The Devil's Pool - Softcover

Sand, George; George Sand

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1421896451 ISBN 13: 9781421896458

Publisher: 1st World Library - Literary Society, 2007

Synopsis

I HAD just been looking long and sadly at Holbein's plowman, and was walking through the fields, musing on rustic life and the destiny of the husbandman. It is certainly tragic for him to spend his days and his strength delving in the jealous earth, that so reluctantly yields up her rich treasures when a morsel of coarse black bread, at the end of the day's work, is the sole reward and profit to be reaped from such arduous toil. The wealth of the soil, the harvests, the fruits, the splendid cattle that grow sleek and fat in the luxuriant grass, are the property of the few, and but instruments of the drudgery and slavery of the many. The man of leisure seldom loves, for their own sake, the fields and meadows, the landscape, or the noble animals which are to be converted into gold for his use. He comes to the country for his health or for change of air, but goes back to town to spend the fruit of his vassal's labor.

About this title

Review:

'Early deaths and endemic poverty are treated here as part of natural life; and natural life, with its indomitable, instinctive force for continuity, is what she is celebrating...it seems to me a book...worth reading more than once. --Victoria Glendinning

From the Author:

To an extent, Sand is writing a fable or parable, to convey the essential goodness and fulfilment that can illuminate such apparently narrow lives, in contract to the ‘fake enlightenment’ of her sophisticated readers. Though she does underline the ugly side of customs such as the arranged marriage, with its potential for exploitation and humiliation, she deliberately highlights the poetic and pure side of rural life, as opposed to squalor and suffering. Early deaths and endemic poverty are treated here as part of natural life; and natural life, with its indomitable, instinctive force for continuity, is what she is celebrating. There is a powerful undercurrent of regret for the disappearance of age-old country customs in her native region; what we would now call the social anthropologist in here is well to the fore in the account of traditional marriage games, tacked on as a coda. She wants rural life to go on in the old predestined way, but with some better understanding of the value of that life.
These seem conservative, even sentimental attitudes for a liberated free-thinking, free-loving, progressive woman like Sand. But the story must also be read as she intended, as an act if empathy with her characters, and a riposte to intellectual arrogance. In any case, we all perversely love what we have chosen to lose – in her case, the simple life. The story was written, originally for magazine publication, at top speed. The unresolved ambivalences and contradictions make The Devil’s pool, as its author knew, an imperfect work of art. It is all the more intriguing for being so. For all its simple charm, it seems to me a book for grown-ups, and worth reading more than once.

About this edition

• Publisher: 1st World Library - Literary Society
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1421896451
• ISBN 13: 9781421896458
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 148
• Editor: 1stworld Library