This could have been a pretty piece of travelogue, with the descriptions of Venice and the Venetians in the days when their decline was recent and poignant and piquant, with their toothless pride in their grandees and knife-throwing assassins in the face of a new and faceless capitalism; of the magic domain of the Tirol just tailor-made to appeal to the Romantic sensibility that was Sand's, of the tourists of many nations and in particular the frequent amused, impressed, resigned jabs at the English, protected by an "invisible fluid," whose goal in travel seems to be to tread all the paths of the earth without ever wetting their mantles or bespattering their three pairs of breeches. It could have been that, leavened with Sand's smart, dilettantish discussion of phrenology as against physiognomy, quoting extensively from Lavater and my beloved Herder, or her prolegomena for a future criticism, where all critics must be required to be writers and all journals required to make room for their writing, so that no one can cast stones without also living in a glass house, and the salutary effects indulging in their own creative endavours as opposed to just picking off those of others will have on their psychology: "You will not all be great men, but you will at least be men."

It could have been that and more, except that these are letters from actual George Sand to her actual lovers and friends (albeit composed with an eye to publication, which in itself is a little ew), and she is just ME ME ME and histrionic and reproachful all the time, and what you see above is not 100% of the value in this volume but is fairly close to it (there is also a cute description of her kids where her son is like "[My sister] will make you proud but I will make you happy," but it only lasts like a page). The rest reflects a woman whose relationships seem like they could be interesting and unconventional if she didn't take them all so humourlessly and if, furthermore, we didn't have to unpick multiple layers of pseudonyms to get a remote sense of what was going on. She refers to herself with the male pronoun, but doesn't do anything cool and gendery with it--conversations and events are reported just as they seem to have really happened, meaning, under the circumstances, with a sort of perpetually suspended and entirely spurious (since she was a woman all along!) homoeroticism lite that never pays off. It's aggravating! Anyway, I read this book by George Sand to prepare myself for reading a book about George Sand and her relationships, and perhaps I should have done it in the reverse order to maximize my profit from this one but I am glad to be moving on regardless. ( )