Which is part of why Frederick the Great is one of the more interesting characters in the book -- he's a bad person in ways that don't come down to "has bad taste in music", but rather stem from being corrupted by absolute power.
That does sound very readable indeed. (And also, fair assessment. Among many other things, he's what happens if you've learned through years of parental abuse that you either have no power or all the power, and there is no in between, and then he gets all the power.)
But philosophically, she's in dialogue with Voltaire (pretty sure someone could write a thesis on this), who she sees as intellectually facile and lacking heart -- she makes some comments about Voltaire having no taste in music, and in these books taste is music has been established as a pretty good indicator of character.
I think it also comes down to both (Sand and Voltaire) being very much embodiments of their respective times. Sand, at the point of her life where she writes these novels, is very much 19th century and Romanticism. Voltaire is 18th century and Enlightenment, which Romanticism for the most part was opposed to. My favourite summing up of Voltaire is from a 20th century biographer, Jean Orieux, who wrote in his preface:
This glittering creature managed his affairs in a continuity without weakness. With fifteen, young Arouet knew what he wanted to become, and he knew it with a deciveness and an ambition which are incredible. He had understood that he needed to become both a very rich man and a very great poet. He achieved both aims. His social success is achieved in tandem with his literary success. Even as a schoolboy he had concluded that talent without money meant only misery, and money without talent stupidity. He didn't feel himself meant for either variation.
Some say he wasn't "serious". Indeed. He did all not to appear so, but his importance is far greater. We tend to forget a bit that we all in the core of our being are marked by the encounter with Candide. Voltaire was the embodiment of a mentality which had doubtlessly existed in France before him, but which only by his pen has been given its definite form. When he gave to this mentality and this humanism, which had been already known to Molière and La Fontaine, Marot and Montaigne, the splendid form of "Micromegas" and the "Lettres", we became more French than we'd ever been before him. Even those of us who turn against this revelation, think, write and speak in a way that shows the Voltairian imprint. Mallarmé has said: The world was made in order to end up in a book. Can't one also say that a Frenchman ever since the farces of the middle ages has only been made to end up in a beautiful narration named "Candide"? While Voltaire made his genius - and the French genius - sparkle in all of Europe, he didn't care about national propaganda. There isn't a trace of patriotic bragging in him. He's above such particularism. (...) For him and those who understood him, there has been a Europe: the Europe of the Enlightenment, the most civilised and most human of mother countries. His borders were those of the mind. In this society, which consisted of the elites of the various nations, he saw the triumph of civilisation: we can say it was a triumph of Voltaire.
(...) Voltaire is a man for fighting, the daily struggle for happiness. Not a mythical but an earthly happiness reachable by all. The point is to free man of tyranny and misery. Humans can only be happy if they use all the possibilities of a human being, and that means if they live in freedom and wealth. Fanaticism, stupidity, poverty result in ignorance, slavery and war. (...) The greatness of Voltaire manifests itself in his sense of human solidarity. This man without a God believed in human beings - without too many illusions. To him, man was the masterpiece of creation. Any attack on freedom and justice he found therefore unbearable. When Calas was hanged, drawn and quartered in Toulouse, you could here in Geneva the cry of Voltaire who felt the torture as well. Not Calas alone was concerned, but all humanity has been violated in him: Voltaire, you and I. And thus you and I are the ones Voltaire then defended. (...)
Voltaire is always fascinating: in the good sense... and in the bad sense. He had countless flaws, and some true vices, dancing, whirling, fluttering vices, vices like lightnings and vices like reptiles: an odd assembly. These flaws, we've left a respectful place in the story of his life. As his friend Bolingbroke once said of Marlborough: "He was such a great man that I have forgotten his flaws." One can forget Voltaire's flaws, but only after knowing them first. We have uncovered them with the same dedication as his virtues, and will leave the reader the satisfaction to either forget them or, according to their taste, to enjoy them.
(Bad taste in music, though, he'd have taken offense to, what with having gone through the trouble of staging opera performances both in Cirey with Émilie and in Geneva, where the Calvinist city fathers were indignant about it. I mean, from our pov George Sand is right, because both Voltaire and Frederick were firmly stuck in the first half of the 18th century with their musical taste and refused to move on, which meant no realisation of the genius of Gluck, and they probably wouldn't have gotten Mozart, either, if they'd come across him. But he did care for music, a lot. It's also very Romantic thing to believe that love for good music equals heart and/or character. (Step forward, Richard Wagner, awful human being, but undoubtedly great composer who adored Beethoven as much as any Sand contemporary.)
no subject
That does sound very readable indeed. (And also, fair assessment. Among many other things, he's what happens if you've learned through years of parental abuse that you either have no power or all the power, and there is no in between, and then he gets all the power.)
But philosophically, she's in dialogue with Voltaire (pretty sure someone could write a thesis on this), who she sees as intellectually facile and lacking heart -- she makes some comments about Voltaire having no taste in music, and in these books taste is music has been established as a pretty good indicator of character.
I think it also comes down to both (Sand and Voltaire) being very much embodiments of their respective times. Sand, at the point of her life where she writes these novels, is very much 19th century and Romanticism. Voltaire is 18th century and Enlightenment, which Romanticism for the most part was opposed to. My favourite summing up of Voltaire is from a 20th century biographer, Jean Orieux, who wrote in his preface:
This glittering creature managed his affairs in a continuity without weakness. With fifteen, young Arouet knew what he wanted to become, and he knew it with a deciveness and an ambition which are incredible. He had understood that he needed to become both a very rich man and a very great poet. He achieved both aims. His social success is achieved in tandem with his literary success. Even as a schoolboy he had concluded that talent without money meant only misery, and money without talent stupidity. He didn't feel himself meant for either variation.
Some say he wasn't "serious". Indeed. He did all not to appear so, but his importance is far greater. We tend to forget a bit that we all in the core of our being are marked by the encounter with Candide. Voltaire was the embodiment of a mentality which had doubtlessly existed in France before him, but which only by his pen has been given its definite form. When he gave to this mentality and this humanism, which had been already known to Molière and La Fontaine, Marot and Montaigne, the splendid form of "Micromegas" and the "Lettres", we became more French than we'd ever been before him. Even those of us who turn against this revelation, think, write and speak in a way that shows the Voltairian imprint. Mallarmé has said: The world was made in order to end up in a book. Can't one also say that a Frenchman ever since the farces of the middle ages has only been made to end up in a beautiful narration named "Candide"?
While Voltaire made his genius - and the French genius - sparkle in all of Europe, he didn't care about national propaganda. There isn't a trace of patriotic bragging in him. He's above such particularism. (...) For him and those who understood him, there has been a Europe: the Europe of the Enlightenment, the most civilised and most human of mother countries. His borders were those of the mind. In this society, which consisted of the elites of the various nations, he saw the triumph of civilisation: we can say it was a triumph of Voltaire.
(...) Voltaire is a man for fighting, the daily struggle for happiness. Not a mythical but an earthly happiness reachable by all. The point is to free man of tyranny and misery. Humans can only be happy if they use all the possibilities of a human being, and that means if they live in freedom and wealth. Fanaticism, stupidity, poverty result in ignorance, slavery and war. (...) The greatness of Voltaire manifests itself in his sense of human solidarity. This man without a God believed in human beings - without too many illusions. To him, man was the masterpiece of creation. Any attack on freedom and justice he found therefore unbearable. When Calas was hanged, drawn and quartered in Toulouse, you could here in Geneva the cry of Voltaire who felt the torture as well. Not Calas alone was concerned, but all humanity has been violated in him: Voltaire, you and I. And thus you and I are the ones Voltaire then defended. (...)
Voltaire is always fascinating: in the good sense... and in the bad sense. He had countless flaws, and some true vices, dancing, whirling, fluttering vices, vices like lightnings and vices like reptiles: an odd assembly. These flaws, we've left a respectful place in the story of his life. As his friend Bolingbroke once said of Marlborough: "He was such a great man that I have forgotten his flaws." One can forget Voltaire's flaws, but only after knowing them first. We have uncovered them with the same dedication as his virtues, and will leave the reader the satisfaction to either forget them or, according to their taste, to enjoy them.
(Bad taste in music, though, he'd have taken offense to, what with having gone through the trouble of staging opera performances both in Cirey with Émilie and in Geneva, where the Calvinist city fathers were indignant about it. I mean, from our pov George Sand is right, because both Voltaire and Frederick were firmly stuck in the first half of the 18th century with their musical taste and refused to move on, which meant no realisation of the genius of Gluck, and they probably wouldn't have gotten Mozart, either, if they'd come across him. But he did care for music, a lot. It's also very Romantic thing to believe that love for good music equals heart and/or character. (Step forward, Richard Wagner, awful human being, but undoubtedly great composer who adored Beethoven as much as any Sand contemporary.)