I ♥ George Sand

[tenlittlebullets]

Just finished Consuelo. (Which, BTW, I'm pretty sure is the only full-length novel I've read cover-to-cover in French. Novellas and plays? Yes. Most of Les Misérables? Yes, in fits and starts and terribly out of order. Started longer books without finishing? Yep. Finished anything over 150 pages? No, not really.)

I feel like I should say something deep about art and devotion and the redemption of humanity, and all those thoughts are rattling around loose in my brain, but the only thing I can pin down is: god damn, what is it with the Romantics and sepulchral wedding-nights. Seriously, you've got Quasimodo and Esmeralda crumbling into dust together, Hernani and Doña Sol poisoning each other before they can consummate their marriage, Albert dropping dead right after pronouncing his vows and Consuelo holding vigil over his corpse all night--not to mention, tangentially related, that lovely exhumation scene in La Dame aux Camélias. It's wonderfully morbid but good god it's getting repetitive.

I know, I know, trivial. I kvetch because secretly it makes my inner Romantic really happy. Or, well, not happy exactly but satisfied in that "O! Behold, the unity of the altar and the tomb opens up a pathway in my soul whose awe-inspiring passages have not been tread since the last time I read Childe Harold's Pilgrimage!" sort of way.

Comments

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

If you think that's over-the-top melodramatic, you'll be really happy when you get to the well scene, aka the "George Sand scares the SHIT out of her readers and makes 'if Ann Radcliffe had written this chapter' jokes while her character faces imminent watery doom" scene. And Albert is crazycakes. Like, cannot distinguish between his life and the lives of his bloodthirsty dead Czech ancestors, falls into a trance and communicates freaky visions of the redemption of Satan to Consuelo through his violin-playing, has prophetic revelations, crazycakes.

It's kind of wonderful.

[citoyenne.livejournal.com]

"George Sand scares the SHIT out of her readers and makes 'if Ann Radcliffe had written this chapter' jokes

Oh, I'm definitively putting Consuelo high up on my to-read list!