A Tribute to "Daniel Deronda"

This is not a review. I can't write much about my feelings about Daniel Deronda without pouring out the secret springs of my soul and my imagination. Nor is it an analysis, though Daniel Deronda is a fascinating treatise on several subjects, most notably the politics of female oppression and the nascent Zionist movement in the 19th century.

No, this is a tribute to a book after mine own heart. Daniel Deronda, though not so perfectly crafted as Middlemarch, is one of those books I wish I could have written. Not because it's perfect, not because I could have written it better, but because I feel that its spirit has been brewing in me and because I've imagined shadowy visions of its scenes before I ever picked it up.

My soul is joined to this novel because of its exploration of women's desire to perform musically - my own greatest desire, which I then place in a fictional character. But always, in my imagination, when my character went to a severe musician, asking for his honest appraisal of her voice, she stood on the verge of declaring with Gwendolen,“ If I have not talent enough to make it worth while... I shall never sing again.” And then she was reminded that “a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for.”

Not only did DD address my own ambition to sing, the ending chapters also reminded of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet from the Portuguese #6. I've long loved the cerebral, moral and spiritual relationship portrayed in this sonnet and desired to write of such a relationship myself. But in many ways it could only be achieved in a Victorian novel. To say that George Eliot has written a novel perfectly realizing the themes of this sonnet would be both an injustice to George Eliot's realistic understanding of human nature and to Elizabeth Barrett 's passionate outpourings over Robert Browning.

Firstly, Gwendolen is not Daniel's moral equal. Up until the very end Gwendolen views Daniel only in relation to herself, never thinking of his feelings and concerns. Nor is their relationship half so “romantic” as Andrew Davies' adaptation has made some believe. And yet the last interview between Daniel and Gwendolen, in both the novel and the BBC series, reminded me immediately of my favorite love sonnet of all time.

VI. Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore -
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.



And because my soul is bound to the soul of Robert Browning...almost as if he were my own Deronda figure... and because I always associate this poem with my own longings after great artistic ability in song... here is an excerpt from that piece of painful perfection which is “Andrea del Sarto”.

I do what many dream of, all their lives,
—Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive—you don’t know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,—
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)—so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
The sudden blood of these men! at a word—
Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.
I, painting from myself and to myself,
Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame
Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
Morello’s outline there is wrongly traced,
His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?

Obviously I've oversimplified this great novel appallingly and I recognize dozens of fascinating areas to be explored. I just don't have the time to edit all my outpourings over this novel into something more coherent, but must pay it some tribute here.