Dostoevsky’s farewell to George Sand, « The Creator who sparked the passion in the spiritual thirst for perfection and chastity »

Albert Vataj

On June 8, 1876, the novelist, the dramaturgia, the literary critic and the ardent activist of social and political affairs, the great, Amanine-Lucile-Aurore, known as George Sand, took her last breath five weeks before her seventy-second birthday. During the long and enriched creative career, it had touched millions of readers and had influenced generations of writers. Among them was the beloved Russian author Fjodor Dostoevsky, a young man at the time of Sand’s literary debut, who had deeply shaped his sensitivity as a writer.
When reading about Sand’s death in the newspaper, Dostoevsky was urged to write one of the warmest praise in the history of literature, at the same level as Borges’s memory of Susan Sontag and Robert Frost of JFK. He was finally involved in the « Diary of a Writer », the same wonderful collection that Dostoevsky gave us why there are no bad people and his achievement in the sense of dream life.
With the intent of « just saying a few words of the deceased in her fresh grave », Dostoevsky complains that his most recent number had come to the press just before Sand’s death announcement:
I didn’t even have a time to say a word about this death. And yet, only after reading about it, I realized what that name means in my life; How pleasure, how many honors this poet and how much joy has aroused me at that time, how much happiness he has given me! I am rejecting all these words without hesitation, because this was literally, he writes in « The Writer’s Diary ».
Given Sand’s idealism as a « service done to humanity as a whole », Dostoevsky considers how many others were affected by her job and soul as much as he:
I imagine that, like me, then a young man, everyone in those days was impressed by the sublime purity of Sand’s characters and ideals, and the modest charm of the strict and reserved confession tone – and such a woman who wears pants and is involved in amusement!
Noting that Sand became more popular with the Russian public than Dickens, Dostoevsky – who had served eight years in a Siberian prison camp for reading forbidden books – considers its unique seduction for the national spirit in a time of fierce ideological despotism in Russia, he writes:
The reader also managed to bring out of the novels everything he was preserved … George Sand was one of the most excellent, harshest and most just representatives of that category of contemporary young people who, when they appeared, began with a direct denial in those « positive » provisions that ended the activities of the French bloodthirsty revolution – more precisely, European – European.
Sand’s work, he argues, proved the idea that « human renovation must be radical and social » and was a central element not only of the emancipation of women, but of the wider socialist movement towards freedom. Dostoevsky writes: Her sermons were not limited to the woman in any way … George Sand belonged to the whole movement and not just the preaching of women’s rights. True, being a woman herself, she naturally preferred to portray heroin instead of heroes, and, of course, women of the whole world now have to put signs of mourning in her memory, because one of their highest and most beautiful representatives has passed away, and besides, a woman almost unprecedented because of her power and talent – a name that is destined for her –
In a threefold poignant feeling against the contemporary fact that books with female protagonists rarely receive literary appreciation, Dostoevsky considers the compassionate idealism that made Sand’s heroines so wide and fascinating.
Its heroines, writes Dostoevsky, represented such a kind of high moral purity that it could not be conceived without an extraordinary ethical search in the poet himself; without the confession of the fullest duty; without the meaning and acceptance of beauty and mercy, patience and justice more sublime. Indeed, side by side with the mercy, patience and recognition of the obligations of duty, it was the extraordinary pride of demanding and protest; However, it was precisely the pride that was so precious because it stemmed from the most sublime truth, without which humanity would never be able to preserve its place at such a high moral elevation. This pride is not a rage quad même, based on the idea that I am better than you and you are worse than me; No, this is merely a sense of the most chaste impossibility of compromise with the falsehood and the vice, though – I repeat – this feeling does not exclude neither the complete forgiveness nor the mercy.
(…)
In a contemporary peasant girl, she suddenly revives the image of Joan of Historical Arc and justifies the current possibility of that magnificent and wonderful event. This is a typical georgesandesque task, as no one except it among contemporary poets carries such a pure ideal… A straightforward, honest but inexperienced character of a new female creature is presented in the picture, which possesses that proud chastity, which is neither afraid, nor can it be contaminated by a creature – vice. The lack of magnificent sacrifice (allegedly expected specifically by her) shakes the heart of the youthful girl and without hesitation, without saving herself, without interest, selfless and fearless, she suddenly takes the most dangerous and fatal step. What she sees and encounters does not confuse or scare it; On the contrary, it immediately increases the courage in the youthful heart, which at this moment, for the first time, understands the full measure of its strength – the strength of innocence, honesty and purity; It doubles energy, reveals new paths and new horizons for a mind that until then had not known himself, an energetic and fresh mind still unpromising with the compromise of life.
Surely, Dostoevski, Sand’s archetype for bold and independent woman-independent women, points out without resistance from those who advised the « future poison of women’s protest, emancipation of women ». But its very commitment to disturbing the restrictive norms of the era and predicting a wider version of mankind is also what made Sand immortal:
George Sand… was one of the clearest predictors (if this thriving term) of a happy future that awaited humanity, in the realization of whose ideals she had believed with faith and greatness throughout her life – because she was able to conceive this, ideal in her soul. The preservation of this belief to the end is usually the fate of the high souls, of all the true friends of mankind… its socialism, its beliefs, its hopes and ideals, it based on the moral feeling of man, on the spiritual thirst of and its desire for perfection and purity, and not for its concept, throughout its life. each of her works.
(…)
Regarding the pride of her research and protest – I repeat – this pride never excluded the mercy, the forgiveness of insult or even the boundless patience based on the compassion for the offender. On the contrary, in her works George Sand has been amazed at the beauty of these truths and in more than one occasion has portrayed characters of the most sincere forgiveness and love.