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AEOLIAN_EXHAUST
April 6, 2003
George Sand to Gustave Flaubert, November 29th, 1866:
"I have never ceased to wonder at the way you torment
yourself over your writing. Is it just fastidiousness on
your part? There is so little to show for it... As to
style, I certainly do not worry myself, as you do, over
that. The wind bloweth as it listeth through my old
harp. _My_ style has its ups and downs, its sounding
harmonies, and its failures. I do not, fundamentally,
much mind, so long as the _emotion_ comes through. But
it is no use my trying to screw it out of myself. It is
the other who sings through me, well or badly, as the
case may be. When I begin to think of all that, I get
frightened, and tell myself that I count for nothing, for
nothing at all... let the wind blow a little through
_your_ strings. I think you fret about it all much more
than you should, and that you ought to let the _other_
have his say more often. Everything would work out all
right, and it would be a great deal less exhausting for
you..."
George Sand: Correspondance, Volume V, p. 253
-- page 428 of
"Lélia, The Life of Geroge Sand"
by André Maurois
(translated by Gerard Hopkins)
(1954) Harper
KEROUAC
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