George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy

George Willis Cooke

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783849652173
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Biografías literarias

The same plan pursued in the admirable study of Emerson by Mr. Cooke is followed in this exhaustive inquiry into George Eliot's ethical teachings as evinced in her writings. The author also gives quite a full sketch of her life and her literary methods, but these are secondary to the main purpose. In the endeavor to interpret thoroughly George Eliot's religious and philosophical opinions, the author brings successively before the reader her most important works—analyzing them keenly and quoting from them largely. He obtrudes his own opinions scarcely at all, allowing the great author to speak for herself through her books. This book is full of an intense interest and well worth careful reading and study.

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.

As a work of art, the most serious defect in 'The Spanish Gypsy' is its doctrinal tone. It is speculative in its purpose quite as much as poetical, and the speculation is so large an element as to intrude upon the poetry. Thought overtops imagination, the fervor and enthusiasm of the poet are more than matched by the ethical aims of the teacher. This ethical purpose of unfolding in a dramatic form the author's theories of life has filled the book, as it has her novels, with epigrams which are original, splendid and instructive. Into a few lines she condenses some piece of wisdom, and in words full of meaning and purpose. Into the mouth of Sephardo, a character distinctive and noteworthy, she puts some of her choicest wisdom. He says,–

Thought

Has joys apart, even in blackest woe,

And seizing some fine thread of verity

Knows momentary godhead.

Again he utters the same idea, but in more expressive words.

Our growing thought

Makes growing revelation.

Don Silva is made to use this highly poetic imagery.

Speech is but broken light upon the depth

Of the unspoken.

Zarca, that truest and most original character in the poem, says of the great work he purposes to accomplish,

To my inward vision

Things are achieved when they are well begun.

Again, he says,–

New thoughts are urgent as the growth of wings.

Expressive and original as 'The Spanish Gypsy' is, yet it gives the impression of lacking in some poetic quality which is necessary to the highest results. Difficult as it may be to define precisely what it is that is wanting, nearly every reader will feel that something which makes poetry has been somehow left out. Is it imagination, or is it a flexible poetic expression, which is absent? While George Eliot has imagination enough to make a charming prose style, and to adorn her prose with great beauty and an impressive manner, yet its finer quality of subtle expression is not to be found in her poetry. Those original and striking shades of meaning which the poet employs by using words in unique relations, she does not often attain to. It is the thought, the ethical meaning, in her poetry as in her prose, which is often of more importance than the manner of e...

Table of contents

• PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
• I. EARLY LIFE.
• II. TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR.
• III. MARRIAGE.
• IV. CAREER AS AN AUTHOR.
• V. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
• VI. LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES.
• VII. THEORY OF THE NOVEL.
• VIII. POETIC METHODS.
• IX. PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE.
• X. DISTINCTIVE TEACHINGS.
• XI. RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES.
• XII. ETHICAL SPIRIT.
• XIII. EARLIER NOVELS.
• XIV. ROMOLA.
• XV. FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH.
• XVI. DANIEL DERONDA.
• XVII. THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS.
• XVIII. LATER ESSAYS.
• XIX. THE ANALYTIC METHOD.
• XX. THE LIMITATIONS OF HER THOUGHT.