I
AURORE DUPIN
PSYCHOLOGY OF A DAUGHTER OF ROUSSEAU
In the whole of French literary history, there is, perhaps, no subject of
such inexhaustible and modern interest as that of George Sand. Of what
use is literary history? It is not only a kind of museum, in which a few
masterpieces are preserved for the pleasure of beholders. It is this
certainly, but it is still more than this. Fine books are, before anything
else, living works. They not only have lived, but they continue to live.
They live within us, underneath those ideas which form our conscience
and those sentiments which inspire our actions. There is nothing of
greater importance for any society than to make an inventory of the ideas
and the sentiments which are composing its moral atmosphere every
instant that it exists. For every individual this work is the very condition
of his dignity. The question is, should we have these ideas and these
sentiments, if, in the times before us, there had not been some exceptional
individuals who seized them, as it were, in the air and made them viable
and durable? These exceptional individuals were capable of thinking
more vigorously, of feeling more deeply, and of expressing themselves
more forcibly than we are. They bequeathed these ideas and sentiments
to us. Literary history is, then, above and beyond all things, the perpetual
examination of the conscience of humanity.
There is no need for me to repeat what every one knows, the fact that
our epoch is extremely complex, agitated and disturbed. In the midst of
this labyrinth in which we are feeling our way with such difficulty, who
does not look back regretfully to the days when life was more simple,
when it was possible to walk towards a goal, mysterious and unknown
though it might be, by straight paths and royal routes?