music. That is worthy of notice. In one of her _Lettres d'un voyageur_,
she celebrates Liszt attacking the _Dies irae_ on the Fribourg organ.
She devotes another letter to the praise of Meyer-beer. She has analyzed
the different forms of musical emotion in several of her books. One of
the ideas dear to romanticism was that of the union and fusion of all
the arts. The writer can, and in a certain way he ought, to produce
with words the same effects that the painter does with colours and the
sculptor with lines. We all know how much literature romantic painters
and sculptors have put into their art. The romantic writers were less
inclined to accord the same welcome to music as to the plastic arts.
Theophile Gautier is said to have exclaimed that music was "the most
disagreeable and the dearest of all the arts." Neither Lamartine, Hugo,
nor any other of the great writers of that period was influenced by
music. Musset was the first one to be impassioned by it, and this may
have been as much through his dandyism as from conviction.
_Fille de la douleur, Harmonie, Harmonie,
Langue que fiour l'amour invents le ginie,
Qui nous viens d'Italie, et qui lui vins des cieux,
Douce langue du coeur, la seule ou la pensee,
Cette vierge craintive et d'une ombre ofensie,
Passe en gardant son voile et sans craindre les eux,
Qui sait ce qu'un enfant peut entendre et peut dire
Dans tes soupirs divins nes de l'air qu'il respire,
Tristes comme son coeur et doux comme sa voix?_
George Sand, who agreed with Musset, claimed for "the most beautiful
of all the arts," the honour of being able to paint "all the shades
of sentiment and all the phases of passion." "Music," she says, "can
express everything. For describing scenes of nature it has ideal colours
and lines, neither exact nor yet too minute, but which are all the more
vaguely and delightfully poetical."(31)
(31) Eleventh _Lettre d'un voyageur_: To Giacomo Meyerbeer.
As examples of music in literature we have George Sand's phrase, more
lyrical and musical than picturesque. We have, too, the gentle, soothing
strophes of Sully Prudhomme and the vague melody of the Verlaine songs:
"_De la musique avant toute chose_." It would be absurd to exaggerate
the influence exercised by George Sand, and to attribute to her an
importance which does not belong to her, over poetical evolution. It is
only fair to say, though, that music, which was looked upon suspiciously
for so long a time by classical writers of sane and sure taste, has
completely invaded our present society, so that we are becoming more
and more imbued with it. George Sand's predilection for modern art is
another feature which makes her one of us, showing that her tendencies
were very marked for things of the present day.
VII
THE HUMANITARIAN DREAM
PIERRE LEROUX--SOCIALISTIC NOVELS
Hitherto we have seen George Sand put into her work her sufferings,
her protests as a woman, and her dreams as an artist. But the
nineteenth-century writer did not confine his ambitions to this modest
task. He belonged to a corporation which counted among its members
Voltaire and Rousseau. The eighteenth-century philosophers had changed
the object of literature. Instead of an instrument of analysis, they
had made of it a weapon for combat, an incomparable weapon for attacking
institutions and for overthrowing governments. The fact is, that from
the time of the Restoration we shall scarcely meet with a single writer,
from the philosopher to the vaudevillist, and from the professor to the
song-maker, who did not wish to act as a torch on the path of humanity.
Poets make revolutions, and show Plato how wrong he was in driving them
away from his Republic. Sophocles was appointed a general at Athens for
having written a good tragedy, and so novelists, dramatists, critics and
makers of puns devoted themselves to making laws. George Sand was too
much a woman of her times to keep aloof from such a movement. We shall
now have to study her in her socialistic _role_.
We can easily imagine on what side her sympathies were. She had always
been battling with institutions, and it seemed to her that institutions
were undoubtedly in the wrong. She had proved that there was a great
deal of suffering in the world, and as human nature is good at bottom,
she decided that society was all wrong. She was a novelist, and she
therefore considered that the most satisfactory solutions are those in
which imagination and feeling play a great part. She also considered
that the best politics are those which are the most like a novel. We
must now follow her, step by step, along the various roads leading to
Utopia. The truth is, that in that great manufactory of systems and that
storehouse of panaceas which the France of Louis-Philippe had become,
the only difficulty was to choose between them all.
The first, in date, of the new gospels was that of the Saint-Simonians.
When George Sand arrived in Paris, Saint-Simonism was one of the
curiosities offered to astonished provincials. It was a parody of
religion, but it was organized in a church with a Father in two persons,
Bazard and Enfantin. The service took place in a _bouis-bouis_. The
costume worn consisted of white trousers, a red waistcoat and a blue
tunic. On the days when the Father came down from the heights of
Menilmontant with his children, there was great diversion for the people
in the street. An important thing was lacking in the organization of the
Saint-Simonians. In order to complete the "sacerdotal couple," a woman
was needed to take her place next the Father. A Mother was asked for
over and over again. It was said that she would soon appear, but she was
never forthcoming. Saint-Simon had tried to tempt Madame de Stael.
"I am an extraordinary man," he said to her, "and you are just as
extraordinary as a woman. You and I together would have a still more
extraordinary child." Madame de Stael evidently did not care to take
part in the manufacture of this prodigy. When George Sand's first novels
appeared, the Saint-Simonians were full of hope. This was the woman they
had been waiting for, the free woman, who having meditated on the lot of
her sisters would formulate the Declaration of the rights and duties
of woman. Adolphe Gueroult was sent to her. He was the editor of the
_Opinion nationale_. George Sand had a great fund of common sense,
though, and once more the little society awaited the Mother in vain. It
was finally decided that she should be sought for in the East. A mission
was organized, and messengers were arrayed in white, as a sign of the
vow of chastity, with a pilgrim's staff in their hand. They begged as
they went along, and slept sometimes outdoors, but more often at the
police-station. George Sand was not tempted by this kind of maternity,
but she kept in touch with the Saint-Simonians. She was present at
one of their meetings at Menilmontant. Her published _Correspondance_
contains a letter addressed by her to the Saint-Simonian family in
Paris. As a matter of fact, she had received from it, on the 1st of
January, 1836, a large collection of presents. There were in all no less
than fifty-nine articles, among which were the following: a dress-box, a
pair of boots, a thermometer, a carbine-carrier, a pair of trousers and
a corset.
Saint-Simonism was universally jeered at, but it is quite a mistake to
think that ridicule is detrimental in France. On the contrary, it is an
excellent means of getting anything known and of spreading the knowledge
of it abroad; it is in reality a force. Saint-Simonism is at the root
of many of the humanitarian doctrines which were to spring up from its
ashes. One of its essential doctrines was the diffusion of the soul
throughout all humanity, and another that of being born anew. Enfantin
said: "I can feel St. Paul within me. He lives within me." Still
another of its doctrines was that of the rehabilitation of the flesh.
Saint-Simonism proclaimed the equality of man and woman, that of
industry and art and science, and the necessity of a fresh repartition
of wealth and of a modification of the laws concerning property. It also
advocated increasing the attributions of the State considerably. It was,
in fact, the first of the doctrines offering to the lower classes,
by way of helping them to bear their wretched misery, the ideal of
happiness here below, lending a false semblance of religion to the
desire for material well-being. George Sand had one vulnerable point,
and that was her generosity. By making her believe that she was working
for the outcasts of humanity, she could be led anywhere, and this was
what happened.
Among other great minds affected by the influence of Saint-Simonism, it
is scarcely surprising to find Lamennais. When George Sand first knew
him, he was fifty-three years of age. He had broken with Rome, and
was the apocalyptic author of _Paroles d'un croyant_. He put into his
revolutionary faith all the fervour of his loving soul, a soul that
had been created for apostleship, and to which the qualification of "a
disaffected cathedral" certainly applied.
After the famous trial, Liszt took him to call on George Sand in her
attic. This was in 1835. She gives us the following portrait of him:
"Monsieur de Lamennais is short, thin, and looks ill. He seems to have
only the feeblest breath of life in his body, but how his face beams.
His nose is too prominent for his small figure and for his narrow
face. If it were not for this nose out of all proportion, he would be
handsome. He was very easily entertained. A mere nothing made him laugh,
and how heartily he laughed."(32) It was the gaiety of the seminarist,
for Monsieur Feli always remained the _Abbe_ de Lamennais. George Sand
had a passionate admiration for him. She took his side against any one
who attacked him in her third _Lettre d'un voyageur_, in her _Lettre a
Lerminier_, and in her article on _Amshaspands et Darvands_. This is
the title of a book by Lamennais. The extraordinary names refer to the
spirits of good and evil in the mythology of Zoroaster. George Sand
proposed to pronounce them _Chenapans et Pedants_. Although she had
a horror of journalism, she agreed to write in Lamennais' paper, _Le
Monde._
(32) _Histoire de ma vie._
"He is so good and I like him so much," she writes, "that I would give
him as much of my blood and of my ink as he wants."(33) She did not have
to give him any of her blood, and he did not accept much of her ink. She
commenced publishing her celebrated _Lettres a Marcie_ in _Le Monde_. We
have already spoken of these letters, in order to show how George Sand
gradually attenuated the harshness of her early feminism.
(33) _Correspondance_: To Jules Janin, February 15, 1837.
These letters alarmed Lamennais, nevertheless, and she was obliged to
discontinue them. Feminism was the germ of their disagreement. Lamennais
said: "She does not forgive St. Paul for having said: 'Wives, obey your
husbands.'" She continued to acknowledge him as "one of our saints,"
but "the father of our new Church" gradually broke away from her and
her friends, and expressed his opinion about her with a severity and
harshness which are worthy of note.
Lamennais' letters to Baron de Vitrolles contain many allusions to
George Sand, and they are most uncomplimentary.
"I hear no more about Carlotta" (Madame Marliani), he writes, "nor about
George Sand and Madame d'Agoult. I know there has been a great deal of
quarrelling among them. They are as fond of each other as Lesage's two
_diables_, one of whom said: 'That reconciled us, we kissed each other,
and ever since then we have been mortal enemies.'" He also tells that
there is a report that in her novel, entitled _Horace_, she has given
as unflattering a portrait as possible of her dear, sweet, excellent
friend, Madame d'Agoult, the _Arabella_ of the _Lettres d'un voyageur_.
"The portraits continue," he writes, "all true to life, without being
like each other." In the same book, _Horace_, there is a portrait
of Mallefille, who was beloved "during one quarter of the moon," and
abhorred afterwards. He concludes the letter with the following words:
"Ah, how fortunate I am to be forgotten by those people! I am not afraid
of their indifference, but I should be afraid of their attentions. . . .
Say what you like, my dear friend, those people do not tempt me at all.
Futility and spitefulness dissolved in a great deal of _ennui_, is a
bad kind of medicine." He then goes on to make fun, in terms that it is
difficult to quote, of the silly enthusiasm of a woman like Marliani,
and even of George Sand, for the theories of Pierre Leroux, of which
they did not understand the first letter, but which had taken their
fancy. George Sand may have looked upon Lamennais as a master, but it is
very evident that she was not his favoured disciple.
It was due to his teaching that George Sand obtained her definite
ideas about Catholicism, or rather against it. She was decidedly its
adversary, because she held that the Church had stifled the spirit of
liberty, that it had thrown a veil over the words of Christ, and that it
was the obstacle in the way of holy equality. What she owed specially,
though, to Lamennais was another lesson, of quite another character.
Lamennais was the man of the nineteenth century who waged the finest
battle against individualism, against "the scandal of the adoration of
man by man."(34)
(34) Compare Brunetiere, _Evolution de la poesie lyrique_,
vol. i. p. 310.
Under his influence, George Sand began to attach less importance to the
personal point of view, she ceased applying everything to herself, and
she discovered the importance of the life of others. If we study this
attentively, we shall see that a new phase now commenced in the history
of her ideas. Lamennais was the origin of this transformation, although
it is personified in another man, and that other man, was named Pierre
Leroux.
What a strange mystery it is, among so many other mysteries, that of one
mind taking possession of another mind. We have come into contact with
great minds which have made no impression on us, whilst other minds, of
secondary intelligence, perhaps, and it may be inferior to our own, have
governed us.
By the side of a Lamennais, this Pierre Leroux was a very puny
personage. He had been a compositor in a printing works, before founding
the _Globe_. This paper, in his hands, was to become an organ of
Saint-Simonism. He belonged neither to the _bourgeois_ nor to the
working-class. He was Clumsy, not well built, and had an enormous shock
of hair, which was the joy of caricaturists. He was shy and awkward, in
addition to all this. He nevertheless appeared in various _salons_,
and was naturally more or less ridiculous. In January, 1840, Beranger
writes: "You must know that our metaphysician has surrounded himself
with women, at the head of whom are George Sand and Marliani, and that,
in gilded drawing-rooms, under the light of chandeliers, he exposes his
religious principles and his muddy boots." George Sand herself made fun
of this occasionally. In a letter to Madame d'Agoult, she writes:
"He is very amusing when he describes making his appearance in your
drawing-room of the Rue Laffitte. He says: 'I was all muddy, and quite
ashamed of myself. I was keeping out of sight as much as possible in a
corner. _This lady_ came to me and talked in the kindest way possible.
She is very beautiful.'"(35)
(35) _Correspondance_: To Madame d'Agoult, October 16, 1837.
There are two features about him, then, which seem to strike every one,
his unkemptness and his shyness. He expressed his ideas, which were
already obscure, in a form which seemed to make them even more obscure.
It has been said wittily that when digging out his ideas, he buried
himself in them.(36) Later on, when he spoke at public meetings, he was
noted for the nonsense he talked in his interminable and unintelligible
harangues.
(36) P. Thureau-Dangin, _Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet._
And yet, in spite of all this, the smoke from this mind attracted George
Sand, and became her pillar of light moving on before her. His hazy
philosophy seemed to her as clear as daylight, it appealed to her heart
and to her mind, solved her doubts, and gave her tranquillity, strength,
faith, hope and a patient and persevering love of humanity. It seems as
though, with that marvellous faculty that she had for idealizing always,
she manufactured a Pierre Leroux of her own, who was finer than the real
one. He was needy, but poverty becomes the man who has ideas. He was
awkward, but the contemplative man, on coming down from the region of
thought on to our earth once more, only gropes along. He was not clear,
but Voltaire tells us that when a man does not understand his own words,
he is talking metaphysics. Chopin had personified the artist for her;
Pierre Leroux, with his words as entangled as his hair, figured now to
her as the philosopher. She saw in him the chief and the master. _Tu
duca e tu maestro_.
In February, 1844, she wrote the following extraordinary lines: "I must
tell you that George Sand is only a pale reflection of Pierre Leroux, a
fanatical disciple of the same ideal, but a disciple mute and fascinated
when listening to his words, and quite prepared to throw all her own
works into the fire, in order to write, talk, think, pray and act under
his inspiration. I am merely the popularizer, with a ready pen and
an impressionable mind, and I try to translate, in my novels, the
philosophy of the master."
The most extraordinary part about these lines is that they were
absolutely true. The whole secret of the productions of George Sand for
the next ten years is contained in these words. With Pierre Leroux and
Louis Viardot she now founded a review, _La Revue independante_, in
which she could publish, not only novels (beginning with _Horace_, which
Buloz had refused), but articles by which philosophical-socialistic
ideas could have a free course. Better still than this, the novelist
could take the watchword from the sociologist, just as Mascarilla
put Roman history into madrigals, she was able to put Pierre Leroux's
philosophy into novels.
It would be interesting to know what she saw in Pierre Leroux, and which
of his ideas she approved and preferred. One of the ideas dear to Pierre
Leroux was that of immortality, but an immortality which had very little
in common with Christianity. According to it, we should live again after
death, but in humanity and in another world. The idea of metempsychosis
was very much in vogue at this epoch. According to Jean Reynaud and
Lamennais, souls travelled from star to star, but Pierre Leroux believed
in metempsychosis on earth.
"We are not only the children and the posterity of those who have
already lived, but we are, at bottom, the anterior generations
themselves. We have gone through former existences which we do not
remember, but it may be that at times we have fragmentary reminiscences
of them."
George Sand must have been very deeply impressed by this idea. It
inspired her with _Sept cordes de la lyre_, _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_
and the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, the whole cycle of her philosophical
novels.
The _Sept cordes de la lyre_ is a dramatic poem after the manner of
_Faust_. Maitre Albertus is the old doctor conversing with Mephistocles.
He has a ward, named Helene, and a lyre. A spirit lives in this lyre.
It is all in vain that the painter, the _maestro_, the poet, the critic
endeavour to make the cords vibrate. The lyre remains dumb. Helene, even
without putting her hands on it, can draw from it magnificent harmony;
Helene is mad. All this may seem very incomprehensible to you, and I
must confess that it is so to me. Albertus himself declares: "This has a
poetical sense of a very high order perhaps, but it seems vague to me."
Personally, I am of the same opinion as Albertus. With a little effort,
I might, like any one else, be able to give you an interpretation of
this logogriph, which might appear to have something in it. I prefer
telling you frankly that I do not understand it. The author, perhaps,
did not understand it much better so that it may have been metaphysics.
I would call your attention, though, to that picture of Helene, with the
magic lyre in her hand, risking her life, by climbing to the spire of
the steeple and uttering her inspiring speech from there. Is not this
something like Solness, the builder, from the top of his tower? Like
Tolstoi, Ibsen had evidently read George Sand and had not forgotten her.
_Spiridion_ introduces us into a strange convent, in which we see the
portraits come out of their frames and roam about the cloisters. The
founder of the convent, Hebronius, lives again in the person of Father
Alexis, who is no other than Leroux.
In _Consuelo_ we have the same imagination. We have already considered
the first part of this novel, that which takes place at Venice, in the
schools of music and in the theatres of song. Who would have thought
that the charming diva, the pupil of Porpora, was to have such strange
adventures? She arrives in Bohemia, at the Chateau of Rudolstadt. She
has been warned that extraordinary things take place there. Comte Albert
de Rudolstadt is subject to nervous fits and to great lethargy. He
disappears from the chateau and then reappears, without any one seeing
him go in or out. He believes that he has been Jean Ziska, and this
is probably true. He has been present at events which took place three
hundred years previously, and he describes them. Consuelo discovers
Albert's retreat. It is a cavern hollowed out of a mountain in the
vicinity, which communicates, by means of a well, with his rooms. The
Chateau of Rudolstadt is built on the same architectural plan as Anne
Radcliffe's chateau. After staying for some time in this bewildering
place, Consuelo sets forth once more. She now meets Haydn, goes through
the Bohmer Wald with him, arrives in Venice, is introduced to Maria
Theresa, and is engaged at the Imperial Theatre. She is now recalled to
the Chateau of Rudolstadt. Albert is on his deathbed, and he marries
her _in extremis_, after telling her that he is going to leave her for a
time, but that he shall return to her on earth by a new birth. He, too,
had evidently read Pierre Leroux, and it was perhaps that which had
caused his illness.
_Consuelo_ is a novel of adventures after the style of _Gil Blas_, the
_Vie de Marianne_, and _Wilkelm Meister_. It is a historical novel, for
which we have Joseph Haydn, Maria Theresa, Baron Trenk, and the whole
history of the Hussites. It is a fantastical story with digressions
on music and on popular songs, but running through it all, with the
persistency of a fixed idea, are divagations on the subject of
earthly metempsychosis. Such, then, is this incongruous story, odd and
exaggerated, but with gleams of light and of great beauty, the reading
of which is apt to leave one weary and disturbed.
We meet with Consuelo again in another book. In those days, it was not
enough for a novel to consist of several volumes. People liked a sequel
also. _Vingt ans apres_ was the sequel to _Trois Mousquetaires_, and the
_Vicomte de Bragelonne_ was a sequel to that sequel. Our grandparents
were capable of allowing themselves to be bored to a degree which makes
us ashamed of our frivolity. The _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_ was the sequel
to _Consuelo_. As time went on, Pierre Leroux called George Sand's
attention to the study of freemasonry. In 1843, she declared that she
was plunged in it, and that it was a gulf of nonsense and uncertainties,
in which "she was dabbling courageously."