George Sand [65]
was very much in vogue at this epoch. According to Jean Rcynaud and Lamennais, souls travelled from star to star, but Pierre Leroux believed in metempsychosis on earth.
"We are not only the children and the posterity of those who have already lived, but we are, at bottom, the anterior generations themselves. We have gone through former existences which we do not remember, but it may be that at times we have fragmentary reminiscences of them."
George Sand must have been very deeply impressed by this idea. It inspired her with _Sept cordes de la lyre_, _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_ and the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, the whole cycle of her philosophical novels.
The _Sept cordes de la lyre_ is a dramatic poem after the manner of _Faust_. Maitre Albertus is the old doctor conversing with Mephistocles. He has a ward, named Helene, and a lyre. A spirit lives in this lyre. It is all in vain that the painter, the _maestro_, the poet, the critic endeavour to make the cords vibrate. The lyre remains dumb. Helene, even without putting her hands on it, can draw from it magnificent harmony; Helene is mad. All this may seem very incomprehensible to you, and I must confess that it is so to me. Albertus himself declares: "This has a poetical sense of a very high order perhaps, but it seems vague to me." Personally, I am of the same opinion as Albertus. With a little effort, I might, like any one else, be able to give you an interpretation of this logogriph, which might appear to have something in it. I prefer telling you frankly that I do not understand it. The author, perhaps, did not understand it much better so that it may have been metaphysics.
I would call your attention, though, to that picture of Helene, with the magic lyre in her hand, risking her life, by climbing to the spire of the steeple and uttering her inspiring speech from there. Is not this something like Solness, the builder, from the top of his tower? Like Tolstoi, Ibsen had evidently read George Sand and had not forgotten her.
_Spiridion_ introduces us into a strange convent, in which we see the portraits come out of their frames and roam about the cloisters. The founder of the convent, Hebronius, lives again in the person of Father Alexis, who is no other than Leroux.
In _Consuelo_ we have the same imagination. We have already considered the first part of this novel, that which takes place at Venice, in the schools of music and in the theatres of song. Who would have thought that the charming diva, the pupil of Porpora, was to have such strange adventures? She arrives in Bohemia, at the Chateau of Rudolstadt. She has been warned that extraordinary things take place there. Comte Albert de Rudolstadt is subject to nervous fits and to great lethargy. He disappears from the chateau and then reappears, without any one seeing him go in or out. He believes that he has been Jean Ziska, and this is probably true. He has been present at events which took place three hundred years previously, and he describes them. Consuelo discovers Albert's retreat. It is a cavern hollowed out of a mountain in the vicinity, which communicates, by means of a well, with his rooms. The Chateau of Rudolstadt is built on the same architectural plan as Anne Radcliffe's chateau. After staying for some time in this bewildering place, Consuelo sets forth once more. She now meets Haydn, goes through the Bohmer Wald with him, arrives in Venice, is introduced to Maria Theresa, and is engaged at the Imperial Theatre. She is now recalled to the Chateau of Rudolstadt. Albert is on his deathbed, and he marries her _in extremis_, after telling her that he is going to leave her for a time, but that he shall return to her on earth by a new birth. He, too, had evidently read Pierre Leroux, and it was perhaps that which had caused his illness.
_Consuelo_ is a novel of adventures after the style of _Gil Blas_, the _Vie de Marianne_, and _Wilkelm Meister_. It is a historical novel, for which we have Joseph Haydn, Maria Theresa, Baron Trenk, and the whole history of
"We are not only the children and the posterity of those who have already lived, but we are, at bottom, the anterior generations themselves. We have gone through former existences which we do not remember, but it may be that at times we have fragmentary reminiscences of them."
George Sand must have been very deeply impressed by this idea. It inspired her with _Sept cordes de la lyre_, _Spiridion_, _Consuelo_ and the _Comtesse de Rudolstadt_, the whole cycle of her philosophical novels.
The _Sept cordes de la lyre_ is a dramatic poem after the manner of _Faust_. Maitre Albertus is the old doctor conversing with Mephistocles. He has a ward, named Helene, and a lyre. A spirit lives in this lyre. It is all in vain that the painter, the _maestro_, the poet, the critic endeavour to make the cords vibrate. The lyre remains dumb. Helene, even without putting her hands on it, can draw from it magnificent harmony; Helene is mad. All this may seem very incomprehensible to you, and I must confess that it is so to me. Albertus himself declares: "This has a poetical sense of a very high order perhaps, but it seems vague to me." Personally, I am of the same opinion as Albertus. With a little effort, I might, like any one else, be able to give you an interpretation of this logogriph, which might appear to have something in it. I prefer telling you frankly that I do not understand it. The author, perhaps, did not understand it much better so that it may have been metaphysics.
I would call your attention, though, to that picture of Helene, with the magic lyre in her hand, risking her life, by climbing to the spire of the steeple and uttering her inspiring speech from there. Is not this something like Solness, the builder, from the top of his tower? Like Tolstoi, Ibsen had evidently read George Sand and had not forgotten her.
_Spiridion_ introduces us into a strange convent, in which we see the portraits come out of their frames and roam about the cloisters. The founder of the convent, Hebronius, lives again in the person of Father Alexis, who is no other than Leroux.
In _Consuelo_ we have the same imagination. We have already considered the first part of this novel, that which takes place at Venice, in the schools of music and in the theatres of song. Who would have thought that the charming diva, the pupil of Porpora, was to have such strange adventures? She arrives in Bohemia, at the Chateau of Rudolstadt. She has been warned that extraordinary things take place there. Comte Albert de Rudolstadt is subject to nervous fits and to great lethargy. He disappears from the chateau and then reappears, without any one seeing him go in or out. He believes that he has been Jean Ziska, and this is probably true. He has been present at events which took place three hundred years previously, and he describes them. Consuelo discovers Albert's retreat. It is a cavern hollowed out of a mountain in the vicinity, which communicates, by means of a well, with his rooms. The Chateau of Rudolstadt is built on the same architectural plan as Anne Radcliffe's chateau. After staying for some time in this bewildering place, Consuelo sets forth once more. She now meets Haydn, goes through the Bohmer Wald with him, arrives in Venice, is introduced to Maria Theresa, and is engaged at the Imperial Theatre. She is now recalled to the Chateau of Rudolstadt. Albert is on his deathbed, and he marries her _in extremis_, after telling her that he is going to leave her for a time, but that he shall return to her on earth by a new birth. He, too, had evidently read Pierre Leroux, and it was perhaps that which had caused his illness.
_Consuelo_ is a novel of adventures after the style of _Gil Blas_, the _Vie de Marianne_, and _Wilkelm Meister_. It is a historical novel, for which we have Joseph Haydn, Maria Theresa, Baron Trenk, and the whole history of