Lucrezia Floriani Read online

  Published in 1993 by

  Academy Chicago Publishers

  363 West Erie Street

  Chicago, Illinois 60610

  Translation copyright © 1985 by Anna Eker.

  Preface and foreword translation

  copyright © 1985 by Betsy Wing.

  Introduction © 1985 by Anita Miller.

  Printed and bound in the USA

  First hardcover edition published by Academy Chicago: June, 1985

  First paperback edition: October, 1993

  No part of this book may be reproduced

  in any form without the express

  written permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Sand, George, 1804-1876

  Lucrezia Floriani.

  I. Title.

  PQ2407.L913 1985 843’.7 95-3876

  ISBN 0-89733-397-7 (paperback)

  Introduction

  In the spring of 1846, when George Sand was forty-two years old, she had been legally separated for ten years from her husband, Casimir Dudevant, and was living at Nohant, the country estate she had inherited from her grandmother, with her two children, Maurice, then twenty-two years old, and her daughter Solange, eighteen. Frederic Chopin, the Polish composer, lived at Nohant as well: he was then thirty-six years old, and suffering from the disease which was to kill him in three years. He had been Madame Dudevant’s guest since they had spent the winter together, with the children, in Majorca in 1838.

  By 1846 George Sand’s relationship with Chopin had deteriorated badly, and it was in the spring of that year that she began to write Lucrezia Floriani. Consequently the novel created a minor scandal: word had gotten out well before publication that the neurotic Prince Karol was obviously Chopin, and that Lucrezia herself was the author, thinly disguised. Chopin had not seemed to recognize himself in parts of the novel which were read aloud to guests at Nohant, and the author stoutly denied that the book was anything but a fabrication. Nevertheless the protagonists were clearly recognizable, and in fact Chopin left Nohant in 1846 because of a quarrel with Maurice, and was never to return.

  The appearance of Lucrezia Floriani was deplored by George Sand’s friends and added fuel to the fires of her enemies, who were legion. Madame Dudevant was, after all, an avowed socialist, a woman who used a man’s name, had worn men’s clothing, smoked cigars, was separated from her husband, and had had frequent passionate love affairs. She was much admired as a writer, but her life and much of her writing were considered outrageous by the moral and religious standards of the time.

  If George Sand’s work and personal life upset the French, one can imagine the reaction to both in the England of Victoria and Albert. She was however read in the original by most Victorian writers and especially admired by the Brownings, Charlotte Bronté, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill and Jane Carlyle, although Thomas Carlyle disliked her work intensely, as did John Ruskin. Despite the obviously controversial nature of her work, the first English translation of it appeared in 1842: Spiridion, a novel concerned with religion, which had been published in France three years earlier. Thereafter, through the decades, Sand translations appeared of those works, at least, which would not offend the eyes of clergymen and other protectors of the innocent. Indiana, published in French in 1832, and concerned with flaming passion outside a loveless marriage, appeared first in English in 1850, not in England but in America.

  Despite this rather tepid spate of translations, influential journals thundered from the right against the French writer. Thackeray wrote an article deploring her attitudes toward marriage. It was not until 1902 that many of the novels which scandalized the Victorians (Indiana, Valentine, Leone Leoni, She and He, etc.) were finally published in good English translations. And Lucrezia Floriani, obviously, was not among them.

  And indeed, even in 1902 Lucrezia would be a shocking book. An actress, never married, with a family of children with different fathers … a woman from the lower rung of society, whose father lives on her estate … a woman who has a love affair with a nobleman several years her junior … and for whom, despite all this, we must feel respect, sympathy and affection. It was too much. And through all this, the sharp intelligence which watches everyone, and especially Prince Karol, and notes reactions and attitudes with a psychological insight which appears no less admirable today than the day it came first to public notice. A remarkable, and in some ways, a pitiless book.

  When society had changed sufficiently so that Madame Dudevant no longer shocked and upset the bourgeoisie, she had come to appear old-fashioned and even unimportant. In the male-oriented establishment of English letters, her obvious influence on some of the greatest English writers was ignored or unknown. It was not until an excellent British television series based on her life was broadcast in the early seventies that people began to hunt her up in libraries (where for the most part she could not be found in English), that feminists rediscovered her, and work was begun to give her her proper place in the history of literature.

  Anita Miller

  Preface

  There is no need for me to state here the literary ideas that influenced me in writing this novel, because it has a foreword summarizing my opinions at the time, and because these opinions have not changed. But I am anxious to be explicit about something I only mentioned in that foreword in regard to contemporary productions whose form I criticized and example I rejected.

  It is not false modesty, even less a faint-hearted nature, that makes me say I like romantic events very much in a novel — the unforeseen, intrigue, action. For the novel, as for the theatre, I should like someone to find a way to unite dramatic movement with real analysis of characters and human sentiments. Without wishing now either to criticize or praise anyone, it is my opinion that this problem has usually not been completely resolved either for the novel, or for the theatre. For twenty years we have been hesitating between the two extremes, and I have, for my part, liking strong emotions in fiction, nonetheless gone to the other extreme, less through inclination than consciously, because I saw this direction was neglected and abandoned by the current fashion. I tried my hardest, without exaggerating either the weakness or importance of my efforts, to keep the literature of my time on a practicable path between the peaceful lake and the wild torrent. My instinct would have sent me towards abysses. I still sense this in the interest and impetuous eagerness with which my eyes and ears seek out drama; but when I am back once again with my thoughts assuaged and satisfied, I do as all readers and spectators do; I reconsider what I have seen and heard, and ask myself why and how the action moved me and carried me along. Then I notice things that are suddenly implausible or inadequate causes for events driven along before the torrent of imagination, regardless of any obstacle of reason or moral truth. That is the moment an impulse drives me backwards, like many others, back towards the calm, monotonous lake of analysis.

  However, I should not like to see my generation forget itself for too long on these still waters and be unaware of the progress that ceaselessly calls it towards new horizons. Lucrezia Floriani, this book that is all analysis and meditation, is no more than a relative protest, therefore, against the abuse of forms fashionable at that time, those veritable surprise machines, whose qualities and flaws it seemed to me were confused with each other by a public that used little judgment.

  Shall I now say a word about my own work, not about its form, which has all the flaws (admitted in advance) that my plan entailed, but about its content, that inalienable question of intellectual freedom that every reader has always claimed and always will claim the right to dispute? That is exactly what I want to do. Victor Hugo, in the preface to Orienta1es, denying that the public had a right t
o address its insolent why to the poet, and declaring that as regards the choice of subject the author answered only to himself, would certainly be right in the eyes of that superhuman power who sends the poet inspiration without consulting the taste, the customs or the opinions of the century. But the public does not bow to such lofty considerations; he keeps on saying to both great and small: Why are you serving us this dish? What is it made of? Where did you get it? What did you season it with? etc. etc.

  Questions like that are pointless, and they are especially awkward; because the instinct that brings a writer to choose some subject or other today that might not have struck him yesterday, is elusive by nature. And if one gave a simple answer, would the public have gotten much farther?

  If, for example, I told you what a very great poet told me one day, unaffectedly and even with a playful innocence: all the time there are thousands of subjects surfacing one after the other in my brain: all of them please me for a moment, but I don’t stop, knowing that one I am able to treat will grab hold of me in a very special way and make me feel the authority it has over my will by indisputable signs.

  “What are they?” I asked him with great interest.

  “A sort of dizzy spell,” he answered, “and my heart’s beating as if I were going to faint. When a thought, an image, any old fact, passes through my mind in a way that stirs my physical being, no matter how vaguely, it is this sort of vertigo that lets me know I have to stop there to seek my poem.”

  So, what would you have to say to this poet? Would he have done better to consult you than to listen to this inner voice that summoned him to obey it?

  On a less elevated level of ideas and productions, there is a mysterious attraction that I shall not have the arrogance to call inspiration, as it concerns myself, but to which I surrender without wanting to fight when it comes. People who do not create works of imagination believe that they are only made out of memories, and always ask you: “Whom did you mean to portray?” They are very much mistaken if they believe it is possible to make a real person into a character in a novel, even in such an unromantic novel as Lucrezia Floriani. One would have to add so much to what is real, in order to make this person logical and defensible in a fictional event, even if it were only for twenty pages, that by the twenty-first one would have stepped out of the resemblance and by the thirtieth, the character you might have claimed to copy would have completely disappeared. What is impossible to accomplish is the analysis of a sentiment. In order for it to make sense to the intelligence, therefore, while passing through the prism of imagination, one must create characters for the sentiment one wishes to describe and not create the sentiment for the characters.

  At least that is my procedure, and I have never been able to find any other. A hundred times subjects have been proposed for me to treat. Someone would tell me an interesting story, describe the heroes, even show them to me. Yet never has it been possible for me to make use of these precious materials. I was immediately struck by something that all of you must have observed more than once. Which is that there is an obvious, unexplainable, but utterly complete divergence between the behavior of people on the fabulous occasions of life, and the character, the habits, and appearance of these very people. Hence our first reaction, at the sight of someone whose works or deeds have made an impression on us, is to say: I didn’t think he looked like that!

  Where does that come from? I don’t know, nor do you, my friendly readers. But that is how it is, and when we have time we can look for the answer together. As for now, to cut short a preface that is already too long, I only have one word in answer to your usual questions. Examine whether or not the portrait of the passion, which is the subject of this book, has some truth, some depth, I won’t say something to teach; it is up to you to find the conclusions, and the writer’s only job is to make you reflect. As for the two characters who are sacrificed (both of them) to this terrible passion, make them over again better within yourself, if the author’s imagination has badly suited them to the example they ought to provide.

  George Sand

  Nohant, January 16, 1853

  Foreword

  My dear reader (an old phrase and the only good one), I am bringing you my new attempt whose form is borrowed from the Greeks at the very least, and which you may not particularly like. Gone are the days when “ … kneeling in a humble preface, the author begs the public’s pardon.” We have definitely cured ourselves of this false modesty since the time when Boileau reported it with no regard for the great men. Today, we are quite cavalier, and if one makes a preface, it is to prove to the dismayed reader that he should respectfully remove his hat to read, admire and keep quiet.

  We did well to act like that with you, kind reader, since it worked. You are just as pleased, because you know very well that the author is not so headstrong as he would like to appear, that it is a manner, a style, a way of dressing himself for the role, and that, basically, he is going to give you his best and serve you according to your taste.

  Now, you often have extremely bad taste, my good reader. Ever since you have stopped being French, you like everything that is contrary to the French spirit, to French logic, to the old customs of the language, and to events and characters that are clearly and simply inferred. To please you, an author has to be simultaneously as dramatic as Shakespeare, as romantic as Byron, as fantastic as Hoffmann, as frightening as Lewis and Anne Radcliffe, as heroic as Calderon and all of Spanish theatre; and if he contents himself with imitating only one of these models, you think it is pretty colorless.

  The result of your reckless appetites is that the school of the novel has rushed headlong into a web of horrors, of murders, betrayals, surprises, terrors, bizarre passions, astounding events; in short, into movement dizzying to good folk who are not sure-footed enough or quick enough at seeing to keep up.

  That is what we have done to please you, and if you were given a few slaps as a matter of form, it was a way of holding your attention, in order to gratify you later with the satisfactions you hope for. So never, I say, has any public been more caressed, more flattered, more spoilt than you nowadays, showered by works.

  You have forgiven so many impertinences that you will let me get away with one little one; that is to tell you that you are ruining your stomach eating so much spice, that you are wearing out your emotions and exhausting your novelists. You force them to overtax their means and push them to an exhaustion of imagination after which nothing will be possible any more, unless we invent a new language and discover a new race of men. You no longer allow talent to apportion itself and it spares no efforts. One of these mornings, it will have said everything and be forced to repeat. That will bore you, and ungrateful towards your friends as you have always been and will always be, you will forget the marvels of richness and imagination they have made for you and the pleasures they have provided.

  Since that’s how it is, run for your life! Tomorrow a movement backwards will begin, reaction will set in. My colleagues are dog-tired, I bet, and are going to join forces to demand another sort of work, and salaries less painfully paid for. I feel the storm coming in the air that grows leaden and heavy, and, cautiously, I begin by turning my back on the frenzied stir of rapid change you liked to have mark your literature. I sit by the roadside and watch them all go by: brigands, traitors, gravediggers, stranglers, extortionists, poisoners, cavaliers armed to the teeth, dishevelled women, the whole enraged and bloody troupe of modern drama. I see them, wearing their daggers, their crowns, their beggars’ rags, their scarlet cloaks, flinging curses at you and looking for some job in the world other than racing like a horse.

  But how shall I start, poor devil that I am, who never attempted or managed to make any innovation in form; so that I won’t be swept away in this whirlwind, and yet so I won’t find myself too far behind when the new style, still unknown but imminent, lifts its head.

  First I’m going to rest and make a quiet little life work, after that we’ll see what we see! If
the new style is a good one, we shall follow it. But today’s is too fantastic, too rich; I am too old to apply myself to it and my means do not allow me to. I shall keep on wearing my grandfather’s clothes; they are comfortable, simple and solid.

  So, reader, in order to do it the French way like our good ancestors, let me warn you that I am going to cut the main ingredient out of the story I shall have the honor of offering you — the strongest spice around in current use: that is to say, the unforeseen, the surprise. Instead of leading you from one astonishment to the next, instead of making you fall every chapter from fever into sickly heat, I shall lead you step by step down a straight little road, making you look in front, behind, right and left at the bushes in the ditch, the clouds on the horizon, everything that comes into view in the peaceful plains we shall have to travel. If, by chance, there is a ravine, I shall tell you, “Watch out, there’s a ravine here”; if there’s a torrent, I shall help you get over it, I won’t push you into it headfirst for the pleasure of telling others: “That reader certainly got taken in,” or the pleasure of hearing you exclaim: “Ouf! I’ve come a cropper here, I didn’t expect that in the least; our author played a good trick on me.”

  In short, I won’t look down on you; I think it would be impossible to do better than that … And yet, it is highly likely that you will accuse me of being the most insolent and the most presumptuous novelist of all, that you will get angry halfway along, and that you will refuse to follow me.

  However you like! Go where you feel like going. I am not annoyed with those who enthrall you by doing the opposite of what I want to do. I don’t hate the fashion. Any fashion is good as long as it lasts and suits; it is not possible to judge it until its reign has ended. Divine right is on its side; it is the daugher of the genius of the times: but the world is so large that there is room for all, and the freedoms we enjoy extend even to allowing us to write a bad novel.