GEORGE SAND AND
FREDERICK CHOPIN
IN MAJORCA
In this fascinating book, the writer George Sand recounts the story of her 1838 winter in Majorca, a winter she passed in the company of Frederick Chopin. In it she describes the natural beauties of Majorca as well as the rumblings of approaching war. A preface by Luis Ripoll, an expert on the lives of Chopin and Sand, helps the reader to appreciate the significance of this unique work.
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GEORGE SAND AND
FREDERICK CHOPIN
IN MAJORCA
BY
GEORGE SAND
Kegan Paul
London New York Bahrain
First published in 2005 by
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ISBN: 0-7103-1040-4
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Preface
A FEW BACKGROUND WORDS
I think it is interesting and almost obligatory, out of consideration for the reader, to include in the explicit pages of the present book, words in the original French of Un Hiver Majorque, which we could describe as words of circumambience and clarification. This we can justify by the very nature of the work, by its descriptive rather than its narrative character, by the superficiality and even the arrangement of some of the chapters, as well as by its subjectivity which leads the authoress at times to make cutting, doubtful or false asseverations, and to divulge ideas which with the passing of time have merited a different and even contrary qualification. In my opinion, this additional touch will, I think, be well received by the reader who makes contact, perhaps for the first time, with the romantic writer; and especially if, besides, he becomes acquainted with Majorca through these same pages, or wishes to compare his own impressions of the island with those of Aurora Dupin, alias Madame Dudevant, and George Sand in her literary works.
On the other hand an attempt has also been made to avoid an excessive number of notes, combining my own with the already numerous notes of the authoress and the translator.
The first thing you should be told is that the winter to which the hook refers is the famous one of 18381839. In reality it was not a winter, but part of the autumn and a little more than half of the following season. A particular note should be made of this point, because the authoress herself, in the work we are prefacing, is mistaken; she is under the impression that she was in the island a month longer then she actually was.
We know of course all about those remote days which witnessed the visit of this early tourist from the 11th November 1838 to the 13th February 1839. We must say at once that George Sand did not make the journey alone. She was accompanied by Frederick Chopin, the immortal musician, her children, Maurice and Solange Dudevant, as well as by a French maid. The latter is presented to us as a shadowy figure, but nevertheless she played a quite important role during the travellers' Majorcan days.
The scene of their stay was first, Palma (which, contrary to what the authoress states, was formerly called Ciutat de Mallorques until the 17th century), then a house in a suburb of the capital called Establiments, and finally, from the 15th December until their departure, the Carthusian monastery (Cartuja) of Jesus the Nazarene in Valldemosa. The monks had abandoned this monastery, not of their own desire, but following a governmental law called the Ley Mendizbal; which must have been of a tremendously advanced nature for those days, and which was designed to take away or, at least, reduce the power and multiple riches that the ordinary religious Orders had succeeded unlawfully in retaining. Under this law, which was put into force at different periods, the dissolution of the Order was brought about and either the demolition of their convent, or only its secularization. An example, among several others, of the first case is the demolition of the convent of Santo Domingo, situated close to the Cathedral of Majorca, a Gothic gem, whose blessed and moving ruins the writer of this book was still able to gaze upon. And an example of the second case is the Cartuja of Valldemosa and its monks.
