by George Sand
“Well,” said Spartacus, “I’m asking you for this humanity’s destiny, in the name of this humanity that is stirring in my loins as well, which I’m bearing inside with greater anxiety and perhaps greater love than you yourself do. An enchanting dream veils their suffering from your eyes, while I’m touching them and shuddering with every passing hour. I yearn to give them peace, and like a doctor at the bedside of a dying friend, I’d rather kill them through imprudence than let them die without assistance. You see, I’m a dangerous man, a monster perhaps, if you don’t turn me into a saint. Tremble for the dying patient if you don’t give the enthusiast the remedy! Humanity is dreaming, singing, and praying in you. In me it is suffering, clamoring, wailing. You’ve opened your future to me, but your future is far away, whatever you may say, and it’ll take a lot of my sweat to distill a few drops of your balm on bleeding wounds. Generations are languishing and passing away without light or action. I, the body of suffering Humanity; I, the cry of distress and the will to salvation, I want to know if my action will do harm or good. You haven’t so thoroughly averted your eyes from evil that you don’t recognize its existence. Where to run first? What to do tomorrow? Is clemency, is violence the means to be used against the enemies of the good? Remember your dear Taborites; they saw an ocean of blood and tears between them and the gates of paradise. I don’t take you for a seer, but I see in you a powerful logic, a magnificent radiance shining through your symbols; if you can surely predict the most distant future, you can even more surely penetrate the veiled horizon limiting the scope of my vision.”
It looked as though the poet were racked with suffering. His forehead was dripping with sweat, he gazed at Spartacus now with dread, now with enthusiasm; he was oppressed by a terrific struggle. His wife, horrified, kept her arms wrapped around him and shot our master looks of mute reproach where there was nonetheless a respectful fear. Never have I felt Spartacus’s power more than in that instant when with all his fanatic will to righteousness and truth he was dominating the tortures of this prophet wrestling with inspiration, the pain of this supplicant woman, the terror of their children, and the reproaches of his own heart. I myself was trembling, I found him cruel. I feared seeing the poet’s beautiful soul broken in an ultimate exertion, and the tears that shone on Consuelo’s dark lashes fell bitter and burning to my heart. All of a sudden Trismegistus stood up. Pushing away both Spartacus and the Zingara, gesturing to the children to stand back, he looked to us transfigured. His eyes seemed to be reading in an invisible book, vast as the world, written in luminous strokes on the canopy of the heavens.
He exclaimed, “Am I not man? . . . Why wouldn’t I say what human nature is calling for, what it will consequently carry out? Yes, I am man, so I can say what man wants, and the things that man will bring to pass. He who sees the gathering clouds can predict the lightning and the hurricane. I, I know what I have in my soul and what will issue forth from it. I am man, and I’m in touch with humanity in my time. I’ve seen Europe, and I know the storms rumbling in its breast. . . . Friends, our dreams are not dreams, I swear to this on human nature! These dreams are dreams only with regard to the present form of the world. But which one has the initiative, spirit or matter? The Gospel says, “The spirit blows where it will.” The spirit will blow and change the face of the world. It is said in Genesis that the Spirit blew on the waters when everything was chaos and darkness. Now, creation is eternal. So let us create; in other words, let us obey the breath of the Spirit. I see the darkness and the chaos! Why should we remain darkness? Veni, creator Spiritus!”
He broke off, then continued in this fashion, “Is it Louis XV who can struggle against you, Spartacus? Frederick, Voltaire’s disciple, is less powerful than his master. . . . And if I compared Maria Theresa to my Consuelo. . . . But what blasphemy!”
He broke off, “Come on, Zdenko! You, my son, you who descend from the Podiebrads and bear the name of a slave, prepare to sustain our cause. You are the new man. Which side will you take? Will you be with your father and mother, or with the tyrants of the world? In you is strength, new generation. Will you confirm slavery or liberty? Son of Consuelo, son of the Bohemian woman, godson of the slave, I hope that you’ll be with the Bohemian woman and the slave. Otherwise, I, born of kings, I renounce you.”
He added, “He who would dare say that the divine essence, which is beauty, goodness, and power, will not come to be on earth, he is Satan.”
He added yet more, “He who would dare say that the human essence created, as the Bible says, in the image of God, and which is sensation, feeling, and knowledge, will not come to be on earth, he is Cain.”
He was silent a while, then went on in this fashion, “Your strong will, Spartacus, has acted like a conspiracy. . . . How weak are these kings on their thrones! They think themselves powerful because everything bends before them. . . . They don’t see the danger. . . . Ah, you’ve overthrown the nobles and their armies, the bishops and their clergy; and you think that you’re so mighty! but it was your strength that you’ve overthrown; it’s not your mistresses, your courtiers, or your abbots that will defend you, poor monarchs, vain phantoms. . . . Off to France with you, Spartacus! France will soon destroy. . . . She needs you. . . . Off to France, I tell you, hurry up, if you want to take part in the work. . . . France is predestined among the nations. Join with the elders of the human race, my son. . . . I hear the voice of Isaiah echoing over France, ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Eternal One has descended upon you; and the nations will march toward your light.’ The Taborites once sang this about Tabor; now Tabor is France!”
He was silent a while. An expression of happiness had come over his physiognomy.
“I am happy,” he exclaimed. “Glory to God! Glory to God in the highest, as the Gospel says, and peace on earth to men of good will! This is what the angels sing; and I feel like the angels, and I would sing with them. So what’s going on? I’m still among you, my friends, I’m still with you, oh my Eve, oh my Consuelo! Here are my children, the souls of my soul. But we aren’t in the mountains of Bohemia any longer, on the rubble of my forefathers’ castle. I feel that I’m breathing light, enjoying eternity. . . . So who among you was saying just a moment ago, ‘Oh, how beautiful life is, and nature, and humanity!’ ” But he added, “The tyrants have spoiled all that. . . . Tyrants! There are no more tyrants. Men are equal. Human nature is understood, recognized, sanctified. Men are free, equal, and brothers. There is no other definition of man. No more masters, no more slaves. . . . Do you hear the cry: Long live the republic. Do you hear the countless throng proclaiming liberty, fraternity, equality. . . . Ah, that was the formula that was whispered in our mysteries, that only disciples of the highest degrees exchanged with each other. There’s no reason for secrecy any longer. The sacraments are for one and all. The chalice for one and all! as our Hussite fathers used to say.”
But alas! all of a sudden he began weeping hot tears. “I knew that the doctrine wasn’t sufficiently developed! Not enough men bore it in their hearts or understood it in their minds!”
“How horrible!” he went on. “War everywhere! And what war!”
He wept a long while. We didn’t know what visions were pressing before his eyes. It seemed to us that he was seeing the war of the Hussites all over again. All his faculties seemed perturbed; his soul was like Christ’s on Calvary.
I suffered a great deal, seeing him suffer so much. Spartacus was firm like a man consulting the oracles.
“Lord! Lord!” cried the prophet after having wept and wailed a long while, “have pity on us. We are in your hands; do with us as you will.”
While uttering these last words, Trismegistus reached out for the hands of his wife and his son, as though he had been suddenly deprived of sight.
The little girls, all alarmed, ran to his bosom, and they remained clutched together in utter silence. There was an expression of terror on the Zingara’s face, and young Zdenko studied his mother’s
eyes fearfully. Spartacus didn’t see them. Was the poet’s vision still before his eyes? Finally he approached the group, and the Zingara motioned to him not to wake her husband. His eyes were open and staring into space, and he was either asleep like a sleepwalker, or he was seeing the dreams that had stirred him slowly fading on the horizon. After a quarter of an hour he took a deep breath, his eyes lit up, and he drew his wife and son to his breast and held them in a long embrace.
Then he stood up and motioned that he wanted to get back on the road.
“The sun is very warm for you just now,” Consuelo said to him. “Wouldn’t you rather have a nap under these trees?”
“This sun is fine,” he replied with an ingenuous smile, “and if you don’t fear it more than usual, it’ll do me a great deal of good.”
They each picked up their burden, the father the packsack, the young man the musical instruments, and the mother the hands of her two daughters.
“You’ve made me suffer,” she said to Spartacus, “but I know that one has to suffer for the truth.”
“Don’t you fear that this crisis will have untoward effects?” I asked her with emotion. “Let me follow you a while longer, I can be of service.”
“Bless you for your charity,” she said, “but don’t follow us. The only thing I fear for him is a bit of melancholy, lasting a few hours. But in this spot there was a danger, a dreadful memory, from which you preserved him by occupying him with other thoughts. He had wanted to come here, and thanks to you, he didn’t even recognize the place. So I bless you in any case and wish you the opportunity and means to serve God with all your will and all your power.”
I kept the children back to stroke them and prolong the fleeting instants, but their mother took them away from me, and I felt as though I were abandoned by all when she bade me farewell for the last time.
Trismegistus did not bid us farewell. He seemed to have forgotten us. His wife begged us not to distract him. He descended the hill with a firm gait. His face was calm, and he was helping, with a sort of lighthearted glee, his elder daughter leap over bushes and rocks.
Handsome Zdenko was walking behind him with his mother and youngest sister. We followed them for a long while with our eyes on the sandy path of gold, the forest path that has no master. They finally disappeared behind the firs; and just when she was about the last one to slip from view, we saw the Zingara grab her little Wenceslawa and put her on her robust shoulder. Then she quickened her pace to join back up with her dear caravan, as alert as a true Bohemian girl, as poetic as the gentle goddess of poverty.
And we too, we are on the road, we are marching on! Life is a voyage that has life as its goal, and not death, as one says in a crude, material sense. We consoled the hamlet’s inhabitants as best we could, and we left old Zdenko awaiting his tomorrow. We met up again with our brothers in Pilsen, where I’ve written out this tale for you, and we’re about to leave again on other quests. And you, too, friend! Keep yourself prepared for relentless travel, for unflinching action. We’re on our way to victory or martyrdom!7
1. Probably the famous Baron von Knigge, known as Philon in the Order of the Illuminati.
2. It is known that this was Adam Weishaupt’s nom de guerre. Is this really the person in question here? Everything points in that direction. [Translator’s note: Spartacus was the slave who incited an insurrection of his fellow slaves against their masters in first-century Rome.]
3. No doubt Xavier Zwack, who was a court councilor and suffered exile for having been one of the principal leaders of the Illuminati.
4. Baader, the Dowager Electress’s physician and a member of the Illuminati.
5. Massenhausen, a councilor in Munich and a member of the Illuminati.
6. It is well known that Weishaupt, who was an eminent organizer, used material signs to summarize his system and that he sent to his faraway disciples his entire theory represented by circles and lines on a little square of paper.
7. Martinowicz, to whom this letter was addressed, a distinguished scholar and enthusiastic illuminist, was decapitated in Buda in 1795, along with several Hungarian noblemen, his accomplices in the conspiracy.
Notes
Introduction
1. The three main translations, with the earliest American dates and places of publication that I’ve been able to discover, are the ones by Francis George Shaw (Boston: William D. Ticknor and Co., 1847), by Fayette Robinson (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson, 1851), and finally by Frank Hunter Potter (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1891). It is interesting to note that Walt Whitman had in his personal library a copy of the second edition of the Shaw translation (New York: William H. Graham, 1848), now in the Library of Congress.
This brief introduction is intended for general readers who have little or no knowledge of French. Readers at ease in French would be well advised to turn to the introductions that have accompanied the re-editions of Consuelo and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt in France over the last fifty years, to wit, the 1959 Classiques Garnier edition by Léon Cellier and Léon Guichard (now reissued in Folio Classique), with its extensive discussions of Sand’s literary sources, of music, the supernatural, and secret societies in the work; the 1983 edition by Simone Vierne and René Bourgeois (Éditions de l’Aurore), with its full appendix of the music and the musicians mentioned in the work; as well as the 1999 edition by Robert Sctrick (Phébus) and the 2004 edition by Nicole Savy and Damien Zanone (Éditions Robert Laffont). This flurry of re-editions testifies to the enduring importance and appeal of George Sand’s works and of this work in particular.
2. George Sand and Pauline Viardot, Lettres inédites de George Sand et de Pauline Viardot (1839–1849), ed. Thérèse Marix-Spir (Paris: Nouvelles éditions latines, 1959), 44; my translation.
3. As defined by Lucienne Frappier-Mazur, “The novel of initiation develops metaphysical, usually religious concerns and a sense of the mystical and supernatural. It must, at least metaphorically, stage a descent into hell which leads to a second birth, and even its most profane versions end with the hero’s access to a higher plane of being, if not with some form of renunciation of terrestrial happiness.” In “Desire, Writing, and Identity in the Romantic Mystical Novel: Notes for a Definition of the Feminine,” Style 18, 3 (Summer 1984): 333. See also Chapter 8, “Consuelo and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt: From Gothic Novel to Novel of Initiation,” in Isabelle Hoog Naginski’s George Sand: Writing for Her Life (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 190–220.
4. See her letter to Pierre Leroux of 15 June 1843 in George Sand, Lettres d’une vie, ed. Thierry Bodin (Paris: Folio Classique, 2004), 421–22; my translations throughout.
5. George Sand, Jean Ziska: épisode de la guerre des hussites (Jan Zizka: An Episode in the War of the Hussites) (Brussels: Société belge de librairie, 1843), 38–40.
6. Nineteenth-century reform societies advocating better social and industrial conditions for the working class.
7. Letter of 26 February 1843 to Charles Poncy, Lettres, 407–8.
8. With regard to Leroux in the context of Romantic socialism, see Naomi J. Andrews, “ ’La Mère Humanité’: Femininity in the Romantic Socialism of Pierre Leroux and the Abbé A. L. Constant,” Journal of the History of Ideas 63, 4 (October 2002): 697–716, and by the same author, “Utopian Androgyny: Romantic Socialists Confront Individualism in July Monarchy France,” French Historical Studies 26, 3 (Summer 2003): 437–57.
9. Andrews, “La Mère Humanité,” 710.
10. With regard to the status of women in secret societies, it should be noted that in the late eighteenth century women could be initiated into some lodges of Freemasonry in France, but only in so-called lodges of adoption especially for women. That possibility of sexually segregated access disappeared early in the nineteenth century and was reinstated only after George Sand’s death. For a detailed discussion of this matter along with an extensive bibliography, see James Smith Allen, “Sister of Another Sort: Freemason Women in Modern France, 1725–1940
,” Journal of Modern History 75 (December 2003): 783–835.
11. See her letter of 7 June 1841, Lettres, 346.
12. See her letter of 28 August 1842, Lettres, 390.
13. See her letter of 13 August 1843, Lettres, 425.
14. Sand, Ziska, 30–31.
15. See her letter to Henriette de la Bigottière, dated “end of December 1842,” Lettres, 399.
16. Frappier-Mazur, “Desire, Writing, and Identity,” 328; see her illuminating and wide-ranging discussion of the male-centered novel of initiation that Sand inherited from tradition and her subversion of this model.
Chapter I
1 Frederick the Great: Frederick II of Prussia (1712–86, r. 1740–86). The action of the novel begins in 1751.
1 Voltaire: French author and philosopher of the Enlightenment (1694–1778).
1 Big Willy: Frederick William I of Prussia (1688–1740, r. 1713–40).
2 Phaëton: Composed by K. Heinrich Graun (1704–59).
2 dear readers: Here and frequently elsewhere Sand uses the exclusively feminine form “lectrices” to refer to her readers.
2 Consuelo’s last adventures: The Countess von Rudolstadt is the last part of Sand’s monumental novel titled Consuelo.
2 d’Argens and La Mettrie: Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’Argens (1704–71), who taught at the Academy in Berlin. Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–51), French physician, philosopher of atheistic materialism, and hedonist who lived in Berlin under the protection of Frederick the Great.