Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (966 page)

He was early impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those heights.

He would not regard his studies as instruments of success, but as the means whereby to feed motive and opinion. He had a strong craving for comprehensiveness of opinion, and was not content to store up knowledge that demanded a mere act of memory in its acquisition. He had a craving after a larger life, an ideal aim of the most winning attractiveness. Though Deronda was educated amidst surroundings almost identical with those which helped to form Gwendolen’s character, yet a very different result was produced in him because of his
inherited
tendencies of mind. After he had seen his mother, learned that he was a Jew, he said to Mordecai, —

“It is you who have given shape to what I believe was an inherited yearning — the effect of brooding, passionate thoughts in my ancestors — thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my grandfather. Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in a city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and born blind — the ancestral life would be within them as a dim longing for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their inherited frames would be like a cunningly wrought musical instrument never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy, mysterious moanings of its intricate structure that, under the right touch, gives music. Something like that, I think, has been my experience. Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for some ideal task in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a multitude — some social captainship which would come to me as a duty, and not be striven for as a personal prize. You have raised the image of such a task for me — to bind our race together in spite of heresy.”

This inherited sense of a larger life made Deronda what he was, and developed in him qualities absent in Gwendolen. This inherited power made him a new Mazzini, a born leader of men, a new saviour of society, a personal magnet to attract and inspire other souls. A magnetic power of influence drew Gwendolen to him from the first time they met, he shamed her narrow life by his silent presence, and he quickened to life in her a desire for a purer and nobler existence. George Eliot probably meant to indicate in his character her conception of the true social reformation which is needed to-day, and how it is to be brought about. The basis on which it is to be built is the traditional and inherited life of the past, inspired with new energies and meanings by the gifted souls who have inherited a large and pure personality, and who are inspired by a quickened sense of what life ought to be. On the one side a life of altruism, on the other a life of egotism, teach that the liner social and moral qualities come out of an inheritance in the national ideals and conquests of a worthy people, while the coarser qualities come of the neglect of this source of spiritual power and sustenance. Two letters written to Professor David Kaufmann indicate that this was the purpose of the hook. At the same time, they show George Eliot’s mind on other sides, and give added insights into her character. As an indication of her attitude towards Judaism, and her faith in the work she had done in Daniel Deronda, they are of great value.

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK,
May 31, ‘77.

MY DEAR SIR, — Hardly, since I became an author, have I had a deeper satisfaction, I may say a more heartfelt joy, than you have given me in your estimate of
Daniel Deronda
. [Footnote: George Eliot and Judaism: an Attempt to Appreciate Daniel Deronda. By Prof. David Kaufmann, of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Buda-Pesth.]

I must tell you that it is my rule, very strictly observed, not to read the criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist which ill-judged praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in me. For far worse than any verdict as to the proportion of good and evil in our work, is the painful impression that we write for a public which has no discernment of good and evil.

My husband reads any notices of me that come before him, and reports to me (or else refrains from reporting) the general character of the notice, or something in particular which strikes him as showing either an exceptional insight or an obtuseness that is gross enough to be amusing. Very rarely, when he has read a critique of me, he has handed it to me, saying, “
You
must read this.” And your estimate of
Daniel Deronda
made one of these rare instances.

Certainly, if I had been asked to choose
what
should be written about my book and
who
should write it, I should have sketched — well, not anything so good as what you have written, but an article which must be written by a Jew who showed not merely sympathy with the best aspirations of his race, but a remarkable insight into the nature of art and the processes of the artistic mind. Believe me, I should not have cared to devour even ardent praise if it had not come from one who showed the discriminating sensibility, the perfect response to the artist’s intention, which must make the fullest, rarest joy to one who works from inward conviction and not in compliance with current fashions. Such a response holds for an author not only what is best in “the life that now is,” but the promise of “that which is to come.” I mean that the usual approximative, narrow perception of what one has been intending and professedly feeling in one’s work, impresses one with the sense that it must be poor perishable stuff without roots to hike any lasting hold in the minds of men; while any instance of complete comprehension encourages one to hope that the creative prompting has foreshadowed, and will continue to satisfy, a need in other minds.

Excuse me that I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the prejudice and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute something to the ennobling of Judaism in the conception of the Christian community and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a moment made me repent my choice, but rather has been added proof to me that the effort has been needed, — yet I confess that I had an unsatisfied hanger for certain signs of sympathetic discernment, which you only have given. I may mention as one instance your clear perception of the relation between the presentation of the Jewish element and those of English social life.

I work under the pressure of small hurries; for we are just moving into the country for the summer, and all things are in a vagrant condition around me. But I wished not to defer answering your letter to an uncertain opportunity….

My husband has said more than once that he feels grateful to you. For he is more sensitive on my behalf than on his own.

Hence he unites with me in the assurance of the high regard with which I remain

Always yours faithfully,
M.E. LEWES.

This first letter was followed a few months later by a second.

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT’S PAKE,
Oct. 12, ‘77.

MY DEAR SIR, — I trust it will not be otherwise than gratifying to you to know that your stirring article on
Daniel Deronda
is now translated into English by a son of Prof. Ferrier, who was a philosophical writer of considerable mark. It will be issued in a handsomer form than that of the pamphlet, and will appear within this autumnal publishing season, Messrs. Blackwood having already advertised it. Whenever a copy is ready we shall have the pleasure of sending it to you. There is often something to be borne with in reading one’s own writing in a translation, but I hope that in this case you will not be made to wince severely.

In waiting to send you this news I seem to have deferred too long the expression of my warm thanks for your kindness in sending me the Hebrew translations of Leasing and the collection of Hebrew poems, a kindness which I felt myself rather presumptuous in asking for, since your time must be well filled with more important demands. Yet I must further beg you, when you have an opportunity, to assure Herr Bacher that I was most gratefully touched by the sympathetic verses with which he enriched the gift of his work.

I see by your last letter to my husband that your Theological Seminary was to open on the 4th of this month, so that this too retrospective letter of mine will reach you in the midst of your new duties. I trust that this new institution will be a great good to professor and students, and that your position is of a kind that you contemplate as permanent. To teach the young personally has always seemed to me the most satisfactory supplement to teaching the world through books, and I have often wished that I had such a means of having fresh, living, spiritual children within sight.

One can hardly turn one’s thought toward Eastern Europe just now without a mingling of pain and dread; but we mass together distant scenes and events in an unreal way, and one would like to believe that the present troubles will not at any time press on you in Hungary with more external misfortune than on us in England.

Mr. Lewes is happily occupied in his psychological studies. We both look, forward to the reception of the work you kindly promised us, and he begs me to offer you his best regards.

Believe me, my dear sir,
Yours with much esteem,
M.E. LEWES.

It was a part of George Eliot’s purpose in
Daniel Deronda
to criticise the social life of England in the spirit in which she had criticised it in
Middlemarch
, as being deficient in spiritual power, moral purpose and noble sentiment. If she made it clear in
Middlemarch
that the individual is crippled and betrayed by society, it was her purpose to make it quite as clear in
Daniel Deronda
how society may become the true inspirer of the individual. We may quarrel with her theory of the origin and nature of the spiritual life in man, but she has somewhat truly conceived its vast importance and shown the character of that influence it everywhere has over man’s life. As types of spiritual lifts, and as individual conceptions of human character, the personages of this novel are drawn with marvellous skill. Mr. E.P. Whipple says that Daniel Deronda is “one of the noblest and most original characters among the heroes imagined by poets, dramatists and novelists.” With equal or even greater justice can it be said that Gwendolen Harleth is one of the most powerful and grandly conceived of imaginary creations in all literature. In the characters, the situations, and the whole working out of this novel, George Eliot shows herself one of the great masters of literary creation.

When the prejudices aroused by the Jewish element in it are allayed, and
Daniel Deronda
is read as a work of literary genius, it will be found not to be the least interesting and important of George Eliot’s books. It has the religious interest and inspiration of
Adam Bede
, the historic value of
Romola
, and the critical elements of
Middlemarch
; and these are wrought into a work of lofty insight and imagination, along with a high spiritual ardor and a supreme ethical purpose. In this novel, for the first time, as Professor Dowden says, her poetical genius found adequate expression, and in complete association with the non-poetical elements of her nature.

XVII.

THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS.

It was
The Spanish Gypsy
, published in 1868, which brought the name of George Eliot before the public as a poet. This work is a novel written in blank verse, with enough of the heroic and tragic in it to make the story worthy of its poetic form. The story is an excellent one, well conceived and worked out, and had it been given the prose form would have made a powerful and original novel. While it would doubtless have gained in definiteness of detail and clearness of purpose by being presented in the prose form, yet its condensation into a poem is a gain, and the whole setting of the story has been made of greater interest by this method of expression. The poetic form is as original as are the theories of life which the poem is designed to inculcate. In structure it combines, with a method quite its own, the descriptive and dramatic forms of poetry. In this it nearly approaches the method followed in her novels of combining description and dialogue in a unitary structure of great strength and perfection. The descriptive passages in her prose works are strong and impressive, lofty in tone, and yet lovingly faithful in detail. Her conversations are often highly dramatic and add greatly to the whole outcome of these novels. In
The Spanish Gypsy
the surroundings of the story are first described in verse which, if not always perfectly poetic, is yet imaginatively thought out and executed in a manner befitting the subject. Suddenly, however, the narrative and descriptive form ceases and the dramatic begins. By means also of full “stage directions” to the dramatic portions of the poem, the story is wrought out quite as much in detail as it needs to be; and much is gained of advantage over the length of her novels by this concentration of scene and narrative. While the narrative portion of the poem is much less in extent than the dramatic, yet it has in it some of the main elements of the plot, and those without which the action could not be worked out. The dramatic element gives it a real and living power. The characters are strongly conceived, and nearly all of them are individualities of an original type and of an action thoroughly distinct and human.