ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that the boundary between the fixed and the improvised turns out to be disconcertingly mobile. It becomes apparent in Consuelo that trained musicians worthy of the name are in fact just as capable as folk musicians of producing a sense of endless renewal through constant improvisation. The nightingale says Sand improvises continually and improvisation here appears synonymous with the fecundity of nature, the production of life; which is both a natural function, and a characteristic of art. The chapter suggests an analogy between the arbitrariness of the signifiers of beauty, and the arbitrariness of language. Generally speaking the arbitrariness of language was accepted. Few people thought that there was one divine true original language, transparent to the truth, compared to which all other languages were inferior, fallings-off. The history of the belief in such a true language is fascinating; its development runs parallel to the evolution of the way God has been held to speak to humanity.
