Posts Tagged ‘George Sand’
“Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though.”*…
The frontispiece of Public and Private Life of Animals, by P. J. Stahl, illustrated by J. J. Grandville, and translated rom the French by J. Thompson; 1877; London, S. Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington.
This collection of acerbic animal fables, originally published in 1842 as Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux, boasts among its contributors some of the finest literary minds of mid 19th-century France, including Honoré de Balzac, George Sand, and the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel (under the pseudonym of P. J. Stahl). The book is also home to some of the finest work (some featured below) by the caricaturist J. J. Grandville, drawings in which we can see the satirical genius and inventiveness that would be unleashed in full glory just two years later with the publication of his wonderful Un autre monde.
See more at Public Domain Review; and visit the original at the Internet Archive.
* A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
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As we anthropomorphize, we might send carefully-limned birthday greetings to Joesph Stella; he was born on this date in 1877. An accomplished illustrator, he is better known as a Futurist painter, perhaps especially for his depictions of industrial America and his images of the Brooklyn Bridge.
He was one of the many artists to break out as a result of the 1913 Armory Show (he was considered by critics as important and influential as Duchamp and Picabia). He was later associated with the American Precisionist movement of the 1910s–1940s.
A photo by Man Ray of Stella (foreground) and Marcel Duchamp (background, sitting under a portrait of Man Ray)
“There is no frigate like a book”*…
This striking portrait of a Thai woman lost in her book is one of an extraordinary series collected by Steve McCurry at “To Light a Fire” (after Victor Hugo’s “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”)
Umbria, Italy
Bamiyan, Afghanistan
Many more at McCurry’s blog…
*There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
– Emily Dickinson
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As we part the pages, we might send adventurous birthday greetings to Amantine (also “Amandine”) Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant– though best known by her pen name, George Sand; she was born on this date in 1804. A prolific novelist and memoirist, she was well known and well regarded in her time; and indeed more recently: writers from Walt Whitman to A.S. Byatt have alluded to Sand’s writing in their own work. But she was in her own time probably equally renown as a free-thinker. Married at 18, she had two children– then, at 27, embarked on a five-year period of what she called “romantic rebellion”… during which she had affairs with Frédéric Chopin, Jules Sandeau, Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Musset, Louis-Chrysostome Michel, Pierre-François Bocage, Félicien Mallefille, Louis Blanc, and (probably) the actress actress Marie Dorval. The French took all of this in stride; it was her wearing of men’s clothing (which she justified as far sturdier and less expensive than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time) and smoking in public that sullied her image.
“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”
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