Chopin and George Sand: Visions of reconciliation and otherness

Abstract

To read Sand’s fiction, or at least what she wrote while she and Chopin shared an intimate relationship, for insights into their creative affinities, is unproductive. However, some of her later writing, both fictional and non-fictional, gives us telling and fascinating insight into her ideas about music and its place in society, ideas which show close affinity with what we can know or can intuit of Chopin’s. Both were drawn to folk traditions, but how this informed their work is complex.