Consuelo, La Comtesse de Rudolstadt: Tome 1

Consuelo, La Comtesse de Rudolstadt #1

by George Sand

George Sand,

Genres: Classics

1072 pages, Paperback

Published December 7, 2004

About the author

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil, best known by her pen name George Sand, was a French novelist, memoirist and journalist. One of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, being more renowned than either Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. She wrote more than 50 volumes of various works to her credit, including tales, plays and political texts, alongside her 70 novels.
Like her great-grandmother, Louise Dupin, whom she admired, George Sand advocated for women's rights and passion, criticized the institution of marriage, and fought against the prejudices of a conservative society. She was considered scandalous because of her turbulent love life, her adoption of masculine clothing, and her masculine pseudonym.

Reviews

[LitWithCharles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un veritable pavé, très épais (1000 pages...!) écrit par la bad girl du 19ème siècle. Malheureusement ce livre fut écrit pour "meubler" une revue littéraire mensuelle à laquelle participait George Sand avec son mentor Pierre Leroux. Il y avait donc une grande pression pour fournir du texte, ce qui explique cette structure un peu loufoque et cette histoire qui zigue et qui zague entre les différents genres (romance, horreur, politique) avec trop peu d'unité. Et puis surtout les longueurs...

L'histoire raconte la trajectoire d'une cantatrice pauvre mais surdouée, entraînée dans des aventures pas possibles entre Venise, la Bohème, la Prusse et l'Autriche. Si le roman avait été mieux géré par ses éditeurs, on aurait pu lire un conte d'aventure passionant d'une sorte de proto-Tintin féministe, mais ici le lecteur est trop souvent assommé par des longueurs traitant sur des schismes religieux, et un manque de continuité. Ce n'est pas une grande lacune littéraire, de ne pas avoir lu ce livre...

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[Dury Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm re-reading this long book — a constant delight. I love the way it shifts from one genre to another; the intelligence of the author, some great over-the-top moments, the way Sand is able to talk about emotions and feelings with freedom and typically sees them as mixed or unknowable.
[Later] Now I finished it. It's my second reading of a 900-page book, so obviously I liked it. The experience of reading it is like entering a river of pure narrative, and I love the successful metamorphoses of genres from Love and power intrigues among singers in Venice, to a kind of Gothic novel, to a picaresque series of adventures, to power intrigues and rivalries at the Imperial court in Vienna, then back to the Gothic setting on the way to Berlin, where the novel (this part) ends. The second volume, which I've read but don't intend to re-read is good but less enchanting, but this volume can be read by itself.

[CharlesS · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second reading of this tome, in preparation for presenting it in summary form in my grad seminar in fall (students will read the sequel La Comtesse de Rudolstadt), helps me understand more completely the oeuvre and career of George Sand. This novel and its sequel in many ways constitute the apogee of her work both in terms of ambitions as a writer and in terms of breadth of her thought, notably on European history and on utopian values. In some ways, I see this as Game of Thrones meets "The Soprano", i.e. Consuelo AS cantatrice (hence, soprano) vis-a-vis the plots and maneuvers of the different courts of middle and eastern Europe in the 18th century.

[reveurdart · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Studieuse et perseverante, vivant dans la musique comme l'oiseau dans l'air et le poisson dans l'eau, aimant a vaincre les difficultes sans se rendre plus de raison de l'importance de cette victoire qu'il n'appartient a un enfant, mais poussee fatalement a combattre les obstacles et a penetrer les mysteres de l'art, par cet invincible instinct qui fait que le germe des plantes cherche a percer le sein de la terre et a se lancer vers le jour, Consuelo avait une de ces rares et bienheureuses organisations pour lesquelles le travail est une jouissance, un repos veritable, un etat normal necessaire, et pour qui l'inaction serait une fatigue, un deperissement, un etat maladif."