A Woman's Version of the Faust Legend: The Seven Strings of the Lyre by George Sand (review)

Reviews83 Nettel's The Orchestra in England (also a social history), which charts the history of a subject not adequately discussed in the book. Copiously noted, well organized, and interestingly written, Russell's book is, nevertheless, a major contribution to the social history of music in England. It is, however, a first book and, like many first books, it is somewhat uneven, containing moments of real accomplishment, but also passages of intellectual immaturity. Despite this unevenness, the good far outweighs the bad and gives promise of still better books to come. Works Cited Disher, M. Wilson. Victorian Song. London: Phoenix House, 1955. Ehrlich, Cyril. The Music Profession in Britain since the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985. Haweis, H.R. Music and Morals. London, 1871. Macherness, E.D. A Social History ofEnglish Music. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. Pearsall, R. Edwardian PopularMusic. London: David and Charles Newton Abbott, 1975. —. Victorian Popular Music. London: David and Charles Newton Abbott, 1973. Kenneth DeLong University of Calgary George Sand. A Woman 's Version ofthe Faust Legend: The Seven Strings of the Lyre. Trans., Intro., and Notes, George A. Kennedy. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina, 1989. 185. $34.95 US. Readers who pick up this book expecting a feminist correction to Goethe's misogyny will be disappointed. In The Seven Strings ofthe Lyre Marlowe, Goethe, and the folk tradition of the Faust legend have had to make way for George Sand's declamations about Romanticism. Because Sand sees Woman as the inspired vessel of art and poetry, her closet drama might be considered feminist, in a fuzzy sort of way. Nevertheless, George Kennedy's edition of the work would more accurately be marketed as An Arch Romantic 's Re-Writing ofthe Faust Legend—or, better yet, under the title of the play itself. As Kennedy comments in his introduction, "The 84Victorian Review primary value of the work is as a document in literary, aesthetic, and intellectual history" (2). Sand's play, then, is interesting as an exposition of Romanticism. Disappointingly, her approach to the legend is so original that it does not reflect the influence of Goethe, so pervasive in nineteenth-century England, from Carlyle's Sartor Resartus to Clough's Dipsychus to Bailey's Festus. Sand's Faust figure is the rationalistic philosopher Master Albertus, and her Mephistopheles takes the disturbingly anti-Semitic form of a rapacious Jewish second-hand dealer and money lender. The devil is ultimately foiled and Albertus taught the central value ofpoetry (as well as Swedenborgian mysticism) through the magic lyre of his angelic ward, Helen, a figure perhaps vaguely inspired by Goethe's allegorical character in "The Helena" sequence of Faust (the only section of Part ? which Sand had read). Given its heavy freight of philosophy, The Seven Strings of the Lyre is nonetheless readable. Its Faust figure is a nineteenth-century idealist committed to analysis and rationalism, its Mephistopheles a representation "of perversity, of atheism and grief (177). Its Helen, however, is less likely to appeal to modern readers. Incorporating Sand's vision of the poetic and spiritual superiority of Woman, even Helen's allegorical function cannot save her from appearing as the ultimate Angel in the House. Beautiful, spiritual, mindless, and sexless, Sand's version of Dos Ewig Weibliche is every bit as disturbing as Goethe's. Kennedy's introduction to what he calls "This curious work" (1) places it nicely within the intellectual context of nineteenth-century France and Sand's biography. His translation from Sand's poetic prose cannot be faulted for the weaknesses in Sand's style, but his attempts to find colloquial idioms are occasionally jarring, as when the student Hanz (modeled, Kennedy explains, upon Franz Liszt) rebukes the "imperfect mind-set" of his master (55), when a factitious poet doesn't want to be "conned" (72), or when one merchant says to another, 'Tell it to the Marines" (151). The editorial apparatus to the text is uneven. Square brackets indicate the editor's additions to Sand's stage directions, but some scenes cry out for explanation and receive none (cf. 169), while others add confusion, as when Sand has explained, 'Hanz enters suddenly and snatches the lyre...