" Some of us achieve freedom with sorrow and with bitter
tears and with great effort--sometimes with spasmodic effort, and
George Sand obtained inward freedom in that way.
But however obtained, the first time a mind feels conscious of it, it
is a revelation, and it may come as an influence from an artist soul.
George Sand had "l'esprit _libre_ et varie." George Eliot "l'esprit
fort et pesant." George Sand was widely, wisely, and eminently human.
She felt deep down in her heart all the social troubles and problems
of her day--and created some herself! But she was true to the artist
soul in her--to the belief in an ideal. Art was dormant when she wrote
disquisitions, and sometimes her social disquisitions are very long
treatises. But her art was not dormant when from her inmost soul she
sketched the fate of the Berri peasant whom she loved so well. In the
introduction to that simple delightful Idyll "La Mare au Diable,"
which should be read by all social reformers and by all who really
care for the poor and the causes of poverty, she conveys her
conceptions of the mission of art towards the oppressed unhappy
labourer; oppressed and unhappy, because with form robust and
muscular, with eyes to see, and thoughts that might be cultivated to
understand the beauty and harmony of colour and sounds, delicacy of
tone and grace of outline, in a word, the mysterious beauty of the
world, he, the peasant of Berri, has never under stood the mystery of
the beautiful and his child will never understand it; the result of
excessive toil, and extreme poverty.
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