The Devil's Pool - Softcover

Sand Pse, Title George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1406800341 ISBN 13: 9781406800340

Publisher: Echo Library, 2006

Synopsis

George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804-76), was a French novelist, memoirist and socialist, recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. She was born in Paris and raised for much of her childhood by her grandmother at her estate in the province of Berry, which Sand later used as the setting for many of her novels. She adopted an unconventional lifestyle, donning male attire and smoking in public, and in 1831 left her husband, whom she had married at 18 in 1822, to enter upon a period of 'romantic rebellion' before legally separating in 1835 and taking custody of their two children. She had affairs with a number of prominent literary figures including Prosper Merimee and Alfred de Musset, and a long relationship with the composer, Chopin. By the age of 27 she was the most popular writer in Europe, remaining immensely influential throughout her lifetime and long after her death. In 1836 the first of several compendia of her writings was published in 24 volumes and in total four separate editions of her 'Complete Works' were published in her lifetime. The Devil's Pool (La Mare au Diable, 1846) is the first in a series of four pastoral novels based on Sand's childhood. It was followed by Francois le Champi (1847), La Petite Fadette (1849), and Les Beaux Messieurs Bois-Dore (1857).

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Echo Library
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1406800341
• ISBN 13: 9781406800340
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 84