Devils Pool (1895)

The Devil's Pool (1895)
by George Sand, translated by Jane Minot Sedgwick and Ellery Sedgwick

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Illustrated by Eugène Abot; (French: La Mare au diable) first in a series of four pastoral novels by Sand, based on her childhood. The original French edition was first published in 1846.

George Sand2474106The Devil's Pool1895Jane Minot Sedgwick and Ellery Sedgwick

THE DEVIL'S POOL

BY

GEORGE SAND

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

JANE MINOT SEDGWICK

AND

ELLERY SEDGWICK

WITH AN ETCHING BY E. ABOT

LONDON
J. M. DENT & COMPANY
Boston: Little, Brown, & Company
1895

E. Abot inv. & sculo.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A.

NOTICE

WHEN I wrote "The Devil's Pool," the first of a series of pastoral tales which I meant to bring out together under the title of "Tales of a Hemp-dresser," I had no system in view, and no design of introducing a revolution into literature. No one man has ever effected a revolution; for a revolution, especially in art, is an unconscious change which everybody has had a hand in. But this is not applicable to tales of rustic life, which have always existed, at all times, and under all forms, and have been sometimes pompous, sometimes affected, and sometimes natural. I have said somewhere, and must now repeat, that pastoral life has always been the ideal of cities and of the courts of kings. I have attempted nothing new in following the easy path which brings back civilized man to the charms of primitive life. I have not tried to invent a new language nor to affect a new style, though many newspaper articles have told me so. I understand my own intentions better than anybody else can, and I am continually surprised that criticism should be so far-seeking, when the simplest ideas and most trivial circumstances are all that inspire the creations of art. Especially as regards "The Devil's Pool," as I have related in the introduction, an engraving of Holbein, that had struck me, and a real scene that I had before my eyes at the same time, while the men were sowing the crops, were all that induced me to write the modest story laid among the humble landscapes of my daily walks. If I am asked what I meant to do, I shall answer that I meant to write a very touching and very simple story, and that I have not succeeded to my satisfaction. I have indeed seen and felt the beauty of simplicity, but seeing and describing are not the same thing. The best the artist can hope for is to persuade those who have eyes to see for themselves. Look at what is simple, my kind reader; look at the sky, the fields, the trees, and at what is good and true in the peasants; you will catch a glimpse of them in my book, but you will see them much better in nature.

George Sand.

Nohant, the twelfth of April, 1851.

Chapters (not listed in original)

To the Reader
Chapter I The Tillage of the Soil
Chapter II Father Maurice
Chapter III Germain, the Skilled Husbandman
Chapter IV Mother Guillette
Chapter V Petit-Pierre
Chapter VI On the Heath
Chapter VII Underneath the Big Oaks
Chapter VIII The Evening Prayer
Chapter IX Despite the Cold
Chapter X Beneath the Stars
Chapter XI The Belle of the Village
Chapter XII The Master
Chapter XIII The Old Woman
Chapter XIV The Return to the Farm
Chapter XV Mother Maurice
Chapter XVI Little Marie
Appendix I A Country Wedding
Appendix II The Wedding Favors
Appendix III The Wedding
Appendix IV The Cabbage

This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

Translation:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1895, before the cutoff of January 1, 1929.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1960, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 63 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse