The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-06-08

1t is not wealth of ideas that you shall
find with him, but wealth of energy,
activity, adventure. His great gift is
an inventive imagination of exhaust
less fertility and unfiagging vivacity.
The moment a man or group of men
is presented to it, it SEXES them and
they speed off at full gallOp on a round
of high and exciting deeds. There will
be plot and counterplot. Deep schemes
will be undone by still deeper ones,
and marvellous obstacles suddenly
thrust in the way will call out greater
maryels of daring and prowess to
surmount them. The flushed face of
achievement viii never be 'sicklied
Ger with the pale cast of thought"
Here are no qualms of conscience, no
mental struggles, no tOrturing intro
spectiOn and self-analysis, no war be-
tween ideal and convention, no cark-
ing care. These are historical nov
els; but do not expect painful solicit
tude for the historic fact. The actors
do not disappear behind the costume
or the scenery, but pursue their eager,
absorbed way equally unconcerned for
time and place.
George Sand is the novelist of the
heart. The spring of what she writes
is always what she has felt. Her first
novels (Indiana," "Lelia'') were little
else but the embodiment of her pas
sionate quarrel with the institution of
marriage as it was cOnventionally un-
derstood and practiced in France.
They were protests against convention
and in favor of the free emotional
life. They lack restraint and wisdom,
being the work of youth, but they are
sincere. In her revolt against that
standard Of moral judgment that un-
derlay the marriage de CONVEYANCE
and that left the voice of the heart al
together out of the question in laying
the foundations of the sanctity of the
family, she at first erected that voice
into an infallible oracle But wider
experience tested disastrously in her
own life the worship of this divinity
also, and with her experience she won
a wiser view Her holly unsubmissive
heart was allied to an eager mind that
had the widest range of sympathies
and interests. She saw that society
was ailing at more than one point, and
she threw herself ardently into that
movement Of social theories that so
stirred France between 1880 and 1913.
Then her novels became pleas and ar
guments sometimes terribly long
winded, for social reforms Gle Meu-
nier d'Angibault'). But the perfect
masterpieces of her art came when she
had left the preaching of social the
cries and had withdrawn from the
turmoil of Paris to the quiet of the old
country heme at NOhant. There she
produced those idyls of French peas
ant life LA More au Diable, La
Petite Fadette" Francois lie Champ, =
Les Maitres Sonneurs') that have
never been surpassed in their domain,
pictures of plain but strong, sweet
and wholesome country lives, in which
GT~r nh n rlrr
role, but not with the passionate and
stormy violence of her younger years.
The flame of passion has burned down
to pure glow, and a rich experience
of life has brought a ripe and mellow
wisdom, which sees that love, to bring
forth its perfect flower, needs to grow
in good moral soil, to have the support
of good and disciplined will and the
/ shelter of calm and reasonable
thoughts. No doubt we must not seek
here the faithful portrait of the aver
age French peasant. We shall miss
from her farmer some of those quail
ties that often belong TO him and
some of those things that always be-
long TO his life: those hard qualities
and those unlOvely things that BaIzac
and lola dwell on SO persistently-his
greed of money, his coarseness, his
crushing toll, the smell of the stable
Oh tlto tl0AtlEHs Out IDL oil tlldL her
! canvas is not lacking in essential truth
for she knew her peasants from a
lung intimacy, such as neither Balzac
nor lola enjoyed. The source of the
difference is that what she saw and
dwelt upon especially was the ideal
part of his possessions, for she be-
iieved intensely in the reality and
power of that ideal part. One could
hardly desire a better exponent and
example of idealism in the art of fic-
ton. With her, art was not the pur-
suit of material reality, but the search
for ideal truth. What she would give
US was not a faithful reflection of the
outward form and feature of our hui
( man life, but a moving picture of it, as
1t IS in its inner forces and capacities.
Quite the opposite of all this is Bal
FAC He is the great realist. He wor-
ships the god of things as they are"