| | 1 | Author: | Doumic, René | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | George Sand; Some Aspects of her Life and Writings  | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | In the whole of French literary history, there is,
perhaps, no subject of such inexhaustible and modern
interest as that of George Sand. Of what use is literary
history? It is not only a kind of museum, in which a few
masterpieces are preserved for the pleasure of beholders.
It is this certainly, but it is still more than this.
Fine books are, before anything else, living works. They
not only have lived, but they continue to live. They
live within us, underneath those ideas which form our
conscience and those sentiments which inspire our
actions. There is nothing of greater importance for any
society than to make an inventory of the ideas and the
sentiments which are composing its moral atmosphere every
instant that it exists. For every individual this work
is the very condition of his
dignity. The question is, should we have these
ideas and these sentiments, if,
in the times before us, there had not been some
exceptional individuals who seized them, as it were, in
the air and made them viable and durable? These
exceptional individuals were capable of thinking more
vigorously, of feeling more deeply, and of expressing
themselves more forcibly than we are. They bequeathed
these ideas and sentiments to us. Literary history is,
then, above and beyond all things, the perpetual
examination of the conscience of humanity. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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