Talk:Daniel Deronda

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[edit] Zionism & Mysticism

The discussion about Zionism in this article is woefully anachronistic. At the time Eliot was ahead of her contemporaries in viewing the Jews as a people worthy of respect - you just have to look at how Jews are spoken of in Trollope, du Maurier and even some Dickens to see how rife anti-semitism was in British society at the time. Compare how the millionaire Melmotte is presented in Trollope's THE WAY WE LIVE NOW with how Mordecai is presented in DANIEL DERONDA. Eliot's sympathetic view of Mordecai's Zionism (a word which I don't think even existed at the time) came in the wake of the sudden surge of nationalism going on in Europe at the time. This was when nationalist and independence movements were happening in Germany and Italy and old regimes such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire were starting to crumble (Eliot mentions the Battle of Sadowa where the Italians defeated the Austrians in a key battle to do with the libeartion of Italy has happening at the same time as Deronda's meeting with his mother). The idea of oppressed or disenfranchised people being allowed self-determination was a popular one among intellectuals of the time. Eliot, who had met and befriended the Jewish intellectual and mystic Emmanuel Deutsch, saw no reason why the Jews should not have the right to self-determination either.

Eliot's sympathy with the Jewish cause and support for Jewish determination is a long way from supporting the disenfranchisement of Arabs. Daniel Deronda is not a tank demolishing a Palestinian home, nor is George Eliot Ariel Sharon. I think Eliot would have been horrified at the suffering the Arab-Israeli conflict has caused in the Middle East. Zionism may not be a fashionable cause now but when she wrote the book Eliot was ahead of her time in seeking to understand Jewish lives, culture and aspirations. Her support for Mordecai is support for a people who had been systematically supressed for centuries, not for settlements on the West Bank or bombing of Lebanese homes. One has to see the 'Zionism' of the book in its historical context. Eliot would have seen it more in terms of the liberation and return to equality of an oppressed people rather than the means to oppress someone else.

The other element of the book which is left out of this discussion - and it is one which causes immense embaressment among British academics who like to see Eliot as the sine qua non of British Victorian Agnostic Humanists - is the influence of Jewish Mysticism in the book. Mordecai is explicitly stated to be a Kaballist who sees himself as the reincarnation of a spirit which was born in Spain and Middle East and migrated through incarnations to the present day (of the book). Eliot actually refers to the Kaballah in the text so it is absolutely clear that she had studied it. The way in which Eliot describes Mordecai's relationship with Deronda is couched in mystical, visionary terms. In some scenes they seem to have an almost psychic relationship. She even drops in names of famous Kaballists, such as Kalonymos, the character in the book who speaks to Deronda when he is in the German synagogue and turns out to have been a friend of his father's. No-one likes to think of Eliot as being anything other than a liberal humanist, forgetting, of course, that she was also very interested in psychic phenomena (cf The Lifted Veil). Sorry guys, but in this book she clearly embraces the idea of a cosmic element to human life - cf Gwendolen's encounter with the Death's Head in the early chapters, her encounter at the Standing Stones with Lydia Glasher. It would be fascinating to really study how much Kaballistic imagery and ideas pervades this book - Mirah's relationship with the Shekinah for instance. Who knows? All I know is that there is very interesting avenue to explore here, one which would completely reevaluate what this book represents in Eliot's canon. It would also mean that decades of scholarly opinion that the Jewish side of the novel is peripheral, inferior etc would have to be completely thrown out and rethought. In fact it is key to what Eliot was writing about.

Food for thought. :-) ThePeg 18:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The article makes the assertion that Kabbalah "is directly referred to in the text." As far as I can tell, it is only implied and not referred to directly. Can we get confirmation on this, or even a textual citation? I tried searching the Gutenberg Etext, but found nothing. Then again, I have no idea how Eliot would have spelled Kabbalah, so it may be there and I just don't remember. Victorianist 23:29, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I will find this for you. I don't have my copy at hand but seem to remember it is in the chapter which describes Mordecai and his past. Eliot refers to be ethics of generosity and humanitarianism which are 'as the caballists teach us' (sic). I will find page references for you. Also Immanuel Deutsch is described in the Biography by Haight (again, I will find these) and I refer to Eliot's interest in the Occult through the phrase cf The Lifted Veil, which is now printed by Virago. Can you give me some time? Thanks ThePeg (talk) 00:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Edits

I've done an edit on the article, filling in some gaps and putting a rather more well-rounded view of its characters and ideas (Zionism in particular). I've left the stuff about peoples' hostility to Eliot's Zionism but have also tried to put the book in context so as to try and understand Eliot's particular take on this topic. ThePeg 23:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I've done another minor edit eg I've changed "Many modern critics" to "Some modern critics". "Many" suggests either a majority or a sizeable phalanx of critics and this is not the case. Or if it is the writer should back the comment up. I've also cleaned up the reference to "modern 'enlightened' views on racial segregation". There's nothing in the book which suggests Eliot thought races shouldn't intermarry. Deronda doesn't not marry Gwendolen because she isn't Jewish but because he is in love with Mirah and anyway Klesmer marries Ms Arrowpoint. In my opinion the original writer of this article was fixated on the Zionism of the article and only put anti-Zionist information on it as well as suggestions that Eliot was racist and/or wrong or wierd to present Jews in a positive light in the book. In the end the article should deal with the novel as a work of literature. Zionism is an element of the book but it is not what the book is ABOUT per se. The article needed balancing. ThePeg 23:40, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Good edits, ThePegQuizzicalBee 23:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)