In his biography, Histoire de ma vie, George Sand remembers the places of Valldemossa as the most beautiful she ever saw.
I left the Charterhouse with a mix of happiness and sadness. I would have happily spent two or three years there, alone with my children. He had a trunk full of good elementary texts and the time to teach them. The sky was magnificent and the island, an enchanted place. [...] Frédéric's music filled that sanctuary with such poetry, even amidst his most painful attacks! And the Charterhouse was so beautiful under the ivy, the blossoms in the valley so splendid, the air so pure above our mountain, the sea so blue on the horizon! It is the most beautiful place where I have ever lived, and one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. And I barely enjoyed it! Since I did not dare to leave the patient, I could not go out with my children for more than a moment every day, and sometimes not even that. I myself was very sick from exhaustion and seclusion.
Histoire de ma vie (1854)
Translated by Richard Mansell. Performed by Rosa Capllonch.
(París, 1804 – Nohant, 1876). Between 1804 and 1876, French writer Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin was based in Paris and Nohant, using the pseudonym George Sand to travel and write with a freedom unknown to women in the 19th century. Interested in literature and art and wishing to become a writer, she left her husband and assumed a pseudonym and habits more customary of a man. In the ensuing years, she took on lovers, travelled, and met major figures from the world of the arts, like Stendhal, Balzac or Liszt. In 1838, she met Frédéric Chopin, with whom she fell passionately in love. The relationship lasted for nine years, providing her with an emotional and family stability that led to a very dynamic, prolific stage in her career, with the publication of her finest works. Chopin and Sand travelled to Mallorca in November 1838 in search of a climate where Chopin and Maurice, George Sand’s son, could recover their health and the couple could calmly pursue their love affair.
Histoire de ma vie is a pièce de resistance as an autobiography, with descriptions ranging from George Sand’s family background through to her vision of writing. It reflects the complex intellect and life of a writer whose first work was published in a supplement to the newspaper La Presse in 1854 and later republished on her death.
Sand moved to the Charterhouse, an old Carthusian monastery, in Valldemossa with Chopin and her children, to spend the winter there in 1838-39. They had travelled to Majorca to look for a place with an agreeable climate for the health of Chopin and her son Maurice, but also to be able to make the most of their affair. Despite good impression when they first arrived, with an idyllic landscape, that winter did not turn out as they had hoped. The sun and the agreeable climate, gave way to a cold and humid winter in Valldemossa. Chopin’s health got worse, as did his mood. The landscape that had fascinated Sand so much was no longer enough to keep her on the island, and only fifty-six days after they arrived, they left Valldemossa. The stay is described in her well-known book Un hiver à Majorque (A winter on Majorca, 1842), where she unleashes her pen on the way of life of a still primitive island.
'La Miranda dels Lledoners' is a privileged corner of the town of Valldemossa, which fascinated and annoyed George Sand in equal measure. From the 'Miranda', and the foot of the Charterhouse and King Sanç's palace, you can contemplate the magnificent beauty of the town of Valldemossa, the valley, and in the distance the city of Palma.
