George Sand and Her French Style g 



in spite of the charm of her writing, ahnost irresistible in the 

 wooing- of the soft slow sentences,^ the inevitable weaknesses 

 of the facility which stood her in place of literary method have 

 been observed over and over, particularly where they are most 

 noticeable, in her construction. Her lack of fundamental plan, 

 of architectural design, has impaired a work that otherwise 

 would have in perfection, as it now has in bulk, few peers. Sen- 

 tences she could write, and chapters, exquisite in touch and feel- 

 ing, — few better ; but alas ! for all their delicacy, fragments. 

 When it comes to building up piece by piece a single whole, an 

 entire fabric with the subdual of many parts to the perfect har- 

 mony of one great purpose, — there her weakness, the weakness 

 of facility, is manifest. "Le genie," she says herself, "vient da 

 avur et 7ie reside pas dans la forme ;"^ and it was her misfor- 

 tune to take her own statement too literally — so literally, indeed, 

 that in Flaubert's sense she had no form at all. 



For to Flaubert form meant something more comprehensive 

 than style. 



"While attaching great importance to observation and analysis, 

 he attached an even greater importance to composition and style. 

 In his opinion it was these two qualities in especial which made 

 a book imperishable. By composition he understood that obsti- 

 nate labor which consists in expressing only the essence of the 

 successive acts of a life, in choosing only the characteristic 

 traits, and in grouping and combining them so that they shall 

 concur perfectly to the effect intended."" 



It was not merely his language, then, for which Flaubert was 

 so anxiously concerned in his obstinate wrestlings with expres- 

 sion — it was as well the figure, the shape, the whole concrete 

 I'lastic eml)odiment — the Gestaltung—\\r\(\Qr which he should ex- 

 hibit his conception, at once the emanation and the incorporation 

 of the idea as surely as the pose of a statue is decisive of the 

 final impression produced, to which the style was to add its par- 

 ticular evocation of sentiment like the music of an opera. This 



^Compare Taine's essay, George Sand, for an appreciation of her style. 



^Histoire de ma vie. 



2 Maupassant's Etude, prefixed to Lettres de Cuslave Flaubert d. George 

 Sand. 



207 



