George-sandizm

[Chew G]

Rather late in the day, but I finally found the text of that George Sand letter with the obscene secondary meaning.  The coding is not what I said: it involves reading all the odd lines and ignoring the even ones.  (So the position of the hyphen between lines 8 and 9 is crucial to the double sense, too.)  I think it speaks for itself....
 
 Je suis très émue de vous dire que j'ai
 bien compris l'autre soir que vous aviez
 toujours une envie folle de me faire
 danser. Je garde le souvenir de votre
 baiser et je voudrais bien que ce soit
 là une preuve que je puisse être aimée
 par vous. Je suis prête à vous montrer mon
 affection toute désintéressée et sans cal-
 cul, et si vous voulez me voir aussi
 vous dévoiler sans artifice mon âme
 toute nue, venez me faire une visite.
 Nous causerons en amis, franchement.
 Je vous prouverai que je suis la femme
 sincère, capable de vous offrir l'affection
 la plus profonde comme la plus étroite
 en amitié, en un mot la meilleure preuve
 que vous puissiez rêver, puisque votre
 âme est libre. Pensez que la solitude où j'ha-
 bite est bien longue, bien dure et souvent
 difficile. Ainsi en y songeant, j'ai l'âme
 grosse. Accourez donc vite et venez me la
 faire oublier par l'amour où je veux me
 mettre.
 
 
 
 Prof. Geoffrey Chew
 Institute of Musicology, Masaryk University, Brno
 chewg at seznam.cz
 
 Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London
 g.chew at rhul.ac.uk

________________________________

From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of Chew G
Sent: Thu 4.10.07 13:20
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] George-sandizm



Since this topic came up, I have been hunting around (but so far in vain) for the text of a George Sand letter, which I copied into a file some time ago. It might be relevant here, provided that it was generally known by contemporaries that she produced such things. It is a letter to a lover, whose literal meaning, though certainly amorous, is much less explicit and obscene than the text produced by skipping from each line to the next and reading the first word or syllable in sequence. (At least, that's what I remember of the way it was coded.)  I think the letter in question was sold at Sotheby's in London a few years ago.



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