Ilse’s Reviews > Un hiver à Majorque > Status Update
Ilse
is on page 86 of 244
Emptiness & stillness terrify me,symmetry and strict order overwhelm me with gloom &if I could accept the idea of eternal damnation,my hell would certainly be to live eternally in a house ruled by meticulous order, where nothing is ever left lying about,where no animal is admitted.You may burn all the carpets in the world,if I may enjoy them only on condition of never seeing a child,a cat or dog frisking over them!
— Sep 21, 2026 05:42AM
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Ilse
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Now, the moral of this tale, childish perhaps, but heartfelt, seems to be that man is not made to live with trees, stones, the clear sky, the azure sea, flowers and mountains, but with his fellow-men.
In the stormy days of our youth, we imagine that solitude is a sure refuge from the assaults of life, a certain balm for the wounds of battle. (ctd in comment section)
— Oct 06, 2026 08:42AM
In the stormy days of our youth, we imagine that solitude is a sure refuge from the assaults of life, a certain balm for the wounds of battle. (ctd in comment section)
Ilse
is on page 85 of 244
Especially detestable to me is an underfurnished and scrupulously tidy room. Unless the occupant happens to possess great intelligence and a nobility of heart that transcends the sphere of such unimportant material considerations, and allows him to treat his home as a mere tabernacle, I diagnose an empty head and a cold heart.
(Madame Sand doesn't seem a fan of a clear desk policy)
— Sep 19, 2026 05:36AM
(Madame Sand doesn't seem a fan of a clear desk policy)
Ilse
is on page 35 of 244
Our social order does not even command the sympathies of its defenders; each of us in dissatisfaction chooses whatever escape suits him best. One throws himself into art, another into science. All of us who have time and money to spare, travel – that is to say, we flee, since surely it is not so much a question of travelling as of getting away? Which of us has not some sorrow to dull, or some yoke to cast off?
— Sep 11, 2026 07:04AM
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Outmane
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Sep 21, 2026 07:28AM
Thank you for sharing this beautiful excerpt Ilse
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Hi Ilse, I can relate to this quote! So much so that I make it a principle to always leave anything lying around, be it plushes, books, chess sets... :D
Outmane wrote: "Thank you for sharing this beautiful excerpt Ilse"You are very welcome, Outmane - and thinking that this book has been dormant on the shelf for about 35 years! Which is perhaps a good thing, I don't think I would have appreciated it much when I was younger :).
P.E. wrote: "Hi Ilse, I can relate to this quote! So much so that I make it a principle to always leave anything lying around, be it plushes, books, chess sets... :D"Hahaha, you made me laugh with you making such a matter of principle, P-E :D - it seems madame Sand would have felt at home both at your and at my place, finding lots to keep her mind busy to look at or play with, in my case apart from lots of books and magazines also a couple of fluffy cats :)). Although I sometimes long for a bit more order, wading through my son's pile of clothes and files or falling over the shoes of the daughter in the hallway and the furniture the son is collecting from family members in our living room awaiting the moment he will move out :)). It's getting a little too cosily messy here :)).
You've got there, dear Ilse! Wonderful. How is this so far?
Katia wrote: "You've got there, dear Ilse! Wonderful. How is this so far?"Finally indeed, after more than three decades, I am seriously engaged into this book, dear Katia :)! With this pace, I'd need seven more lives to read all the books that have been piling up in this house over the years :)). So far I most enjoy moments like this one, when Sand inserts personal reflections and asides into her travel memoir - I am not so smitten by her amply paraphrasing of what other authors wrote about Mallorca's historical buildings and sites (although pretty instructive). She made me quite curious though to read more about the history of Spain, the Carlist wars - she mentions a few times the refugees fleeing the mainland - and that would be another book to read that has been collecting dust here for years, Robert Lemm's Geschiedenis van Spanje. Looking forward to hear what you make of her book when you would get to it!
Ilse wrote: "Katia wrote: "You've got there, dear Ilse! Wonderful. How is this so far?"Finally indeed, after more than three decades, I am seriously engaged into this book, dear Katia :)! With this pace, I'd n..."
Thank you, dear Ilse. I really like your idea of 7 lives:-)) The same here:-) Also I seem to develop the habit of an older person of being slow, and not being able to let go something I am only half-enjoy:-) I hope Sand would keep her retelling to the minimum for your sake! Like you, I do not know much about teh 19th century Spain. It seemed to disappear from my radar for this particular period. So I hope you will get to Robert Lemm's book and then tell me more about it:-) So far I hope Chopin would feature prominently in her story as I remember you liked him.
If you think of yourself as being slow, I wonder which word I need to describe the extent of stagnation I am dwelling in, dear Katia :D. I am baffled by your speed of reading and producing stunning essays on top! Me, I would say I am a tortoise, if I wouldn't have been observing our surprisingly fast tortoise making its way through the garden and the house with truly dazzling speed;-). I have been in that state of not being able to quit books once started as far as I remember reading, although I am now practising on letting go of books that I decided not to read (eg the 1Q84 trilogy by Murakami), giving them away or leaving them in those sweet book boxes in the streets.On Chopin, I was duly warned that he wouldn't feature prominently in the book :-(. To mend that, I am reading two annexes to the book that weren't included in the French edition that I am reading: an excerpt from George Sand's autobiography - and an essay of Robert Graves who denies that Chopin had such a bad time on Mallorca and has quite some theories on why George Sand was so nasty on the inhabitants and had a terrible daughter :D.