History of foreign literature XIX - early XX centuries. Last love The product behind the love theory George Sand

She wore a man's suit, smoked cigars, openly changed lovers and was involved in politics, calling herself a "communist". The descendants of French kings and itinerant actors mixed in her family. Her books, now almost forgotten, once excited the minds and delighted thousands of fans around the world. France honors the memory of this amazing woman - Amadina Aurora Lyon Dupin, known as George Sand.

Passion first. Literature.

George Sand - Gustave Flaubert: "Holy literature, as you call it, always comes second to me. I have always loved someone more than her, and my family more than anyone."

Already at the height of her fame, she often said that she hated "her craft". Literature really was for her only a craft, which, however, gave her priceless freedom. For her sake, she did not hesitate to leave a quiet life in her native estate, two children and her husband, with whom she lived for almost ten years. Admittedly, the last victim was given to her especially easily.

Until the age of thirty, she did not even think about any literary career. Almost immediately after graduating from a women's college at a Catholic monastery, at the age of eighteen, she married a young lieutenant Casemir Dudevant, settled on her estate in Nohant and soon gave birth to her first child. Relations with her husband did not work out - a rustic fellow and a typical military man, he loved simple entertainment and rude jokes. He snored over books with which his young wife hoped to intoxicate, scolded her mercilessly for the "romantic nonsense" that had been hammered into her head in the monastery, and was not attentive enough to her in bed. Her girlish ideas about sublime love and the complete unity of lovers were shattered against base reality. Increasingly, for no apparent reason, she suddenly burst into tears, complained of feeling unwell, coughed, and suspected that she alternately had consumption and cholera. He suspected her of pretending, and a rare day in their house passed without quarrels.

All this could not continue indefinitely, but the denouement came only in the winter of 1831, when Madame Dudevant packed her things, said goodbye to her bitterly crying children (by this time she had managed to give birth to a daughter) and went to Paris. It would not be entirely correct to call this a desperate step: in Paris, a young lover, the writer Jules Sando, was waiting for her, whom she managed to meet a year before visiting mutual friends. At nineteen, he did not have a roof over his head and a steady income, but Aurora was ready to endure any hardships with him. Upon arrival in the capital, she immediately found herself in the company of Sando's young friends - mostly students, who were all a little in love with her. This new state brought her into exaltation: “To live! How wonderful it is, how good! Despite sorrows, husbands, worries, debts, relatives, gossip, despite piercing sadness and boring gossip! heaven!"

Meanwhile, they needed something to exist. To get rid of the cost of expensive women's outfits and not stand out too much in the men's company, Aurora began to wear a man's dress - trousers, wide coats, hats with a brim and boots, so comfortable after narrow ladies' shoes. She was good at drawing, but how could you make money by painting portraits for fifteen francs? There were always people even poorer than she, ready to do it for five francs. Paint boxes with gouache? They paid money for it.

She tried working in the library, but it was too cold and she started coughing again. Write? And why not try? She tried to write her first novel back in Nohant, however, realizing that it was no good, she sent it to the oven. But this occupation always gave her pleasure, she kept a diary and extensive correspondence with pleasure. "I was convinced that I write quickly, easily, I can write a lot without getting tired, that my thoughts, sluggish in the brain, when I write, come to life, logically connecting with each other ..." It was up to the small - to penetrate into the literary world.

Among her acquaintances were those who could bring with the right people. In the end, she was introduced to the famous literary critic de Latouche, who invited her to write for Le Figaro. She agreed, thus beginning her literary career in journalism.

The first actual literary experience was the novel "Rose and Blanche" written jointly with Sando. Even before it was published, Aurora met her husband's stepmother in Paris, and she, shocked by her behavior and, most importantly, her intention to write books, asked her daughter-in-law what name she was going to sign her opuses with. Aurora promised her mother-in-law with a smile that the name Dudevant would not appear on the covers of her books. Lovers began to sign "J. Sando."

When, in 1832, after a trip home to Noan, she brought her second, independent novel, Indiana, the question arose of how to sign it. Jules, who had nothing to do with him, refused to put his signature. At the same time, their common pseudonym "J. Sando" has already gained some fame due to the success of the first book. Aurora and the publisher found a compromise: "Sando" turned into "Sand", and the initial "Zh." became deciphered as "Georges" - obsessed with the idea of ​​the dominance of men in literature, Aurora insisted on a male name. Thus was born George Sand and his first truly successful novel. It was followed by another, then several stories and countless articles.

She became famous, she was overwhelmed by visitors, and often, having sent them out, she managed to start writing only at night. Her lover looked at her friend, who became a popular writer, with a feeling of admiration, mixed with bitterness and writer's jealousy - he himself was not in demand by the public like Georges. She persuaded him to work, and he only complained about life: “You want me to work, I would like it too, but I can’t! I don’t have a steel spring in my head like you have! After all, you just have to press a button how the will immediately begins to act ... "

Readers and critics generally accepted her books favorably, although not without scandals - at the end of the century of romanticism, her too realistic descriptions, the shocking frankness of the heroines, their lifestyle and free-thinking were not to everyone's liking. But what could be better for an aspiring writer than a veil of light scandal? By the time she published her most sincere and, oddly enough, almost the most mature novel Lelia in 1833, where she depicted her own spiritual quest and anguish as frankly as possible, her name was already widely known in France and beyond. outside of it. They started talking about her not only as a writer, but also as a new type of woman - free, earning her own living, denying secular conventions and generally accepted norms of behavior. The conservatives showered her with ridicule and insults, the Saint-Simonists dreamed of making her their Mother of God, famous writers and musicians sought her acquaintance. She did not lose her head from the glory that had fallen on her in less than two years and tried to stay on her own.

Over a long literary career, Georges tried herself in literally all genres: love and psychological novels, religious novels, stories about secret societies and distant lands, pamphlets on corrupt officials and apologies for revolutionary figures. Today's reader will have a hard time getting past Sand's most popular novels, which were read by contemporaries - well, her books are really ill-adapted to modern tastes. But in the middle of the century, Dostoevsky and Walt Whitman were devoted admirers of her pen.

The amount of literary heritage left by her is amazing. A few months before her death in 1876, she continued to work on her seventy-first (or, if you count together those novels that she herself destroyed, ninety-first) novel. And that's not counting countless stories, plays, ten volumes of autobiographies, essays, reviews, political pamphlets, and some forty thousand letters. Today, the complete works of George Sand have 123 volumes, but even it cannot be called truly complete: it does not include hundreds of articles written by her for newspapers and magazines, and seventeen thousand letters destroyed by their addressees for fear of being compromised in the eyes of posterity.

One can only wonder how this woman, who seemed to devote twenty-four hours a day to work, managed to pass for one of the most famous mistresses of the 19th century, "Don Juan in a skirt", as her detractors called her.

Passion second. Love.

George Sand - Pietro Pagello, 1834: "Will I be your friend or slave? Do you want me or do you love me? Having satiated your passion, will you be able to thank me? If I make you happy, will you be able to say so ?. Do you know what the desire of the soul is, which no human caress can lull or tire?

Rumor attributed to George Sand love affairs with almost all the well-known writers, artists and musicians of her time. Prosper Merimee, Alfred de Musset, Fryderyk Chopin are only the loudest and "textbook" names on this list. But what many contemporaries took for Sand's promiscuity was in fact a desire to get rid of the heavy complexes that had tormented her from her youth. She was not a beauty - on the contrary, she openly considered herself to be ugly. Olive skin that had acquired an unattractive icteric tint with age, large but always sleepy eyes, high protruding cheekbones - and not an ounce of grace, which, in her own words, replaced beauty in other women. She was not a brilliant conversationalist, she preferred to listen more than speak. And finally, she was not a good mistress, who knew how to give pleasure to a man and herself to enjoy intimacy with him.

Brought up in the spirit of Rousseau's ideas, Aurora from her youth dreamed of sublime platonic love, not finding pleasure first in the rough caresses of Baron Dudevant, and then in the ardent but inept courtship of young Sando. Alfred de Musset yelled at Georges more than once in a rage that she should have become a nun. She answered him with insults for insults and did not lose hope of meeting a man someday who could awaken a real woman in her. Each time, converging with a new lover, she sincerely believed that this was love that would bring her long-awaited happiness.

But in fact, she made the same fatal mistake every time. In love, she was invariably guided by maternal instinct, choosing lovers weaker and younger than herself (for example, Alfred de Musset and Frederic Chopin were six years younger than her). Only with her big "children", as she herself called them, could she be happy. But not for long.

Her romance with Alfred de Musset began quite idyllically. Georges even, discarding her natural bashfulness, wrote to Sainte-Beuve, her old friend and mentor, who introduced her to the young poet: “I fell in love, and this time very seriously, with Alfred de Musset. This is something that I I had no idea what I didn’t even hope to find, especially in him. At first I denied this love, rejected it, refused it, and then I gave up, and I am happy that I did it. "

Georges fears were more than justified: Musset was a spoiled young man who knew fame and sensual pleasures early. Even in his youth, he became a frequenter of brothels and opium dens, while managing to maintain an innate sensitivity bordering on sentimentality. By the time of the meeting with George Sand, Musset was on the verge of suicide, mentally and physically exhausted.

The first months of their love, spent in the tiny apartment of Georges, were painted in the most iridescent colors. They had fun and fooled around like children, inventing more and more pranks. Once, Musset dressed as a maid - a short skirt, an apron, a cross around his neck - and served Georges at the table, contriving to overturn a decanter of water on the head of the philosopher Lerminier. Being a good draftsman, Alfred constantly replenished Georges' album with caricatures of their mutual friends and drawings, writing funny captions for them, in which "tears" were only for rhyme:

Georges is sitting in his little room among the flower pots, she smokes a cigar, her eyes are full of tears.

For all this cheerful turmoil, the businesslike Georges did not forget about work for a second. She jumped out of bed in the middle of the night in order to have time to write another novel by the deadline, and lectured Alfred, who did not show such zeal. He only laughed it off: “I worked all day,” he said, “in the evening I composed ten poems and drank a bottle of vodka; she drank a liter of milk and wrote half a volume.”

The end of the idyll came unexpectedly. In December 1833, the lovers went to Venice. Musset had a hard time enduring the journey, suffering from seasickness and trembling with chills and anger in the cabin, while Georges, standing on the upper deck, admired the scenery with a cigar in her mouth. Disgusting quarrels began to arise between them: Musset accused Georges of being too courageous and was never capable of delivering love pleasure. Deeply wounded, Sand retorted: so much the better, but he will not remember her in the arms of other women!

In Italy, Alfred, having announced to his companion that he was mistaken and never really loved her, again plunged into the "pernicious intoxications of the past." He drank heavily, spent his nights in Venetian brothels, and eventually came down with brain inflammation that threatened to develop into insanity. Georges was scared to death - it would be a terrible end to her love. She urgently called a young Italian doctor, Pietro Pagello, and nursed the sick Musset with him for several weeks.

As a result, Alfred recovered and found that the mistress he had abandoned found solace in the arms of his Italian doctor. Musset was furious, but what can you do - after all, he himself gave her freedom of action. They returned to Paris separately: Musset shortly after his recovery, and Georges five months later, together with Pagello, the first Letters of a Traveler, the new novel Jacques and sketches for Italian short stories. Needless to say, the kind, but rustic lover quickly got bored with her, and after a few months they parted without drama and mutual reproaches. Musset, unable to forget his unfaithful mistress, passionately insisted on starting all over again. Georges agreed, but almost immediately realized that she was mistaken. They broke up again - this time for good.

Her other equally famous romance - with the Polish composer and musician Fryderyk Chopin - was much longer. They were together for about ten years, but Chopin did not bring Sand the desired peace. When they first met, Georges did not make a great impression on the young idol of the Parisian salons. "Is she really a woman?" he asked his friends. "I'm ready to doubt it." Georges, dressed in a man's coat, with a tie, in high-heeled boots and with a constant cigar, could hardly please the romantic Chopin, who at that time suffered from unrequited love for a young blond polka. But Georges was not interested in a quick victory. She was ready to besiege the vending fortress for as long as needed. The siege took about a year and a half and ended in a convincing victory for George Sand: Chopin was absolutely subdued by the "charming Aurora" (he was the only one of all Sand's lovers who always called her by her real name).

Their unclouded happiness was marred only by the incessant cough of Chopin, who had not been in good health since childhood. On the advice of friends, they decided to leave for a while in warmer climes - in the Spanish Mallorca. At first everything went well, but soon the sunny days were replaced by the rainy season. The roof of the house, taken by Sand, turned out to be like a sieve. All things and the walls of the house themselves instantly dampened, and from the smoke of the small braziers with which they had to heat the room, Chopin began to have even more severe coughing fits. A council of local doctors diagnosed consumption.

In addition to worries for the life of his beloved, other troubles fell on Sand: the owner of the house, frightened by the illness of a Parisian, demanded that they move out. It was impossible to return to Paris under the circumstances, and the only place where Sand and Chopin could find refuge was the ancient Valldemos Monastery. The gloomy atmosphere of the monastery was not conducive to recovery, and as soon as there was a change for the better in Chopin's condition, they began to prepare for departure.

Upon their return to France, they lived for several months at the Sand estate in Nohant, and the rural air did a real miracle with Chopin. Now they could spend the winter season in Paris without fear, where their house became one of the most attractive salons, gathering fans of Chopin's innovative music and Sand's literary talent. Heine, Balzac, Delacroix, Liszt were frequent guests here. Chopin reveled in the success that was provided to him in this refined society, and Georges was sincerely proud of her Shipette, or Chopinski, as she jokingly called him.

Fryderyk always sensitively listened to the advice and opinion of Georges, who subtly felt the music and knew how to give his genius the theme of the next work. Who knows how many masterpieces he composed while she stood behind him and, putting her hand on his shoulder, whispered: "Be bolder, velvet fingers!"

But if in a creative sense this union could not be considered successful, then from a love point of view it was another collapse of Georges. After the hard trials that she had to endure in Mallorca, she became convinced that Chopin, with his fragile health and propensity for nervous attacks, was not made for love pleasures. The passion with which she stubbornly sought him for a year and a half grew into a motherly calm affection and a sense of responsibility for the life of her "third child". He, who never showed much interest in the sensual side of their relationship, at first agreed with the "treatment" that his beloved prescribed for him. But at the same time, the atmosphere in which Georges so loved to be - the atmosphere of a free, noisy salon, in which guests were not alien to jokes of a dubious nature - led him to indignation. A contemporary of Sand, who visited her, painted the following picture in a letter to a friend: “Crowds of ill-mannered men, kneeling before her, declared their love to her, puffing on tobacco and spraying saliva. One Greek said “you” to her and hugged her; some extraordinarily vulgar theatrical figure threw himself at her feet, calling her sublime. "The whims of friendship," this amazing woman then said with soft and calm contempt ... "

The refined Chopin, shocked by all this, gave her scenes of jealousy, which brought him new mental suffering. The situation was aggravated by the frequent quarrels of Fryderyk with the children of Georges, who by that time were already old enough to stop obeying a stranger to them, who was trying to impose his will on them.

Gradually, Chopin moved away from this family. There were no scenes and scandals between him and Georges - Chopin was afraid of them like fire. He stopped visiting her, and then writing to her. The last time they met by chance was in the living room of a mutual friend in March 1848. Georges wanted to speak to Frederic, but he, deadly pale, rushed out of the room. They never saw each other again - Chopin died on October 17, 1849. None of the musician's acquaintances informed the former lover of his death, so there was not even a bouquet from her on his grave.

Passion three. Cigars.

Honoré de Balzac to Eve of Hans, February 1838: "I arrived safely at Chateau Nohant on a fast Saturday, about half past seven in the evening, and found my friend George Sand in a dressing gown, smoking an afternoon cigar by the fireplace in a secluded room of enormous size."

Having abandoned the female dress and taking on a male pseudonym, George Sand considered it necessary for herself to acquire purely masculine habits. In the company of Jules Sando, almost everyone smoked cigars, and Georges was no exception. Most likely, at first it was just a kind of gesture - a risky challenge to society that condemned "such" women, and another successful touch in her new extravagant image. But gradually she got used to it: "The good Havana is one of the best inventions of mankind that I know," she wrote in her diary. after the last puff, I can not help but admire the work I have done, which brought me half an hour of real pleasure.

The surroundings were of a different opinion. In a memorandum of claims drawn up by Casemir Dudevant on the eve of his divorce proceedings with Aurora, he assigned smoking a special role in the moral decay of his wife: "1835: Antipathy between spouses; Madame Dudevant began to behave like a man, began to smoke, swear, dress in a man's dress and lost all the beauty of the female ... " Georges retorted that cigars and coffee - the only thing that supports her "miserable inspiration at two hundred francs a sheet."

Despite public censure, Sand was not going to give in, sometimes smoking up to seven cigars a day. Even the quivering Chopin had to come to terms with this, for the sake of which Georges abandoned the men's suit. A contemporary of Sand, a Russian musician who was staying in Paris, indignantly recalled how, at one of the receptions, Georges, taking out a cigar, commandingly said to the great composer: “Frederick, fire!”, And he rushed with all his might for matches ...

In memory of the famous writer, the society of women - lovers of cigars, created in California in 1992, bears her name. The great aficionado George Sand would certainly have been delighted with this fact.

The material for the work was prepared by Ksenia Yakovleva

George Sand (1804-1876)

In the early 30s of the XIX century, a writer appeared in France, whose real name, Aurora Dudevant (née Dupin), is rarely known to anyone. She entered literature under the pseudonym George Sand.

Aurora Dupin belonged to a very noble family on her father, but on her mother she was of democratic origin. After the death of her father, Aurora was brought up in her grandmother's family, and then in a monastery boarding school. Shortly after graduating from the boarding house, she married Baron Casimir Dudevant. This marriage was unhappy; convinced that her husband was a stranger and a distant person to her, the young woman left him, leaving her estate Noan, and moved to Paris. Her situation was very difficult, there was nothing to live on. She decided to try her hand at literature. In Paris, one of her countrymen, the writer Jules Sando, suggested that she write a novel together. This novel, Rose and Blanche, was published under the collective pseudonym Jules Sand and was a great success.

The publisher ordered Aurora Dudevant a new novel, demanding that she keep her pseudonym. But she alone had no right to a collective pseudonym; changing her name in it, she retained the surname Sand. This is how the name George Sand appears, under which she entered literature. Her first novel was Indiana (1832). Following him, other novels appear (Valentina, 1832; Lelia, 1833; Jacques, 1834). During her long life (seventy-two years), she published about ninety novels and short stories.

For the majority, it was unusual that a woman writes and publishes her works, exists on literary earnings. There were a lot of all sorts of stories and anecdotes about her, very often without any basis.

George Sand entered literature somewhat later than Hugo, in the early 1930s; the heyday of her work falls on the 30s and 40s.

First novels. George Sand's first novel, Indiana, brought her well-deserved fame. Of the early novels, it is undoubtedly the best. This is a typical romantic novel, in the center of which is an "exceptional", "incomprehensible" personality. But the author manages to expand the scope of the romantic novel through interesting and deep observations of modern life. Balzac, who was his first critic, drew attention to this side of the work. He wrote that this book is "a reaction of truth against fiction, of our time against the Middle Ages... I don't know anything written simpler, more subtle" 1 .

At the center of the novel is an Indiana Creole family drama. She is married to Colonel Delmare, a rude and despotic man. Indiana becomes infatuated with a young social dandy, frivolous, frivolous Raymond. Both the marriage to Delmar and the infatuation with Raymond would have brought Indiana to ruin if not for the third person who saves her; this is the main character of the novel - her cousin Ralph.

At first glance, Ralph is an eccentric, an intolerable person with a closed character, embittered, whom no one likes. But it turns out that Ralph is a deep nature and that he alone is truly attached to Indiana. When Indiana discovered and appreciated this true deep love, she came to terms with life. Lovers retire from society, live in complete solitude, and even their best friends consider them dead.

When George Sand wrote Indiana, she had a broad goal in mind. Bourgeois criticism stubbornly saw only one question in the work of George Sand - namely, the women's question. He certainly occupies a large place in her work. In "Indiana" the author recognizes a woman's right to break family ties if they are painful for her, and to resolve the family issue as her heart tells her.

However, it is easy to see that the problems of George Sand's creativity are not limited to the women's issue. She herself wrote in the preface to the novel that her novel was directed against "tyranny in general." “The only feeling that guided me was a clearly conscious ardent disgust for crude, animal slavery. Indiana is a protest against tyranny in general."

The most realistic figures in the novel are Colonel Delmar, Indiana's husband, and Raymond. Delmare, although honest in his own way, is rude, soulless and callous. It embodies the worst aspects of the Napoleonic military. It is very important to note that the author connects the moral characterization of the hero here with the social one. In the time of George Sand, among very many writers there was an erroneous view of Napoleon as a hero, the liberator of France. George Sandke idealizes Napoleon; she shows that Delmar is despotic, petty and rude, and that he is precisely as a representative of the military environment.

Two tendencies stand out clearly in the novel: the desire to show the Indiana family drama as typical against the background of the social relations of that era and at the same time indicate the only possible romantic way out for it - in loneliness, in distance from society, in contempt for the rude "crowd".

In this contradiction, the weakest aspects of the romantic method of George Sand, who in this period does not know any other solution to the social issue, except for the departure of her heroes from all social evils into their personal, intimate world, affected.

The motif of the individual's romantic protest against the prevailing bourgeois morality reaches its highest point in the novel Lelia (1833).

For the first time in literature, a female demonic image appears. Lelia is disappointed in life, she questions the rationality of the universe, God himself.

The novel "Lelia" reflected in itself those searches and doubts that the writer herself experienced during this period. In one letter, she said about this novel: “I put more of myself into Lelia than into any other book.”

Compared with the novel "Indiana", "Lelia" loses a lot: the image of the social environment is narrowed here. Everything is focused on the world of Lelia herself, on her tragedy and death as a person who does not find the meaning of life.

A turning point in the worldview J. Sand. New ideas and heroes. In the mid-1930s, an important turning point took place in the worldview and work of J. Sand. George Sand begins little by little to realize that her romantic hero-individualist, standing, as it were, outside of society and opposing himself to it, no longer meets the requirements of life. Life went forward, put forward new questions, and in connection with this, a new hero had to appear.

The work of J. Sand developed already after the July Revolution, when the French bourgeoisie triumphed in complete victory. The labor movement in France in the 1930s acquired a very acute character. During the 1930s, a series of uprisings broke out: the Lyon uprising of the workers of 1831, the uprising in Paris in 1832, then the Lyon uprising of 1834, the uprising in Paris of 1839. The labor question attracted the widest public attention; it has also found its way into the literature. Thus, the very historical situation was such that it forced us to reconsider the problem of romantic individualism. The masses, the working class, and not the individual, entered the arena of struggle against social injustice. The impotence of a solitary individual protest became more and more evident.

Already in the middle of the 1930s, George Sand felt that the principle of non-interference in public and political life, which she had preached until now, was vicious and that it needed to be resolutely reconsidered. “Non-intervention is selfishness and cowardice,” she writes in one letter.

Her further movement along this path is associated with the names of two utopians - Pierre Leroux and Lamennet, with whom George Sand was personally connected and whose teachings had a strong influence on her.

The doctrine of utopian socialism arose at the very beginning of the 19th century. The utopians Saint-Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen were in many ways still associated with the Enlightenment. From the Enlighteners, they learned the basic erroneous position that for the triumph of social justice on earth it is enough to convince a person, his mind. Therefore, they taught, it is impossible to foresee the moment of the advent of socialism; it will triumph when the human mind discovers it. Engels writes: "Socialism for all of them is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and one has only to discover it for it to conquer the whole world with its own power" 2 .

In The Communist Manifesto, the utopians are characterized as follows: “The creators of these systems already see the contradictions of classes, as well as the influence of destructive elements within the dominant society itself. But they do not see in the proletariat any historical initiative, any political movement characteristic of it. These mistakes of the utopians are explained historically.

“Immature capitalist production, immature class relations were also matched by immature theories,” wrote Engels. The utopians could not yet understand the historical role of the working class and denied it any historical activity. Hence the main mistake of the utopians, which was that they denied the revolutionary struggle.

But Marx and Engels pointed out that for all the imperfections and fallacies of the utopian systems, they also had great merits: already in the first French revolution they saw not only the nobility and the bourgeoisie, but also the propertyless class. The fate of this poorest and most numerous class is what interests Saint-Simon in the first place.

Pierre Leroux and Lamennet were followers of Saint-Simon, but their teaching appeared in different historical conditions, in conditions of ever deeper class contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. During this period, the denial of the historical role of the working class and the revolutionary struggle was already of a reactionary character. The improvement of the position of the exploited classes, in their opinion, was possible only on a Christian basis. The preaching of religion becomes their main goal.

"Oras". Pierre Leroux had a particularly strong influence on George Sand. Together with him, she published the magazine Independent Review, which began to appear in 1841, and in the same year Horace, one of her best novels, is published in it.

In this novel, her former romantic hero was severely criticized and exposed. In the image of Horace, the romantic "chosen" nature is brilliantly parodied. The usual romantic situation is preserved, but it is given in a parody.

George Sand mercilessly exposes this "chosen nature." She mocks Horace, ridiculing his complete failure in everything. Whatever Horace undertakes, he discovers his bankruptcy. As a writer, he is a complete fiasco; failure befalls him when trying to become a secular lion. In love, he turns out to be a scoundrel, in political struggle, a coward. Horace has only one desire - to exalt himself by all means. He always plays - sometimes in love, then in republicanism. Having learned that his republican beliefs require not only chatter, but also sacrifice, he quickly changes them, proving that fighting on the barricades is the lot of inferior people. However, this does not prevent him from dreaming about the time when he will die like a hero; Anticipating this, Horace writes his own epitaph in verse beforehand.

Horace is a vivid typical image. In his person, J. Sand exposed the bourgeois young people of that time, who were ready to make a career for themselves at any cost, having nothing in their souls except the ability to chat.

A society where the power of money reigns supreme puts countless temptations in the way of young people: wealth, fame, luxury, success, worship - all this was acquired by speculating on one's convictions, selling one's honor and conscience.

It is on this slippery slope that Horace enters, like the hero of Indiana Raymond, and quickly and steadily rolls down.

The typicality of this image was pointed out by Herzen, who enthusiastically spoke about this novel in his diary of 1842: “I greedily ran through“ Horace ”by J. Sand. A great work, quite artistic and profound in meaning. Horace is a face that is purely contemporary to us... How many, having descended into the depths of their souls, will not find in themselves much of Horas? Bragging about feelings that do not exist, suffering for the people, the desire for strong passions, high-profile deeds and complete failure when it comes down to it.

Novels of the 40s. Thus, the teaching of the utopian socialists rendered George Sand an important service in the development of her social outlook. From narrow themes of a personal nature, she moves on to social topics. Exposing the remnants of feudalism, capitalist slavery, and the corrupting role of money now occupies one of the first places in her best social novels of the 1940s (Consuelo, The Wandering Apprentice, Monsieur Antoine's Sin, The Miller of Anjibo).

But we must not forget that the ideas of utopian socialism strongly influenced George Sand and their negative side.

George Sand, following the utopians, denied the revolutionary struggle. The failure of her utopian ideas reveals itself most of all when she tries to give some concrete, practical program for the realization of socialism. She, like the Utopians, believed above all in the great power of example. Many of its heroes are reformers, and their specific actions are very naive; more often than not, some chance comes to the aid of the hero. Such is the hero of the novel The Sin of Monsieur Antoine by Emile Cardonnet. On the dowry received for Gilberte, Emil decides to arrange a labor association organized on the principle of free labor and equality. Emil dreams: "In some empty and bare steppe, transformed by my efforts, I would establish a colony of people living with each other like brothers and loving me like a brother."

In the novel The Countess Rudolstadt, George Sand tries to draw a little more concretely the fighters for a new, happy society. She depicts here the secret society of the "Invisibles"; its members conduct extensive underground work; no one can see them, and at the same time they are everywhere. Thus, there are no longer only dreams, but also some practical actions. On what principles is such a secret society organized? When Consuelo is initiated into the society of the Invisibles, she is told the purpose of this society. “We,” says the initiator, “depict the warriors going to conquer the promised land and the ideal society.”

The teachings of the "Invisibles" include the teachings of Huss, Luther, Masons, Christianity, Voltairianism and a number of different systems, one of which fundamentally denies the other. All this testifies to the fact that for J. Sand herself it was extremely unclear what principles should have formed the basis of such a secret society.

The novel "Countess Rudolstadt" is the most striking indicator of the fallacy of the views and positions of the utopian socialists, under whose influence Georges was; Sand. Ideological impotence and utopianism also affected the artistic side of the novel. This is one of her weakest works.

It has a lot of mysticism, secrets, miraculous transformations, disappearances; here are dungeons in which dried corpses, bones, instruments of torture, etc. are hidden.

The strength of George Sand is not in these less than successful attempts to realize his utopian ideal in artistic images. Democratic folk images - this is where the greatest strength of the writer was manifested: this is the best that she created.

Sympathy and compassion for the oppressed people are imbued with her best novels. She managed to find living images in which her social sympathies were clothed.

In the novel Horas, she contrasted the heroes of the workers with the protagonist, in whose face she exposed bourgeois careerism, corruption and immorality. This is Laravinier and Paul Arcene. Participants in the Republican uprising of 1832, they were both dangerously wounded during the Battle of Saint-Merry. These are folk heroes who, in contrast to Horace, never talk about heroism, do not take any poses, but, on the other hand, when necessary, sacrifice their lives without hesitation.

The same noble worker, endowed with a high sense of democratic honor, is depicted in the hero of the novel The Traveling Apprentice, Pierre Hugenin.

One of the best images among George Sand's democratic heroes is Consuelo, the heroine of the novel of the same name. Consuelo is the daughter of a simple gypsy, a wonderful singer. Not only her voice is beautiful, but also her whole moral character. The poor, lonely, defenseless girl has such strength of character, such courage and fortitude that she is able to withstand the most cruel and merciless enemies. She is not afraid of any trials, nothing can break her courage: neither prison, nor the despotism of Frederick of Prussia, nor the persecution of her enemies.

Like all democratic heroes in George Sand, Consuelo has a plebeian pride: she leaves the castle of Rudolstadt despite the fact that she becomes the wife of Albert Rudolstadt.

You can name a number of positive images of the people in the works of George Sand. These are the worker Huguenin (“The Traveling Apprentice”), the miller Louis (“The Miller from Anzhibo”), the peasant Jean Japplou (“The Sin of Monsieur Antoine”), this is a whole series of heroes and heroines from her peasant stories (“Little Fadette”, “Damn Swamp " etc.). True, in the depiction of folk heroes, J. Sand remains in romantic positions; she consciously idealizes these heroes, turns them into bearers of abstract goodness and truth, thus depriving them of typical expressiveness.

But it is important that, while exposing social injustice, despotism, the lack of rights of the people, George Sand at the same time asserts that all the best, healthy comes only from the people and that the salvation of society is in it. The people have such qualities as an innate sense of justice, disinterestedness, honesty, love for nature and work; these are the qualities, according to George Sand, and should bring health improvement to social life.

The merit of George Sand is indisputable: she introduced a new hero into literature and was among the few writers who contributed to the fact that this new democratic hero received citizenship rights in literature. This is the social pathos of her work.

Engels ranked George Sand among those writers who made an important revolution in literature. He wrote: “The place of kings and princes, who were previously the heroes of such works, is now beginning to be occupied by the poor, the contemptible class, whose life and fate, joys and sufferings constitute the content of novels ... this is a new direction among writers, to which Georges belongs Sand, Eugene Xu and Boz (Dickens), is undoubtedly a sign of the times” 3 .

The February Revolution of 1848 captures George Sand in the maelstrom of its events. She is on the side of the rebellious people. By editing the Bulletin of the Republic, she is in opposition to the very moderate majority of the provisional government, demanding a republic and better working conditions; she declared that if the provisional government did not ensure the triumph of democracy, the people had no choice but to declare their will again.

During this period, J. Sand closely associated the political struggle with his work; in her opinion, literature should become one of the areas of the common struggle. More and more often, in her theoretical works, the idea appears that an artist who lives alone, in his own closed sphere, and does not breathe the same air with his era, is doomed to sterility.

It was at this time that George Sand attacked the theory of "art for art's sake" with particular passion. For her, this formula does not make any sense. Indeed, pedantry has never gone so far in its absurdity as in this theory of "art for art's sake": after all, this theory does not respond to anything, is not based on anything, and no one in the world, including its heralds and opponents, could never put it into practice.

But the further development of revolutionary events and the deepening of contradictions in the revolution of 1848 have a negative impact on George Sand. Her former revolutionary enthusiasm is replaced by confusion.

Disappointment in the revolution, a misunderstanding of the ways in which the revolutionary movement should go, because she did not go further than the ideas of the utopians, lead her to refuse any participation in social life, and this negatively affects her work, manifesting itself as a decrease in the ideological and artistic nature of her later works ( "Valvedr", "Marquis Wilmer" and many others).

Much in the work of J. Sand belongs to the past. The weaknesses of her utopian views and artistic method did not escape the gaze of the brilliant Russian critic Belinsky, who in general highly appreciated J. Sand.

But her best works do not lose their significance for us either: they excite with their democracy, optimism, their love for the working man.

Notes.

1. Sat. "Balzac on Art". M. - L., "Art", 1941, pp. 437 - 438.

2. K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 19, p. 201.

3. K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 1, p. 542.

One of the winter evenings we gathered outside the city. Dinner, at first cheerful, like any feast that unites true friends, was overshadowed at the end by the story of one doctor, who in the morning ascertained a violent death. One of the local farmers, whom we all considered an honest and sane person, killed his wife in a fit of jealousy. After the impatient questions that always arise in tragic incidents, after explanations and interpretations, as usual, discussions began on the details of the case, and I was surprised to hear how it aroused disputes between people who in many other cases agreed in views, feelings and principles.

One said that the killer acted in full consciousness, being sure that he was right; another argued that a mild-tempered person could only be dealt with in this way under the influence of a momentary insanity. The third shrugged his shoulders, finding it base to kill a woman, no matter how guilty she was, while his interlocutor considered it low to leave her alive after an obvious infidelity. I will not pass on to you all the contradictory theories that arose and were discussed about the eternally insoluble question: the moral right of a husband to a criminal wife from the point of view of law, society, religion and philosophy. All this was discussed with fervour, and, not seeing eye to eye, began the argument again. Someone remarked, laughing, that honor would not prevent him from killing even such a wife, about whom he did not care at all, and made the following original remark:

Make a law, he said, that would oblige a deceived husband to cut off in public the head of his criminal wife, and I bet that every one of you who now speaks of himself implacable will rebel against such a law.

One of us did not take part in the dispute. It was Mr. Sylvester, a very poor old man, kind, courteous, with a sensitive heart, an optimist, a modest neighbor, at whom we laughed a little, but whom we all loved for his good-natured character. This old man was married and had a beautiful daughter. His wife died, having squandered a huge fortune; daughter did even worse. Trying in vain to wrest her from her depravity, Monsieur Sylvester, being fifty years old, provided her with his surviving last means to deprive her of a pretext for vile speculation, but she neglected this sacrifice, which he considered necessary to make her for his own honor. He went to Switzerland, where he lived under the name of Sylvester for ten years, completely forgotten by those who knew him in France. He was later found near Paris, in a country house, where he lived remarkably modestly, spending three hundred francs of his annual income, the fruits of his labor and savings abroad. Finally, he was persuaded to spend the winter with Mr. and Mrs. ***, who especially loved and respected him, but he became so passionately attached to solitude that he returned to it as soon as the buds appeared on the trees. He was an ardent hermit and was known as an atheist, but in fact he was a very religious person who created a religion for himself of his own accord and adhered to the philosophy that is spread a little everywhere. In a word, despite the attention that his family showed him, the old man was not distinguished by a particularly high and brilliant mind, but he was noble and sympathetic, with serious, sensible and firm views. He was compelled to express his own opinion after having refused for a long time under the pretext of incompetence in this matter, he confessed that he had been married twice and both times unhappy in family life. He did not say anything more about himself, but, wanting to get rid of the curious, he said the following:

Of course, adultery is a crime because it breaks an oath. I find this crime equally serious for both sexes, but both for one and for the other in some case, which I will not tell you, there is no way to avoid it. Let me be a casuist about strict morality and call adultery only adultery, not caused by the one who is its victim, and premeditated by the one who commits it. In this case, the unfaithful spouse deserves punishment, but what punishment will you apply when the one who believes it, unfortunately, is himself a responsible person. There must be a different solution for both one and the other side.

Which? shouted from all sides. - You are very inventive if you found it!

Maybe I haven't found it yet, - Mr. Sylvester replied modestly, - but I have been looking for it for a long time.

Tell me what do you think is the best?

I always wished and tried to find the punishment that would act on morality.

What is this separation?

Contempt?

Even less.

Hatred?

Everyone looked at each other; some laughed, others were perplexed.

I seem mad or stupid to you,” Mr. Sylvester remarked calmly. “Well, friendship used as a punishment can affect the morals of those who can repent… It's too long to explain: it's already ten o'clock, and I don't want to disturb my masters. I ask permission to leave.

He did as he said, and there was no way to keep him. No one paid much attention to his words. We thought that he got out of difficulties by saying a paradox, or, like an ancient sphinx, wanting to disguise his impotence, asked us a riddle that he himself did not understand. I understood Sylvester's riddle later. It is very simple, and I will even say that it is extremely simple and possible, but meanwhile, in order to explain it, he had to go into details that seemed instructive and interesting to me. A month later, I wrote down what he told me in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. ***. I do not know how I earned his trust and got the opportunity to be among his closest listeners. Perhaps I became especially sympathetic to him as a result of my desire, without a preconceived goal, to know his opinion. Perhaps he felt the need to pour out his soul and hand over into some faithful hands those seeds of experience and charity that he had acquired through the hardships of his life. But be that as it may, and whatever in itself this confession may be, that is all that I could recall from the narration heard over the course of long hours. This is not a novel, but rather a report of analyzed events, presented patiently and conscientiously. From a literary point of view, it is uninteresting, not poetic, and affects only the moral and philosophical side of the reader. I ask his forgiveness for not treating him this time to a more scientific and refined meal. The narrator, whose goal is not to show his talent, but to express his thought, is like a botanist who brings not rare plants from a winter walk, but grass that he was lucky to find. This blade of grass delights neither the eye, nor the smell, nor the taste, but meanwhile, one who loves nature appreciates it and will find material for study in it. M. Sylvester's story may seem dull and devoid of embellishment, but nevertheless his listeners liked it for its frankness and simplicity; I even know that sometimes he seemed dramatic and beautiful to me. Listening to him, I always remembered the wonderful definition of Renan, who said that the word is "a simple garment of thought and all its elegance lies in complete harmony with the idea that can be expressed." In the case of art, "everything should serve beauty, but what is deliberately used for decoration is bad."

I think that Mr. Sylvester was filled with this truth, because he managed to capture our attention during his simple story. Unfortunately, I am not a stenographer and I convey his words as best I can, trying to carefully follow the thoughts and actions, and therefore I irretrievably lose their peculiarity and originality.

He began in a rather casual tone, almost lively, for, despite the blows of fate, his character remained cheerful. Perhaps he did not expect to tell us his story in detail and thought to bypass those facts that he considered unnecessary for proof. As his story progressed, he began to think differently, or else, carried away by truthfulness and recollection, he decided not to cross out or soften anything.

She preferred the ups and downs of the writer's profession to the measured life of the mistress of the estate. Her works were dominated by the ideas of freedom and humanism, and passions raged in her soul. While readers idolized the novelist, advocates of morality considered Sand the personification of universal evil. Throughout her life, Georges defended herself and her work, shattering ossified ideas about how a woman should look like.

Childhood and youth

Amandine Aurora Lucile Dupin was born on July 1, 1804 in Paris, France. The writer's father, Maurice Dupin, comes from a noble family, who preferred a military career to an idle existence. The novelist's mother, Antoinette-Sophie-Victoria Delaborde, the bird-catcher's daughter, had a bad reputation and made a living by dancing. Due to the origin of the mother, aristocratic relatives did not recognize Amandine for a long time. The death of the head of the family turned Sand's life upside down.

Dupin (the grandmother of the writer), who had previously refused to meet with her granddaughter, recognized Aurora after the death of her beloved son, but she still found a common language with her daughter-in-law. There were often conflicts between women. Sophie Victoria was afraid that after another quarrel, the elderly countess, to spite her, would deprive Amandine of her inheritance. In order not to tempt fate, she left the estate, leaving her daughter in the care of her mother-in-law.

Sand's childhood cannot be called happy: she rarely communicated with her peers, and her grandmother's maids showed her disrespect at every opportunity. The writer's social circle was limited to the elderly countess and teacher Monsieur Deschartres. The girl wanted a friend so badly that she invented him. The faithful companion of Aurora was called Corambe. This magical creature was both an adviser, a listener, and a guardian angel.

Amandine was very upset by the separation from her mother. The girl saw her only occasionally, coming with her grandmother to Paris. Dupin sought to keep Sophie-Victoria's influence to a minimum. Tired of overprotection, Aurora decided to escape. The countess found out about Sand's intention and sent her granddaughter out of hand to the Augustinian Catholic monastery (1818-1820).

There the writer got acquainted with religious literature. Having misinterpreted the text of Holy Scripture, the impressionable person led an ascetic life for several months. Identification with Saint Teresa led to the fact that Aurora lost sleep and appetite.

It is not known how this experience could have ended if the abbe Premor had not brought her to her senses in time. Due to decadent moods and constant illnesses, Georges could no longer continue her studies. With the blessing of the abbess, the grandmother took her granddaughter home. The fresh air did Sand good. After a couple of months, there was no trace of religious fanaticism.

Despite the fact that Aurora was rich, smart and pretty, in society she was considered a completely unsuitable candidate for the role of a wife. The base origin of the mother made her not quite equal in rights among aristocratic youth. Countess Dupin did not have time to find a groom for her granddaughter: she died when Georges was 17 years old. Having read the works of Mably, Leibniz and Locke, the girl was left in the care of an illiterate mother.

The gulf formed during the separation between Sophie Victoria and Sand was unreasonably large: Aurora loved to read, and her mother considered this occupation a waste of time and constantly took away books from her; the girl aspired to a spacious house in Nohant - Sophie-Victoria kept her in a small apartment in Paris; Georges grieved for her grandmother - the former dancer now and then showered the deceased mother-in-law with dirty curses.

After Antoinette failed to force her daughter to marry a man who aroused extreme disgust in Aurora, the enraged widow dragged Sand to the monastery and threatened her with imprisonment in a dungeon cell. At that moment, the young writer realized that marriage would help her free herself from the oppression of a despotic mother.

Personal life

Even during his lifetime, Sand's amorous adventures were legendary. Spiteful critics attributed to her novels with the entire literary beau monde of France, arguing that because of the unrealized maternal instinct, the woman subconsciously chose men much younger than her. There were also rumors about the writer's love affair with her friend, actress Marie Dorval.

A woman who had a huge number of admirers was married only once. Her husband (from 1822 to 1836) was Baron Casimir Dudevant. In this union, the writer gave birth to a son, Maurice (1823) and a daughter, Solange (1828). For the sake of the children, the spouses who were disappointed in each other tried to save the marriage to the last. But intransigence in outlook on life turned out to be stronger than the desire to raise a son and daughter in a complete family.

Aurora did not hide her loving nature. She was in an open relationship with the poet Alfred de Musset, a composer and virtuoso pianist. Relations with the latter left a deep wound in the soul of Aurora and are reflected in the works of Sand "Lucrezia Floriani" and "Winter in Mallorca".

Real name

The debut novel Rose and Blanche (1831) is the result of Aurora's collaboration with Jules Sandeau, a close friend of the writer. The joint work, like most of the feuilletons published in the Le Figaro magazine, was signed by their common pseudonym - Jules Sand. The writers also planned to write the second novel "Indiana" (1832) in co-authorship, but due to illness, the novelist did not take part in creating the masterpiece, and Dudevant personally wrote the work from cover to cover.

Sando categorically refused to publish a book under a common pseudonym, in the creation of which he had nothing to do. The publisher, in turn, insisted on preserving the cryptonym with which readers were already familiar. Due to the fact that the novelist's family was against putting their names on public display, the writer could not be published under her real name. On the advice of a friend, Aurora replaced Jules with Georges, and left her surname unchanged.

Literature

The novels published after Indiana (Valentina, Lelia, Jacques) placed George Sand in the ranks of democratic romantics. In the mid-1930s, Aurora was fascinated by the ideas of the Saint-Simonists. The works of the representative of social utopianism Pierre Leroux (“Individualism and Socialism”, 1834; “On Equality”, 1838; “Refutation of Eclecticism”, 1839; “On Humanity”, 1840) inspired the writer to write a number of works.

Maupra (1837) denounced romantic rebellion, while Horace (1842) debunked individualism. Faith in the creative possibilities of ordinary people, the pathos of the national liberation struggle, the dream of art serving the people, permeate Sand's dilogy - "Consuelo" (1843) and "Countess Rudolstadt" (1843).

In the 1940s, Dudevant's literary and social activities reached their peak. The writer participated in the publication of left-republican magazines and supported working poets, promoting their work (“Dialogues on the Poetry of the Proletarians”, 1842). In her novels, she created a whole gallery of sharply negative images of representatives of the bourgeois (Bricolin - "The Miller from Anzhibo", Cardonnet - "The Sin of Monsieur Antoine").

During the years of the Second Empire, anti-clerical sentiments appeared in Sand's work (a reaction to the policies of Louis Napoleon). Her novel Daniella (1857), which attacked the Catholic religion, caused a scandal, and the newspaper La Presse, in which it was published, was closed. After this, Sand withdrew from public life and wrote novels in the spirit of early works: The Snowman (1858), Jean de la Roche (1859) and The Marquis de Vilmer (1861).

The work of George Sand was admired by both, and, and, and Herzen, and even.

Death

Aurora Dudevant spent the last years of her life on her estate in France. She took care of children and grandchildren who loved to listen to her fairy tales (“What the Flowers Talk About”, “The Talking Oak”, “Pink Cloud”). Towards the end of her life, Georges even earned the nickname "the good lady of Nohant."

The legend of French literature passed into oblivion on June 8, 1876 (at age 72). Sand's cause of death was intestinal obstruction. The eminent writer was buried in the family vault in Nohant. Dudevant's friends - Flaubert and Dumas son - were present at her burial. Upon learning of the death of the writer, the genius of the poetic arabesque wrote:

“I mourn the dead, I salute the immortal!”

The literary heritage of the writer is preserved in collections of poems, dramas and novels.

Among other things, in Italy, director Giorgio Albertazzi based on Sand's autobiographical novel "The Story of My Life" made a TV movie, and in France, the works "The Beautiful Gentlemen of Bois Doré" (1976) and "Maupra" (1926 and 1972) were filmed. .

Bibliography

• "Melchior" (1832)
• "Leone Leoni" (1835)
• "Younger Sister" (1843)
• "Koroglu" (1843)
• "Karl" (1843)
• "Joan" (1844)
• "Isidora" (1846)
• "Teverino" (1846)
• "Mopra" (1837)
• Mosaic Masters (1838)
• "Orko" (1838)
• Spiridion (1839)
• "The sin of Monsieur Antoine" (1847)
• Lucrezia Floriani (1847)
• Mont Reves (1853)
• "Marquis de Wilmer" (1861)
• "Confessions of a Young Girl" (1865)
• Nanon (1872)
• "Grandma's Tales" (1876)