It completes in an interesting way these observations, which would bear much expansion, to perceive that when we at last have a Life of George Sand—a celebrity12 living with the imputed13 intensity, if ever a celebrity did—we are indebted for it to the hand of a stranger. No fact could more exactly point the moral of my few remarks. Madame Sand’s genius and renown14 would have long ago made her a subject at home if alacrity15 in such a connection had been to be dreamed of. There is no more significant sign of the general ban under which alacrity rests. Everything about this extraordinary woman is interesting, and we can easily imagine the posthumous16 honours we ourselves would have hastened to assure to a part taken, in literature and life, with such brilliancy and sincerity17. These demonstrations18, where we should most look for them, have been none the less as naught—save indeed, to be exact, for the publication of a number of volumes of letters. It is just Madame Sand’s letters, however—letters interesting and admirable, peculiarly qualified19 to dispose the reader in her favour—that in England or in America would have quickened the need for the rest of the evidence. But now that, as befalls, we do at last have the rest of the evidence as we never have had it before, we are of course sufficiently20 enlightened as to the reasons for a special application of the law of reserves and delays. It is not in fact easy to see how a full study of our heroine could have been produced earlier; and even at present there is a sensible comfort in its being produced at such a distance as practically assigns the act to a detached posterity21. Contemporaneously it was wise to forbear; but to-day, and in Russia, by good luck, it is permitted to plunge22.
Mme. Wladimir Karénine’s extraordinarily23 diffuse24, but scarcely less valuable, biography, of which the first instalment,[6] in two large volumes, brings the story but to the year 1838, reaches us in a French version, apparently25 from the author’s own hand, of chapters patiently contributed to Russian periodicals. Were it not superficially ungrateful to begin with reserves about a book so rich and full, there might be some complaint to make of this wonderful tribute on grounds of form and taste. Ponderous26 and prolix27, the author moves in a mass, escorted by all the penalties of her indifference28 to selection and compression. She insists and repeats, she wanders wide; her subject spreads about her, in places, as rather a pathless waste. Above all she has produced a book which manages to be at once remarkably29 expert and singularly provincial30. Our innocence31 is perhaps at fault, but we are moved to take the mixture for characteristically Russian. Would indeed any but that admirable “Slav” superiority to prejudice of which we have lately heard so much have availed to handle the particular facts in this large free way? Nothing is at all events more curious than the union, on the part of our biographer, of psychological intelligence and a lame32 esthetic33. The writer’s literary appreciations34 lag in other words half a century behind her human and social. She treats us to endless disquisitions on pages of her author to which we are no longer in any manageable relation at all—disquisitions pathetic, almost grotesque35, in their misplaced good faith. But her attitude to her subject is admirable, her thoroughness exemplary, the spirit of service in her of the sort that builds the monument stone by stone. When we see it reared to the summit, as we are clearly to do, we shall feel the structure to be solid if not shapely. Nothing is more possible meanwhile than that a culture more homogeneous—a French hand or a German—could not have engaged in the work with anything like the same sincerity. An English hand—and the fact, for our culture, means much—would have been incapable36 of touching37 it. The present scale of it at all events is certainly an exotic misconception. But we can take of it what concerns us.
The whole thing of course, we promptly38 reflect, concerns at the best only those of us who can remount a little the stream of time. The author of “L’Histoire de ma Vie” died in 1876, and the light of actuality rests to-day on very different heads. It may seem to belittle39 her to say that to care for her at all one must have cared for her from far back, for such is not in general the proviso we need to make on behalf of the greatest figures. It describes Madame Sand with breadth, but not with extravagance, to speak of her as a sister to Goethe, and we feel that for Goethe it can never be too late to care. But the case exemplifies perhaps precisely40 the difference even in the most brilliant families between sisters and brothers. She was to have the family spirit, but she was to receive from the fairies who attended at her cradle the silver cup, not the gold. She was to write a hundred books but she was not to write “Faust.” She was to have all the distinction but not all the perfection; and there could be no better instance of the degree in which a woman may achieve the one and still fail of the other. When it is a question of the rare originals who have either she confirms us, masculine as she is, in believing that it takes a still greater masculinity to have both. What she had, however, she had in profusion41; she was one of the deepest voices of that great mid-century concert against the last fine strains of which we are more and more banging the doors. Her work, beautiful, plentiful42 and fluid, has floated itself out to sea even as the melting snows of the high places are floated. To feel how she has passed away as a “creator” is to feel anew the immense waste involved in the general ferment43 of an age, and how much genius and beauty, let alone the baser parts of the mixture, it takes to produce a moderate quantity of literature. Smaller people have conceivably ceased to count; but it is strange for a member of the generation immediately succeeding her own that she should have had the same fate as smaller people: all the more that such a mourner may be ruefully conscious of contributing not a little himself to the mishap46. Does he still read, re-read, can he to-day at all deal with, this wonderful lady’s novels? It only half cheers him up that on the occasion of such a publication as I here speak of he finds himself as much interested as ever.
The grounds of the interest are difficult to give—they presuppose so much of the old impression. If the old impression therefore requires some art to sustain and justify47 itself we must be content, so far as we are still under the charm, to pass, though only at the worst, for eccentric. The work, whether we still hold fast to it or not, has twenty qualities and would still have an immense one if it had only its style; but what I suppose it has paid for in the long-run is its want of plastic intensity. Does any work of representation, of imitation, live long that is predominantly loose? It may live in spite of looseness; but that, we make out, is only because closeness has somewhere, where it has most mattered, played a part. It is hard to say of George Sand’s productions, I think, that they show closeness anywhere; the sense of that fluidity which is more than fluency48 is what, in speaking of them, constantly comes back to us, and the sense of fluidity is fundamentally fatal to the sense of particular truth. The thing presented by intention is never the stream of the artist’s inspiration; it is the deposit of the stream. For the things presented by George Sand, for the general picture, we must look elsewhere, look at her life and her nature, and find them in the copious49 documents in which these matters and many others are now reflected. All this mass of evidence it is that constitutes the “intensity” we demand. The mass has little by little become large, and our obligation to Madame Karénine is that she makes it still larger. She sets our face, and without intending to, more and more in the right direction. Her injudicious analyses of forgotten fictions only confirm our discrimination. We feel ourselves in the presence of the extraordinary author of the hundred tales, and yet also feel it to be not by reason of them that she now presents herself as one of the most remarkable51 of human creatures. By reason then of what? Of everything that determined52, accompanied, surrounded their appearance. They formed all together a great feature in a career and a character, but the career and the character are the real thing.
Such is far from usually the case, I hasten to recognise, with the complete and consistent artist. Poor is the art, a thing positively53 to be ashamed of, that, generally speaking, is not far more pressing for this servant of the altar than anything else, anything outside the church, can possibly be. To have been the tempered and directed hammer that makes the metal hard: if that be not good enough for such a ministrant, we may know him by whatever he has found better—we shall not know him by the great name. The immense anomaly in Madame Sand was that she freely took the form of being, with most zest54, quite another sort of hammer. It testifies sufficiently to her large endowment that, given the wide range of the rest of her appetite, she should seem to us to-day to have sacrificed even superficially to any form of objective expression. She had in spite of herself an imagination almost of the first order, which overflowed55 and irrigated56, turning by its mere57 swift current, without effort, almost without direction, every mill it encountered, and launching as it went alike the lightest skiff and the stateliest ship. She had in especial the gift of speech, speech supreme58 and inspired, to which we particularly owe the high value of the “case” she presents. For the case was definitely a bold and direct experiment, not at all in “art,” not at all in literature, but conspicuously59 and repeatedly in the business of living; so that our profit of it is before anything else that it was conscious, articulate, vivid—recorded, reflected, imaged. The subject of the experiment became also at first hand the journalist—much of her work being simply splendid journalism—commissioned to bring it up to date. She interviewed nobody else, but she admirably interviewed herself, and this is exactly our good fortune. Her autobiography61, her letters, her innumerable prefaces, all her expansive parentheses62 and excursions, make up the generous report. We have in this form accordingly a literary title for her far superseding63 any derived64 from her creative work. But that is the result of a mere betrayal, not the result of an intention. Her masterpiece, by a perversity65 of fate, is the thing she least sat down to. It consists—since she is a case—in the mere notation66 of her symptoms, in help given to the study of them. To this has the author of “Consuelo” come.
But how in the world indeed was the point so indicated not to be the particular cross-road at which the critic should lie in wait for a poor child of the age whom preceding ages and generations had almost infernally conspired67 to trap for him, to give up, candidly68 astray, to his hands? If the element of romance for which our heroine’s name stands is best represented by her personal sequences and solutions, it is sufficiently visible that her heredity left her a scant69 alternative. Space fails me for the story of this heredity, queer and complicated, the very stuff that stories are made of—a chain of generations succeeding each other in confidence and joy and with no aid asked of legal or other artificial sanctions. The facts are, moreover, sufficiently familiar, though here as elsewhere Madame Karénine adds to our knowledge. Presented, foreshortened, stretching back from the quiet Nohant funeral of 1876 to the steps of the throne of King Augustus the Strong of Poland, father of Maurice de Saxe, great-great-grandfather of Aurore Dupin, it all hangs together as a cluster of components70 more provocative71 than any the great novelist herself ever handled. Her pre-natal past was so peopled with dramatis person? that her future was really called on to supply them in such numbers as would preserve the balance. The tide of illegitimacy sets straight through the series. No one to speak of—Aurore’s father is an exception—seems to have had a “regular” paternity. Aurore herself squared with regularity72 but by a month or two; the marriage of her parents gave her a bare escape. She was brought up by her paternal73 grandmother between a son of her father and a daughter of her mother born out of wedlock74. It all moves before us as a vivid younger world, a world on the whole more amused and more amusing than ours. The period from the Restoration to the events of 1848 is the stretch of time in which, for more reasons than we can now go into, French life gives out to those to whom its appeal never fails most of its charm—most, at all events, of its ancient sociability75. Happy is our sense of the picturesque76 Paris unconscious of a future all “avenues” and exhibitions; happy our sense of these middle years of a great generation, easy and lusty despite the ensanguined spring that had gone before. They live again, piecing themselves ever so pleasantly and strangely together, in Madame Sand’s records and references; almost as much as the conscious close of the old régime so vaunted by Talleyrand they strike us as a season it would have been indispensable to know for the measure of what intercourse77 could richly be.
The time was at any rate unable to withhold78 from the wonderful young person growing up at Nohant the conditions she was so freely to use as measures of her own. Though the motto of her autobiography is Wahrheit und Dichtung quite as much as it had been that of Goethe’s, there is a truth beyond any projected by her more regular compositions in her evocation79 of the influences of her youth. Upon these influences Madame Karénine, who has enjoyed access through her heroine’s actual representatives to much evidence hitherto unpublished, throws a hundred interesting lights. Madame Dupin de Francueil and Madame Dupin the younger survive and perform for us, “convince” us as we say, better than any Lélia or any Consuelo. Our author’s whole treatment of her remarkable mother’s figure and history conveniently gives the critic the pitch of the great fact about her—the formation apparently at a given moment, yet in very truth, we may be sure, from far back, of the capacity and the determination to live with high consistency80 for herself. What she made of this resolve to allow her nature all its chances and how she carried on the process—these things are, thanks to the immense illustration her genius enabled her to lend them, the essence of her story; of which the full adumbration81 is in the detached pictorial82 way she causes her mother to live for us. Motherhood, daughterhood, childhood, embarrassed maturity83, were phenomena84 she early encountered in her great adventure, and nothing is more typical of her energy and sincerity than the short work we can scarce help feeling she makes of them. It is not that she for a moment blinks or dodges85 them; she weaves them straight in—embarks with them indeed as her principal baggage. We know to-day from the pages before us everything we need to know about her marriage and the troubled years that followed; about M. Casimir Dudevant and his possible points of view, about her separation, her sharp secession, rather, as it first presents itself, and her discovery, at a turn of the road as it can only be called, of her genius.
She stumbled on this principle, we see, quite by accident and as a consequence of the attempt to do the very humblest labour, to support herself from day to day. It would be difficult to put one’s finger more exactly upon a case of genius unaided and unprompted. She embarked86, as I have called it, on her great voyage with no grounds of confidence whatever; she had obscurely, unwittingly the spirit of Columbus, but not so much even as his exiguous87 outfit88. She found her gift of improvisation89, found her tropic wealth, by leaping—a surprised conquistador of “style”—straight upon the coral strand90. No awakened91 instinct, probably, was ever such a blessing92 to a writer so much in need. This instinct was for a long time all her initiation93, practically all her equipment. The curious thing is that she never really arrived at the fruit of it as the result of a process, but that she started with the whole thing as a Patti or a Mario starts with a voice which is a method, which is music, and that it was simply the train in which she travelled. It was to render her as great a service as any supreme faculty94 ever rendered its possessor, quite the same service as the strategic eye renders a commander in the field or instant courage the attacking soldier: it was to carry her through life still more inimitably than through the career of authorship. Her books are all rich and resonant95 with it, but they profit by it meagrely compared with her character. She walks from first to last in music, that is in literary harmonies, of her own making, and it is in truth sometimes only, with her present biographer to elbow us a little the way, that these triumphant96 sounds permit us a near enough approach to the procession to make out quite exactly its course.
No part of her career is to my sense so curious as this particular sudden bound into the arena97. Nothing but the indescribable heredity I have spoken of appears traceably to have prepared it. We have on one side the mere poverty and provinciality99 of her marriage and her early contacts, the crudity100 of her youth and her ignorance (which included so small a view of herself that she had begun by looking for a future in the bedaubing, for fancy-shops, of little boxes and fans); and on the other, at a stride, the full-blown distinction of “Valentine” and “Jacques,” which had had nothing to lead up to it, we seem to make out, but the very rough sketch101 of a love-affair with M. Jules Sandeau. I spoke98 just now of the possible points of view of poor M. Dudevant; at which, had we space, it might be of no small amusement to glance—of an amusement indeed large and suggestive. We see him, surely, in the light of these records, as the most “sold” husband in literature, and not at all, one feels, by his wife’s assertion of her freedom, but simply by her assertion of her mind. He appears to have married her for a nobody approved and guaranteed, and he found her, on his hands, a sister, as we have seen, of Goethe—unless it be but a figure to say that he ever “found” her anything. He appears to have lived to an advanced age without having really—in spite of the lawsuits102 he lost—comprehended his case; not the least singular feature of which had in fact positively been the deceptive103 delay of his fate. It was not till after several years of false calm that it presented itself in its special form. We see him and his so ruthlessly superseded104 name, never to be gilded105 by the brilliant event, we see him reduced, like a leaf in a whirlwind, to a mere vanishing-point.
We deal here, I think, with something very different from the usual tittle-tattle about “private” relations, for the simple reason that we deal with relations foredoomed to publicity106 by the strange economy involved in the play of genius itself. Nothing was ever less wasted, from beginning to end, than all this amorous107 experience and all this luxury of woe108. The parties to it were to make an inveterate109 use of it, the principal party most of all; and what therefore on that marked ground concerns the critic is to see what they were appreciably110 to get out of it. The principal party, the constant one through all mutations, was alone qualified to produce the extract that affects us as final. It was by the publication four years since of her letters to Alfred de Musset and to Sainte-Beuve, by the appearance also of Madame Arvède Barine’s clear compact biography of Musset, that we began to find her personal history brought nearer to us than her own communications had in her lifetime already brought it. The story of her relations with Musset is accordingly so known that I need only glance at the fact of her having—shortly after the highest degree of intimacy111 between them had, in the summer of 1833, established itself in Paris—travelled with him to Italy, settled with him briefly112 in Venice, and there passionately113 quarrelled and parted with him—only, however, several months later, on their return to France, to renew again, to quarrel and to part again, all more passionately, if possible, even than before. Madame Karénine, besides supplying us with all added light on this episode, keeps us abreast114 of others that were to follow, leaves us no more in the dark about Michel de Bourges, Félicien Mallefille and Chopin than we had already been left about their several predecessors115. She is commendably116 lucid117 on the subject of Franz Liszt, impartially118 examines the case and authoritatively119 dismisses it. Her second volume brings her heroine to the eve of the historic departure with Chopin for Majorca. We have thus in a convenient form enough for one mouthful of entertainment, as well as for superabundant reflection.
We have indeed the whole essence of what most touches us, for this consists not at all of the quantity of the facts, nor even of their oddity: they are practically all there from the moment the heroine’s general attitude defines itself. That is the solid element—the details to-day are smoke. Yet I hasten to add that it was in particular by taking her place of an autumn evening in the southward-moving diligence with Alfred de Musset, it was on this special occasion that she gave most the measure of her choice of the consistent, even though it so little meant the consequent, life. She had reached toward such a life obviously in quitting the conjugal121 roof in 1831—had attacked the experiment clumsily, but according to her light, by throwing herself on such material support as faculties122 yet untested might furnish, and on such moral as several months of the intimité of Jules Sandeau and a briefer taste of that of Prosper123 Mérimée might further contribute. She had done, in other words, what she could; subsequent lights show it as not her fault that she had not done better. With Musset her future took a long stride; emotionally speaking it “looked up.” Nothing was wanting in this case—independently of what might then have appeared her friend’s equal genius—quite ideally to qualify it. He was several years her junior, and as she had her husband and her children, he had, in the high degree of most young Frenchmen of sensibility, his mother. It is recorded that with this lady on the eve of the celebrated124 step she quite had the situation, as the phrase is, out; which is a note the more in the general, the intellectual lucidity125. The only other note in fact to be added is that of the absence of funds for the undertaking126. Neither partner had a penny to spare; the plan was wholly to “make money,” on a scale, as they went. A great deal was in the event, exactly speaking, to be made—but the event was at the time far from clear to them. The enterprise was in consequence purely127 and simply, with a rounded perfection that gives it its value for the critic, an affair of the heart. That the heart, taking it as a fully45 representative organ, should fail of no good occasion completely and consistently to engage itself was the definite and, as appeared, the promising128 assumption on which everything rested. The heart was real life, frank, fearless, intelligent and even, so far as might be, intelligible129 life; everything else was stupid as well as poor, muddle130 as well as misery131. The heart of course might be misery, for nothing was more possible than that life predominantly was; but it was at all events the misery that is least ignoble132.
This was the basis of Madame Sand’s personal evolution, of her immense moral energy, for many a year; it was a practical system, applied133 and reapplied, and no “inquiry” concerning her has much point save as settling what, for our enlightenment and our esteem134, she made of it. The answer meets us, I think, after we have taken in the facts, promptly enough and with great clearness, so long as we consider that it is not, that it cannot be in the conditions, a simple one. She made of it then intellectually a splendid living, but she was able to do this only because she was an altogether exceptional example of our human stuff. It is here that her famous heredity comes in: we see what a race-accumulation of “toughness” had been required to build her up. Monstrous135 monarchs136 and bastards137 of kings, great generals and bastards of bastards, courtesans, dancers supple138 and hard, accomplished139 men and women of the old dead great world, seasoned young soldiers of the Imperial epic140, grisettes of the pavé de Paris, Parisian to the core; the mixture was not quite the blood of people in general, and obviously such a final flower of such a stem might well fix the attention and appeal to the vigilance of those qualified to watch its development. These persons would, doubtless, however, as a result of their observation, have acquired betimes a sense of the high vitality141 of their young friend. Formed essentially142 for independence and constructed for resistance and survival she was to be trusted, as I have hinted, to take care of herself: this was always the residuary fact when a passion was spent. She took care of Musset, she took care of Chopin, took care, in short, through her career, of a whole series of nurslings, but never failed, under the worst ingratitude143, to be by her own elasticity144 still better taken care of. This is why we call her anomalous145 and deprecate any view of her success that loses sight of the anomaly. The success was so great that but for the remainder she would be too encouraging. She was one in a myriad146, and the cluster of circumstances is too unlikely to recur147.
It is by her success, none the less, we must also remember, that we know her; it is this that makes her interesting and calls for study. She had all the illumination that sensibility, that curiosity, can give, and that so ingeniously induces surrender to it; but the too numerous weaknesses, vulgarities and penalties of adventure and surrender she had only in sufficient degree to complete the experience before they shaped themselves into the eloquence148 into which she could always reascend. Her eloquence—it is the simplest way to explain her—fairly made her success; and eloquence is superlatively rare. When passion can always depend upon it to vibrate passion becomes to that extent action, and success is nothing but action repeated and confirmed. In Madame Sand’s particular case the constant recurrence149 of the malady150 of passion promoted in the most extraordinary way the superior appearance, the general expression, of health. It is of course not to be denied that there are in her work infirmities and disfigurements, odd smutches even, or unwitting drolleries, which show a sense on some sides enfeebled. The sense of her characters themselves for instance is constantly a confused one; they are too often at sea as to what is possible and what impossible for what we roughly call decent people. Her own categories, loose and liberal, are yet ever positive enough; when they err151 it is by excess of indulgence and by absence of the humorous vision, a nose for the ridiculous—the fatal want, this last almost always, we are reminded, the heel of Achilles, in the sentimental152, the romantic estimate. The general validity of her novels, at any rate, I leave impugned153, and the feature I have just noted154 in them is but one of the points at which they fail of reality. I stick to the history of her personal experiment, as the now so numerous documents show it; for it is here, and here only, that her felicity is amusing and confounding; amusing by the quaintness155 of some of the facts exposed, and yet confounding by reason of the beauty mixed with them.
The “affair” with Musset for example has come to figure, thanks to the talent of both parties, as one of the great affairs in the history of letters; and yet on the near view of it now enjoyed we learn that it dragged out scarce more than a year. Even this measure indeed is excessive, so far as any measure serves amid so much that is incoherent. It supposed itself to have dropped for upwards156 of six months, during which another connection, another imperious heart-history, reigned157 in its stead. The enumeration158 of these trifles is not, I insist, futile159; so that while we are about it we shall find an interest in being clear. The events of Venice, with those that immediately preceded and followed them, distinctly repay inspection160 as an epitome161, taken together, of the usual process. They appear to contain, as well as an intensity all their own, the essence of all that of other occasions. The young poet and the young novelist met then, appear to have met for the first time, toward the end of June 1833, and to have become finally intimate in the month of August of that year. They started together for Italy at the beginning of the winter and were settled—if settled be not too odd a word to use—by the end of January in Venice. I neglect the question of Musset’s serious illness there, though it is not the least salient part of the adventure, and observe simply that by the end of March he had started to return to Paris, while his friend, remaining behind, had yielded to a new affection. This new affection, the connection with Pietro Pagello, dates unmistakably from before Musset’s departure; and, with the completion of “Jacques” and the composition of the beautiful “André,” the wonderful “Léone-Léoni” and some of the most interesting of the “Lettres d’un Voyageur,” constituted the main support of our heroine during the spring and early summer. By midsummer she had left Italy with Pagello, and they arrive in Paris on August 14th. This arrival marks immediately the term of their relations, which had by that time lasted some six or seven months. Pagello returned to Italy, and if they ever met again it was the merest of meetings and after long years.
In October, meanwhile, the connection with Musset was renewed, and renewed—this is the great point—because the sentiments still entertained by each (in spite of Pagello, in spite of everything) are stronger even than any awkwardness of which either might have been conscious. The whole business really is one in which we lose our measure alike of awkwardness and of grace. The situation is in the hands of comedy—or would be, I should rather say, were it not so distinctly predestined to fall, as I have noted, into those of the nobler form. It is prolonged till the following February, we make out, at furthest, and only after having been more than once in the interval162 threatened with violent extinction163. It bequeaths us thus in a handful of dates a picture than which probably none other in the annals of “passion” was ever more suggestive. The passion is of the kind that is called “immortal164”—and so called, wonderful to say, with infinite reason and justice. The poems, the letters, the diaries, the novels, the unextinguished accents and lingering echoes that commemorate165 it are among the treasures of the human imagination. The literature of the world is appreciably the richer for it. The noblest forms, in a word, on both sides, marked it for their own; it was born, according to the adage166, with a silver spoon in its mouth. It was an affection in short transcendent and sublime167, and yet the critic sees it come and go before he can positively turn round. The brief period of some seventeen or eighteen months not only affords it all its opportunity, but places comfortably in its lap a relation founded on the same elements and yet wholly distinct from it. Musset occupied in fact but two-thirds of his mistress’s time. Pagello overlapped168 him because Pagello also appealed to the heart; but Pagello’s appeal to the heart was disposed of as expeditiously169. Musset, in the same way, succeeded Pagello at the voice of a similar appeal, and this claim, in its turn, was polished off in yet livelier fashion.
Liveliness is of course the tune60 of the “gay” career; it has always been supposed to relegate170 to comedy the things to which it puts its mark—so that as a series of sequences amenable171 mainly to satire172 the approximations I have made would fall neatly173 into place. The anomaly here, as on other occasions of the same sort in Madame Karénine’s volumes, is that the facts, as we are brought near to them, strike us as so out of relation to the beautiful tone. The effect and the achieved dignity are those of tragedy—tragedy rearranging, begetting174 afresh, in its own interest, all the elements of ecstasy175 and despair. How can it not be tragedy when this interest is just the interest, which I have touched on, of exemplary eloquence? There are lights in which the material, with its want of nobleness, want of temper, want even of manners, seems scarcely life at all, as the civilised conscience understands life; and yet it is as the most magnanimous of surrenders to life that the whole business is triumphantly176 reflected in the documents. It is not only that “La Nuit d’Octobre” is divine, that Madame Sand’s letters are superb and that nothing can exceed, in particular, the high style of the passage that we now perceive Musset to have borrowed from one of them for insertion in “On ne Badine pas avec l’Amour”—to the extreme profit of the generation which was, for many years thereafter, to hear Delaunay exquisitely177 declaim it at the Théatre Fran?ais; it is that, strange to say, almost the finest flower of the bouquet178 is the now-famous written “declaration” addressed to Pagello one evening by the lady. Musset was ill in bed; he was the attendant doctor; and while, watching and ignorant of French, he twirled his thumbs or dipped into a book, his patient’s companion, on the other side of the table and with the lamp between them, dashed off (it took time) a specimen179 of her finest prose, which she then folded and handed to him, and which, for perusal180 more at leisure, he carried off in his pocket. It proved neither more nor less than one of the pontoon bridges which a force engaged in an active campaign holds itself ready at any time to throw across a river, and was in fact of its kind a stout181 and beautiful structure. It happily spanned at all events the gulf182 of a short acquaintance.
The incident bears a family resemblance to another which our biographer finds in her path in the year 1837. Having to chronicle the close of the relation with Michel de Bourges, from which again her heroine had so much to suffer, she has also to mention that this catastrophe183 was precipitated184, to all appearance, by the contemporaneous dawn of an affection “plus douce, moins enthousiaste, moins apre aussi, et j’espère plus durable185.” The object of this affection was none other than the young man then installed at Nohant as preceptor to Madame Sand’s children—but as to whom in the event we ask ourselves what by this time her notion of measure or durability186 can have become. It is just this element that has positively least to do, we seem to make out, with “affection” as so practised. Affection in any sense worth speaking of is durability; and it is the repeated impermanence of those manifestations187 of it on behalf of which the high horse of “passion” is ridden so hard that makes us wonder whether such loves and such licences, in spite of the quality of free experience they represent, had really anything to do with it. It was surely the last thing they contained. Félicien Mallefille may be, to his heart’s content, of 1837 and even of a portion of 1838; it is Chopin who is of the rest of the year and—let us hope our biographer will have occasion to show us—of at least the whole of the following. It is here that, as I have mentioned, she pauses.
One of the most interesting contributions to her subject is the long letter from Balzac to his future wife, Madame Hanska, now reproduced in the most substantial of the few volumes of his correspondence (“Lettres à l’étrangère, 1833-1842,” published 1899) and printed by Madame Karénine. The author, finding himself near Nohant in the spring of 1838, went over to pay his illustrious colleague a visit and spent more than a day in sustained conversation with her. He had the good fortune to find her alone, so that they could endlessly talk and smoke by the fire, and nothing can be all at once more vivid, more curious and more judicious50 than his immediate44 report of the occasion. It lets into the whole question of his hostess’s character and relations—inevitably more or less misrepresented by the party most involved—air and light and truth; it fixes points and re-establishes proportions. It shows appearances confronted, in a word, with Balzac’s strong sense of the real and offers the grateful critic still another chance to testify for that precious gift. This same critic’s mind, it must be added, rests with complacency on the vision thus evoked188, the way that for three days, from five o’clock in the afternoon till five in the morning, the wonderful friends must have had things out. For once, we feel sure, fundamental questions were not shirked. As regards his comrade at any rate Balzac puts his finger again and again on the truth and the idiosyncrasy. “She is not aimable and in consequence will always find it difficult to be loved.” He adds—and it is here that he comes nearest straightening the question—that she has in character all the leading marks of the man and as few as possible those of his counterpart. He implies that, though judged as a woman she may be puzzling enough, she hangs together perfectly189 if judged as a man. She is a man, he repeats, “and all the more that she wants to be, that she has sunk the woman, that she isn’t one. Women attract, and she repels190; and, as I am much of a man, if this is the effect she produces on me she must produce it on men who are like me—so that she will always be unhappy.” He qualifies as justly, I may parenthesise, her artistic191 side, the limits of which, he moreover intimates, she had herself expressed to him. “She has neither intensity of conception, nor the constructive192 gift, nor the faculty of reaching the truth”—Balzac’s own deep dye of the truth—“nor the art of the pathetic. But she holds that, without knowing the French language, she has style. And it’s true.”
The light of mere evidence, the light of such researches as Madame Karénine’s, added to her so copious correspondence and autobiography, makes Madame Sand so much of a riddle193 that we grasp at Balzac’s authoritative120 word as at an approach to a solution. It is, strange to say, by reading another complexity194 into her image that we finally simplify it. The riddle consists in the irreconcilability195 of her distinction and her vulgarity. Vulgar somehow in spite of everything is the record of so much taking and tasting and leaving, so much publicity and palpability of “heart,” so much experience reduced only to the terms of so many more or less greasy196 males. And not only vulgar but in a manner grotesque—from the moment, that is, that the experience is presented to us with any emphasis in the name of terror and pity. It was not a passive but an active situation, that of a nature robust197 and not too fastidious, full at all times of resistance and recovery. No history gives us really more ground to protest against the new fashion, rife198 in France, of transporting “love,” as there mainly represented, to the air of morals and of melancholy199. The fashion betrays only the need to rejuvenate200, at a considerable cost of falsity, an element in connection with which levity201 is felt either to have exhausted202 itself or to look thin as a motive203. It is in the light of levity that many of the facts presented by Madame Karénine are most intelligible, and that is the circumstance awkward for sensibility and for all the graces it is invited to show.
The scene quite changes when we cease to expect these graces. As a man Madame Sand was admirable—especially as a man of the dressing-gown and slippers204 order, easy of approach and of tutoiement, rubbing shoulders with queer company and not superstitiously205 haunted by the conception of the gentleman. There have been many men of genius, delightful206, prodigal207 and even immortal, who squared but scantly208 with that conception, and it is a company to which our heroine is simply one of the most interesting of recruits. She has in it all her value and loses none of her charm. Above all she becomes in a manner comprehensible, as any frank Bohemian is comprehensible. We have only to imagine the Bohemian really endowed, the Bohemian, that is, both industrious209 and wise, to get almost all her formula. She keeps here and there a feminine streak—has at moments an excess of volubility and too great an insistence210 on having been in the right; but for the rest, as Balzac says, the character, confronted with the position, is an explanation. “Son male,” he tells Madame Hanska, “était rare”—than which nothing could have been more natural. Yet for this masculine counterpart—so difficult to find—she ingenuously211 spent much of her early life in looking. That the search was a mistake is what constitutes, in all the business of which the Musset episode is the type, the only, the real melancholy, the real moral tragedy.
For all such mistakes, none the less, the whole lesson of the picture is precisely in the disconcerting success of her system. Everything was at the start against that presumption212; but everything at the end was to indicate that she was not to have been defeated. Others might well have been, and the banks of the stream of her career are marked, not invisibly, with mouldering213 traces of the less lucky or the less buoyant; but her attitude as life went on was more and more that of showing how she profited of all things for wisdom and sympathy, for a general expertness and nobleness. These forces, all clarified to an admirable judgment214, kept her to the last day serene215 and superior, and they are one of the reasons why the monument before us is felt not to be misplaced. There should always be a monument to those who have achieved a prodigy216. What greater prodigy than to have bequeathed in such mixed elements, to have principally made up of them, the affirmation of an unprecedented217 intensity of life? For though this intensity was one that broke down in each proposed exhibition the general example remains218, incongruously, almost the best we can cite. And all we can say is that this brings us back once more to the large manner, the exceptional energy and well-nigh monstrous vitality, of the individual concerned. Nothing is so absurd as a half-disguise, and Madame Sand’s abiding219 value will probably be in her having given her sex, for its new evolution and transformation220, the real standard and measure of change. This evolution and this transformation are all round us unmistakable; the change is in the air; women are turned more and more to looking at life as men look at it and to getting from it what men get. In this direction their aim has been as yet comparatively modest and their emulation221 low; the challenge they have hitherto picked up is but the challenge of the “average” male. The approximation of the extraordinary woman has been practically, in other words, to the ordinary man. George Sand’s service is that she planted the flag much higher—her own approximation at least was to the extraordinary. She reached him, she surpassed him, and she showed how, with native dispositions222, the thing could be done. So far as we have come these new records will live as the precious text-book of the business.
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worthies
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| 应得某事物( worthy的名词复数 )； 值得做某事； 可尊敬的； 有（某人或事物）的典型特征 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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portraiture
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| n.肖像画法 | |
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retrospects
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| n.回顾，回想( retrospect的名词复数 )v.回顾，回想( retrospect的第三人称单数 ) | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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imputed
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| v.把（错误等）归咎于( impute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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renown
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| n.声誉，名望 | |
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alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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posthumous
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| adj.遗腹的；父亡后出生的；死后的，身后的 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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diffuse
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| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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prolix
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| adj.罗嗦的；冗长的 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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esthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的；悦目的，雅致的 | |
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appreciations
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| n.欣赏( appreciation的名词复数 )；感激；评定；（尤指土地或财产的）增值 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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belittle
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| v.轻视，小看，贬低 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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ferment
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| vt.使发酵；n./vt.（使）激动，（使）动乱 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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mishap
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| n.不幸的事，不幸；灾祸 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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fluency
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| n.流畅，雄辩，善辩 | |
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copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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overflowed
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| 溢出的 | |
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irrigated
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| [医]冲洗的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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parentheses
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| n.圆括号，插入语，插曲（ parenthesis的名词复数 ） | |
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superseding
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| 取代，接替( supersede的现在分词 ) | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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notation
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| n.记号法，表示法，注释；[计算机]记法 | |
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conspired
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| 密谋( conspire的过去式和过去分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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components
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| （机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分 | |
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provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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paternal
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| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
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wedlock
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| n.婚姻，已婚状态 | |
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sociability
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| n.好交际，社交性，善于交际 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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withhold
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| v.拒绝，不给；使停止，阻挡 | |
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evocation
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| n. 引起，唤起 n. <古> 召唤，招魂 | |
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consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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adumbration
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| n.预示，预兆 | |
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pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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dodges
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| n.闪躲( dodge的名词复数 )；躲避；伎俩；妙计v.闪躲( dodge的第三人称单数 )；回避 | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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exiguous
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| adj.不足的，太少的 | |
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outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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improvisation
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| n.即席演奏(或演唱)；即兴创作 | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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92
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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93
initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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94
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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resonant
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| adj.(声音)洪亮的，共鸣的 | |
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96
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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97
arena
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| n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台 | |
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98
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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99
provinciality
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| n.乡下习气，粗鄙；偏狭 | |
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100
crudity
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| n.粗糙，生硬；adj.粗略的 | |
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101
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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102
lawsuits
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| n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 ) | |
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103
deceptive
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| adj.骗人的，造成假象的，靠不住的 | |
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104
superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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105
gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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106
publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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107
amorous
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| adj.多情的；有关爱情的 | |
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108
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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109
inveterate
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| adj.积习已深的，根深蒂固的 | |
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110
appreciably
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| adv.相当大地 | |
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111
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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112
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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113
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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114
abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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115
predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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116
commendably
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| 很好地 | |
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117
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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118
impartially
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| adv.公平地，无私地 | |
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119
authoritatively
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| 命令式地，有权威地，可信地 | |
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120
authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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121
conjugal
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| adj.婚姻的，婚姻性的 | |
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122
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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123
prosper
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| v.成功，兴隆，昌盛；使成功，使昌隆，繁荣 | |
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124
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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125
lucidity
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| n.明朗，清晰，透明 | |
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126
undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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127
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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128
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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129
intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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130
muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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131
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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132
ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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133
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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134
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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135
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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136
monarchs
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| 君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 ) | |
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137
bastards
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| 私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙 | |
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138
supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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139
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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140
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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141
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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142
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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143
ingratitude
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| n.忘恩负义 | |
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144
elasticity
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| n.弹性，伸缩力 | |
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145
anomalous
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| adj.反常的；不规则的 | |
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146
myriad
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| adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量 | |
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147
recur
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| vi.复发，重现，再发生 | |
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148
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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149
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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150
malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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151
err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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152
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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153
impugned
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| v.非难，指谪( impugn的过去式和过去分词 )；对…有怀疑 | |
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154
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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155
quaintness
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| n.离奇有趣，古怪的事物 | |
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156
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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157
reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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158
enumeration
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| n.计数，列举；细目；详表；点查 | |
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159
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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160
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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161
epitome
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| n.典型，梗概 | |
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162
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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163
extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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164
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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165
commemorate
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| vt.纪念，庆祝 | |
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166
adage
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| n.格言，古训 | |
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167
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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168
overlapped
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| _adj.重叠的v.部分重叠( overlap的过去式和过去分词 )；（物体）部份重叠；交叠；（时间上）部份重叠 | |
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169
expeditiously
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| adv.迅速地，敏捷地 | |
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170
relegate
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| v.使降级，流放，移交，委任 | |
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171
amenable
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| adj.经得起检验的；顺从的；对负有义务的 | |
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172
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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173
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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174
begetting
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| v.为…之生父( beget的现在分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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175
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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176
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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177
exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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178
bouquet
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| n.花束，酒香 | |
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179
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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180
perusal
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| n.细读，熟读；目测 | |
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182
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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183
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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184
precipitated
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| v.（突如其来地）使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 )；促成；猛然摔下；使沉淀 | |
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185
durable
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| adj.持久的，耐久的 | |
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186
durability
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| n.经久性，耐用性 | |
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187
manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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188
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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189
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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190
repels
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| v.击退( repel的第三人称单数 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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191
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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192
constructive
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| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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193
riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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194
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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195
irreconcilability
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| Irreconcilability | |
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196
greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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197
robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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198
rife
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| adj.(指坏事情)充斥的，流行的，普遍的 | |
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199
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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200
rejuvenate
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| v.(使)返老还童；(使)恢复活力 | |
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201
levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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202
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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203
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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204
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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205
superstitiously
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| 被邪教所支配 | |
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206
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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207
prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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208
scantly
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| 缺乏地，仅仅 | |
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209
industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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210
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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211
ingenuously
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| adv.率直地，正直地 | |
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212
presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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213
mouldering
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| v.腐朽( moulder的现在分词 )；腐烂，崩塌 | |
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214
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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215
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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216
prodigy
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| n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆 | |
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217
unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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218
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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219
abiding
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| adj.永久的，持久的，不变的 | |
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220
transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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221
emulation
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| n.竞争；仿效 | |
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222
dispositions
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| 安排( disposition的名词复数 )； 倾向； （财产、金钱的）处置； 气质 | |
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