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George Sand in the Netherlands



At the difference of what had happened in most other European countries, the Dutch seemed not to have appreciated the novels of George Sand, the most famous French female novelist of the 19th century. This has been the prevailing opinion up to the 1980s, in line with the evidently bad reputation of French romanticism in the Netherlands (Van den Berg 1995). So it seemed fully comprehensible that (the very most of) her work had not been immediately commented nor translated into Dutch. Although the difference with the numbers of Sand translations in Germany (for instance) was quite shocking, the tendency was (myself not excluded) to document the Dutch absence and make it understandable by quoting articles from the literary press, in which the journalist stated that "he would have preferred Mister Sand’s Lélia [1833] having remained near the Seine in Paris" (1835), or two years later that "one would not hear this critic saying that he should not have wished George Sand [..] to be put in prison". There was at least some approval of the author of this "soul-destructing sensuality" being conscious of her crimes, while she understood she had to hide behind a male pseudonym.

There seemed to have been only one exception: the immediate translation into Dutch of Sand’s 1863 novel Mademoiselle La Quintinie (little translated into other languages). This case, however, could be also used as a confirmation of the lack of real literary interest, by referring to its content: a catholic priest being ridiculed and attacked. Given the Dutch situation where Protestants and Catholics were fighting each other, a Dutch protestant Association saw the usefulness of having precisely this book translated and distributed among Catholics in the south of the country. A polemic between catholic and protestant periodicals followed, and in fact Sand became accepted , as was again demonstrated by the important number of necrologies in the Dutch press (including the daily press) when she died in 1876. However, their authors make frequent allusions to her international success as "counter-balancing" the "scandalous novels" of her early period and her "unfeminine" behaviour (including divorce and male clothing).

Both the violent tone of the polemics following the Mademoiselle La Quintinie translation, and the recognition of the worldwide influence of Sand's oeuvre finally induced the question: was George Sand, yes or no, part of the 19th-century "cultural repertoire" of the Netherlands (Even-Zohar 1997)?

The recent history of Dutch language (Netherlands and Flanders) 19th-century literature apparently decided for the negative. Van den Berg and Couttenier do certainly not exclude women: they mention seven Belgian and 21 Dutch authors (percentage still to be calculated...). But any influence of or opinions about George Sand are described only for Belgian authors. Interestingly, one of the statements is that the Flemish critics officially rejected what, in fact, they were following.

This is precisely what also happened in the Netherlands - and has already been demonstrated in a series of articles, of which this contribution is only a brief abstract. Indeed since the history of reading, of the press, of translations has started to produce its outputs, it is impossible not to see the impact of George Sand for the Dutch reading public, which certainly was less important than her influence in Germany, England and Russia (for instance), and also less considerable than the presence of Dickens or Scott (for instance) in Holland.






SvD, October 2009 (not finished)





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