She is a reference in 19th century literature, a woman who multiplies romantic and creative relationships, and who invests body and soul in the causes she defends.
In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", Jean des Cars tells you about the romance between George Sand and the composer Frédéric Chopin but also the author's revolutionary experience.
In 1836, George Sand met the composer Frédéric Chopin.
It will be the start of a great love story.
In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of history", Jean des Cars looks back on the romance between the two artists and describes the political and social commitment of this figure of the 19th century.
George Sand was 32 years old when she heard, for the first time, Chopin play in the salons of the Hôtel de France at Liszt and Marie d'Agoult's.
"What an unfriendly woman!"
notes the musician, shocked by his dress style!
He is 26 years old but already an amazing gifted career and he is the darling of Paris.
Born in Poland, he was a child prodigy.
From the age of 8, he composed, and gave his first concert at the age of 9.
At 19, he was the first Polish pianist.
On November 1, 1830, he left Poland for a long journey before settling definitively in Paris in 1831. There, he had the chance to enter the aristocratic society which organized his recitals.
If she did not make a good impression on the prodigy, George Sand, in love with music, is immediately sensitive to the romantic charm of the composer.
She notices his bright brown eyes, his wonderful smile, his slender waist, his beautiful slender hands but also his elegant pallor (due to the onset of tuberculosis).
She hopes to bring the musician to Nohant at the end of the summer of 1837. He refuses.
In the fall, he agrees to see her again in Paris.
Chopin's Polish fiancée moved away from him on the orders of his parents who worried about the persistent cough of their future son-in-law.
Desperate, he then wrote in his journal: "If someone wanted to put me on the edge, I would be very happy".
That someone will be George Sand.
Insensibly, he ends up attaching himself to her.
They saw each other a lot at the beginning of the summer of 1838 and became lovers.
The fragile health of his children and Chopin's persistent cough prompted George Sand to transport his penates to the Balearic Islands to spend the winter of 1837-1838 on the island of Mallorca.
They first settled in Palma, before taking refuge in the west of the island, in the almost total isolation of the Carthusian monastery of Valldemosa.
George Sand is writing a new novel there.
She says: "I wrote" Spiridion "in Mallorca, in a chartreuse in ruins, between two seas, a magnificent place, a terrible winter. We had rented a Carthusian cell consisting of three rooms and a kitchen in full blast. I was there with Chopin and my children. My son was growing sick and Chopin was sick from birth! "
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The wild beauty of the place inspires Chopin his admirable preludes and ballads, but for George, it is a kind of hell.
She has to shop, cook and treat the musician whose condition is worsening.
She decides to return in small steps, via Spain.
If the stay in Mallorca was fruitful for the work of the couple, the very bad weather and the illnesses of each other turned it into a nightmare.
Fortunately, the following summer, settling in Nohant will be much more peaceful.
For the novelist, it is a definitive change of life.
Chopin does not like the countryside a priori but the air of Berry suits him and he is much better.
While she is writing, he composes, sitting beside her, his Sonata in B flat major and his second nocturne.
Chopin notes in his diary: "I only want to live for you".
In the fall, however, you have to return to Paris, at 16 rue Pigalle then rue Taitbout.
This district, at the bottom of Montmartre, is inhabited by many artists.
It is called "The New Athens".
It was on the occasion of this return to Parisian life that Chopin became friends with Eugène Delacroix.
The principle of summer in Nohant and winter in Paris is established.
Delacroix paints in a workshop specially designed for him by his hostess.
The sister of the famous singer Malibran also sings, and Chopin accompanies her.
Every summer from 1841 to 1848, the group meets in Nohant.
If Maurice, the son of George Sand has already installed a puppet theater to entertain his mother's guests, it is Chopin, himself a genius mime, who will create the Nohant theater.
Apparently, the romance between Chopin and Sand continues.
They admire each other.
She has a real passion for music and advises it with relevance.
He sincerely loves her but he is easily jealous.
She cheerfully assumes the responsibility of loving and protecting him.
She even accepts to live often in chastity to spare the strength of the patient.
Chopin surely owes him years of happiness and perhaps even an extension of his fragile existence.
However, from 1843, small flaws appeared in their relations.
George seems tired because his lover's illness makes him very nervous and sensitive.
They live with their families, with the children who have grown up.
Maurice, now 20, adores his mother.
Solange, soon to be 16, believes herself unloved and has every pretext to oppose it and always agree with Chopin.
She is beautiful and sassy and has more and more influence on the musician.
One day, he criticizes Maurice who talks about leaving Nohant.
George Sand supports his son.
Chopin then lowers his head and tells her that he doesn't love her anymore.
In 1847, the composer left Nohant, never to return.
From now on, George Sand can only worry from a distance about the health of his "Chopinet".
She tells it herself to the singer Pauline Viardot: "Do you see Chopin? Tell me about his health. I could not pay for his fury and his hatred with hatred and fury. I think of him. often like a sick, embittered and lost child. "
Chopin died at the age of 39, without seeing her again, on October 17, 1849 in Paris.
In the meantime, George Sand had his revolutionary experience.
George Sand and the Revolution of 1848
Already shaken by the banquet campaign in 1847, Louis-Philippe's regime was increasingly unpopular at the beginning of 1848. In February, the dismissal of Prime Minister Guizot did not appease angry Parisians.
A shooting claims new victims among the revolutionaries.
Barricades are erected, the insurgents march on the Tuileries and prepare to invade the castle.
The king is forced to flee in all haste when the rioters have succeeded in breaking into the throne room and ravaging it.
George Sand is in heaven!
She who was in the grip of emotional and financial difficulties metamorphoses suddenly.
It must be said that for a dozen years, she had familiarized herself with the Republican cenacle.
She collaborated in combat reviews alongside Lamennais and Leroux.
She had practically set herself up as the director of conscience of several proletarian writers.
Enthusiastic at the beginning of March by the scale and dignity of the popular parades, particularly during the funerals of the victims of the February uprising, George Sand no longer hesitates.
In a flash, she forgets her misfortunes and in her own words, she is twenty years younger.
She launches into passionate writings.
On March 3, she wrote a letter to the middle class, inviting the petty bourgeoisie to unite and find the socialist truth.
Four days later, she wrote a "Letter to the People" in which she preached the union of classes for the Revolution.
There follows a letter to the rich in which she predicts that "France will be communist for a century".
She creates a weekly "La Cause du Peuple" which she writes almost entirely on her own.
The Parisians appear to him as "the first people of the world".
She says that she "has a full heart and her head on fire".
She corrects the proofs of her bulletins on the printer's marble, dressed in the blue uniform of the typographers.
His chronicles are displayed on all the facades of the Town Halls of France.
But his ardor is misinterpreted by his opponents.
She is accused of being in the pay of the Provisional Government.
And his revolutionary fever will be seriously dampened by the result of the April 23 elections.
Out of 900 elected, there are still 300 monarchists.
The most progressive socialists, like Barbes, are eliminated.
The Second Republic is proclaimed on May 4.
Riots broke out, new barricades were erected in Paris on June 23.
General Cavaignac receives full powers to put down the insurrection.
It will be done on June 26th.
The toll is terrible: 4,000 dead on the side of the insurgents, 1,500 shot without trial, 15,000 arrests and thousands sentenced to prison or deportation to the colonies.
On the military side, there are 1,500 victims, including six generals.
From the platform of the Assembly, Cavaignac declares: "Order has triumphed over anarchy".
Learning of these massacres, Louis-Philippe, exiled in England, said his bitterness: "The Republic is lucky, it can shoot the people".
As for George Sand, desperate, she returned to Nohant.
She explains: "My heart is as sad as if I had had ten children killed on the barricades ... I was first overwhelmed with such disgust when leaving Paris, then with such horror when I left Paris. learning the grim news of June, that I was sick like a fool for many days… The June insurgents probably did not know why they were fighting. The necessity of things, the physical and moral unease inevitably pushed them to allow themselves to be aroused by ringleaders who had no social idea that I know of and who are suspected to be agents of foreign and extreme bourgeois reaction. "
She understands that France, which had just voted for the conservatives, was not ripe for the Republic.
From then on, she will be right.
For her, the Revolution is over.
From now on, she thinks only of composing while compromising as little as possible with Prince-President Louis-Napoleon, the future Napoleon III.
It is a constant for George Sand to know how to put an end to all his businesses when they feel that they are doomed to failure.
Melancholy but resolute, she "returns to her sheep" to Nohant, to her literature.
She confines herself to helping outcasts when she can.
It remains that for a few short and exhilarating weeks, his name identified with the hope of a victory of the people.
George Sand, "the good lady of Nohant"
In Nohant, life resumes its course.
This is where George Sand learns of Chopin's death.
She will write: "I have lost my good health. This death affected me deeply. Yes, good words should have been said at her bedside. Up there or over there (I do not know where we are going) , but it's somewhere where you are better and where you can see more clearly), he will remember that I looked after him for nine years as hardly one takes care of his own son, whom I sacrificed to excellent affections and honest relations to his jealousies, to his whim, which I have suffered morally finally for the love of him in these nine years, more than he has suffered physically in all his life. that is saying a lot to him, the poor child. "
Back in his native Berry, George Sand will complete what we can call his "Berry quartet".
An ode to this land and its peasants.
The first "La Mare au Diable", written in four days, had been published in 1846. The second "François le Champi" was completed in 1849. "Les Maîtres Sonneurs" followed in 1853 and the last one, "La petite Fadette" , in 1869. There will also be "History of my life", its river memories which have earned it many attacks, then the story of its history with Musset "She and Him" which causes a new scandal.
Musset's brother, who judges that she has granted herself the beautiful role in her story, replies with an avenger "Him and She"!
In Nohant, she is not alone.
Her son Maurice is with her accompanied by several friends.
The one she prefers is the engraver Manceau.
He will become her secretary and her lover.
He was thirteen years younger than her, was completely devoted to her and would remain so until her death in 1865. In 1850, she wrote to her friend the publisher Hetzel: "Yes, I love him! He is born in misery, he received no education, neither moral, nor other. He did not make any study, he was in apprenticeship… He is incredibly artist by the spirit. His intelligence is extraordinary, it serves no purpose. that to him and to me consequently… He has great faults: he is at the same time violent and calculated. Violent, he wounds terribly. Calculated, he imposes himself and seeks domination. His two faults make him hate when they are in them. don't make him like it. "
As she needs money, she also turned to the theater.
About twenty plays, generally taken from his novels, were produced in Paris, at the Odeon and at the Gymnase, often with the help of Alexandre Dumas Fils.
But the theater is also an occupation in Nohant.
We remember that Chopin was the first to make it an institution.
This theater will improve: a stage is added in 1851. Friends and the most talented servants, like the servant Marie, take part in it.
Marie, whom George Sand to identify correctly calls "Marie des poules" was recently brought out of oblivion thanks to a very pretty play, "Marie des poules".
Everyone lends their support for the theater.
Manceau often has the leading role.
He's as good at serious as he is at comedy, and he excels at making costumes and arranging sets.
Coming out of his Berry vein, at the end of his life, George Sand embarked on historical novels.
They will experience great success: "Mademoiselle La Quintinie", an anti-clerical novel, and "Les beaux Messieurs du Bois Doré" in 1857, an evocation of the Louis XIII era.
She saw the war of 1870 with a mixture of lucidity and despair and hates the episode of the Commune, considering that it has nothing to do with the revolutionaries of 1848. She even judges that Barbès would certainly have "denied the assassins" , arsonists, thieves and traitors ".
She died on June 8, 1876, in full activity, of an intestinal obstruction.
His old friend Gustave Flaubert cries at his funeral and Victor Hugo writes: "I mourn a dead woman and I greet an immortal".
Undoubtedly, she leaves a work.
She herself said: "I have a goal, a task, a passion. The job of writing is one, violent ... When it has taken hold of a poor head, it can no longer leave it".
Bibliographic resources:
Claire and Laurent Greilsamer, George Sand Dictionary (Perrin, 2014)
Aline Alquier, George Sand (Éditions Pierre Charron, 1973)
André Maurois, Lélia or the life of George Sand (Hachette, 1952)
Martine Reid, George Sand (Gallimard, 2013)
At the heart of History "is a Europe 1 Studio podcast
Author and presentation: Jean des Cars
Production: Timothée Magot
Director: Jean-François Bussière
Distribution and editing: Clémence Olivier
Graphics: Karelle Villais