Translated by George Burnham Ives
Review by Rob Spence
Opposite the title page of this new edition of George Sand’s novel is a list of her works of fiction. It contains 76 novels and novellas, produced over a working life of 45 years. This astonishing output was supplemented by plays, travelogues and autobiographical writing, all establishing her as one of the foremost French literary figures of her time. Her fame, or perhaps notoriety, has rested rather too much on her gender fluidity, which has been the main focus of recent portrayals of her in film and TV. This new publication of an early novel offers an opportunity to re-examine the basis of her reputation.
The novel has a frame narrative: an unnamed narrator introduces us to a group of bohemian friends, actors and musicians, relaxing after a meal in Venice, presumably at a time contemporaneous to the novel’s publication, 1839. The most striking figure in the group is the opera singer Lelio, who is middle aged, with a body that “had acquired a reasonable degree of embonpoint.” (I was irresistibly reminded of mid-period Pavarotti.) Lelio, who we gather has hitherto been reticent about his background, then launches into the tale of doomed passion that constitutes the novel’s narrative.
Lelio’s story is in two distinct parts. In the first, he recounts his early life as a private gondolier to a rich household in Venice. In the second, taking place ten years or so later, he is an established star on tour around the major opera houses of the day. Sand gives Lelio full authorial control of the text. His first-person account is replete with dialogue (including examples where he is not present at the scene), lengthy descriptions, and philosophical musings, so it is easy to forget that this is supposedly an after-dinner monologue. Nevertheless, the tale he unfolds is an engaging one. It contains several operatic and novelistic tropes, not least some amazing coincidences, but this is not surprising for fictional works of this time.
In the first part of the story, the teenage Lelio has travelled to Venice from his home at Chioggia, for reasons darkly hinted at, and later fully explained. He becomes a servant in the household of the young widow Bianca Aldini, and is entranced by the music he hears her playing. Music becomes his obsession, and he is encouraged by her to develop his untutored singing voice. His admiration for her grows into love, though he is too shy to declare it. Here, and elsewhere, Sand uses her characters to examine the issue of class and how society views any breaking of the code which separates persons of noble rank from the common people. It is an interesting variant of a theme present in many novels and operas of the period. In those, resolution is usually achieved by the tardy discovery that the orphan or peasant is in fact of noble blood, and thus entitled to the hand of the fair heroine. Not so here. In both parts of his tale, Lelio is a proud son of a fisherman, with no pretensions to any higher rank, despite his status as an artist.
The second part of his tale centres around his romantic pursuit of a girl whose true identity is unknown to him, but fairly obvious to the attentive reader. She is being married off to her cousin, and this sets the stage for a some conventional complications, involving fight and pursuit, duels and passionate declarations.
The Last of the Aldinis is, to a degree, a typical novel of its time, but its use of an outsider figure who remains on the outskirts rather than being assimilated into polite society is refreshing, as is Sand’s willingness to confront the injustices of a rigidly patriarchal system. Lelio and his musician friends are content to follow their unconventional lives. As he says in the last words of the novel: “Long live Bohemia!”
Rob Spence’s home on the web is at robspence.org.uk
George Sand, The Last of the Aldinis (Michael Walmer, 2024). 978-0645751925, 203pp., paperback
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