Death and Desire in George Sand's Lélia

Romancing the Dead; Death and Desire in George Sand's Lélia

Jacinta Wright

On June 6th, 1833, George Sand published her review of Senancour's Obermann in La Revue des deux mondes. This article was later used as a preface to the 1840 Charpentier edition of Obermann. At the time, Sand herself had completed her third novel, Lélia, which began serialisation in La Revue des deux mondes in July of 1833. Sand's article on Obermann has been viewed as a privileged intertext to Lélia. Kristina Wingârd Vareille briefly refers to it as 'la véritable préface de Lélia'.' Béatrice Didier includes an article on Senancour's influence on Lélia in her 1987 edition of the novel.2 In Margaret Waller's The Male Malady, Waller opens her chapter on Lélia with a rereading of Sand's analysis of Obermann. Waller finds in the article a 'radical revision of the mal-du- sièclé' in that it formulates a textual politics of the mal-du-siècle which is specifically feminist.3 However, it is the opinion of this author that Sand's article goes even further. It outlines an extraordinary literary manifesto which merits further critical reading. It permits Sand's readers to appreciate the extent of her ambition in writing Lélia, as it delineates a literary genealogy which stretches from Homer to Shakespeare to Sand herself. Principally, however, it outlines Sand's aesthetic of the poetic exploration of human psychology through literature. This study is a reading of Sand's inscription of a troublesome sexual desire in Lélia, which is consistently linked to the valorisation of death and suffering in the text. Such a reading is necessarily informed by a reflection on Sand's preface to Obermann. In this preface, Sand calls for new literary forms which will depict the disorderly desires of her generation. She makes a typology of desire as it is described in various literary works, and she relates the depiction of desire to the literary worth of these works. In 1839, Sand rewrote

1. Wingârd Vareille, Kristina, Socialite, sexualité et les impasses de l'histoire (Uppsala; Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1987), p. 147. 2. Sand, George, Lélia, édition établie et présentée par Béatrice Didier (Meylan, Les Editions de l'Aurore, 1987). 3. Waller, Margaret, The Male Malady: Fictions of Impotence in the French Romantic Novel (New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 1993), p. 139. 58 WRIGHT

Lélia, this time expunging the controversial references to Lélia's sexual impotence. In this study of Sand's eroticisation of death and despair, all references are to the better-known edition of 1833, in which Lélia suffers from sexual impotence brought on by metaphysical suffering. This edition foregrounds the problematic of the heroine's struggle with desire and its fulfillment.

Sand begins her article on Obermann with a dismissal of epic, dramatic and melodramatic literature. She contrasts these genres with that of the interiorised, confessional and psychological fiction. The former will attract the interest of the vast majority of readers. The latter works, however, are more important and more precious, as they describe the sufferings of the human soul detached from the chaos of historical event. Sand reads these works as anatomies of the human psyche; they are more revealing in psychological terms than history itself; they can teach us about the evolution of human psychology through the centuries: [...] les poèmes les plus importants et les plus précieux sont ceux qui nous révèlent les intimes souffrances de l'âme humaine dégagées de l'éclat et de la variété des événements extérieurs. Ces rares et austères productions ont peut-être une importance plus grande que les faits mêmes de l'histoire pour l'étude de la psychologie au travers du mouvement des siècles ; car elles pourraient, en nous éclairant sur l'état moral et intellectuel des peuples aux divers âges de la civilisation, donner la clef des grands événements qui sont encore proposés pour énigmes aux érudits de notre temps. (QAL 49)4 Sand concludes this reflection by declaring that the true worth of Senancour's Obermann lies in its psychological element, and that critical approaches to the text must always take this account: ia plus haute et la plus durable valeur de ce livre consiste dans la donnée psychologique, et c'est principalement sous ce point de vue qu'il doit être examiné et interrogé' (QAL 50). Sand continues by defining what she means by the psychological content of a text. For her, this lies in the depiction of moral suffering ('la souffrance morale' - QAL 50) and in the description of its causes, foremost among which is the problem of unfulfilled desire. Sand proceeds to situate Obermann in a literary genealogy which begins with Homer's Iliad (QAL 50) and includes

4. Bessis, Henrietta & Glasgow, Janis (eds.), Questions d'art et de littérature (Paris, Des femmes, 1991). DEATH AND DESIRE IN LELIA 59

Shakespeare's Hamlet (QAL 55), Byron's poetry (including Childe Harold, Lara, The Corsair and Manfred, QAL 52-3), Goethe's Faust (QAL 52) and The Sorrows of Young Werther (QAL 50), and Chateaubriand's René (QAL 50) and Atala (QAL 52). As Sand defines it, each of these authors has inscribed a different form of the frustration of desire. Werther experiences frustrated passion, René, the awareness of superior qualities without the will to realise them, Obermann, the clear realisation of his own inadequacy. Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther can be compared to Homer's Iliad in that the depiction of frustrated love is a classical form of the depiction of desire. However, Sand claims that the advance of history has produced more sophisticated literary forms, including René and Obermann. Of these, Sand states that Obermann is the most original, because of its depiction of impotent desire. For Sand, this malady has become widespread, and has afflicted her generation ('beaucoup d'entre nous en [ont] été frappés' - QAL 64). She defines this form of impotence as follows: 'la souffrance de la volupté dépourvue de puissance' (QAL 64). She states that the pervasive nature of this illness must inevitably give rise to new literary forms: 'L'invasion de ces maladies a dû introduire le germe d'une poésie nouvelle' (QAL 63). Although, according to Sand, this affliction is widespread, no one has yet dared to write about it; perhaps because only a great artist can treat of it in a truly poetic way: 'C'est une maladie plus répandue que les autres, mais que nul n'a encore osé traiter. Pour la revêtir de grâce et de poésie, il faudra une main habile et une science consommée' (QAL 66). Sand's preface to Obermann reveals the ambition of her intent in writing Lélia. Waller argues that this preface lays claim to a feminine and feminist specificity of Sand's mal-du-siècle. It is certainly true that Lélia, as a woman, is a radically new figure in the canon of mal-du- siècle protagonists. However, it would appear that in Lélia, Sand is attempting nothing less than an anatomy of desire, and the human suffering which accompanies it. In her article, Sand predicts that the

5. Perhaps the best-known incident which followed the book's critical reception was Planche's challenge to Capo de Feuillade after the latter's damning article in L'Europe littéraire on the 9th and 22nd of August, 1833. A duel ensued in August, 1833 (see 'Accueil de Lélia en 1833', in Sand, George, Lélia, édition établie et présentée par Pierre Reboul - Paris, Garnier, 1960). In March, 1834, Sand wrote that the attacks against the author oî Lélia were becoming so personal, and so offensive, that she felt that it was necessary to make a public response (QAL 70). 6. Sand, George, Correspondance (Paris, Garnier frères, 1964. Vol. 1, Tome II). 7. Redoul, op. cit., p. 587. 60 WRIGHT first attempts to undertake such a literary project would be repudiated and misunderstood; this was certainly the case with Lélia. The novel was met with an outraged critical response.5 It also met with high praise; Chateaubriand wrote to Sand declaring that she would live to become 'Le Lord Byron de la France' (COR 401).6 In an article published in La Revue des deux mondes, Gustave Planche compared Lélia to Byron's Manfred.1 Alfred de Musset compared it to Chateaubriand's René, and to Byron's Lara (COR 368). Therefore, on its publication, Lélia was received into the same mal-du-siècle canon outlined by Sand in her article on Obermann. It remains to study the depiction of desire in Lélia, guided by the aesthetic of reading outlined by Sand in her article on Obermann. Sand has charted the sources and dissatisfactions of desire in Goethe, Chateaubriand, Senancour and others; we may then ask how these works compare with Lélia, and if there is an economy of desire which is particular to Sand. It is clear that Lélia articulates the problematic of unfulfilled sexual desire as a source of psychological suffering. This suffering is as limitless as desire itself. Béatrice Didier summarises the problem as follows: Le drame de Lélia ne consiste pas exactement à ne pas savoir jouir, mais à avoir désiré intensément et à souffrir d'un décalage entre l'immensité du désir et les limites de la jouissance. L'opposition jouir-désirer risque d'entraîner un déplacement du lieu du désir. Le corps est le lieu de la jouissance ; mais celui du désir, c'est l'esprit, l'intelligence et l'âme.8 Physical desire must remain unfulfilled in Lélia because the body is figured as an inadequate vehicle for the experience of pleasure. As Béatrice Didier remarks, this creates a problematic status for the body within the text.9 The text negotiates this problem through a sublimation of the body which is operated through a consistent eroticisation of death in the novel. Lélia herself frequently expresses a morbid wish for disembodiment through death, and for a human affect which is mediated through the spirit and the intellect alone. The division between life and death is blurred as Lélia is variously and consistently referred to as a dead woman walking, as a ghost, an angel, a spectre, a cadaver. However, if the problem of the body can be overcome through its denial, the problem of desire remains. Desire cannot be repressed,

8. Didier, 'Le corps féminin dans Lélia', op. cit., p. 198. 9. 'Tel est finalement le statut du corps dans Lélia, statut fort inconfortable et problématique', ibid. DEATH AND DESIRE IN LELIA 61 and emerges instead in transgressive forms. The heightening of desire and pleasure is associated with sadomasochistic and suicidal tendencies; with the desire to be killed in the sexual act, or to murder the lover, or to kill oneself. The swooning, sleeping, dead or unconscious body is frequently figured as an erotic object. This displacement of erotic investment leads to an underlying necrophiliac tendency in Lélia, whereby the only good body is a dead body. The story of desire in the 1833 version of the novel is told through the figures of its five main characters; Lélia, the poet and woman artist, Pulchérie, her sister, a courtesan, Sténio, a young poet who is in love with Lélia, Magnus the Irish monk, and Trenmor, the former rake who has expiated his sins through a prison term. The novel is divided into four parts. The first part is largely composed of a correspondence between Sténio and Lélia. This correspondence sets the scene for the problematic relationship between these two figures. Sténio is in love with Lélia, and he sexually desires her. But Lélia has rejected the experience of physical pleasure, and cannot enter into a sexual relationship with him. In the opening pages of their correspondence, Sténio recalls a walk with Lélia in the mountains. She is insensible to the physical beauty around her, as, according to Sténio, she sighs for her homeland: 'vous demandiez à Dieu pourquoi il vous oubliait si longtemps parmi nous, pourquoi il ne vous rendait pas vos ailes blanches pour monter à lui ?' (L 10).'° Lélia is an angel briefly banished from her homeland in Heaven. The perfection of her celestial home forbids her from enjoying the beauty of the earth. Already, Sténio describes the death of pleasure and the alienation of the senses which characterise Lélia's experiences of the physical world. He also underlines her ambiguous status between life and death. Lélia's exile from physical gratification relegates her not only to the spirit world, but also to the company of the dead. In a later scene where Sténio, Trenmor and Lélia attend a costume ball, Sténio tells her that she is like a corpse who has opened her coffin, and is walking around among the living. He says that the other guests shrink from her as though they are afraid to touch her shroud, and that her hand is as cold as the marble tomb which, he imagines, she has just left (L 48). Trenmor warns Lélia to leave Sténio; she is a dead woman who will freeze his youth and vitality. 'Lélia', he tells her, 'le cercueil te réclame... couche-toi dans ton linceul, dors donc enfin dans ton silence' (L 52). The physical coldness of the living Lélia renders her

10. Sand, George, Lélia (Paris, Gamier, 1960). 62 WRIGHT corpse-like. However, Lélia is also described as young and stunningly beautiful; her body is a privileged object of desire in the novel, and is desired variously by Sténio, by Magnus, and even by her sister Pulchérie. Although Lélia cannot have a pleasurable physical experience of sexual desire and its gratification, all the circuits of desire in the novel begin and end with her body. Lélia is, therefore, a troublesome object of desire. She embodies death, and consequently the end of desire; its extinction. Because of this, attempts to satisfy desire in the novel are ultimately doomed, and the desiring subject frequently ends up romancing the dead, as exemplified in the following scene. In the second part of the novel, the reader discovers that Lélia lives with Sténio, although their relationship remains platonic. A strangely disturbing scene describes the only sexual encounter which will take place between Sténio and Lélia. This scene reiterates the depiction of Lélia as a dead woman, and illustrates her rejection of the conscious body as an erotic object. The couple are on the terrace of the villa Viola, built for the mistress of a rich man. In this house, Viola has died of love. Sténio plays the harp and sings for Lélia. As night falls, Sténio drops his harp, prostrates himself before Lélia, and begs her to show him some sign of life. She begins to cry, and he reads her tears as a sign that she is alive: 'tu pleures ! Tu vis donc enfin V(L 89). Sténio's prostrate and suffering body evokes Lélia's sympathy and affection; she embraces and kisses him. We are told that this is the first kiss which Sténio has received from a woman. He is overcome with a dreadful fear of death: 'Il devint pâle, son cœur cessa de battre; près de mourir, il la repoussa de toute sa force car il n'avait jamais tant craint la mort qu'en cet instant où la vie se révélait à lui' (L 89). Sténio asks Lélia if she will try to love him, and in reply, she embraces him tightly. Again, Sténio is overcome with weakness and horror; 'c'était le ciel et l'enfer, c'était l'amour et la honte, le désir et l'effroi, l'extase et l'agonie' (L 90). Sténio recovers his courage, and decides to master Lélia in his turn. He takes her in his arms, and kisses her. However, Lélia can only tolerate Sténio as an inert, unconscious body, and not as a sexual subject. She immediately pushes him away, and tells him that she no longer loves him. He falls back on the terrace, and believes this time that he is really going to die: 'C'est alors qu'il se crut réellement près de mourir' (L 90). Despair and shame replace his feelings of love. Lélia laughs, and, we are told, 'il se releva et délibéra un instant s'il ne la tuerait pas' (L 91). Sténio's frustrated desire re-emerges as homicidal impulse, and Lélia's as a fantasy of holding Sténio's unconscious body. He attempts • DEATH AND DESIRE IN LÉLIA 63 to leave, but Lélia stops him and tries to console him. She asks him to sleep in her arms, a request which surprises him: 'M'endormir ! dit Sténio d'un ton de surprise et de reproche' (L 92). All sexual experience in the novel is haunted by the spectre of death. For Lélia, the only possible consommation of sexual pleasure is a passage from love to unconsciousness, mimicking a passage from love to death. This scenario is repeated in the following passage. Lélia and Sténio visit Viola's tomb. Viola has experienced a love so deep and so extreme that she has died from it, and Sténio calls on Viola's spirit to penetrate Lélia. In a moment of ironic confusion, Sténio urges the dead woman to infuse Lélia with life; 'ne pouvez-vous pénétrer jusqu'au cœur de Lélia ? Ne pouvez-vous embraser l'air qu'elle respire et faire qu'elle ne soit plus là, pâle, froide et morte, comme ces statues qui se regardent d'un air mélancolique dans le ruisseau' (L 95). Lélia understands Viola's death differently. The direct confusion of love and death which Viola exemplifies seems to Lélia an ideal consummation of love. 'Enfant !', she scolds Sténio, 'Vivre d'amour et en mourir ! C'est beau pour une femme !' (L 95). The image of the sleeping body as erotic object recurs in the third part of the novel. However, this time, the sleeping body is not the object of a paralysed sexuality, but a conduit towards sexual pleasure. In this scene, Lélia is reunited with her sister, Pulchérie, who has become the famous courtesan Zinzolina. Pulchérie is horrified by her sister's deathlike appearance; 'vous semblez morte' (L 148), she scolds. The sisters discuss the experiences which have shaped them sexually. Unlike Lélia, Pulchérie has learned to negotiate and survive her life as a woman. Pulchérie has adopted as her own personal creed the writings of Anacreon, a Greek poet of the sixth century B.C. who celebrates the pleasures of wine, women and song. Hers is a religion of sensual pleasure: 'J'ai réduit mes ambitions à savoir jouir de ce qui est' (L 150). Whereas Pulchérie has concentrated her energies on the pleasurable experience of desire, on jouissance, she accuses Lélia of having applied herself to its denial (L 164). Pulchérie the courtesan has blossomed under this self-imposed régime of pleasure, but she compares the body of the celibate Lélia to a used garment which no one wants. Pulchérie and Lélia confide in each other the story of their sexual awakening. Pulchérie recounts what she describes as 'ma première leçon d'amour, ma première sensation de désir' (L 158). Curiously, the object of this first sensation is the sleeping body of her sister. Pulchérie tells of an idyllic day in their youth when she gazed on the sleeping Lélia and realised for the first time the beauty and desirability of the 64 WRIGHT other: 'Oh vous étiez belle, Lélia ! Mais belle autrement que moi, et cela me troublait étrangement' (L 158). In the experience of this pleasurable gaze, Pulchérie passes from a state of childish narcissism to an adolescent sexuality, a transition that Lélia has failed to make. Instead, Lélia's childhood experience of mystic visions has prevented her from taking a scopophiliac pleasure in looking at any real object. She says: 'de magiques apparitions m'ont gâté la nature réelle avant qu'à mes yeux se fût révélé le sens de la vue' (L 165). Lélia's capacity for desire has been frozen through her mystic spiritualism and her asceticism. 'Mes rêves avaient été trop sublimes ; je ne pouvais plus redescendre aux appétits grossiers de la matière' (L 167). She tells Pulchérie about her first lover. Although she loved him intensely, all the strength of her will could not allow her to enjoy sexual pleasure; the only pleasure she could imagine was an asphyxophiliac desire to be smothered by her lover: Mon sang se glaçait, impuissant et pauvre... Alors il eût fallu mourir. Mais l'égoïste ne voulut jamais consentir à m'étouffer en me pressant contre sa poitrine ; c'était pourtant là tout mon espoir de volupté. J'espérais connaître enfin les langueurs et les délices de l'amour en m'endormant dans les bras de la mort. (L 174) For Lélia, the only sexual climax she can imagine is death itself; this is the ideal configuration of sexual pleasure which she has rehearsed in her relationship with Sténio. As Lélia continues to recount her story to Pulchérie, she recalls a period when she lived in perfect communion with death. Fleeing from the memory of her disappointing love affair, she spent a period of two years in isolation in the ruins of an old monastery. Here she discovered an underground chapel which held the skeleton of a dead monk. This chapel became a temple where, we are told, she finds release for the ardour in her blood. The skeleton becomes the totem of her cult of death, a passive object which is the focus of her energy and her passion: Cette relique, ce caveau, ce crucifix me devinrent sacrés. Ce fut sous cette voûte sombre et froide que j'allai souvent éteindre l'ardeur de mon sang. J'enveloppai d'un nouveau vêtement la dépouille sacrée du prêtre. Je m'agenouillai chaque jour auprès d'elle... Je me pris d'une sainte et folle affection pour ce cadavre... souvent, dans mes rêves, je le vis passer devant mon grabat comme l'esprit des visions de Job... (L 191) The skeleton comes alive only in her dreams, as in the terrifying night visions of death and despair which visit Job. The language in this DEATH AND DESIRE IN LELIA 65 description is curiously contradictory. Although we are told that Lélia respects the sacred nature of the monk's skeleton, her religious fervour sounds remarkably like sexual passion; 'j'allai souvent éteindre l'ardeur de mon sang'. Interestingly, this experience of the living Lélia whose bed is haunted by the spectre of the dead monk parallels the horrifying fantasies of the monk, Magnus. If Lélia stands for the sublimation and rejection of sexual passion, Magnus is represented as a shameful figure, a man who cannot master his sexual fantasies. Nonetheless, Lélia 's haunting by the dead monk mimics Magnus's haunting by the spectre of the living Lélia. In Magnus's dreams, the vision of Lélia as a lascivious courtesan haunt his bed: 'Parfois même, il se couchait sur mon lit, sur mon pauvre lit solitaire et froid ; il s'étendait sur ce grabat, l'horrible spectre, avec des grâces de courtisane et des frémissements voluptueux' (L 85). It is clear that the depiction of desire in Lélia is highly problematic. Desire can never be satisfied; it is consistently short- circuited by its proximity to death. Lélia 's body is fetishised in the novel as the ultimate object of desire, but all sexual union with this body is a union with death. Of course, the novel concludes with just this ultimate consummation. Sténio, driven to distraction by his relationship with Lélia, throws himself into a life of debauched libertinage. This destroys his mind and his body within a year. Trenmor rescues him, and brings him to recuperate in a monastery. Here Sténio speaks to the priest, Magnus, who is driven half-mad with desire for Lélia. Magnus has devoted his life to penitence, and to the prayerful suppression of his feelings of desire. They enter into a long dialogue, which finally hinges on Sténio 's question for Magnus; has prayer and fasting quenched all physical desire for Lélia? Could she sleep in his bed without causing him to commit sin? Magnus is too ashamed to answer, and Sténio realises that his desire for Lélia will always torture him. He drowns himself in a nearby lake. Lélia arrives, too late, and finds his corpse. She pronounces a long speech over his body, and discovers that in the stillness of death, he resembles most the Sténio whom she loved: 'Maintenant elle retrouvait Sténio calme et recueilli comme elle l'avait connu, comme elle l'avait aimé' (L 318). She kisses him, and Magnus is overcome with jealousy. Magnus strangles her in order to contain his lust; we are told that his rosary beads are wrapped so tightly around her neck that they have to be cut out. Dying, Lélia staggers to Sténio 's body, and collapses at his feet. She thanks God for

11. Waller, op. cit., p. 139. 66 WRIGHT uniting them at last, and dies. The perfect union of love and death which has threatened the novel has finally been realised. The problem of the body has been overcome; death disembodies the lovers; Trenmor fancies that they have turned into the light of two stars, dancing together for all eternity. The problem of desire is also solved; death, its ultimate and only resolution has claimed the lovers.

This article began with a reflection on Sand's review of Obermann. In her treatment of Lélia, Margaret Waller finds in this article, and in the novel, evidence of Sand's feminist politics. She reads Lélia 's sexual impotence as the expression of her despair as she 'comes face to face with the realisation that she has no desire or ambition and feels no hope for the future precisely because as a woman, she is asked to confine her desires and ambitions to loving a man'.11 This is, undoubtedly, an integral part of the text, and is convincingly argued by Waller. In my opinion, however, it does not satisfactorily explain the recurrent eroticisation of death in Lélia. Here, it is perhaps necessary to return to the starting point of this consideration of death and desire in Lélia. Of Obermann, Sand states: 'A nos yeux, la plus haute et la plus durable valeur de ce livre consiste dans la donnée psychologique, et c'est principalement sous ce point de vue qu'il doit être interrogé' (QAL 50). The complexity of Sand's work is revealed in its exploration, not only of the political reasons for Lélia's impotence, but also in the psychological study of the eroticisation of death in the novel.

Dublin City University