaubert dated 15 January 1876, just a few months before her death, she had urged him to "keep your cult for form; but pay more attention to the substance. Do not take true vir-tue for a commonplace in literature. Give it its representative. . . . "Sand did not live to see the final result, Un Coeur simple, emerge from Flaubert's imagination. But, as it was directly inspired by Sand, it can perhaps be seen as the last installment of their fascinating correspondence. "I had begun Un Coeur simple exclusively on account of her [Sand) , only to please her," wrote Flaubert. "She died while I was in the midst of this work. Thus it is with our dreams."

Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Gustave Flaubert - Photograph by Nadar (Radio Times Hulton Picture Library)

George Sand by Thomas Couture (Bibliotheque Nationale)

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J

GEORGE SAND: HER LIFE, HER WORKS, HER CIRCLE, HER INFLUENCE

San Diego State University San Diego, CA

February 11 - 14, 1981

Conference Speakers:

Paul Blount, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA "George Sand and the Feminist Movement in England during the Victorian Period."

Elaine Boney, San Diego State University "The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann on George Sand."

Rosemary Brown, Yale University, New Haven, CT "The Status of the Arts in George Sand's Fiction."

Anne Callahan, Loyola University, Chicago, IL "Sand and Balzac."

Pierrette Daly, University of Missouri, St. Louis, MO "Consuelo et les contes de fjes."

Sandra Dijkstra, University of California-San Diego, San Diego, CA "Depiction of 19th Century Women in French Art."

Sherry Dranch, Wheaton College, Norton, MA "Heroinism and Intertextuality in George Sand's Consuelo."

Sharon L. Fairchild, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX "Social Aspects in George Sand's Correspondence."

Jacqueline Gervais, San Diego State University "Les Oiseaux dans la vie et l'oeuvre de George Sand."

Janis Glasgow, San Diego State University "Aldo le rimeur: An Introduction.'

Tatiana Greene, Barnard College-Columbia University, New York, NY "George Sand, heretique."

Hugh Harter, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH "Gertrude Gomez de Avellaneda: The Hispanic George Sand."

Suzanne Henig, San Diego State University "George Sand's Influence on Virginia Woolf."

Edith Jonsson-Devillers, University of California-San Diego "Metamorphoses du conte, du contour, et du conte dans La Fleur sacrge de George Sand."

Alice Laborde, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA "Dialectique et poetique de l'amour dans Lelia de George Sand."

Helene Laperrousaz, University of California-San Diego "Le Mythe d'Orphee, ou l'expression impossible chez George Sand et Gustave Moreau."

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Stefan Max, San Diego State University "Quelques notes sur La Ville noire de George Sand."

Carol Mozet, San Diego State University "Une etude comparative sur Lord Byron et George Sand: 'Le Corsaire,"Lare et l'Uscoque."

Annabelle Rea, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA "Towards a Definition of Women's Voice in Sand's Novels."

Sylvie Richards, Pennsylvania State University, Erie, PA "The Two Georges: A Psychoanalytic of the Doubles in Indiana and Adam Bede."

Ida Rigby, San Diego State University "Delacroix and George Sand." (Slide presentation)

Lucy McCallum Schwartz, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND "George Sand et le roman intime: Tradition and Innovation in Women's Literature."

Claude-Marie Senninger, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM "George Sand et Thgophile Gautier."

Virginia Shubert, Macalester College,St. Paul, MN "George Sand's Lelia and Alfred de Musset's A Confession of a Child of the Century."

Albert Smith, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL "George Sand and the Theatre of the Fantastic."

Eve Sourian, The City College - CUNY, New York, NY "Les opinions religieuses de George Sand."

John Stuart, University of Texas, Arlington, TX "Quietism - Consuelo and La Comtesse du Rudolstadt."

Enid Standring, Montclair State College, Upper Montclair, NJ "George Sand and Music."

Alex Szogyi, Hunter College-CUNY, New York, NY "A Newly Discovered Manuscript of a Play by George Sand."

Shelley Temchin, Tufts University, Medford, MA "Portraits of a Personnage, George Sand's Autobiography and Correspondence."

Anh-vo Tran, San Diego State University "La Dernier Aldini."

GianAngelo Vergani, San Diego State University "The Venice of 1833." (Slide presentation)

Dora Wilson, California State University, Long Beach, CA "George Sand and Music."

Marilyn Yalom, Stanford University, Stanford, CA "Toward a History of Female Adolescence: The Contribution of George Sand."

Dorothy Zimmerman, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE "George Sand and Art."

(3-5

36

HER LIFE, HER WORKS, HER CIRCLE,

HER INFLUENCE

D *if) o !irate thatoectErftv

FetrariaRg 11 - 14, 15:t81

A George Sand

A. GEORGE SAND $15.00 each, two for B. GEORGE SAND A VENISE $25.00.

A limited number of autographed posters-$25.00

Signed original editions printed on papier rives gris - Issue of 50 -- $300.00

Order form:

GEORGE SAND

George Sand ‘a Venise

Poster A Poster B

NAME

ADDRESS

ZIP

Autographed A Autographed B

Original edition

Make checks payable to: George Sand Festival

Send to: Prof. Janis Glasgow Dept. of French & Italian San Diego State University San Diego, CA 92182

GEORGE SAND POSTERS

Created by Fran9oise Gilot for THE GEORGE SAND CONFERENCE

San Diego State University, San Diego, CA February 11 - 14, 1981

Proceeds of the sale will go to: The George Sand Conference

GEORGE SAND

AN INTERVIEW WITH FRANcOISE GILOT

By Alex Szogyi

November 4, 1980 New York, NY

AS: What do you believe to be the role of the woman-artist in the twentieth century?

FG: This question astonishes me, all the more because I find that the role of the artist is always most difficult to define. The artist's creation arises from his or her own inner world. The artist is a seer, a prophet. He can give to the world only through the medium of his art. Now, if you speak of the Ale of the artist vis a vis society or his rile within it, the artist often appears marginal or even anti-social. He opposes society, he is a loner, a harsh critic of his contemporaries, or rather, in many instances, it is society which places the artist in a corner, like a troublesome child, or an outcast.

AS: Perhaps the word r8le is poorly chosen and it is rather a personal decision to play a certain role within that society.

FG: You spoke of the woman-artist. I am essentially a painter, a writer, but above all a painter. As an artist, an artist-who-is-a woman, I would like to call myself an artist-woman. Everything depends on the emphasis placed on the first word. I feel that the artist is always androgynous. If, physiologically, he happens to be a man, as an artist he is both man and woman, for if he doesn't have the sensitivity of a woman, he is not truly an artist. If an artist is physiologically a woman, she must also possess the qualities which one generally attributes to the masculine, that is to say, strength, en-ergy, character, decisiveness and the spirit of discovery. Sensitivity is not enough. Therefore, in my opinion, one will have to make a distinction between the artist-woman, who, as a genuine contributor to culture as well as to art in a major way, will make all the necessary sacrifices that her contribution will demand and the woman-artist, who re-mains hedonistic and has no control of her subjectivity. This is most important because I do not distinguish between life and work. There is no dualism in art, there is only the Gestalt of a life which carries all and makes one a creative being in all things. One is always this being at all times, everywhere. And if the fact of becoming creative obliges one to make dramatic sacrifices in life, it must be done. I speak of this, because I believe that the reason why there are fewer artist-women than artist-men is because earli-er in human evolution the woman could not detach herself from her Ale of protector of the family who conserves and nourishes and who could not develop the ascetic or the ec-static qualities one must necessarily have to be a visionary artist. This distinction is important because in the twentieth century the woman has liberated herself to a certain extent from her traditional role as protector of the family to go towards a greater inde-pendence and creativity.

AS: Has all this changed since the nineteenth century? Do artists still have the same situations in our time? I should like to begin to speak of George Sand.

FG: That is just why I have always had such a great admiration for George Sand. She was a role-model for me. I must add that I cannot take personal credit for admiring George Sand. I had a grandmother whose own grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, was alive in George Sand's time and greatly admired George Sand. In my maternal family, all the women were feminists. As a child and a tom-boy at that, I couldn't understand why I should feel inferior to a boy. My grandmother told me that I had to understand why I was different in many ways but absolutely not inferior and it was up to me not to become infe-rior by exercising my mind, acting according to my convictions and working to be indepen-

37

dent. I wondered what she was talking about. Whenever a child hears something which seems extremely mysterious, he wonders, but long years pass before he can ascribe meaning to what he has heard.

From the beginning George Sand was generous, courageous, a hard worker. She dared to live in agreement with her beliefs, she despised the accepted social conventions of her time, she foresaw the possibility of progress for mankind. She fought for her ideas with enthusiasm and resilience. She did not spare herself. I respect her integrity.

AS: To stay with the same basic distinctions, do you believe that George Sand was an artist-woman or a woman-artist, or perhaps even both?

FG: As artist-woman, she was a pioneer. Once a path has been delineated, it is easier to enlarge it. One must realize that, apart from some women of the seventeenth century, such women as Madame de la Fayette or la Marquise de Seviga, existed in a com-pletely different society and had that freedom of action and of thought which belonged essentially to the aristocracy. In the eighteenth century that same freedom belonged to the women of the gentry who opened their salons to philosophers who themselves belonged to the upper echelon of the population. Until the nineteenth century, the ordinary people were not in power politically. One could not speak of the role of women except at home. After the French Revolution, when the bourgeoisie came to power, this new class had a new vision, perhaps at first puritanical and restrictive of the woman-who-wished-to-become-herself in all senses of that word on the level of life and creation, but nevertheless there was an evolution. At first women made mistakes but at least they could make them. I personally enormously admire George Sand as a human being, as an artist, as well, with a few special caveats, because my esthetic sense is certainly different from hers. She truly participated in her period. Her time was the time of Romanticism and the Romantic agony, even the masculine variety is not to my taste. I do like the Sturm u.nd Drang of the Romantics but I surely do not like their lamentations and jeremiads, the lachrymal frenzies, the whimperings inherited from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I must say that I always detested Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I do not believe that certain exaggerated forms of sensibility are truly sensitive. I would choose Diderot as a true example of sensibility. And even Laclos. I question Rousseau's sincerity. Nevertheless, I do believe that, even from the point of view of the twentieth century, George Sand is a very great author. If I even so much as read a few pages of her, her style captivates me. She has a mastery of rhythm, sounds, movement, vocabulary, evocation. She is indeed a great writer. If I had lived at her time, I would perhaps understand her even better. We all mature in function of the dynamic forces at play within society in our own time. We are forced to live through the illusions and the mal du siècle of our own time. She had hers -- we have ours. It is important to comprehend that. There are perhaps elements of her novels which no longer touch me or perhaps have never touched me. What is important to me is ultimate, ly that her words have the power to move me. If there are elements of George Sand's work I do not love, it is perhaps because I read them when I was too young. What annoys me or has become a bit "old hat" must be re-evaluated. I believe that George Sand must be re-read. A master in the art of writing and composition, she questions her metier. This willingness to show the artist at work and his thinking process is extremely modern.

AS: She speaks directly to her reader, which was quite modern for her time in the way she did it.

FG: Precisely. We must make our favorite selections from her work and only when we have read enough, can we begin to do that. No work is ever entirely without a deciduous element, don't you think? When we chop down old trees, we see dead branches which were struck by lightning.

AS: The dead branches in her work are most obvious because they were the elements of the style in fashion. Proust praised just that element he was given to read in child-hood. We were helped by knowing her life, but we got to know it too well, to the detriment

38

of her work. Now the work is being rediscovered and there is an opportunity to make a needed synthesis.

FG: It is important to do that.

AS: You were so generous to give the Friends of George Sand two such beautiful posters for the San Diego Conference. How did you create these posters? How did you choose the elements that make it up? How did you decide on the details of her face and the symbols you chose on your own?

FG: As I told you, I have a sort of ideal image of George Sand inside myself. Of course, in the past, I became familiar with Delacroix's portrait and the various pictures of her in books, many of the known visual images of Sand, especially the photograph by Nadar. Without ever having seen George Sand, I composed strong remanent vision of her created by a mental collage of all the portraits I have seen of her. When Janis Glasgow of San Diego State University asked me to do the posters for the conference which will take place in San Diego next February, I immediately began to revive and activate my recollections of George Sand. Painting for me is "a remembrance of things past" because I almost never work from real life but I work close to mental images that I have felt for a long time and I am obliged to do this work from memory, to actualize and revivify as Proust did with the madeleine. To start, I always need some clues which help to catch the thread that leads me to the vision. During my last trip to Paris, I went to visit Georges Lubin. He had the great gentillesse to show me all the portraits he possessed, especially Couture's portrait as well as others and all the photographs which constituted a unique iconography of Sand. More importantly, as we talked of her, M. Lubin's knowl-edge and devotion created a conducive mood, a presence. I saw emerging the decisive per-sonality of Sand, a most interesting process. I cannot explain further but it happened this way.

AS: She is much more beautiful in your poster than she was in real life.

FG: Perhaps she became more beautiful since! But what I felt came from M. Lubin's evocation. I could see her. Her eyes were a bit protuberant, her neck was arched. She must have been slightly hyperthyroid. The artist must perceive and choose the features which exist, not purely physically but to display the temperament of the mode, its spirit, the desire to reveal character must appear through form.

One chooses only those forms which reveal the character within which lead to the signifiant you wish to reach. I ordered my thoughts and placed all the relevant shapes on that paper. Sometimes, instead of starting with a sketch, I write down the character-istics. For instance, she had such and such a neck, a nose of a certain kind. I make little notes in manuscript form and then it all becomes easy and clear. I found an aspect of George Sand in that way.*

AS: Perhaps this is a strange question, but if we could arrange an imaginery inter-view with her, what would you enjoy discussing with her?

FG: Wouldn't that be imprudent?

AS: Such interviews are done in French magazines between two people who could never have met. From two different centuries.

FG: The dialogues of the dead are magnificent. It must just be a little difficult at first!

AS: I should really like to ask her what she thought of all the men in her life. I'd like to ask that because I believe she was a little too generous with them at the time.

*See page 36, 39

FG: But you know what she did write when she was some fifty years of age -- she said that from the point of view of the serenity which she had acquired, (perhaps from the vantage point of menopause itself) -- that she absolutely could no longer comprehend all of those successive ardent loves. I think she was certainly right. We're all driven like migratory birds during the seasons of love. Human beings imagine that they are free but they are conditioned exactly in the same way as the birds, genetically, to this dionysiac aspect of life. I think one must experience love and passion at the proper time, for if not. . . better to be a young fool than an old one.

AS: There is an excellent recent book about her handwriting which helps convince us that she always played the masculine r8le with her men. She seduced them but she perhaps never really wished to sleep with them and it is the maternal role she enjoyed playing. She said she wanted all the rest but she was conditioned by her mother and her grandmother to play the masculine rele because her father had died young and she had replaced him for the women of the family. For her mother, for her grandmother, and in a sense she played it even with her most durable love, Alexandre Manceau, with whom she spent many more years than with the others, in her maturity. He, too, was tubercular as was Chopin. She was never given an earthy love which would have allowed her to play anything but the dominant role. That is perhaps why she had so many affairs -- searching for what she could never attain. Who can tell?

FG: I believe, on the contrary, that when you haven't reached something, you really are not aware of it. It is well known, for instance, that jealous people are precisely those who are capable of the deception they accuse others of perpetrating.

AS: They often deceive before the others ever can.

FG: Precisely. Even her physical features reveal that she must have been sensuous. I do have the distinct impression that this maternal rile was an excuse that she gave herself. There are two types of women. There is the woman who loves to play the role of a little girl all her life -- I mean in matters of love. She can play another role in life but in matters of love she prefers encountering men older than she. Then there is the woman who prefers the adolescent man and so perhaps she adopts a maternal pose and she gives me the impression of being the true woman in love. Colette described this so thor-oughly in LE BLE EN HERBE and CHERI. We have to return to mythic truths. It is Phaedra's love for Hippolytus, it is once again Oedipus wedding his mother. I do believe that in love the true woman loves a man younger than she. I can objectively speak of that because I am of the opposite persuasion, preferring mature men. Yet I can place myself in her shoes and realize that her instincts were not actually maternal. She must have had a sensuous love for the slim bodies of her partners. The woman who loves can love with physical passion like a man, or with veneration, like a girl. It is also a question of esthetics. For example, let us take a man like Andre Gide. When he loved a man, he preferred a certain young adolescent, ephebe. It was a cult of beauty. I find that the love of an ephebe or a young girl is not at all comparable to the love of a mature adult. When one has that very esthetic tendency and one is no longer young or handsome oneself, this brings a lot of suffering, sometimes tragedy, a return to the major archetypes.

AS: And Gide did love a mature woman also. .

FG: Yes. That way he came full circle.

AS: Now I should like to ask a provocative question. In your book on your life with Picasso, you used a marvellous expression: the religion of Picasso. I wonder if you experienced it? Does one ever get over it?

FG: In some ways I am a religious person, I have a belief in transcendance. But I

40

see no God in human form. So therefore I don't have the religion of Picasso in me. He was just a marvellous artist and a human being whom I loved. That was not a religion. It was just a passionate love.

AS: Do you think that Picasso influenced your own work? I know that you were a painter in your own right even before you met him. You have said that your temperaments were completely opposite, that you were so very French and he was Mediterranean. For instance, did your separate artistic temperaments merge or were they polarized? Did he affect your work in the long run?

FG: I think he certainly did make a deep contribution to my development. Even though our temperaments were, as you said, very far apart. What affected me most, I would say, was not his work as a finished product -- his style -- but rather his attitude. Each artist always lives in his unique inner world and this mysterious universe must be given form. One is always completely alone in that search. I am still very moved remem-bering him at work. It was seeing the process, the endurance, the courage and the integ-rity with which he went about his thoughts and feelings, struggling to find, then having to destroy and struggling again, until he would arrive at some final statement. He was driven, he would never compromise the truth of a vision, running the risk of being less esthetically pleasing in order to go beyond and drive himself to the edge. I always had that integrity as my own goal, but seeing him at work really helped me to surpass myself, to realize not only what I wanted as an artist, but the means toward my goal. You have to devote not only all of your time but all of your own being -- everything must be put into the creative fire -- you have to feed the fire with yourself, and so there is noth-ing you can ever spare in yourself if you want to be inspired. I saw that in him and that is why I admire him: not so much for the masterpieces which, of course, were marvel-lous but for the indomitable courage and perseverance with which he went about his own creation.

AS: I know that you have been living for a long time in California. Do you feel that your life in California gave you experiences and values that you could not have had in France?

FG: I was never confined to France alone -- even as a child, we went to England --my parents also had a house in Italy. We travelled more than most people did. I was never confined to being a French person in France. Most of my French friends always said that my home was like an embassy because there used to be so many friends from different countries in and out all the time. And so I do not consider myself only specifically French. Usually the French are very private and prefer to remain among themselves.

AS: Do you feel that your association, artistic and personal, with two of the greatest men of the century -- your life has been unique in that sense -- has been a help to you or a hindrance to you as an artist?

FG: Not from within. People always seem astonished.by my life. I don't see why. It is normal for a lion to live with a lioness. A tiger will live with a she-tiger, not with a cat. It would have been awkward for me to be associated with men who spend their time playing bridge or golf. I had the life that was right for me. As for it being a hindrance, seen from the outside, it provoked envy and jealousies. People thought I had a marvellous life. Very well, why didn't they have one?

AS: Are you experimenting with new art forms?

FG: Molded paper sculpture attracts me. The pulp of paper still damp, flexible, instead of canvas or sheets of paper -- still made of linen or cotton rag. A different aspect of the same medium. An entire new cycle, half-way between painting and sculpture.

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Painting,

reflection of a light that traverses time.

Wm of flowing images. Waves of an.logous &might. The mind is aroused The hand sets to work.

Magnetic mug of creation... On the pip my penal is an arrow That spreads tool vibrations As it flies toward the target Of an unknown vision Soon to become manifest.

I travelled from afar it n true

Toward the face broader than life

The face dilated with joy That now stares at me

With the ..ignotk mak

WammuMdmosodfim.

AS: You have written poems and illustrated them. Do you feel a kinship between poetry and painting?

FG: Poetry is painting and painting is poetry. In the beginning was the word: the logos, harmonious order resulting from the interplay of proportions, cadences, rhythms. Rhymes have shape and color. A poem happens in space as well as in time, a painting hap-pens in time as well as in space.

AS: Do you have a personal esth6tique? Is it Apollonian or Dionysian?

FG: The Apollonian and the Dionysian are the two aspects of art. They complement one another. The Apollonian aspect is necessary to achieve clarity, simplicity, intel-ligence, balance, hierarchy, but without the Dionysiac ecstasy we cannot outdo ourselves, transcend our limitations, reveal the mystical essence of our psyche in the universe. I need the Apollonian sun but I prefer the Dionysian mystery, the asymmetry of a Baroque equilibrium, a dynamic shaping of power. One must always hold something. Each age has its symbols, its symbolic language. We develop our own archetypes. The Mandala and the Tarot provide us with these symbols.

AS: You often use cherries in your paintings. For instance: did the bowl of cher-ries proferred by Picasso at your first meeting in the Parisian restaurant symbolize for you an essential aspect of your existence?

FG: I like to eat cherries. They remind me of my childhood. As Baudelaire put it, they evoke the vert paradis des amours enfantines. God is to be found in details. The cherry is small and red. Red is my favorite color. Can a cherry be disliked by anyone? The cherry is perfectly formed. It is a symbol of springtime, of youth, of equilibrium, of la mesure. Nobody can be in a bad mood facing a cherry. It is Apollonian! Yet its curvilinear green tail, its finely chiselled oval leaves spin round in the wind, reminding us of the enigmatic forces of nature at play. It is Dionysian! I would describe cherries as typical ing6nues perverses in the vegetable realm. George Sand must have loved them too. . . .

Copyright Alex Szogyi, 1981

Francoise Gaol

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GEORGE SAND AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS* (Conclusion)

Georges Lubin

When George Sand went to Paris, in 1831, to follow her calling (with the authori-zation of her husband, of course, for there, too, the tNapoleonicl Code was formal: the husband could force his wife to reside in their domicile); when she began her emancipa-tion, she was going to live in another milieu: among students and journalists critical of the establishment. Her first writings appeared in Figaro, a small, satirical opposition journal. The period was seething with the activity of the Latin Quarter, which was agi-tated by riots and confrontations, which she later portrayed in her novel Horace. It was there that she acquired her political education. She was interested in the preachings of the followers of Saint-Simon, which sensitized her to social questions, and it is possible that the document General Meeting of the Family (November 19 - 21, 1831) may have had a determining effect on her thought. In it were two of the themes which nourished her writ-ings: "Women and the Proletariat both needed liberation. Both, burdened under the yoke of slavery, should lend us a hand and reveal a new language to us." The emancipation of women and the emancipation of the proletariat were ideas which George Sand defended her entire life. Owing to the great success of her first works, she defended these ideas by her eloquent pen, which enabled her to touch numerous readers.

There was not one of her early novels which did not contain a condemnation, im-plicit or explicit, of society and marriage. From Rose et Blanche on, the writer showed us a woman who was beaten down by public opinion, and who "fell as the victim of society, which was always right." Indiana developed harsh criticism of society's constraining laws. To her husband, who professed that "women are made to obey and not to advise" (a statement which Casimir Dudevant must have often pronounced), the heroine opposed "a force of in-calculable resistance against everything which would serve to oppress her. To resist ev-ery sort of constraint mentally had become second nature to her, a principle of behavior, a law of her conscience." She bravely confronted him, by saying: "You have the rights of the strongest, and society supports you." Or "Deeply hurt by the laws of society, rigidly mustering all her will-power to hate and despise them," she aspired to find refuge "under the protection of those peoples who haven't been sullied by the yokes of our laws and our prejudices, in order to live in peace, as a stranger to every social institution." From these few short quotations, you can note how frequently the words "society" and "social" were persistently repeated in this novel. They were still more insistent in her prefaces, which followed, and were coupled with expressions which formed so many loaded words: "so-cial yoke," "social miseries," and so on. Civilization, opinion, laws were treated with as much scorn as was the society which had produced them, for in society there were only constraints and oppression. Readers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau can recognize therein ideas of that writer, the first master-thinker to influence the adolescent Aurore.

In Valentine, Bgn4dict, the hero, has scarcely enough harsh words to damn "this infamous tyranny of men over women!" And his revolt expressed itself in Romantic terms: "Marriage, societies, institutions, hatred to you, hatred unto death!"

As for Lglia, its reading furnishes us with a veritable anthology of anathema:

"What paternal eye was opened on the human race the day it imagined splitting itself in two by placing one sex under the domination of the other? Isn't it a ferocious appetite which has made woman the slave and chattel of men? What

*Translation by Janis Glasgow, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA

Editor's note: This talk was delivered at various institutions during M. Georges Lubin's west coast tour -- April-May, 1980.

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instincts of pure love, what notions of holy fidelity could resist this mortal blow? What exchange of feelings, what fusion of the minds is possible between the master and the slave? The hour of emancipation never tolls for her (the woman). What, therefore, is this crime against nature which holds half the human race in a state of eternal childhood?"

And again, from Pulcherie's mouth: "The union of man and woman must have been a passing one in the designs of Providence; everything is opposed to their association, and change is a necessity of their nature."

In Le Secr4iaire intime, marriage, such as the world has conceived it, is defined without indulgence as "the bitterest and most mocking form of man's oaths sworn before God."

Let's open Jacques, a novel written in Venice after Musset's departure. Here it is a man, Jacques himself, who writes, saying: "I have not reconciled myself with society, and marriage still is, according to me, one of the most odious institutions. I don't doubt it will be abolished, if the human species makes some progress toward justice and reason." (In later editions, "odious" was even replaced by "barbarous.")

In Horace, what a character retains of the doctrines of Saint-Simon is "this apos-tolic and truly divine feeling of the rehabilitation and the emancipation of humankind in the person of women."

You are perhaps saying to yourselves that those were only the reflections or the imprecations of main characters. What proves that the author embraced the same opinions? Well, the proofs are numerous! Here, for example, is an article which forms part of the Lettres d'un voyageur, the "Letter to Monsieur Nisard." Nisard, a critic, had hurt George Sand, with a certain indulgence, moreover, by objecting to her that, among other things, "it would perhaps be more heroic for one who has been unlucky in marriage not to scandal-ize others with his or her misfortune by making a social question out of a private case." What did she answer? That patience, abnegation and silence have limits, and don't suffice to remedy the "sort of shameful contract and stupid despotism which the infamous decrep-itude of the world has engendered." And then there are the prefaces, where the author explained her deep intentions to distracted readers, who were incapable of discerning the object lesson by themselves. Here, for example, is the general preface to the Perrotin Edition of 1842:

I wrote Indiana with an unreasoned . . . but a deep and legitimate feeling about the injustice and barbarism of laws which still rule the existence of wives in marriage, in the family and society. I wasn't trying to write a legal contract, but rather to fight opinion . . . My war will be long and arduous; but I am neither the first, nor the only, nor the last champion of such a noble cause, and I will defend it as long as I still have in me one breath of life.

When one reads certain writers today proclaiming that George Sand did nothing for women's rights, you have to recognize that the authors of such counter-truths did not read her works. It is not one, two, or three, but rather dozens of quotations that I could set side by side to contradict them.

And then, aren't there the testimonies of Sand's contemporaries, who were sometimes such violent adversaries in their lashing out at her, that it would seem more appropriate to call them her enemies. For example, Count Theobald Walsh, a pious legitimist, who re-roached her "the scandal and degrading immorality of (herj distressing doctrines and of Limn], barbarous negations." Or Capo de Feuillide who cited Lelia to fathers of families as an abominable example. Or Barbey d'Aurevilly, who, after having admired her consider-ably, and even having imitated her, sided with the cohort of unjust critics. It was

44

Veuillot, Pontmartin, Granier de Cassagnac, all collaborators on the most reactionary journals. It was a Baron Massias who cried out: "George Sand, the shame and glory of the sex she has repudiated! She undermines the bases of society by attacking the sanctity of marriage!':, I shall end, because one has to stop somewhere, with a critic of the paper L'Assemblee nationale, at the moment when the publication of Sand's Oeuvres illustrees had just begun. He saw red at the idea of the ravages that her literature was going to produce in people. I quote: "These innocent pastoral novels are infamous pleas not only against marriage and the family, but against society in general, against religion, against moral duty." What was in the first installment of the Illustrated Works? La Mare au diable (The Devil's Whirlpool) and Andre. You would never have imagined that La Mare au diable was so dangerous? I could also have quoted a diatribe pronounced by the director of an educational institution at Auxerre for the distribution of school prizes, in 1858.

But one must question oneself, or rather ask George Sand, against what was she battling? She was fighting "against the injustice and the barbarism of the laws which still govern women's existence in marriage and society," against the clauses of the Napoleonic Code which shackled women, the eternal minors; against a whole set of laws which gave women no voice in matters concerning the administration of their household goods, or even of their personal property, or concerning the education of their children. She was fighting the shocking discrimination between the lenient sanctions which punished a husband's adultery (in the unique case where it was perpetrated in the conjugal domi-cile), and the terrible ones reserved for the wife. She was also speaking out against bourgeois (as well as aristocratic) marriages, which bound together fortunes, lands, mun-dane relations, without any care for similarity of ages or reciprocal physical and spiri-tual attraction on the part of both the husband and the wife.

But should we say that George Sand condemns marriage per se, without distinction? It would be a serious error to believe that. Her novel Mauprat contains a defense of, or rather is a defense for, reciprocal faithfulness on the part of two beings who love each other and merit that love -- in marriage. Numerous other novels unite pure and noble beings, who are model spouses. Taking up a text from which I just quoted you a passage, what do I find?:

This love which I edify and which I honor above the ruins of the infamous (that is to say of marriage as it exists in society) is my utopia, my dream, my poetry. This love is great, noble, beautiful, voluntary, eternal; but this love is marriage as Jesus conceived it, as St. Paul ex-plained it (First letter to the Corinthians); one such as Chapter VI of Title V of the Civil Code expresses its reciprocal duties (The main article, 212, says that the couple owes each other mutual faith, help and assistance). I ask that sort of marriage of society, as an innovation or as an institution lost in the nights of time, an insti-tution which it would be most opportune to revive, to extract from the dust of the centuries and the filth of customs, if one hopes to see genuine conjugal fidelity, true peace, and real family sanctity follow that sort of shameful contract and stupid despotism which now exist etc.

People have claimed that George Sand made herself the champion of adultery. A false interpretation. I shall undoubtedly surprise you by saying that she could have been a model wife if she had found a husband capable of inspiring in her both passion and admiring esteem. Her correspondence, which spans her entire life, and her works, both strongly con-firm that. When she excused adultery, she never glorified it: she noted it as a conse-quence of the husband's bad behavior, and when the wife didn't have that motivation, as in the novel Le dernier amour, the novelist condemned and punished it. Whose sentence is this one: "The ideal of love is certainly eternal fidelity." You will locate it in the notice to Mauprat.

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We don't know all the wise advice she gave to women or girls, who thought they would find in her an alibi for their longings for affairs! It wasn't George Sand who would have endured the "female guest" whom one of her contemporary women of letters tol-erated.

I find in one of her letters concerning the followers of Saint-Simon, who held on wife-swapping some peculiar theories (notably Enfantin): "The wrong has been to want to liberate women for the benefit of those who loved them a little too much. I am horrified by libertinism, first of all, and then by affectation. I therefore lent a hand to certain ideas, but I turned my back on certain individuals."

Somewhat later, in 1848, she expressed her ideas concerning particular women's clubs:

How do these women define women's liberation? Is it like Saint-Simon, Enfantin and Fourier? Do they claim the right to destroy marriage and proclaim promiscuity? If that is the way it is, good, I find them very logical in their claims for political life, but I declare that I am separating myself personally and absolutely from their cause which, under this aspect, is quite foreign to me.

(In her manuscript, you can see that she had first written "odious and repugnant" replaced by "foreign.")

Concerning this letter, George Sand has been reproached for having refused her support to the cause of women, by not accepting being put up for election, as a feminist club had invited her to do. That is one more bad case. George Sand simply didn't fall into the trap like a scatterbrain. Much less utopian than a critic with eye-blinders claimed, she knew that it would have been a vain attempt, since women were not voters, and, by law, were not eligible for election. Who, then, would have voted for a woman, be it even George Sand? Only a very few men, for the male electorate was not ready to defend such a demand. The result would have been contrary to the hopes of the "suffragettes" of the period, and risked discrediting the cause, by crushing it under the ridicule of an insignificantly low number of votes. Remember that we are in the era when Heinrich Heine called George Sand the "emancimater" (emancimatrice). Moreover, she expressed herself clearly on that aspect when she said that the most urgent matter was to attribute to women the civil rights, which they so cruelly lacked, and to educate them. They were kept in ignorance in order to enslave them better. For us, today, women's lack of education, then, is horrifying. There were practically no girls' schools. An example: in 1854, Ferdinand de Lessups sought to establish two sisters of charity, who would minister to the sick and instruct the little girls, in an Indre parish, where he had his cAteau. The report ended with the statement: "and it will be all the more marvelous in that, among a population of more than a thousand inhabitants, there is not a single example of a woman knowing how to read and write." Implanting public instruction for women was an idea only slowly accepted, in spite of the Duruy Law. Imagine that, in 1870, 23;509 parishes (out of 38,000) had not even one school for girls.

The seeds sown in writings germinate slowly in human minds. It has taken more than a century for the emancipation desired by George Sand to take place. In order to storm such fortresses of reactionary thought, a long undermining work is necessary. An idea encountered in a chance reading causes reflection, people communicate it, discuss it, and, step by step, what appeared utopian, impossible, even ridiculous, ceases being con-sidered as such, and becomes law. By her example and her pen, George Sand was one of those individuals who caused minds to evolve, and thereby favored the liberation of women, a liberation so long denied by male legislators.

In recent times, George Sand and Flora Tristan have often been compared. Rather than to pit them against each other, one should really consider them as complementary. Courageous with her pen in hand, George Sand was far too timid to speak in public: she refused to give readings. She would have been incapable of making propaganda tours in worker quarters as Flora Tristan did in workshops. So Sand wrote Le Compagnon du tour de France while Tristan actually made such a tour of France.

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The impact of George Sand, however, was much deeper and more extensive. She was read in all social milieu: aristocratic, intellectual, middle class and lower class. That was not the case of Tristan, who had difficulty distributing her books, and who had to go from door to door to find subscribers for her Workers' Union (L'Union ouvriere) (to which George Sand subscribed for a number of copies, and to which she had her friends subscribe).

Their Ales, in the great fight for women's and workers' liberation, were differ-ent, but they were equally useful. Both blazed the trail for emancipation -- that long trail whose end neither one was able to envisage.

NEW MEMBERS

Margaret V. Allen, 538 Selfridge Street, Bethlehem, PA 18015 Linda C. Anderson, Box 105, Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504 William G. Atwood, 555 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021 Mary Ellen Birkett, Dept. of French, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01060 Beth A. Brombert, 187 Library Place, Princeton, NJ 08540 Peter Byrne, 11, rue de Calais, 75009 Paris, France Rosemary Buck, 61 East Goethe Street, Chicago, IL 60610 Robin E. Carpenter, 164 Strathmore Road, Brighton, MA 02135 Lydia Dal Dosso, L-178 United Nations, New York, NY 10017 Sherry A. Dranch, Wheaton College, Box AS, Norton, MA 02766 Marie-Louise Garb6ty, 923 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10021 Gerlinde Geiger, 2 Maple Avenue, Northampton, MA 01060 Timothy Hairston, 2626 N. Palmer, Milwaukee, WI 53212 Louisette Hamzeh, French Dept., Bethlehem University, B.P. #9, Israel Deborah Hardy, University of Wyoming, Box 3198 University Station, Laramie, WY 82071 Francine S. Johnston, 15 Orange Drive, Jericho, NY 11753 Alice M. Laborde, Dept. of French, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA 92717 William Maccio, 24, rue Jean Moulin, 69300 Caluire, France Marguerite Mazzeo, 36 Devine Avenue, Syosset, NY 11791 Paloma Paves-Yashinsky, 6 Bernard Avenue, Toronto M5R 1R2, Ontario, Canada Paulette Rose, 3 North Lake Circle, White Plains, NY 10605 Elisabeth Ruthman, 14 Aspen Hills, Slingerlands, NY 12159 Amy Jo Saculla, 2965 N. Bartlett Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211 Gloria M. Smolenski, 531 West 211 Street, New York, NY 10034 Gisela Spies-Schlientz, Im unteren Kienle 7, 7 Stuttgart 1, West Germany Claude Tricotel, Fourneuil - Verderel, 60112 Milly-sur-Therain, France

University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia, PA 10104 Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA 94395

Boulogne-sur-Seine France

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1 BOOK REVIEWS

George Sand, Correspondance, Vol. XIV, juillet 1856-juin 1858. Edited by Georges Lubin. Paris: Garnier FrAres, 1979

Volume by volume Georges Lubin is producing George Sand's masterwork: her corre- spondence. The manuscript for Volume XV has already gone to the publisher.

With Volume XIV we pick up George Sand, age 52, at Nohant and leave her there two years later. She will have scarcely left the Berri for Paris, but she will write with growing warmth of her love for the little village of Gargilesse, thirty miles from Nohant, where she shares a cottage retreat with Manceau. It is a period that will see the appear- ance of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, though neither will greatly stir the air of the Berrichon countryside. George in the meantime will have pro- duced her two or more novels per year, notably La Daniella, Les Dames vertes, Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Dor6, L'Homme de neige, and Elle et Lui.

The first novel became a cause celebre because of its anticlericalism, a constant in George Sand's life; the last may move us more because it followed and concerns the Sand- Musset liaison. The letter in the current volume of the Correspondance to the poet's bro- ther Paul is of special interest to sandistes for the same reason, but there are well over five hundred letters in addition -- 563 to be exact, 412 of them never before published.

Le Monde's and my own favorite is a letter to a law student with leanings toward writing. Assure your independence first, Sand counseled him, "that is, your daily bread," since writing is a "continuous hazard" and less and less of a "profession." It reminds one of Voltaire's own conclusion: you should make money in order to write, not write in order to make money. George Sand, of course, wrote in order to write and paid her way with her pen, though an inherited wealth, wrung back from a reluctant husband, helped get her started. For the unknowingly unhappy few who haven't savored George Sand's correspondence in full -- and know her only through her pastoral novels -- it might be just as well to cut short the comment and quote her letter to the law student complete, letting it speak for itself:

Je crois vous avoir deja dit qu'avant tout, il faut songerl vivre, c'est-A-dire A s'assurer le pain quotidien avec l'indepen- dance de la conscience et la dignite personnelle, N'ayez jamais, par la faute de votre imprevoyance ou de votre langueur, besoin de recourir aux autres. On se perd sur cette pente-1A. On s'habitue a se faire porter, et comme les riches ne portent personne, c'est presque toujours sur les epaules de pauvres amis travailleurs, que l'on monte. On n'y est pas ties bien, ils vous secouent de temps en temps. Mais on s'habitue a abuser et on ne sait plus marcher seul, dAs qu'on a tate des jambes des autres.

Donc, devant un moyen quelconque d'être vous-meme le porteur de votre propre existence, il ne faut pas dire, "ceci ou cela m'ennuie." Toute carriere est pleine d'ennuis mortels et de deboires affreux, n'en doutez pas. Ne croyez pas qu'il en existe une seule oft it n'y ait pas 'a souffrir cruellement, quand on ne fait qu'y bailler, on est encore des mieux traites.

Le bonheur n'est dans aucune chose extgrieure arrangee, choisie et projetee par nous, tout va la diable en ce triste monde. Et pourtant it y a, -a la disposition de chacun de nous, une grande somme de bonheur. Le beau et le bien sont dans lair que nous respirons. La terre est belle et il y a des hommes bons. Nous avons la notion de Dieu, le beau ideal; le rave (nullement fou), des mondes meilleurs, le sentiment du vrai et les joies de la con- science pure. Nous pouvons done etre heureux partout autant qu'il est donne a l'homme de l'atre, quand nous avons l'intelligence assez developpee pour comprendre que ces joies pures ne sont pas dans une region ou l'on puisse mettre le pied et la main, mais dans un monde tout moral et intellectuel ou l'ame peut entrer toute entiere.

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Qu'importe donc que l'on ait fait des chiffres, ou des gcritu-res vides et sans interet pendant tout le jour, si, en regardant et en respirant pendant un instant la beaute de la nature, on se sent digne de la sentir? Qu'importe qu'on ait eu, en face, douze heures de suite, des sots, des importuns, des itches, si, en rencontrant un honnete homme on se sent digne qu'il vous presse la main avec affec-tion? Le bonheur de l'homme est ainsi fait et mesurg par le ciel, qu'un instant de plaisir vrai compense une annge de fatigue et de patience.

Maintenant marchez, et vous verrez bien que je ne vous trompe pas, que je vous dis ce qui est vrai.

Quelle carrire? Je n'en sais rien. Cela n'est pas de ma com-petence. Je ne conseille pas la litterature parce que ce n'est pas une profession en soi-meme. Rien d'assurg, un hasard continuel. C'est un par-dessus le marcht d'autres occupations rgglees et stables. Pour etre un ttat honorable, it faut que ce soit le fruit d'une maturite quelconque, ou d'une precocite phenomenale. Mais cela devient de moins en moins une profession. Tout le monde a la forme aujourd'hui. Elle court les rues. Les libraires regorgent de pro-ductions sans valeur de fond, qui se ressemblent toutes, qui ne s'ecoulent pas. Aussi les libraires se ruinent et ne voient pas plus clair dans leurs jugements que dans leurs affaires.

La magistrature est effrayante pour la conscience, aujourd'hui comme toujours et plus que jamais.

Partout ailleurs, partout du moins ou l'on peut conserver le droit d'etre un honnete homme, it y a sa accepter l'ennui, le peu, le dgplaisir. Et qui donc a le droit d'etre heureux en fait? Personne, puisque le bonheur est dans le sentiment et dans la pensge.

Courage et amitig. George Sand.

Perhaps the 20-year-old law student was finally dissuaded: he has left no trace in French literature. The letter to him, however, retains its original freshness and salt a century and a quarter later.

P.S. Continuing publication of the Sand correspondence now seems assured thanks to France's Centre National des Lettres.

Joseph Barry Paris, France

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George Sand, My Life. Translated and adapted by Dan Hofstadter. New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, 1979.

Is it possible to convey with justice in 246 pages the style and content of what was originally 1600 pages, and in another language? I think not.

Any attempt to defend Hofstadter and Harper for selecting memorable episodes of Histoire de ma vie, grouping them for the reader's convenience, presenting them in acces-sible English--in other words rendering the work available to a large public--has at best to sound condescending. It is clearly the omissions themselves that disturb the reviewers:

The translation . . . . is often perfectly evocative and just as often annoyingly confusing, due probably as much to what's been left out as to the way Hofstadter rendered what he gleaned (R. A. Sperry, Best Seller, May 1979).

Given the remarkable circumstances and experiences which characterized Sand's life, these pages are disappointingly uninformative and incomplete (Anthony S. Caprio, Library Journal, Feb. 1, 1979).

Dorothy Parker, writing for The Christian Science Monitor (March 28, 1979) has accepted without a question Hofstadter's rationalization, stated in the Prologue to My Life, that Sand "mercilessly padded" her autobiography in order to make money; Parker is there-fore not unduly disturbed by the omissions but comes away from the reading feeling (as so many previous generations have felt) that the writer was merely a notorious figure whose life, understandably, attracts more of an audience than her literature.

In The New York Times Book Review (March 11, 1979), Patricia:Meyer Spacks is enough of a student of women's literature not to dismiss Sand's novels so summarily. Indeed she begins her review by pointing out what she considers are clear parallels between Sand's life and that of the heroine of Indiana. Spacks feels that twentieth century readers, "weaned as we are on psychological subterfuge,“ will not be put off by Sand's disclaimers. (Here Spacks is responding to the first page of Hofstadter's translation, where Sand ex- plains that she is writing of her own life because several biographers have confused her with her characters; she remarks with some disdain: "How easy it is to write a novelist's biography: you present her fiction as the truth about her life, with little expenditure of imagination;" but this inspires rather than discourages Spacks from taking her Freudian prerogatives.) Not only does the critic find the novelist in the novels, she finds her incapable of writing non-fiction; Spacks concludes her review that "reading this truncated autobiography feels like reading fiction."

We see that all four reviewers, who praise Hofstadter on other grounds, feel com-pelled to comment on what has been left out; far worse, to my way of thinking, is the con-fusion of life and work that at least two of them are left with after reading Hofstadter's adaptation.

The review of Alex Szogyi in Nineteenth Century French Studies, (Vol. VIII, nos. 3 & 4, Spring-Summer 1980), indirectly explains how this confusion is a result of abridging the material. Being familiar with the original work, Szogyi is aware that the emphasis of Hofstadter's shortened version is on the passionate nature of Sand's personality; whereas the impression one is left with from reading Histoire de ma vie is considerably fuller:

What comes through at every moment of this beautiful auto- biography is her absolute purity of intention. It [the total work] should help set the record straight and counterbalance the unfor-tunate image of the immoralist we have inherited from a mixture of history, hearsay and sheer unfortunate gossip . . . (p. 299).

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Mr. Hofstadter's contention that this hitherto untranslated work of Sand's be made available in English is certainly worthwhile. (He could have mentioned that the section pertaining to Sand's adolescent years in le couvent des Anglaises has been available in English as My Convent Life since 1893, and that this one section alone is almost as long as his whole book.) The ruthless condensation has, however, forced him to give the work a shape and character that the amorphous, digressive original does not have. And why should it? As Szogyi says: "Abridgment is not the answer."

I propose that the work in its entirety is worth translating and that a group be formed to make the job manageable (perhaps at the workshop in Tours). Surely among the friends of George Sand there are those who would rise to the occasion. In any event, I have begun the task and present here the first ten pages (which Hofstadter skips over com-pletely) of Histoire de ma vie in my translation.

Histoire de ma vie by G. Sand

I do not think there need be vanity or impertinence in writing down the story of one's life, still less in choosing among the memories that life has left us those which seem worth saving. Actually, a painful duty may be fulfilled in the process, for I know of nothing more discomforting than to define and sum oneself up as a person.

The study of the human heart is such that the more one is absorbed in it, the less clearly one sees it; for certain energetic souls, to know oneself is a fastidious, on-going undertaking. Be that as it may. I intend to discharge this duty. I have always had it in my vision. I have always promised myself not to die without having done what I have ad-vised others to do: a sincere study of my own nature and a careful examination of my own existence.

An unsurmountable laziness . . . has made me defer this task until today. Perhaps to my detriment I have allowed a fair number, by my count, of biographies to be published full of errors in both directions--praise and blame. In some of these biographies, first published elsewhere and then reproduced in France with further fanciful modifications, my name is about the only non-fictional thing remaining. Questioned by the authors of such works, called on to furnish whatever information I would, I have pushed apathy to the point of refusing the slightest guidance to those well-meaning people. I swear I felt a mortal distaste to bother the public with my personality, which has no striking feature, when my head and heart abound with personalities stronger, more logical, more whole, more ideal, with types superior to myself; in a word, with characters as interesting as those in a novel.

The habit of speaking about oneself seems easily to lead to self-praise and that, doubtless involuntarily, by a law instinctive to the human spirit which cannot prevent itself from embellishing and elevating the object of its contemplation. Such naive praises do not even merit warning when they are cloaked in lyricism, like those of poets, which have a special and consecrated privilege in this area. But the mood of self-enthusiasm which inspires such audacious reaches toward heaven is not quite the right atmosphere for the soul to repose and speak at length of itself to mankind. Such excitation excludes sensitivity to its own weaknesses. It identifies itself with a Divinity, with its embraced Ideal. If an inclination toward regret and repentance is found within, it exaggerates it to the point of poetic despair and remorse. It becomes Werther, or Manfred, or Faust, or Hamlet, sublime types from art's point of view, but types which, without the aid of a phil-osophical intelligence, sometimes become morbid examples or models beyond the range of mankind.

May these great portraits of the most powerful emotions of the poetic soul remain forever blessed! And let's quickly admit that one ought to forgive great artists for hav-ing thus draped themselves in thunderclouds or rays of glory. It is their right and, in giving us the results of their most sublime emotions, they have accomplished their supreme mission. But let us also admit that in more humble circumstances, and under more vulgar

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wraps, one may accomplish a serious task more immediately useful to one's fellow-creatures by communicating oneself to them without symbol, without halo, and without pedestal.

It is impossible to believe that the poet's faculty for idealizing his own exis-tence and making of it something abstract and impalpable is the more perfect teaching. Useful and vivifying it is without doubt, for every spirit is lifted with that of the in-spired dreamer, every feeling is purified or exalted in following him across those rap-turous regions. But what is lacking in this subtle balm, strewn by him over our failings, is very important--reality.

Naturally, it takes something for an artist to touch on this reality; those who are gratified in this way are really very generous. As for me, I cannot carry the love of duty so far. It is not without great effort that I am going to descend into the prose of my subject.

I have always found that it was in bad taste not only to talk of oneself, but also to keep company with oneself for any length of time. There are few days, few moments in the lives of ordinary beings which are interesting or useful to contemplate. Like every-one else, I have sometimes scrutinized myself on such days and at such hours, and I have then taken up my pen to relieve some lively pang which escaped me, or some sharp anxiety which was working in me. The majority of these fragments has never been published and will serve as the stakes for the examination of my life that I am undertaking. Only a few of these have taken a half-confidential, half-literary form in letters published from time to time and postmarked from divers places. They have been collected under the title Lettres d'un voyageur. At the time that I wrote those letters, I did not feel too alarmed . . . because it was neither overtly nor literally of myself that I spoke. That traveller was a sort of fiction, a convenient character, masculine as is my pseudonym, old though I was still young. Into the mouth of that sad pilgrim, who added up to something of a fictional hero, I put impressions and reflections more personal than those I would have risked in a novel, where the conditions of the art are more stringent.

Then, I needed to shed certain anxieties, rather than to attract my readers' atten-tion to myself. And I have still less today this drive--merely puerile in ordinary men but dangerous at the very least to the writer. I will explain why I do not have it, but why I will nevertheless write my autobiography as if I did have it, as one eats by the clock, without appetite.

I lack it because I have arrived at an age of tranquility, where my personality has nothing to gain by showing itself and where I should aspire only to have it forgotten, to forget it completely myself if I were merely following my instinct and consulting my good taste. I no longer try to transcribe the enigmas which tormented my youth. I have re4 solved in myself for good the problems which kept me awake. I had help, for left on my own I very likely would have cleared up nothing.

My century has set off sparks of truth that it cherishes. I have seen them and I know from where their main fires emanate. That is sufficient. In days gone by I looked to psychology for insight. That was pointless. When I understood that insight rested in principles and that those principles were in me without issuing from me, I was able to ar-rive at a tranquility of spirit without too much effort or merit. Tranquility of the heart has not been achieved, nor will it ever be. For those who were born compassionate there will always be something to love on this earth, consequently to lament, to serve, to suffer for. So, one need not court the absence of pain or fatigue or fear, no matter one's age, for that would mean insensitivity, impotence, premature death. One can better cope with an incurable disease when one has accepted it.

Such tranquility of thought, such resignation of feeling do not inspire bitterness toward foolish humanity, nor enthusiasm for myself, who was deluded for so long. Hence it is not an attraction toward conflict, or a need of expansion that bring me to speak of my present or past.

As I have said, I rather regard it as a duty and here is why: many human beings live without taking serious account of their existence, without understanding and looking at where they stand in relation to God, in relation to their individuality and to the soci-ety of which they are part. They pass among us without self-revelation because, unawares, they vegetate. Though their destiny, undeveloped as it is, may have its usefulness in the

52

eyes of Providence, it is decreed that the manifestation of their lives remains unfinished and morally barren for the rest of mankind.

The most lively and scrupulous source of the evolution of the human spirit is, to speak in the language of today, the notion of solidarity.* Men of all times have felt it instinctively; usually when an individual found himself invested with a somewhat developed gift for exposing his own life, he was kept from doing it by the desires of his close ones, or by an interior voice no less persuasive. Then it seemed to him to be the fulfillment of an obligation, as indeed it was, whether he had to relate historic events to which he had been witness, or whether he had frequented important individuals, or, finally, whether he had travelled and appreciated men and things beyond the ordinary.

Another kind of personal labor, accomplished still more rarely, exists, which, in my opinion, has as great a usefulness: that which relates the inner life, the life of the soul--that is to say, the story of one's own spirit and heart--with a view toward friendly teaching. Such personal impressions, trips or essays into the abstract world of one's head or heart, told by a sincere, serious spirit, might be a prod, an encouragement, even a counsel or guide for other spirits involved in the labyrinth of life. It is like an exchange of confidence and sympathy which lifts the morale of the one-who-talks as well as the one-who-listens. In our personal lives we are naturally propelled toward that kind of expansiveness at once humble and proud. When a friend, a brother, approaches us to admit his pains and involvements, we have no better arguments to fortify and convince him than those taken from our own life, so much do we then feel that the life of a friend is our own, that the life of each is that of all. "I have suffered the same ills, I have crossed the same reefs and I have survived. You too will heal and overcome." That is what one friend says to another, what man teaches to man. And which of us, in those moments of de-- spair and breakdown, when the affection and help of another human being are indispensable, has not received strength from the outpourings of that soul to whom he went to pour out his.

Certainly then it is the most tried spirit which has the greatest power over anoth-er. Under stress we rarely look to the support of a skeptic or a mocker. It is toward an unlucky one, even unluckier than we that we look and reach out. If we catch him in a mo-ment of pain, he will be versed in pity and will sympathize with us. If we call to him during a spell of health and sanity, he will advise us and perhaps save us; but surely he will not influence us so much as he will be understanding; he will probably be compelled to confide in us in return.

The recital of sufferings and struggles in the life of each man is therefore a les-son for all. It would mean health for all if men could analyse the cause of their suffer-ing and realize what has saved them. It is in this sublime spirit and under the power of an ardent faith that Saint Augustine wrote the Confessions, which was effective for his time and several generations of Christians thereafter. An abyss separates the Confessions of J.-J. Rousseau from those of the Father of the Church. The goal of the eighteenth-cen-tury philosopher seems more personal, hence less serious and useful. He accuses himself in order to clear himself; he reveals his private crimes in order to reject public slander. Furthermore, he is a monument of the confusion of pride and humility which sometimes repels us by its affectation and often charms us and touches us by its sincerity. As totally flawed and frequently guilt ridden as this famous work might be, it carries with it serious lessons, and the more the martyr abases himself and wanders from the pursuit of his ideal, the more the same ideal strikes us and beckons us.

The Confessions of Jean-Jacques has been judged for too long as a purely individual apology. He is at fault for this impression by mingling personal preoccupations with the rest of the work. Now that his friends and enemies no longer exist, the book has greater value. It is no longer of such consequence to know to what extent the author was unfair or hypersensitive, or to what extent his detractors were lying or cruel. What interest us, what enlightens and influences us, is the spectacle of an inspired human being at grips with the errors of his time and the obstacles in his philosophical destiny. It is the

* One would have said sensibility in the last century, charity prior to that, fraternity, fifty years ago.

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struggle of this genius, infatuated with austerity, independence and dignity, with the frivolous, disbelieving, corrupt environment through which he passed and which, reacting on him constantly either by seduction or tyranny, led him into an abyss of despair or toward sublime protest.

If the thought behind the Confessions was good, that is if it was his duty to un-cover childish mistakes and relate inevitable failures, I am not among those who shrink from such public penance. I think my readers know me well enough, at least as a writer, not to accuse me of cowardice. But, in my opinion, this manner of self-accusation is not humble, and the public is not fooled thereby. It is not useful nor edifying to know, for example, that Jean-Jacques stole three livres, ten sous from my grandfather still more so because it may not even be true.*

As for me, I recall in my childhood having taken ten sous from my grandmother's purse in order to give it to a beggar, and even to have done it secretly and with pleasure. I find that a subject neither for praise nor blame. It was simply a silliness, because I would have only had to ask for it.

Well, the majority of our faults, at least for us decent folk, are nothing more than trifles; we would do well to accuse ourselves of them in front of the dishonest ones, who do evil with skill and premeditation. Since the public is composed of both kinds, it is rather exaggerated to reveal oneself worse than one is in order to placate or please them.

My spirit suffers when I see the great Rousseau humiliate himself this way and imagine that in exaggerating or even inventing such sins he clears himself of the vices of the heart which his enemies ascribe to him. He certainly did not disarm them with his Confessions; and isn't it enough, in order to believe him good and pure, to read the parts of his life where he forgets to accuse himself? It is only there that he is naive; one is well aware of it.

Whether one is pure or impure, young or old, it is always vanity, childish, trivi-al, to undertake one's own justification. I have never understood how an accused person could take the stand on his own behalf. If guilty, he furthers his guilt through lying, and his lie, exposed, adds humiliation and shame to the harshness of his punishment. If innocent, how can he lower himself to wish to prove it? Moreover, it has to do with life and honor. In the ordinary course of existence it is necessary either to love oneself dearly or to have a serious commitment passionately to repulse the calumny which reaches even the best of men and to wish absolutely to prove one's excellence. Though it may be a requirement of public life, in private one does not prove his loyalty with speeches; and since no one is able to prove that he has reached perfection, we must leave to those who know us the care of absolving us from our failings and appreciating our virtues.

Still, since we are all dependent on one another, there is no isolated fault. There is no error of which someone might not be the cause or the accomplice, and it is im-possible to accuse oneself without accusing the next one, not only the enemy who attacks us, but still more the friend who defends us. That is what happened to Rousseau, and that

* Here are the facts as I have found them in the notes of my grandmother: "Franceuil, my husband, said one day to Jean-Jacques: 'Let's go to the [Comedie] Francais, shall we?' 'Let's go,' said Rousseau, 'that will always let us yawn away an hour or two.' This was perhaps the only witty rejoinder that he made in his life, and not enormously witty at that. Perhaps it was the same night that Rousseau stole three livres, ten sous from my husband. It had always seemed to us that there had been affectation in his showing off this swindle. Franceuil had no recollection of it and it even occurred to him that Rous-seau had invented it in order to show the susceptibilities of his conscience and in order to prevent us from suspecting those crimes which he didn't confess. Besides, if it were the case, good old Jean-Jacques would have to crack the whip a bit harder today to make our ears perk up."

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is particularly reprehensible. Who can excuse him for having made Mme Waren's confession at the same time as his own? Pardon me, Jean-Jacques, for blaming you when I finished your admirable Confessions! Though I blame you, the result is to pay you greater tribute, because this blame does not destroy my respect and enthusiasm for the whole of your work.

I am not here creating a work of art. Actually, I am even restraining myself from doing it because these matters have value only through spontaneity and carelessness. I would not want to tell my life like a novel. Form would limit it. I choose therefore to speak without order and without sequence, even to fall into contradictions. Human nature is made up of non sequiturs, and I do not at all believe those who pretend to find them-selves always in accord with their moi of yesterday.

My work will therefore feel the after-effects of this spiritual abandon and, in order to begin, I will drop the expose of how useful these memoirs are and I will end it by examples of action in proportion to the recital which I am going to begin.

No one who has done me harm need fear. I do not remember him. No scandalmonger need rejoice. I write not for him.

I was born the year Napoleon was crowned. . . . Thelma Jurgrau Empire State College-SUNY White Plains, NY

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CHRONOLOGIE

Georges Lubin

1864 29 fevrier: lre representation du Marquis de Villemer ((Won). 12 juin: G.S., laissant Nohant a son fils, vient vivre A Palaiseau avec Manceau, dans une villa entour6e d'un jardin, rue du Lavoir, tout en gardant A Paris, un pied-A-terre, 97, rue des Feuillantines, l'entresol (actuellement 90, rue Claude Bernard). 21 juillet: Mort A Guillery de Marc-Antoine Dudevant, G.S. se rend aupres de ses enfants. 28 septembre: lre representation du Drac (Vaudeville). 15 octobre: Theatre de Nohant (Michel Levy, in-18). 22 octobre: Le Drac (Michel Levy, in-18).

1865 18 fgvrier: La Confession d'une jeune fille (Michel Levy, 2 volumes in-18). 12 ao0t: Laura (Michel Levy, in-18). 21 aodt: PIET-par la tuberculose, Manceau meurt A Palaiseau. Septembre: G.S. frequente le restaurant Magny, y rencontre les ecrivains qui s'y retrouvent aux "diners Magny." Liaison avec le peintre Charles Marchal.

1866 10 janvier: Naissance A Nohant d'Aurore Dudevant. 20 janvier: Monsieur Sylvestre (Michel Levy, in-18). 12 aoilt: lre representation des Don Juan de village, ecrit en collaboration avec Maurice Sand (Vaudeville). 14 aoat: lere representation du Lis du Japon (Vaudeville). 26-30 aotlt: Va a St.-Valery-en-Caux, chez Dumas fils et chez Flaubert A Croisset. 8-19 septembre: Voyage en Bretagne avec Maurice et Lina. 22 septembre: Les Don Juan de Village (Michel Levy, in-18). Le Lis du Japon (id. in-18). 3-10 novembre: 2e sejour chez Flaubert A Croisset 17 novembre: Promenades autour d'un village (lre edition separee, Michel Levy, in-18). 15 decembre: Preface de l'ouvrage de Maurice Sand, Le Monde des Papillons (Rothschild, in-40).

1867 30 mars: Le Dernier Amour (Michel Levy, in-18) 13 aodt: Mort de Francois Rollinat. 25-30 septembre: Voyage en Normandie

1868 Fevrier-mars: Sejour Bruyeres (Golfe Juan) chez Juliette Adam, avec Maurice. 11 mars: Naissance de Gabrielle Dudevant Nohant. 24-26 mai: G.S. va voir Flaubert A Croisset. 27 mai: Elle emmenage dans un appartement au 5, rue Gay-Lussac (ler au-dessus de l'entresol) qu'elle conservera comme pied-A-terre jusqurh sa mort. 4 juillet: Cadio (Michel Levy, in-18). ler aodt: Mademoiselle Merquem (Michel Levy, in-18). 3 octobre: lre representation de Cadio, piece (Porte-St-Martin). 15 decembre: Baptgme protestant d'Aurore et Gabrielle. Septembre: Deux voyages rapides dans les Ardennes. 15 septembre: lre representation de la Petite Fadette, opera-comique, musique de Th. Semet (Opgra-Comique). 18 decembre: La Petite Fadette, opera-comique, (Michel Levy, in-18). 23-28 decembre: Flaubert A Nohant.

1869 8 mars: Mort de Calamatta. 27 mai: Vente de la maison de Palaiseau.

1870 25 fevrier: lre representation de l'Autre (Odeon). 14 mai: L'Autre (Michel Levy, in-8.) 28 mai: Pierre qui roule (Michel Levy, in-18, en vente des fevrier). Le beau Laurence (id. in-18, en vente des fevrier). 19 juillet: Declaration de guerre "a la Prusse. 2 septembre: Capitulation de Sedan. 3 septembre: Malgre tout (Michel Levy, in-18, en vente des le mois de juin). 4 septembre: Proclamation de la Republique.

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1871 8 mars: Mort de Casimir Dudevant. 18 mars-28 mai: Insurrection de la Commune de Paris. Devant ce soulevement dont elle ne comprend pas les motivations, G.S., mal renseignee come toute la province, s'indigne et desapprouve. Plus tard, son coeur saignera l'annonce de l'impitoy-able repression versaillaise. 12 avril: Mort a Paris de Pierre Leroux. Obseques le 14. (G.S. qui n'est pas h Paris n'y assiste pas, quoi qu'en aient dit certains journaux). 23 septembre: Cesarine Dietrich (Michel Levy, in-18). Decembre: Journal d'un voyageur pendant la_guerre (Michel Levy, in-18). G.S. col-labore activement au journal Le Temps.

1872 ler juin: G.S. commence 'a publier dans la Revue des Deux Mondes et dans le Temps des contes ecrits pour ses deux petites-filles. 29 juin: Francia, suivi d'Un bienfait n'est jamais perdu (Michel Levy, in-18).

sejour e. Cabourg avec sa famille apres une epidemie de coqueluche. 28 decembre: Nanon (Michel Levy, in-18).

1873 12-19 avril: Flaubert et Tourgueniev a Nohant. 24 avril-9 mai: sejour a Paris. 24 mai: Impressions et souvenirs (Michel Levy, in-18). 4-25 aont: Voyage en Auvergne. 15 novembre: Contes d'une grand'mere lre serie (Michel Levy, in-18).

1874 30 mai-10 juin: Court voyage b. Paris. 19 septembre: Ma soeur Jeanne (Michel Levy, in-18).

1875 31 mai-10 juin: Court voyage a Paris. 14 aoat: Flamarande (Michel Levy, in-18). 28 aoat: Les deux frbres (Michel Levy, in-18).

1876 8 JUIN: MORT DE GEORGE SAND A NOHANT. 10 juin: Inhumation. La Tour de Percement-Marianne, (Calmann-Levy, in-18). en vente des janvier). 30 septembre: Contes d'une grand-mere 2e sgrie (Calmann-Levy, in-18).

PUBLICATIONS POSTHUMES

1877 22 septembre: Derniere pages, (Calmann-Levy, in-18). 17 novembre: Nouvelles lettres d'un voyageur (Calmann-Leiry, in-18).

1879 Questions d'art et de litterature (Calmann-Levy, in-18, a la date de 1878). Questions politiques et sociales (Calmann-Levy, in-18).

1882-1884 Correspondance (6 volumes, Calmann-Levy, in-18). 1897 Lettres a Alfred de Musset et a Sainte-Beuve (Calmann-Levy, in-18). 1904 Souvenirs et ides (Calmann-Levy, in-18).

Correspondance entre George Sand et Gustave Flaubert (Calmann-Levy, in-18). Correspondance de George Sand et d'Alfred de Musset (Bruxelles, E. Deman, in-8°).

1926 Journal intime (posthume) (Calmann-Levy, in-16). 1928 Le roman d'Aurore Dudevant et d'Aurelien de Seze (Ed. Montaigne, in-16). 1931 L'Histoire du reveur, suivi de Jehan Cauvin (Ed. Montaigne, in-16). 1953 George Sand et Marie Dorval (Correspondance in6dite) (Gallimard, in-16). 1956 George Sand-Alfred de Musset (Correspondance) Ed. du Rocher. 1959 Lettres inedites de George Sand et Pauline Viardot (Nouvelles -editions latines,in-80) 1964-1978 Correspondance, tomes I a XIII (Garnier freres, in-16). 1970-1972 Oeuvres autobiographiques (Gallimard, 2 volumes, in-16).

Boulogne-sur-Seine France

57

George Sand Workshop at

Universite'de Tours

June 11-16, 1981

In Honor of

GEORGES LUBIN

Directors:

Marie M. Collins, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ Natalie Datlof, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY Marie-Jacques Hoog, Douglass C./Rutgers U., New Brunswick, NJ

Rutgers Junior Year Program at Tours Isabelle Naginski, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Cooperating Institutions:

Douglass College/Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ Universite de Tours, France

Special Addresses:

Joseph Barry, Paris, France Georges Lubin, Boulogne-sur-Seine, France Gerard Roubichou, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York, NY Albert Sonnenfeld, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Simone Vierne, Universite de Grenoble, Grenoble, France

Workshops:

June 11, 12, 13

Field Trips:

June 14, 15, 16

Registration: $25.00 (Make checks payable to: Friends of George Sand)

Students $15.00

Note: For travel and housing information see attached registration flyers.

For further information:

(516) 560-3296 - University Center for Cultural E Intercultural Studies (UCCIS) Hofstra University Hempstead, NY 11550

(201) 648-5498 - Department of Foreign Languages Rutgers University Newark, NJ 07102 58

COLLOQUE GEORGE SAND

July 13 -- 23, 1981

George Sand will be the subject of the Cerisy-la-Salle Colloquium from July 13-23, 1981, directed by Simone Vierne, Universite de Grenoble III. Cerisy-la-Salle is an internation-al cultural center in Normandy whose various colloquia are among the most prestigious in the academic West. Three hundred kilometers from Paris, it can be reached by car in a few hours and by train via Caen. Lodging is in the chateau. Write for further details to: CCIC, 27, rue de Boulainvilliers, 75016, Paris, France. A $50 deposit iS required for registration. The approximate cost is $38 per day for room and board, half for students.

LISTE DES CONFERENCIERS PREVUS POUR LE COLLOQUE GEORGE SAND

Alain VERJAT-MASSMAN (Universitg de Barcelone) "Forms et fonctions du discours autobiographique."

Marie-Jacques HOOG (Douglas College-Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ) "Les Lettres d'un voyageur, texte initiatique."

Nadine DORMOY-SAVAGE (Lehmann College-CUNY, New York, NY) "Identitg et mimdtisme dans quelques romans de George Sand."

Lucy MAC CALLUM SCHWARTZ (University of North Dakota) "Sensibilite et sexualitg: les rapports sexuels dans les premiers romans de George Sand (1831-1843)."

Annarosa POLI (Universitg de Padoue) "George Sand dans les journaux et revues de 1831 a 1836."

Philippe BERTHIER (Universitg de Grenoble III) "Corambe, l'analyse d'un mythe."

Beatrice DIDIER (Universite' de Paris VIII) "George Sand et les structures narratives des contes populaires."

Franpise VAN ROSSUM-GUYON (Universite' d'Amsterdam) "Le narrateur, figure masquge."

Jean DELABROY (Universite de Paris VII) "Jeanne, femme, nature, symbole, gcriture."

Mireille BOSSIS (chercheur, Nantes) "Soi et 1'Autre, dans la Correspondance de George Sand."

Stephane MICHAUD (Universit6 de Dijon) "George Sand et Flora Tristan."

Bernadette CHOVELON (Biblioth6caire, chercheur, Paris) "George Sand et Solange: le rapport

Luce CZYBA (Universit6 de Lyon) "La Femme et le Prolgtaire dans le Compagnon du Tour de France."

Simone VIERNE (Universitg de Grenoble III) "George Sand, le rave et l'hallucination."

Simone LECOINTRE, (Universite' de Paris-Nanterre) "Probremes d'gnonciation."

Mireille HIRSH (Universitg de Lille III) "Lire un conte merveilleux, Le Chateau de Pictordu."

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NINETEENTH CENTURY WOMEN WRITERS' CONFERENCE REPORT

Hofstra University Hempstead, NY

November 7-9, 1980

Well over two hundred people attended Hofstra University's recent Nineteenth Century Women Writers' International Conference on November 7, 8, and 9. Eminent scholars from North America and Europe gave papers on women writers from the United States, Britain, France, Canada, Germany, and other countries. The featured speakers were feminist scholar Germaine Greer, French scholar Germaine Br6e and the international artist Franioise Gilot.

Special panels were devoted to studies of Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, George Sand, Annette Von Droste-Hillshoff and Madame de Sta61. Other papers were given on Char-lotte Bronto, Margaret Fuller, Christina Rossetti, Rahel Varnhagen, Michael Field, Louise Otto, Jane Austen, and Fredrika Bremer. Men discussed in connection to women included Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Lewis Carroll, Henry James, Alfred de Musset, Gustave Flaubert, and Fedor Dostoevsky. Among the distinguished panelists were Patricia Thomson from Eng-land, recent author of George Sand and the Victorians, Madelyn Gutwirth, author of Mme de Sta61, Novelist and two scholars from Paris, Marie-Claire Hoock-Demarle and Evelyne Diebolt.

Special events during the conference included a book and manuscript exhibit on the women writers along with an art exhibition of "Women Artists of the Berry Region of France" in the David Filderman Gallery of the Hofstra University library. Included in the art exhibition were the works of Christiane Sand and Marie Ebbesen who live and work in the Berry region. Mme Franioise Gilot gave a special address entitled, "Women Artists of France" at the festive opening. In addition, Still Beat Noble Hearts, based on the Euro-pean years of Margaret Fuller, was performed by Laurie James. The Book Fair drew both Womens' Studies publishers as well as antiquarian book dealers and was attended by all the conference participants.

Our guest-of-honor, Germaine Bile was honored at the conference banquet. At this event Professor Br6e was presented with the Hofstra University Medallion by President James M. Shuart. Her keynote address, "The Unpredicted Double: Nineteenth Century Women Writers as Twentieth Century Mirrors," was followed by a concert of nineteenth-century music by two Hofstra students, Martha Tunnicliff (flute) and Mary Elizabeth LaTorre (piano).

Dr. Germaine Greer, Director of the Tulsa Center for the Study of Women's Literature at the University of Tulsa, gave the opening address of the conference on Friday morning, "'Infinite Riches in a Little Room': Suggestions Toward an Alternative Aesthetic," a strong plea for an "alternative aesthetic" in evaluating women writers of the past. Where men seek the heroic voice, Dr. Greer felt women did best in the confined intimacy of the draw-ing room, conveying forceful meaning with small, delicate strokes.

There were two panels on Emily Dickinson, one on her relationship to the critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson and one on her poetry. George Eliot was looked at in connection to feminist aspects of her work; Professor Coral Lansbury of Rutgers questioned whether Elizabeth Gaskell was not more a feminist than George Eliot. George Sand was the center of a panel on intertextuality with papers featuring M. Gerard Roubichou, Cultural Attache from the French Embassy, and Professor Alex Szogyi of Hunter College. The two scholars from France, Professors Hoock-Demarle and Diebolt, participated on a panel where all papers were given in French.

Credit for the success of the conference must go to the directors, Professors Rhoda Nathan of the English Department and Avriel Goldberger of the French Department, as well as to the coordinators, Natalie Datlof and Alexej Ugrinsky of UCCIS. Professor Joseph G. Astman, Director of UCCIS, and Professor Robert N. Keane, Chairman of the Conference Com-mittee, were also deeply involved in the conference.

As the conference disbanded following a gala wine and cheese reception on Sunday evening, all were looking forward to a future conference, on Twentieth-Century Women Writers planned for November 1982.

Robert N. Keane Chairman, Dept. of English Hofstra University

60

WORKS IN PROGRESS:

Linda Anderson, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Senior Project: A translation of "Lettres 1 Marcie" under the supervision of Professor Isabelle Naginski.

Mary Ellen Birkett, Dept. of French, Smith College, Northampton, MA, is compiling a bibliography on George Sand and Madame de Stael in an annual publication, The Roman-tic Movement: A Selective and Critical Bib-liography (Garland Press). Professor Birkett is eager to learn of any scholar-ship that should be included in the bibli-ography. Of particular interest are books and articles appearing in specialized or little-publicized journals, since the bibli-ography aims to be as comprehensive as pos-sible.

Joyce Carleton, Dept. of Modern Languages, Central Connecticut State C., New Britain, CT, is in the process of translating Maurice Sand's work, Six mille lieues a toute vapeur, into English. The work is Maurice's diary, dept during his tour of America, and is a description of our coun-try as it was over one hundred years ago.

Shelley Temchin, Tufts University, Medford, MA, is completing a Ph.D. dissertation on "Lelia: A Modern Reading." This is a tex-tual study of themes and structures of Sand's third novel, 1833 version.

NEWSNOTES

Sherry Dranch, Wheaton College, Norton, MA, will be delivering a paper, "The Author as Non-Woman: Sex Roles, Social Utopias and the Dissemination of George Sand's Early Work," at West Virginia University's Fifth Annual Colloquium on Literature as part of the session entitled "Bohemians and Lib-erals," on November 13, 1981.

University of Houston, Houston, TX, hosted the Colloquium in Nineteenth-Century French Studies on October 23-25, 1980. There was (for the first time) a panel devoted to George Sand moderated by Kathryn Crecelius, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Papers were read by: Pierrette Daley, Univ. of Missouri, St. Louis, MO, "La Fragmentation dans Lelia: le miroir et l'gpee."

James M. West, Southwestern at Memphis, Memphis, TN, "Aquatic Nomenclature and Imag-ery in Indiana."

Richard B. Grant, Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX, "La Petite Fadette and the Problem of Masculine Individuation."

Festival George Sand, sponsored by the Alliance Franiaise de San Diego and San Diego State University was held on November 8, 1980 at the La Jolla Museum of Contem-porary Art. The program included a perfor-mance of Chopin Mazurkas by Dr. Arthur Lambert, Professor of Music, SDSU, "Un Caprice" of Alfred de Musset directed by Jose-Paul Moretto, the Dance Troupe of Sylvie Varenne performed "Her Name Was George," and "Hommage a l'Amitie Franco-Americaine" was given by Jose-Paul Moretto. This event was held as a pre-conference celebration of the forthcoming conference on George Sand.

Sylvie Varenne, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, choreographed a dance drama, "Preludes to George Sand," for a senior project, which was performed at the univer-sity's Contemporary Dance Theatre's 1980 Spring Concert. This sensitive dramatic offering was so well received that Varenne, with community support and the backing of Dr. Carole Rae, UNLV Dance Department head, founded Sand Productions.

The newly-formed company which now numbers five has performed a dance drama, "Her Name Was George," narrated through the eyes of the nineteenth-century literary critic Sainte-Beuve. The latest performance was given at the Festival George Sand on Novem-ber 8, 1980.

Varenne is director and co-choreographer of the company. This young company looks for-ward to touring and any inquiries should be sent to: Sand Productions, 1176 Maryland Circle #2, Las Vegas, NV 89109. (702) 733-8580.

61

OVERSEAS:

London, England:

"George Sand," claims the London-based playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, "was one of the first writers to make literary use of heredity." Wertenbaker is writing a one-woman play with musician based on George Sand's large number of auto-biographical texts in which Sand "cracks the myths already cementing around her." The play, George Sand, will be directed by Faynia Williams and is to open in Brighton on 18 May 1981, to be followed by a tour of England. The play has been commissioned by the Brighton Theatre of Brighton, England.

Paris, France:

Georges Lubin has succeeded Maurice Toesca as president of the Association des Amis de George Sand, 40, rue Beaujon, 75008 Paris.

Warsaw, Poland:

The following article was discovered in POL-AM JOURNAL, September 1980: "Chopin music lovers all over the world were deeply moved by the news about the discovery of Chopin's genuine piano which he played while staying in Majorca.

The piano is owned by a 33 ear-old resident of Dusseldorf, who bought it as a bargain for 100 West German marks [$50] from a junk dealer in the city. Inside the old and dilapidat-ing instrument he found an envelope containing the piano's bill of lading from Marseille to Palma in Majorca, dated back to 1841 . . . .

Electrified by the discovery, the English Broadwood and Sons' firm, producer of the instru-ment, is interested in buying the piano from its present owner.

PUBLICATION NEWS:

William G. Atwood, The Lioness and the Little One: The Liaison of George Sand and Frederic Chopin, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980, cloth, $16.95.

Joseph Barry, Infamous Woman: The Life of George Sand is currently being translated into French by Marie-France de Palomera for Editions du Seuil. Among the many works Palomera has translated eighteen are in the Biblioth'eque Nationale. They include Gertrude Stein's Everybody's Autobiography (Autobiographie de tout le monde), Susan Sontag'e Illness as Metaphor (La Maladie come metaphore), as well as Collection Nelson Rockefeller, Chefs-d'oeuvre de l'art primitif, texte de Douglas Newton.

Evelyne Diebolt, professor at the University of Paris VII introduced a new journal entitled, Penelope, pour l'histoire des femmes, at the Nineteenth Century Women Writers' Conference at Hofstra University. Penelope is published by the Groupe d'Etudes F6ministes de l'Uni-versite de Paris VII (GEFUP). The first issue, "Les femmes et la presse," (Juin, 1979) declares the intent of the journal: "Notre desir? Ne pas faire une Revue acadgmique, exhaustive et fignol6e: . . . Nous ne voulons pas creer un 'ghetto' de l'histoire des fem-mes. Mais plAtot. . . stimuler la reflexion sur cette dimension de l'histoire . . .

62

accueillir celles et ceux qui s'interrogent sur la 'place' des femmes et ses changements dans le temps; favoriser la gate d'histoire orale qui peut ttre si prometteuse pour les femmes, si gardiennes de la m6moire."

One can obtain this issue as well as numero 2, printemps 1980, "Education des filles, Enseignement des femmes," and numgro 3, automne 1980, "Les femmes et la creation," by writing to:

G.E.F. (Groupe d'Etudes Fgministes) Universitg de Paris VII, 75005 PARIS. Subscriptions are $10.00 a year. International Postal Money Orders only, please.

* * *

Georges Lubin, is currently correcting proof on volume XV of the George Sand Correspondance and is preparing volume XVI for publication.

George Sand, Correspondance. vol. XIV, Ed. Georges Lubin. Paris: Garnier, 1980. See book review, page

, Lettres d'un voyageur. Penguin Classics, London, England is planning to publish a new edition and translation in 1981. The translator is Sacha Rabinowitz and Patricia Thomson, University of Sussex, Brighton, England, will do the Introduction and Notes.

Gisela Spies-Schlientz, Stuttgart, West Germany, is preparing a George Sand Reader for publication in 1981.

Patricia Thomson, George Sand and the Victorians will be published in paper by Academy Chicago Ltd., Chicago, IL.

L'ARC* Numgro 79 -- GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Table des matibres

Bernard Pingaud Gerard Genette Michel Zgraffa Henry James Marthe Robert Bernard Pingaud

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre Maurice Bej art Georges Perec Daniele Sallenave

Dolf Oehler Claude Mouchard Jacques Neefs Gustave Flaubert Jeanne Bem

*L'ARC Chemin de Repentence 13100 Aix-en-Provence

Les Flaubert Flaubert par Proust Devant et apres Flaubert: Henry James Gustave Flaubert: extraits Flaubert et Kafka Deux remarques sur l'ingratitude: a propos

de Flaubert et Kafka Entretien avec Jean-Paul Sartre Notes sur Madame Bovary Wart parle de Flaubert Emprunts 5. Flaubert Le Lecteur enchants (Fragments d'une

correspondance) L'Schec de 1848 DSchirer l'opinion Le volume des livres (Fragments pour Bouvard) Pour Bouvard et Pgcuchet Pour connaitre Flaubert

63

This caricature portrays Flaubert as the pitiless surgeon dissecting the heart of his heroine, Emma Bovary. Cartoon of 1857.

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE:

1981

San Diego State Univ., San Diego, CA February 11-14 - George Sand: Her Life, Her Works, Her Circle, Her Influence. For info: (714) 265-6491, See pp. 34-36.

Universite'de Tours, Tours, France June 11-16 - George Sand Workshop See page 58.

Centre Culturel International de Cerisy-la-Salle July 13-23 - Colloque George Sand See page 59.

West Virginia Univ., Morgantown, WV September 11-13 - Fifth Annual Colloquium on Literature: The Romantic Presence.

Indiana Univ., Bloomington, IN November 12-14 - Annual Colloquium on Nine-teenth-Century French Studies. Call for Papers. One of. the section topics is: "Madame de Stahl and Women Novelists." Each paper must be submitted in duplicate by March 31, 1981. Address them to Prof. Gilbert D. Chaitin, Dept. of French, Indiana U., Bloomington, IN 47401.

1982

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11550 November 5, 6, 7 Twentieth-Century Women Writers' Conference Call for Papers. Submit papers in dupli-

cate by Jan. 1, 1982. Twenty minutes pre-sentation time. Selected papers will be published. UCCIS, Natalie Datlof & Alexej Ugrinsky, Conf. Coordinators.

64

2. George Sand Studies (Second Series)

3. Heinrich von Kleist Studies

4. William Cullen Bryant Studies

1981 ISSUES

Volume IV, Number 1-George Sand and Education

Volume IV, Number 2 - George Sand Workshop

**********

Volume IV, Number 1: This issue will be devoted to the theme of "Education in Rela-tion to George Sand." Articles can range from broad historical and biographical per-spectives to specific thematic and textual ones, such as how Sand's didacticism relates to her theory of writing as an art.

In addition, the editors invite articles on general topics along with items of interest to all Sand scholars. Please send relevant material by April 15, 1981 to:

Dr. Thelma Jurgrau Empire State College of SUNY 10 Mitchell Place White Plains, NY 10601

Georgaarid 9011 Melrose Avenue

Los Angeles, California 90069 (213) 858-1648

Drawing by David Levine. Reprinted by permission from The New York Review of Books. Copyright *1979 NYREV. Inc.

AMS Press is pleased to announce the serial publication of the

Hofstra University Cultural & Intercultural

Studies

George Sand Studies (First Series) ISBN -61651-8 $24.50

Contents:

Henri Peyre: The Presence of George Sand Among Us. Joseph Barry: G.S.: Our Existential Contemporary. Gerard Roubichou: G.S. Today. Frank Lambasa: Paris—The Romantic Hub of Europe. Janis Glasgow: G.S. and Balzac. Aaron Noland: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and G.S. Marie-Jeanne Pecile: G.S.'s Literary Encounters. Paul G. Blount: G.S. and the Victorians. Thelma Jurgrau: The Linking of the Georges, Sand and Eliot. Lesley S. Herrmann: G.S. and Turgenev. Carole Karp: G.S. and the Russians. Nancy Rogers: Social Protest in Her Early Works. Enid Standring: The Lelios of Berlioz and G.S. Alex Szogyi: High Analytical Romanticism. Dennis O'Brien: G.S. and Feminism. Index.

All titles have full CIP information AMS ISBN prefix: 0-404-

Trade discount schedule on request

65

"I am nothing but a literary lizard, warming myself all in the bri sun b

• Passionate, witty, analytical, and

erotic, Flaubert's letters are adazzling display of a writer's art and life.

They range from amorous, yet often sadistic, epistles to his beautiful mistress, to colorful accounts of his trips to the temples and brothels of the Mideast.

Most important, the letters chroni-de one of the central events in liter-

histoiy, the composition of adame Bovary. And throughout this

collection, Steegmuller provides a thoroughly satisfying cntical and his-torical text.

It is, as Leon Edel says, "An enchanting book. Once one starts reading._ it's difficult to put down." $12.50 illustrated.

Letter to Louise Colet, 1846

Selected, Edited, and Translated by

Francis Steernuller Courtesy M. Jean Ducourneau and Dr. B. Jean.

The Belknap Press of

liarvardUniworsityPress Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

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Editors Mary Jo Lakeland and Susan Ellis Wolf Advisory Editor Monique Wittig

THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION OF QUESTIONS FEMINISTES

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Board of Editors Mae Bisseret, Christine Delphy, Colette Guillaumin, Claude Hennequin, Emmanuele de Lesseps, Nicole—Claude Mathieu, Monique Plaza, Monique Wittig

FEMINIST ISSUES

VOLUME I, NUMBER I SUMMER 1980

Including: Questions Feministes Editors Monique Wittig Christine Delphy Nicole—Claude Mathieu

Monique Plaza

A Feminist Issues Report

EDITORIAL: VARIATIONS ON SOME COMMON THEMES

THE STRAIGHT MIND

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