The Intimate Journal of George Sand

Edited and translated by Marie Jenney Howe. New York: John Day Co. 1929. 8vo. x + 198 pp. $3.50.

LAST year, literary France celebrated the ‘Centenary of Romanticism.’ Hooks and articles, lectures and exhibitions, have invited the public to look back to the generations of Nuits and the A nits. Unpublished memoirs and correspondence have been brought to light. Among them, The Intimate Journal of George Sand is a valuable contribution which enables the reader to penetrate more deeply into the soul of a woman who was in many respects the living symbol of what French Romanticism stands for.

Assuredly, coming after the scholarly and exhaustive works of W. Karénine, Vincent, Maurms, and several others, also after the publication of the Correspondance de Musset et de G. Sand by Decori and other collections of letters, the Journal offers no startling revelations: in its essential features we knew the picture of George Sand it affords. However, no other single book evokes her soul and her character in a more condensed and more striking manner. These pages unfold episode after episode of that stormy, cynical, moving, contradictory, but always sincere existence, from the days when George was carried away by her passion for Musset, until the years when, ‘very old, gently traversing her sixty-fifth year, the ‘good lady of Nohant waited, with a heart full of peace, the hour of her final rest.

The first pages of the Journal (1834-1835) are in the same style as many letters published by Decori: passionate, burning, disorderly, full of such a lyricism that Musset will use certain lines in the Nuits. Outbursts of love, appeals to God, humble supplications of a forsaken umoureuse. reproach, jealousy, desire, regrets — everything pours forth in volcanic torrents in the purest vein of the times.

After 1837, the Journal takes a new form: ‘Daily Conversations with the very learned and skilled Dr. Piffoel,’which is only the name given to George Sand by herself, by Liszt and other friends. Charming sketches here and there: ‘Franz’s [Liszt’s] piano is in a room on the ground floor under mine. My window, before which the lindens are swaying, is just above his window. ... I love those broken phrases which he flings from the piano, and which rest with one foot in the air, dancing off into space like little lame elves.’ At other times she discusses education, the influence of great writers, happiness, and love, over and over again. New personages appear: Adam Mickiewicz, the visionary leader, Heinrich Heine, who ‘can say diabolically clever things,’Pauline Viardot the singer, and many other friends. Friends only: no enemies are ever discussed in these ‘intimate recollections.

flic closing fragments of the Journal have a real beauty: George Sand is growing old in years; she knows the curtain will fall before long, and she looks life straight in the face, with serenity, confidence, and, despite all storms and whirlwinds, with gratitude. ‘Spring means fever, autumn means repose. Late autumn leads slowly to mistiness and sleep. . . . Now I am very old . . . [but] stronger and more active than I was in youth. I can walk farther. I can stay awake longer. My body has remained as supple as a glove.’

George Sand probably ‘sinned’ beyond the limits generally allowed to the average mortal.

' Paix et pardon (Peace and forgiveness),’ she said, when she finished sorting and collecting her correspondence with Musset. If we want to judge her once more, can we do it any better than she did hersell in a letter to a friend: ‘ To anyone who observes my life superficially, I must seem either a fool or a hypocrite. But whoever looks below the surface must see me as I really am, — very impressionable, carried away by my love of beauty, hungry for truth, faulty in judgment, often absurd and always sincere.’

ANDRÉ MORIZE