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23 000 €

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George SAND

Histoire de ma vie

Victor Lecou, Paris 1854, 13,9x22,2cm, 20 volumes reliés.

Very rare and sought-after first edition of one of the most important autobiographical works in the history of French literature, George Sand's masterpiece.
Bound in half beige calf, spines with four raised bands framed in gilt and black, marbled paper boards, original wrappers and spines preserved for each volume, elegant pastiche bindings. A skillful restoration of paper on page 209 of the first volume, a small tear not affecting the text on page 241 of the fifth volume, a browned set of pages to the margin of the twelfth volume, restored first cover of volume 16 and a few marginal stains to the end of the same volume.
Provenance: from the Pierre Boutellier library, with his bookplate pasted on the flyleaf of the first volume.
Precious copy signed and inscribed by George Sand on the title page of the first volume, to her greatest friend [François] Rollinat, one of her close friends at her home of Nohant and father of the poet Maurice Rollinat, named after Sand's son.
A pleasant and extremely rare copy, with an inscription by George Sand, almost free of any foxing and housed in uniform Romantic pastiche bindings. A few stains to the margins, but no damage to the text.

“Our friendship is infinite. All the rest is time, earth and human life.”

The man she affectionately nicknamed Pylade was not just one of George Sand's best friends; he was, as she later wrote to Flaubert, “[her] double in this life”.
Her exceptional friendship with François Rollinat inspired George Sand to write some of the finest pages of Histoire de ma vie, collected under the title,
“Mon chapitre de l'amitié moins beau mais aussi senti que celui de Montaigne” [My chapter on friendship, less beautiful but just as heartfelt as Montaigne's] on pages 211 to 246 of volume 16 of this first edition.
A few volumes later, she explained this long but exceptional passage dedicated to her discreet friend: “I do not propose to entertain the public with accounts of all my friends. To devote a chapter to each of them, aside from the fact that it might injure the timid modesty of certain persons who prefer to be withdrawn and inconspicuous, would be of interest only to me and a very limited number of readers. If I have mentioned Rollinat repeatedly, it is because this typical friendship gave me an opportunity to erect my humble altar to a religion of the soul that is contained, to a more or less pure degree, within each of us”.

“But all I have said here does not and cannot begin to tell the treasure of exquisite goodness, generous candor, and deep wisdom that this elite soul contained, unknown to itself. I was able to appreciate it from the first time I saw him, and consequently I have deserved a friendship that I count among the most precious blessings of my life. Beyond the feelings of esteem and respect that I had for this person's character, so tried by the need for abnegation and modesty in his domestic heroism, a peculiar likeness of feeling, a sweet agreement in our ideas, a conformity or, better said, an extraordinary similarity in our appreciation of all things, revealed to each of us what we had dreamed of as the perfect friendship, a feeling set apart from all other feelings by its sanctity and serenity.
It is very rare that between a man and a woman some livelier thought than befits the fraternal bond does not come along to trouble the relationship, and often the faithful friendship of a mature man is only the generosity of a passion conquered in the past.
(...)
As for Rollinat, he was not the only one of my friends who had, from the very first day, done me the honor of loving me only platonically. But I have always confessed to all of them that I had a sort of unexplainable preference for him. Others have respected and served me as much as he—others whom the link of childhood memories should moreover make more precious to me. They are no less so to me. But because I do not have such links with Rollinat, because our friendship dates from only twenty-five years ago, I must consider it as built more on choice than on habit. This is the friendship about which I have most often been pleased to agree with Montaigne:
If pushed to say why I loved him, I feel it can only be expressed by answering, “Because it was him, because it was me.' There is beyond all my discoursing, and beyond what I can say in particular about it, some inexplicable and fateful force which mediated this union. We sought each other out before we met, because of the stories that we had heard about each other, which made a greater impression on our feelings than such stories usually do.... And at our first meeting we were both so taken with each other, so familiar, so grateful to each other, that nothing, from then on, was as close as we were to each other... having started so late... [our knowledge of each other] had no time to lose, and had no need to conform to the pattern of dull and ordinary friendships, which require so many precautions by way of long and preliminary conversations.'
(...)
I was, however, deeply wounded by the scorn that my dear Montaigne had for my sex when he said, “‘To tell the truth, the ordinary capacity of women is not sufficient to respond to this exchange, or to the nurturing communion of this sacred bond; nor do their souls seem steady enough to sustain the strain of such a close and lasting knot.”
(...)
That woman may differ from man, that the heart and mind answer to a sex, I do not doubt. Equality will always be an exception. But even supposing that woman's education should make the necessary progress (I would not want it exactly like that of man), woman will always be more artistic and poetic in her life; man will always be more so in his work. But must this difference, essential for the harmony of things and the noblest enticements of love, consitute a moral inferiority?
(...)
Thus, I was going along nourishing a dream of male virtue to which women could aspire, and was constantly examining my soul with a naive curiosity in order to find out whether it had the power of such aspirations, and whether uprightness, unselfishness, discretion, perseverance in work—all the strengths, in short, that man attributes exclusively to himself—were actually unavailable to a heart which accepted the concept of them so ardently. I did not sense myself to be perfidious, or vain, or talkative, or lazy, and I wondered why Montaigne would not have liked and respected me as much as a brother, as much as La Boétie.
While meditating also on that passage concerning the absorption of the whole being in an “amor amicitiae” [“love between friends'”], which he thought ideal, but declared to be impossible between a man and a woman, I believed along with him, for a long time, that the transports and jealousies of love were irreconcilable with the divine serenity of friendship. And at the time I met Rollinat, I was seeking friendship without love, as a refuge and a sanctuary in which I might forget the existence of any stormy and heart-breaking affection. Gentle and fraternal friendship provided me already with concern and devotion, whose value I did not underestimate, but by a combination of circumstances that was probably fortuitous, not one of my former friends —man or woman—was exactly the right age to know and understand me well, some because they were too young, others because too old. Rollinat, younger than I by several years, did not consider himself different from me on that account. An extreme weariness of life had already given him a point of view of hopelessness, while an invincible enthusiasm for ideas kept him keen and alive under the weight of absolute resignation to external matters. The contrast in that intense life—the embers beneath the ice, or rather beneath his own ashes—corresponded to my own situation. We were astonished to have only to look each within himself to recognize the other's state of mind. Our habits of life were different on the surface, but there was a similarity in our make-up which made our mutual dealings as easy from the beginning as if they had been founded on habit: the same mania for analysis; the same scrupulous judgments that went as far as indecision; the same need for a notion of sovereign good; the same absence of many of the passions and appetites that govern or influence the lives of most people, consequently the same incessant reverie: the same deep despondency, the same sudden bursts of gaiety; the same innocence of heart; the same incapacity of ambition; the same princely indulgence in fantasy at times when others profit to bring about their glory and fortune; the same triumphant satisfaction at refusing to entertain anything reputed to be serious that seemed frivolous to us and beyond the pale of duties we ourselves considered to be serious; and finally, the same good qualities or the same faults, the same slumberings and the same awakenings of the will.
Duty, however, binding us hand and foot, plunged us completely into our work, and we stuck to it with invincible persistence, feeling nailed down by these duties which we accepted without dispute. Other persons, outwardly more brilliant and active, often preached courage to me. Rollinat never preached to me except by example, without even suspecting the worth and effect of that example. With him and for him I formed a code of true and sound friendship, a friendship not unlike Montaigne's conception, wholly by choice, wholly selective and perfect. At first, this bore resemblance to a romantic convention, but it lasted for twenty-five years, without the “sacred bond” of our souls being ruptured for a single instant, without a single doubt having grazed the absolute faith that we had in each other, without some demand or personal preoccupation having reminded one that he was a separate being from the other, a separate existence from the single soul containing two beings.
work, bound hand and foot, and we remained there with invincible persistence, nailed by these duties accepted without question. Other characters, brighter and more active in appearance, have often preached courage to me. Rollinat only ever preached to me by example, without even suspecting the value and effect of that example. With him and for him, I learned the code of true and healthy friendship, a friendship à la Montaigne, all about choice, election and perfection. At first, it seemed like a romantic convention, and it lasted for twenty-five years, without the holy stitching of souls being loosened for a single moment, without a doubt touching the absolute faith we have in each other, without a demand, a personal preoccupation reminding one or the other that he or she was a being apart, an existence different from the single soul in two persons.
Each of us has, during his long span, formed other attachments entailing a more complete affection, in view of the laws of life, but they have taken nothing from the entirely spiritual union of our hearts. Nothing in this peaceful and, so to speak, paradisiacal union could cause the other persons associated with us on a more intimate level to be jealous. The person whom one of us preferred to all others immediately became dear and hallowed to the other, and his chosen company. In short, this friendship has remained worthy of the most beautiful novels of chivalry. Although it has never declared itself but platonically, it has had and will always have the grandeur of a declaration to ourselves, and this pact between two enthusiasts has taken on all the firmness of a religious conviction. Founded on esteem in the beginning, by now it has become so engrained as no longer to need that esteem; and if one of us were possibly to stray into some vice or crime, he would still be able to tell himself that there existed on earth one pure, sane soul who would not be cut off from him.
(...)
But where this right has not been reserved and not even expected because of unlimited trust, where this right disappears in the plenitude of ardent faith, there only is the great, the ideal friendship. I, for one, need an ideal. Let those who don't need it do without it.
But you who still float between the boundaries of poetry and reality that wisdom does allow, you for whom I write and to whom I have promised to say some useful things as the occasion arose, you will forgive me this long digression in favor of its conclusion, which is this:
Yes, you must poeticize the beautiful feelings in your soul, and not fear placing them too high in your esteem. You must not bring together all the needs of the soul into one and the same appetite for happiness, which would be apt to make us selfish. Ideal love—I have not yet spoken about that, it is not time—ideal love would epitomize all the most divine feelings we can conceive of, and yet it would take nothing away from ideal friendship. Love will always require two egotists, because it bears with it infinite satisfaction. Friendship has less at stake: it shares all the sorrow, but not all the pleasures. It is less rooted in reality, in gain, in the intoxications of life. Thus, it is rarer, even in a very imperfect state, than love in whatever state you find it. It seems widespread, however, and the label of friend has become so common that one can say “my friends” when speaking about two hundred persons. This is not a profanation, in the sense that you can and must love, even individually, all those whom you know to be good and deserving. Yes, believe me, the heart is large enough to lodge many affections, and the more you accord it sincere and devoted ones, the more you will feel your heart grow in strength and warmth. Its nature is divine, and the more you sometimes feel it burdened to death beneath the weight of disappointment, the more the pressure of its suffering attests its immortal life. So, do not be afraid to be fully affected by surges of benevolence and sympathy, nor to give in to the sweet or painful of the many concerns that make demands on generous spirits. But be no less attentive to the cultivation of special friendship, and do not believe yourself absolved from having a real friend, a perfect friend; that is to say, a person whom you may love enough to want to be perfect for, a person who may be sacred to you and for whom you may be equally sacred. The great goal we must all pursue is to kill the great evil that gnaws at us—the cultivation of self-love. You will soon see that when you have succeeded in becoming excellent for someone, you are not long in becoming better for everyone; and if you go on to seek ideal love, you will see that ideal friendship has admirably prepared your heart to receive its benefits.” (translations from Story of my life: the autobiography of George Sand (ed. Thelma Jurgrau), Albany : State University Press of New York, 1991).


A copy in exceptional condition and extraordinary provenance, one of the most desirable of Histoire de ma vie.

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