Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Daniel Deronda
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Daniel Deronda - the epigraphs
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Epigraph for the book as a whole. [It does not appear in my older copy of the work, but appears in the Gutenberg edition. Is it in yours?] This may not make complete sense until we have gotten further into the book, but OTOH Eliot put it at the head of the book, so presumably she wanted it to say something to the reader just starting to read. Any thoughts on it?Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul:
There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires
That trample on the dead to seize their spoil,
Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible
As exhalations laden with slow death,
And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys
Breathes pallid pestilence.
(Eliot does not give a source for this. Her normal practice was that where she did not give a source, the epigraph was original with her. That would seem to make it of particular significance, wouldn't it?)
Epigraphs for Book 1. Comment on any or all.Chapter 1:
Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off in medias res. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out.
Chapter 2:
This man contrives a secret 'twixt us two,
That he may quell me with his meeting eyes
Like one who quells a lioness at bay.
Chapter 3:
"Let no flower of the spring pass by us; let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered."—BOOK OF WISDOM.
Chapter 4:
"Gorgibus.— * * * Je te dis que le mariage est une chose sainte et sacrée: et que c'est faire en honnêtes gens, que de débuter par là.
"Madelon.—Mon Dieu! que si tout le monde vous ressemblait, un roman serait bientôt fini! La belle chose que ce serait, si d'abord Cyrus épousait Mandane, et qu'Aronce de plain-pied fût marié à Clélie! * * * Laissez-nous faire à loisir le tissu de notre roman, et n'en pressez pas tant la conclusion." MOLIÈRE. Les Précieuses Ridicules.
[Would anybody like to venture a translation for those of us who do not read French?]
Chapter 5
"Her wit
Values itself so highly, that to her
All matter else seems weak."
—Much Ado About Nothing.
Chapter 6
"Croyez-vous m'avoir humiliée pour m'avoir appris que la terre tourne
autour du soleil? Je vous jure que je ne m'en estime pas moins."
—FONTENELLE: Pluralité des Mondes.
(Translation?)
Chapter 7:
"Perigot. As the bonny lasse passed by,
Willie. Hey, ho, bonnilasse!
P. She roode at me with glauncing eye,
W. As clear as the crystal glasse.
P. All as the sunny beame so bright,
W. Hey, ho, the sunnebeame!
P. Glaunceth from Phoebus' face forthright,
W. So love into thy heart did streame."
—SPENSER: Shepard's Calendar.
Chapter 8:
What name doth Joy most borrow
When life is fair?
"To-morrow."
What name doth best fit Sorrow
In young despair?
"To-morrow."
Amy wrote: "For the epigraphs of ch 4 and 6, my edition has notes/translations in the back. I will copy out the notes for you here.Ch 4
" Moliere, Les Precieuses ridicules (1659)
"Gorgibus: I tell you that m..."
I love that chapter 4 epigraph! Thanks for those translations.
I have to admit to often skimming the epigraphs rather than giving them serious thought, or reading an epigraph at the end rather than the beginning of a chapter. When reading Middlemarch, I felt that some of the epigraphs should have been prefaced as spoilers! I am accustomed to allowing a story to unfold as I read, rather than going in with a sense of what to expect. (I have an unusual attitude toward spoilers though -- I'll often save introductions until after I finish a novel, skip blurbs on book jackets, etc to avoid inadvertently stumbling upon plot details.) The author did intend the epigraphs to be read and considered where they appear, though, so I really should make more of an effort to experience the novel as intended. :)The opening epigraph sets an ominous tone for the novel. I am expecting one of the themes to be ruinous choices, personal accountability, moral failings / corruption, or something similar.
I love the epigraph for Chapter 1. What an acute observation! I notice that many theological "discussions" hinge on this very issue, e.g. "Something can't exist from nothing, and since god isn't a 'something', a theological viewpoint is most coherent". Yes, we certainly do seek after that elusive beginning! I loved being reminded of Eliot's genius and perceptiveness on p. 1. I think Eliot was giving us a heads up here. Perhaps the characters are best understood within the context of past events.
The opining epigraph seems, to me, to be asking us to forget what we thought we knew about protagonists and antagonists. The antagonist in a novel usually embodies the terror that is 'out there' but the author seems to be asking us to look within, and to approach the novel in an introspective way.
Theresa wrote: "The opining epigraph seems, to me, to be asking us to forget what we thought we knew about protagonists and antagonists. The antagonist in a novel usually embodies the terror that is 'out there' ..."I like your interpretation. This makes complete sense.
E :) wrote: "I love the epigraph for Chapter 1. What an acute observation!"I love it, too. Eliot was very interested in science, so it's no coincidence that she starts with a scientific principle. As we read the book, it may be interesting to look for other areas where she uses scientific examples, metaphors, and the like. This is, in my experience, a bit unusual for Victorian writers, so a bit noteworthy when we run across it in Eliot. (Perhaps the most famous example being her pier glass observation in Middlemarch. Worth looking up if you're not familiar with it.)
Everyman wrote: "Epigraph for the book as a whole. [It does not appear in my older copy of the work, but appears in the Gutenberg edition. Is it in yours?] This may not make complete sense until we have gotten fur..."The epigraphs all appear in my free kindle version...I'll post further once I've started reading.
Susanna wrote: "Eliot is casting her novel as some sort of epic, and perhaps not just a romance. "Nice observation.
Susanna wrote: "Epigraph 1 is interesting to because of her mentioning of the poetic concept of starting a story "in media res" (in the middle). This harkens back to the epics, including the Iliad and Paradise Los..."Could Eliot also be saying that when we start reading the novel we think we're starting at the beginning of the story, but really we are coming in at the middle Meaning that there a people or events in the novel which took place before the story begins, but are important to how the story ends?
Elizabeth wrote: "Could Eliot also be saying that when we start reading the novel we think we're starting at the beginning of the story, but really we are coming in at the middle Meaning that there a people or events in the novel which took place before the story begins, but are important to how the story ends? "She absolutely could be saying that.
Really, don't all of us enter life in media res? We aren't self-aware until we're maybe six months to a year old, so we have to go back and learn about our beginnings from others. And those beginnings can go back several generations to make us who we are.
I realize that I neglected to post the epigraphs for Book 2. But it's not quite too late! So here they are:Chapter 11:
The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline for our ignorance.
I first read this as cynicism, but on reflection changed my mind. How about you? How to you read this comment?
Chapter 12:
"O gentlemen, the time of life is short;
To spend that shortness basely were too long,
If life did ride upon a dial's point,
Still ending at the arrival of an hour."
—SHAKESPEARE: Henry IV.
Chapter 13:
"Philistia, be thou glad of me!"
If you don't know who Philistia was, you're in good company -- neither did I. And my assumption that it was a person was wrong -- according to Wikipedia it was a grouping of five cities in the Levant, the precursor of Palestine. But what this epigraph means completely eludes me.
Chapter 14:
I will not clothe myself in wreck—wear gems
Sawed from cramped finger-bones of women drowned;
Feel chilly vaporous hands of ireful ghosts
Clutching my necklace: trick my maiden breast
With orphans' heritage. Let your dead love
Marry it's dead.
How goulish. But how apt, appearing at the head of the chapter in which Gwendolen meets Mrs. Glasher. Knowing what she found out, marrying Grandcourt would indeed seem like a life of feeling chilly vaporous hands of ireful ghosts.
Chapter 15:
"Festina lente—celerity should be contempered with cunctation."—SIR THOMAS BROWNE
No, I didn't know what cunctation meant either. Does anybody dare to claim that they did? [g]
Chapter 16:
Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so for every visible arc in the wanderer's orbit; and the narrator of human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense suffering which take the quality of action—like the cry of Prometheus, whose chained anguish seems a greater energy than the sea and sky he invokes and the deity he defies.
Once again, she uses scientific imagery for a very pertinent comment.
Chapter 17:
"This is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."
—TENNYSON: Locksley Hall.
Chapter 18:
Life is a various mother: now she dons
Her plumes and brilliants, climbs the marble stairs
With head aloft, nor ever turns her eyes
On lackeys who attend her; now she dwells
Grim-clad, up darksome allyes, breathes hot gin,
And screams in pauper riot.
But to these
She came a frugal matron, neat and deft,
With cheerful morning thoughts and quick device
To find the much in little.
What a delightful introduction to Mrs. Meyrick.
Book 3 epigraphsChapter 19:
"I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say, 'Tis all barren': and so it is: and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers."—STERNE: Sentimental Journey.
Chapter 20:
"It will hardly be denied that even in this frail and corrupted world, we sometimes meet persons who, in their very mien and aspect, as well as in the whole habit of life, manifest such a signature and stamp of virtue, as to make our judgment of them a matter of intuition rather than the result of continued examination."—ALEXANDER KNOX: quoted in Southey's Life of Wesley.
Who do you think Eliot intended this to be most relevant to?
Chapter 21:
Put in a separate post because of its length and value for discussion
Chapter 22:
We please our fancy with ideal webs
Of innovation, but our life meanwhile
Is in the loom, where busy passion plies
The shuttle to and fro, and gives our deeds
The accustomed pattern.
It took me a few readings to really appreciate this epigraph, but I think it contains a lot of wisdom.
Chapter 23:
Among the heirs of Art, as is the division of the promised land, each has to win his portion by hard fighting: the bestowal is after the manner of prophecy, and is a title without possession. To carry the map of an ungotten estate in your pocket is a poor sort of copyhold. And in fancy to cast his shoe over Eden is little warrant that a man shall ever set the sole of his foot on an acre of his own there.
The most obstinate beliefs that mortals entertain about themselves are such as they have no evidence for beyond a constant, spontaneous pulsing of their self-satisfaction—as it were a hidden seed of madness, a confidence that they can move the world without precise notion of standing-place or lever.
Chapter 24:
"I question things but do not find
One that will answer to my mind:
And all the world appears unkind."
—WORDSWORTH.
Chapter 25:
How trace the why and wherefore in a mind reduced to the barrenness of a fastidious egoism, in which all direct desires are dulled, and have dwindled from motives into a vacillating expectation of motives: a mind made up of moods, where a fitful impulse springs here and there conspicuously rank amid the general weediness? 'Tis a condition apt to befall a life too much at large, unmoulded by the pressure of obligation. Nam deteriores omnes sumus licentiae, or, as a more familiar tongue might deliver it, "As you like" is a bad finger-post.
Chapter 26:
He brings white asses laden with the freight
Of Tyrian vessels, purple, gold and balm,
To bribe my will: I'll bid them chase him forth,
Nor let him breathe the taint of his surmise
On my secure resolve.
Ay, 'tis secure:
And therefore let him come to spread his freight.
For firmness hath its appetite and craves
The stronger lure, more strongly to resist;
Would know the touch of gold to fling it off;
Scent wine to feel its lip the soberer;
Behold soft byssus, ivory, and plumes
To say, "They're fair, but I will none of them,"
And flout Enticement in the very face.
Does anybody recognize this as relating to any specific person or classical incident? It seems to me that it should, but I can't link it up.
Chapter 27:
Desire has trimmed the sails, and Circumstance
Brings but the breeze to fill them.
I love this one.
Book 21 EpigraphIt is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy "Let there not be," and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon. And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a practiced vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled —like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp—precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction?
What a gloomy thought, but also, I fear, completely true. And as relevant today as in Eliot's day (and maybe more so because of the speed with which Ignorance can spread through the Internet across the world.
Who was it said "A lie can circle the world before the truth can get its pants on"?
I like epigraph at Chapter 16. Deronda's childhood pain connected with the suspicion that his uncle is his father eats away at his inner life (soul?). I see it as filling his life with doubt and a gnawing pain of wondering why his father does not acknowledge him as his son. I hope he fares better than Prometheus by not having the wound constantly reopened. If he does, I take hope in the fact that Prometheus was finally set free.Eliot is brilliant. I'm sure I can read this book many times and gain more pleasure and insight.
What's really sad about the circumstance is that he may not be his uncle's son, which would make all of his suffering for nought. How much better it would have been for Deronda to have asked for the truth at age 13?
Philip wrote: "Surely this is true of all reading. Even if the story begins with a birth there are characters who already exist. A history is therefore already in the making. "
This is, of course, true, as it is of every life (every baby born has a family history and often a bunch of relatives waiting to help him or her enter into the ongoing family structure and traditions).
But there is a difference when the story starts out in the middle of a life and then spends considerable time going back to fill in the details after we have met and gotten to know the characters? Of course, that's also true of many of the people we get to know more than casually; we find out things about them that happened in their background, before we met them.
So is Eliot saying nothing? Or is she saying something more than the obvious?
Perhaps she's saying it's not David Copperfield.
Book 4 Epigraphs (sorry I'm late -- health issues)Chapter 28: "Il est plus aisé de connoître l'homme en général que de connoître un homme en particulier.—LA ROCHEFOUCAULD."
Anybody want to offer a translation?
Chapter 29:
"Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice,
him or her I shall follow.
As the water follows the moon, silently,
with fluid steps anywhere around the globe."
—WALT WHITMAN.
Okay, who is speaking in the right voice here? Grandcourt, before the marriage? Deronda and his "little sermon"? But does that mean that Gwendolen is going to follow Deronda (presumably figuratively) around the globe?
Chapter 30:
No penitence and no confessional,
No priest ordains it, yet they're forced to sit
Amid deep ashes of their vanished years.
What a tragic commentary on Mrs. Glasher and her children.
Chapter 31:
"A wild dedication of yourselves
To unpath'd waters, undreamed shores."
—SHAKESPEARE.
Isn't that a pretty good description of marriage? Or at least to what marriage should be?
Chapter 32:
In all ages it hath been a favorite text that a potent love hath the nature of an isolated fatality, whereto the mind's opinions and wonted resolves are altogether alien; as, for example, Daphnis his frenzy, wherein it had little availed him to have been convinced of Heraclitus his doctrine; or the philtre-bred passion of Tristan, who, though he had been as deep as Duns Scotus, would have had his reasoning marred by that cup too much; or Romeo in his sudden taking for Juliet, wherein any objections he might have held against Ptolemy had made little difference to his discourse under the balcony. Yet all love is not such, even though potent; nay, this passion hath as large scope as any for allying itself with every operation of the soul: so that it shall acknowledge an effect from the imagined light of unproven firmaments, and have its scale set to the grander orbits of what hath been and shall be.
Whose love are we talking about here??
Chapter 33:
In all ages it hath been a favorite text that a potent love hath the nature of an isolated fatality, whereto the mind's opinions and wonted resolves are altogether alien; as, for example, Daphnis his frenzy, wherein it had little availed him to have been convinced of Heraclitus his doctrine; or the philtre-bred passion of Tristan, who, though he had been as deep as Duns Scotus, would have had his reasoning marred by that cup too much; or Romeo in his sudden taking for Juliet, wherein any objections he might have held against Ptolemy had made little difference to his discourse under the balcony. Yet all love is not such, even though potent; nay, this passion hath as large scope as any for allying itself with every operation of the soul: so that it shall acknowledge an effect from the imagined light of unproven firmaments, and have its scale set to the grander orbits of what hath been and shall be.
Chapter 34 -- anybody up for translation?
"Er ist geheissen
Israel. Ihn hat verwandelt
Hexenspruch in elnen Hund.
* * * * *
Aber jeden Freitag Abend,
In der Dämmrungstunde, plötzlich
Weicht der Zauber, und der Hund
Wird aufs Neu' ein menschlich Wesen."
—HEINE: Prinzessin Sabbaz.
Epigraphs for Book 5:Chapter 35 -- standing alone
Were uneasiness of conscience measured by extent of crime, human history had been different, and one should look to see the contrivers of greedy wars and the mighty marauders of the money-market in one troop of self-lacerating penitents with the meaner robber and cut-purse and the murderer that doth his butchery in small with his own hand. No doubt wickedness hath its rewards to distribute; but who so wins in this devil's game must needs be baser, more cruel, more brutal than the order of this planet will allow for the multitude born of woman, the most of these carrying a form of conscience—a fear which is the shadow of justice, a pity which is the shadow of love—that hindereth from the prize of serene wickedness, itself difficult of maintenance in our composite flesh.
Wow. What an epigraph for the chapter which gives us our first real look at the marital couple.
More epigraphs for Book 5Chapter 36 - translation offered?
"Rien ne pese tant qu'un secret
Le porter loin est difficile aux dames:
Et je sçais mesme sur ce fait
Bon nombre d'hommes qui sont femmes."
—LA FONTAINE.
Chapter 37:
Aspern. Pardon, my lord—I speak for Sigismund.
Fronsberg. For him? Oh, ay—for him I always hold
A pardon safe in bank, sure he will draw
Sooner or later on me. What his need?
Mad project broken? fine mechanic wings
That would not fly? durance, assault on watch,
Bill for Epernay, not a crust to eat?
Aspern. Oh, none of these, my lord; he has escaped
From Circe's herd, and seeks to win the love
Of your fair ward Cecilia: but would win
First your consent. You frown.
Fronsberg. Distinguish words.
I said I held a pardon, not consent.
What more perfect Epigraph for the interaction of Hans and Deronda could Eliot have come up with? This is magnificent. Absolutely magnificent.
More epigraphs for Book 5Chapter 38
There be who hold that the deeper tragedy were a Prometheus Bound not after but before he had well got the celestial fire into the narthex whereby it might be conveyed to mortals: thrust by the Kratos and Bia of instituted methods into a solitude of despised ideas, fastened in throbbing helplessness by the fatal pressure of poverty and disease—a solitude where many pass by, but none regard.
I'm not sure why this epigraph. Any ideas?
Chapter 39
Need translation? Isn't it interesting that Eliot assumes her readers know both French and German?
"Vor den Wissenden sich stellen
Sicher ist's in alien Fällen!
Wenn du lange dich gequälet
Weiss er gleich wo dir es fehlet;
Auch auf Beifall darfst du hoffen,
Denn er weiss wo du's getroffen,"
—GOETHE: West-östlicker Divan.
Chapter 40
"Within the soul a faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness, as the ample moon.
In the deep stillness of a summer even.
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove.
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea, with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene."
—WORDSWORTH: Excursion, B. IV.
Don wrote: "Not sure the Google Translate feature helps much on the Goethe. I got this:Imagine the knower
Sure it is in alien cases!
If you long tormented you
White matter where he is wanting you there;
Als..."
That's a giggle for sure!
Don wrote: "Not sure the Google Translate feature helps much on the Goethe. ."You may not be sure, but I am! [g]
Eliot offers us an overall epigram at the beginning of the book and (at least so far) one at the head of each chapter. These are easy to skim over in order to get to story, but I think they may deserve a little attention. This is a topic for discussing the epigrams, what they add (or don't add) to the novel, and why Eliot chose them to place where she placed them.
spoiler note Please only discuss epigraphs for the chapters which have been posted for discussion.