George Sand and the Hotel Named After the Author

A NEW LEARNING
In the city of Loches in the Loire Valley, Christine and I stayed at the George Sand Hotel, the guest house that carries her name. Yes, George Sand was a woman. She was born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin and she became the most famous female writer of 19th century France. She authored novels, stories, plays, essays and memoirs. She was the epitome of French romantic idealism and in her literature she questioned sexual identity and gender destinies in fiction. She demanded for women the daily freedom of life that men took for granted. She wrote "The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women."

As brilliant a writer as she was recognized to be, she was prominent as much for her lifestyle and personality. The time in which she lived, with its restrictions and conventions, drew notoriety to her way of life. Aurore was married to a baron, scandalously left him, taking her two children to live on her own. She became friends with many artists, writers, and musicians like Eugène Delacroix and Franz Liszt and had romantic relationships with others, most notably Frédéric Chopin. She was loud, lewd and shocking. She was anything but the typical Parisian lady of the 1800’s. Her protest of treatment of womankind was manifest in her dress, that is no dress. She wore men’s clothing, suits, pants (long before that was acceptable), ties and a top hat. She smoked cigars. She became iconic because of her fame as a writer.

And Christine and I stayed in a charming hotel named after her, an aged old building, with a tiny entrance off a seamy street, with rooms, on three levels to which you climbed with luggage round and round the tightest circular staircase with head bumping low spots in the ceiling. And of course, our room, because we chose to pay less, was up with the pigeons or whatever else requires less oxygen. It looked like the attic with the structural support beams serving as obstacles en route to our beds each night. Ours is the tiny gable window in the roof. It did have a great view over a waterfall and the sound of running water 24/7 and it had a fine restaurant with good food. Then we learned that Paris has a George Sand Hotel with an elegant environment and beautiful furnishings which would have set us back a few Euros. Oh yes, on the outskirts of the city there is another less elaborate one with the same name, Hotel George Sand, Courbevoie, France; and another at 26 rue des Mathurins

The pleasant French proprietors knew nothing about George Sand.

At Hofstra University in 1976 Friends of George Sand founded the George Sand Association as a literary society, the purpose of which is to encourage and foster research and scholarship on George Sand.

Sand's "Story of My Life" is available from Amazon

Where is my muse of humour?

A NEW LEARNING
Don’t writers speak of visitations by muses who inspire their creative processes? I woke early today, concerned that the comic muse was avoiding me. Oscar Wilde wrote, "Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow." I have been writing solemn blogs for a while and I need a change. I need a chuckle.

My preacher illustrated a truth with this humorous story on Sunday. A thief who broke into a darkened home was collecting stealables when he heard a voice said, “Jesus is watching you.” He peered into the darkness but could see no one and continued with his rummaging. Again the voice said, “Jesus is watching you.” Freaked, he shone his flashlight around the room until the beam settled on a parrot. The thief spoke to the parrot. “Are you talking to me?” The parrot answered, “Yes I am. I am warning you?” The thief skeptically questioned. “You’re warning me? What’s your name?” The parrot said, “Hitler.” “Hitler! The thief exclaimed. What kind of people would name their parrot Hitler?” The answer came. “The kind of people who would name their Rottweiler ‘Jesus’.”

Now I can’t recall the point the preacher’s joke was illustrating, but I needed the laugh so it’s good. And the giggle needs feeding.

I permitted the absence of the humour muse to disturb my sleep without knowing anything about muses. Ancient Greek mythology embraced a sisterhood of goddesses or nymphs, nine in number. Yes, these inspirational paranormals are all female. I have always associated a ‘nymph’ with biology and insects. I had no idea that they looked as voluptuous as the ancients imagined them in human form. The muse I need is Thalia. Her name means ‘blossoming one.’ She is the muse of comedy and bucolic poetry (country or pastoral).

I called Thalia tonight and she referred me to my funny bone. Well it’s not a bone at all. Rather my ulnar nerve runs down the inside of my elbow and affects the feelings in my fourth and fifth fingers and when it is bumped against the humerus – did you get that? Hyoo-muh-rus. The long bone from elbow to shoulder I get a strange and funny feeling. How a-musing! Oh, and did you know that the English term 'museum' derives from the Greek Μουσείον (Mouseion, which denotes a place or temple dedicated to the Muses (the patron divinities in Greek mythology of the arts), and hence a building set apart for study and the arts. I think I will be OK now. My last pearl for the day is "It was all so different before everything changed."