race. The one is a Spanish nobleman, the other the daughter of a Zincala
chief. Yet they love, and feel that no outward circumstances are sufficient
to separate them. This verdict of their hearts is the verdict of mankind in
all ages; but it is not the one arrived at by George Eliot in obedience to
her philosophy. The reasons why these two should not wed grew entirely out
of the social circumstances of the time. An English nobleman of to-day
could marry such a woman as Fedalma without social or other loss. The
capacities of soul are superior to conditions of race. Virtue and genius do
not depend on social circumstances. Yet _The Spanish Gypsy_ has for its
motive the attempt to prove that the life of tradition and inheritance is
the one which provides all our moral and social and religious obligations.
In conformity with this theory the conflict of the poem arises, because Don
Silva is not in intellectual harmony with his own character. A thoughtful,
fastidious, sensitive soul was his, not resolute and concentrated in
purpose, He was no bigot, could not be content with any narrow aim, saw
good on many sides.
A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious
In his acceptance, dreading all delight
That speedy dies and turns to carrion:
His senses much exacting, deep instilled
With keen imagination's airy needs;--
Like strong-limbed monsters studded o'er with eyes,
Their hunger checked by overwhelming vision,
Or that fierce lion in symbolic dream
Snatched from the ground by wings and new-endowed
With a man's thought-propelled relenting heart.
Silva was both the lion and the man;
First hesitating shrank, then fiercely sprang,
Or having sprung, turned pallid at his deed
And loosed the prize, paying his blood for naught.
A nature half-transformed, with qualities
That oft betrayed each other, elements
Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects,
Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes.
Haughty and generous, grave and passionate;
With tidal moments of devoutest awe,
Sinking anon to furthest ebb of doubt;
Deliberating ever, till the sting
Of a recurrent ardor made him rush
Right against reasons that himself had drilled
And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed
Too proudly special for obedience,
Too subtly pondering for mastery:
Born of a goddess with a mortal sire,
Heir of flesh-fettered, weak divinity,
Doom-gifted with long resonant consciousness
And perilous heightening of the sentient soul.
Too noble and generous to accept the narrow views of his uncle, Don Silva
insisted on marrying Fedalma, because he loved her and because she was a
pure and true woman. He had a poet's nature, was sensitive to all beauty,
and his heart vibrated to all ideal excellence. His love became to him a
thing apart, a sacred shrine; and Fedalma was made one with all joy and
beauty.
He thought all loveliness was lovelier,
She crowning it; all goodness credible,
Because of that great trust her goodness bred.
His love gave a delicious content and melody to his day dreams.
O, all comforters,
All soothing things that bring mild ecstasy,
Came with her coming, in her presence lived.
Spring afternoons, when delicate shadows fall
Pencilled upon the grass; high summer morns
When white light rains upon the quiet sea
And cornfields flush with ripeness; odors soft--
Dumb vagrant bliss that seems to seek a home
And find it deep within 'mid stirrings vague
Of far-off moments when our life was fresh;
All sweetly tempered music, gentle change
Of sound, form, color, as on wide lagoons
At sunset when from black far-floating prows
Comes a clear wafted song; all exquisite joy
Of a subdued desire, like some strong stream
Made placid in the fulness of a lake--
All came with her sweet presence, for she brought
The love supreme which gathers to its realm
All powers of loving. Subtle nature's hand
Waked with a touch the far-linked harmonies
In her own manifold work. Fedalma there,
Fastidiousness became the prelude fine
For full contentment; and young melancholy,
Lost for its origin, seemed but the pain
Of waiting for that perfect happiness.
So strong was Don Silva's love, so ardent his passion for Fedalma, that he
forsook all duties and social obligations and became a Zincala for her
sake. Yet once awakened to the real consequences of his act, he killed
Zarca and sought to regain by hard penances his lost knighthood.
With Fedalma also love was an absorbing passion. The passionate devotion of
a woman is in her words.
No ills on earth, though you should count them up
With grains to make a mountain, can outweigh
For me his ill who is my supreme love.
All sorrows else are but imagined flames,
Making me shudder at an unfelt smart;
But his imagined sorrow is a fire
That scorches me.
With great earnestness she says she will--
Never forsake that chief half of her soul
Where lies her love.
With what depth of love does she utter these words:
I belong to him who loves me--whom I love--
Who chose me--whom I chose--to whom I pledged
A woman's truth. And that is nature too,
Issuing a fresher law than laws of birth.
Though her love is deep and passionate and full of a woman's devotedness,
the mark of race is set deep within her soul. The moment the claim of race
is brought clearly before her as the claim of duty, as the claim of father
and of kindred, she accepts it. Her love is not thrown hastily aside, for
she loves deeply and truly, and it tears her heart in sunder to renounce
it; but she is faithful to duty. Her love grows not less, loses none of its
hold upon her heart.
No other crown
Is aught but thorns on my poor woman's brow.
Hers is not a divided self, however; to see the way of duty with her, was
to follow in it. Her father's invincible will, courage and patient purpose
are her own by inheritance. Once realizing the claim of birth and race, she
does not falter, love is resolutely put aside, all delight in culture and
refinement becomes dross in her eyes.
I will not count
On aught but being faithful. I will take
This yearning self of mine and strangle it.
I will not be half-hearted: never yet
Fedalma did aught with a wavering soul.
Die, my young joy--die, all my hungry hopes!
The milk you cry for from the breast of life
Is thick with curses. O, all fatness here
Snatches its meat from leanness--feeds on graves.
I will seek nothing but to shun base joy.
The saints were cowards who stood by to see
Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves
Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain--
The grandest death, to die in vain--for love
Greater than sways the forces of the world!
That death shall be my bridegroom. I will wed
The curse that blights my people. Father, come!
The poem distinctly teaches that Fedalma was strong, because the ties of
blood were strongly marked upon her mind and willingly accepted by her
intellect and conscience; while Don Silva was weak, because he did not
acknowledge those ties and accept their law. In the end, however, both
declare that the inherited life is the only one which gives joy or duty,
and that all individual aims and wishes are to be renounced. The closing
scene of this great poem is full of sadness, and yet is strong with moral
purpose. Don Silva and Fedalma meet for the last time, she on her way to
Africa with her tribe to find a home for it there, he on his way to Rome,
to seek the privilege of again using his knightly sword. Both are sad, both
feel that life has lost all its joy, both believe it is a bitter destiny
which divides them from the fulfilment of their love, and yet both are
convinced that love must be forsworn for a higher duty. Their last
conversation, opened by Don Silva, is full of power, and concentrates into
its last words the total meaning of the poem.
I bring no puling prayer, Fedalma--ask
No balm of pardon that may soothe my soul
For others' bleeding wounds: I am not come
To say, "Forgive me:" you must not forgive,
For you must see me ever as I am--
Your father's...
FEDALMA.
Speak it not! Calamity
Comes like a deluge and o'erfloods our crimes,
Till sin is hidden in woe. You--I--we two,
Grasping we knew not what, that seemed delight,
Opened the sluices of that deep.
DON SILVA.
We two?--
Fedalma, you were blameless, helpless.
FEDALMA.
No!
It shall not be that you did aught alone.
For when we loved I willed to reign in you,
And I was jealous even of the day
If it could gladden you apart from me.
And so, it must be that I shared each deed
Our love was root of.
DON SILVA.
Dear! you share the woe--
Nay, the worst part of vengeance fell on you.
FEDALMA.
Vengeance! She does but sweep us with her skirts.
She takes large space, and lies a baleful light
Revolving with long years--sees children's children,
Blights them in their prime. Oh, if two lovers leane
To breathe one air and spread a pestilence,
They would but lie two livid victims dead
Amid the city of the dying. We
With our poor petty lives have strangled one
That ages watch for vainly.
DON SILVA.
Deep despair
Fills all your tones as with slow agony.
Speak words that narrow anguish to some shape:
Tell me what dread is close before you?
FEDALMA.
None.
No dread, but clear assurance of the end.
My father held within his mighty frame
A people's life: great futures died with him
Never to rise, until the time shall ripe
Some other hero with the will to save
The outcast Zincali.
DON SILVA.
And yet their shout--
I heard it--sounded as the plenteous rush
Of full-fed sources, shaking their wild souls
With power that promised sway.
FEDALMA.
Ah yes, that shout
Came from full hearts: they meant obedience.
But they are orphaned: their poor childish feet
Are vagabond in spite of love, and stray
Forgetful after little lures. For me--
I am but as the funeral urn that bears
The ashes of a leader.
DON SILVA.
O great God!
What am I but a miserable brand
Lit by mysterious wrath? I lie cast down
A blackened branch upon the desolate ground.
Where once I kindled ruin. I shall drink
No cup of purest water but will taste
Bitter with thy lone hopelessness, Fedalma.
FEDALMA.
Nay, Silva, think of me as one who sees
A light serene and strong on one sole path
Which she will tread till death...
He trusted me, and I will keep his trust:
My life shall be its temple. I will plant
His sacred hope within the sanctuary
And die its priestess--though I die alone,
A hoary woman on the altar-step,
Cold 'mid cold ashes. That is my chief good.
The deepest hunger of a faithful heart
Is faithfulness. Wish me naught else. And you--
You too will live....
DON SILVA.
I go to Rome, to seek
The right to use my knightly sword again;
The right to fill my place and live or die
So that all Spaniards shall not curse my name.
I sate one hour upon the barren rock
And longed to kill myself; but then I said,
I will not leave my name in infamy,
I will not be perpetual rottenness
Upon the Spaniard's air. If I must sink
At last to hell, I will not take my stand
Among the coward crew who could not bear
The harm themselves had done, which others bore.
My young life yet may fill some fatal breach,
And I will take no pardon, not my own,
Not God's--no pardon idly on my knees;
But it shall come to me upon my feet
And in the thick of action, and each deed
That carried shame and wrong shall be the sting
That drives me higher up the steep of honor
In deeds of duteous service to that Spain
Who nourished me on her expectant breast,
The heir of highest gifts. I will not fling
My earthly being down for carrion
To fill the air with loathing: I will be
The living prey of some fierce noble death
That leaps upon me while I move. Aloud
I said, "I will redeem my name," and then--
I know not if aloud: I felt the words
Drinking up all my senses--"She still lives.
I would not quit the dear familiar earth
Where both of us behold the self-same sun,
Where there can be no strangeness 'twixt our thoughts
So deep as their communion." Resolute
I rose and walked.--Fedalma, think of me
As one who will regain the only life
Where he is other than apostate--one
Who seeks but to renew and keep the vows
Of Spanish knight and noble. But the breach--
Outside those vows--the fatal second breach--
Lies a dark gulf where I have naught to cast,
Not even expiation--poor pretence,
Which changes naught but what survives the past,
And raises not the dead. That deep dark gulf
Divide us.
FEDALMA.
Yes, forever. We must walk
Apart unto the end. Our marriage rite
Is our resolve that we will each be true
To high allegiance, higher than our love.
Our dear young love--its breath was happiness!
But it had grown upon a larger life
Which tore its roots asunder. We rebelled--
The larger life subdued us. Yet we are wed;
For we shall carry each the pressure deep
Of the other's soul. I soon shall leave the shore.
The winds to-night will bear me far away.
My lord, farewell!
What has been said of _The Spanish Gypsy_ applies very nearly as well to
all her other poems. They are thoughtful, philosophic, realistic; they are
sonorous in expression, stately in style, and of a diction eloquent and
beautiful. On the whole, the volume containing the shorter poems is a
poetical advance on _The Spanish Gypsy_, containing more genuine poetry,
more lyrical fire, and a greater proportion of humor, sympathy and passion.
They are carefully polished and refined; and yet that indefinable something
which marks the truest poetry is wanting. They are saturated with her
ideas, the flavor of her thought impregnates them all, with but two or
three exceptions.
Her artistic conceptions are more fully developed in some of these poems
than in any of her novels, especially in "Armgart" and "The Legend of
Jubal." The special thought of "Armgart" is, that no artistic success is of
so much worth as a loving sympathy with others. The longing of Armgart was
to be--
a happy spiritual star
Such as old Dante saw, wrought in a rose
Of light in Paradise, whose only self
Was consciousness of glory wide-diffused,
Music, life, power--I moving in the midst
With a sublime necessity of good.
Her ambition runs very high.
May the day be near when men
Think much to let my horses draw me home,
And new lands welcome me upon their beach,
Loving me for my fame. That is the truth
Of what I wish, nay, yearn for. Shall I lie?
Pretend to seek obscurity--to sing
In hope of disregard? A vile pretence!
And blasphemy besides. For what is fame
But the benignant strength of One, transformed
To joy of Many? Tributes, plaudits come
As necessary breathing of such joy;
And may they come to me!
Armgart is beloved of the Graf, and he tries to persuade her to abandon her
artistic career and become his wife. He says to her,--
A woman's rank
Lies in the fulness of her womanhood:
Therein alone she is loyal.
Again he says to her,--
Pain had been saved,
Nay, purer glory reached, had you been throned
As woman only, holding all your art
As attribute to that dear sovereignty--
Concentering your power in home delights
Which penetrate and purify the world.
Armgart will not listen; her whole heart is enlisted in music. She says to
the Graf,--
I will live alone and pour my pain
With passion into music, where it turns
To what is best within my better self.
A year later Armgart's throat has failed, and her career has ended in
nothing. Then her servant and friend, Walpurga, who has devoted her life to
Armgart, speaks that lesson George Eliot would convey in this little story,
that a true life is a life of service. Walpurga chides Armgart's false
ambition in these words:
I but stand
As a small symbol for the mighty sum
Of claims unpaid to needy myriads;
I think you never set your loss beside
That mighty deficit. Is your work gone--
The prouder queenly work that paid itself
And yet was overpaid with men's applause!
Are you no longer chartered, privileged,
But sunk to simple woman's penury,
To ruthless Nature's chary average--
Where is the rebel's right for you alone?
Noble rebellion lifts a common load;
But what is he who flings his own load off
And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel's right?
Say, rather, the deserter's.
Armgart learns from her master, the old and noble Leo, that he had also
been ambitious, that he had won only small success, and that he now lived
for the sake of the good he could do to those about him. He says to her,--
We must bury our dead joys,
And live above them with a living world.
Then Armgart is brought to see that there is a noble privilege in living as
her friend has lived, in making music a joy to others, and in doing what
she can to make life better for humanity.
There are two very distinct ideas running through the poem, that a life
guided by altruism is better than--a merely artistic life, and that woman
is to find in home and wedded joys that opportunity for the development of
her soul, without which no artistic career can be complete. The words of
the Graf speak George Eliot's own thought, that Armgart's life and her art
would have been both more perfect and more noble had she held all her art
as attribute to the dear sovereignty of affection.
The same artistic conception pervades "The Legend of Jubal." That fame for
which Jubal also yearns comes to him, he is taught, in the good which he
leaves behind him for humanity to enjoy. He dies, and ceases to be as a
personal being. At least this may be inferred from the concluding lines.
Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave,
The All-creating Presence for his grave.
A _sun-wave_ while living, his being is now _quenched_. But he lives on in
the life of the race, lives on in man's joy of music, in the deeper life
which music awakens in all bosoms through all ages. He is told that he has
no need of--
aught else for share
Of mortal good, than in his soul to bear
The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest
Of the world's springtide in his conscious breast.
His own loved Past says to him,--
This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow,
And that immeasurable life to know
From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead,
A seed primeval that has forests bred.
This poem views death as positivism conceives it, and gives a poetic
interpretation of that subjective immortality, or that immortality in the
race, in which George Eliot so heartily believed. No other artistic
presentation of this theory has ever been made which equals that given in
this poem, and in the one beginning, "O may I join the choir invisible."
This latter poem is not only beautiful in itself, but it has made altruism
attractive and lovely. Its tone of thought is elevated, its spirit lofty
and noble, and its ideal pure and gracious. All that can be said to make
altruism lovely and winning, to inspire men with its spirit and motive, is
here said. The thought presented in these two poems is repeated in "The
Death of Moses." Here we have Moses living forever in the human influence
he created.
He dwells not with you dead, but lives as Law.
For her ideas about resignation we must turn to the pages of _The Mill on
the Floss and Romola_, for those about heredity and the past to _The
Spanish Gypsy_ and _Daniel Deronda_; but in these shorter poems she has
completely unfolded the positivist conception, as she accepted it, of death
and immortality. The degree to which she was moved and inspired by this
belief in an immortality in humanity is seen in the greater ardor and
poetic merit of these poems than any others she wrote.
It is interesting to note that she introduces music into "The Legend of
Jubal" and "Armgart". It was the art she most loved. She even said that if
she could possess the power most satisfactory to her heart, it would be
that of making music the instrument of the homage which the great
performers secure. Yet she teaches in "Armgart" that there is a power
higher than this, the power of affectionate service. Her books are full of
the praise of music. She makes Maggie Tulliver express her own delight in
it.
"I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have
plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas
into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled
with music."
In _Adam Bede_ she becomes most poetic when extolling the power of
exquisite music to work on the soul.
To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your
soul, the delicate fibres of life wherein memory can penetrate, and
binding together your whole being, past and present, in one unspeakable
vibration, melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the
love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating
in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt
lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with
past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy.
In the "Minor Prophet" is to be found George Eliot's theory of progress.
That poem also repeats her faith in common humanity, and gives new emphasis
to her joy in the common toils and affections of men. In the "College
Breakfast Party" and "Self and Life," her thoughts take a more truly
philosophic form than in any of her other poems, but the first of these is
the poorest piece of poetic work she gave to the public. Nothing new in the
way of teaching appears in these or her other poems.
George Eliot is the poet of positivism. What is beautiful, touching and
inspiring in that conception of the world she has sung, and in as poetic a
manner as that philosophy is ever likely to inspire. Her poetry is full of
the thoughts and sentiments of the time. It reflects the mood of her
generation. Prof. Sidney Colvin has truly said that "there is nothing in
the literature of the day so rousing--to the mind of the day there is
scarcely anything so rousing in all literature--as her writing is. What she
writes is full of her time. It is full of observation, imagination, pathos,
wit and humor, all of a high class in themselves; but what is more, all
saturated with modern ideas poured into a language of which every word
bites home with peculiar sharpness to the contemporary consciousness." This
is true even more of her poetry than of her prose. That poetry lacks where
the age lacks, in true poetic quality. The ideal, the breath of eternal
spring, is not in it.
XVIII.
LATER ESSAYS.
The later essays of George Eliot have the same characteristics as the
earlier ones, and are mainly of interest because they furnish additional
evidences of her philosophical, ethical and political opinions. While they
indicate the profound thoughtfulness of her mind, her deep concern about
the largest problems of human existence, and her rare ethical tone and
purpose, they add little or nothing to her literary reputation. It is very
plain that while George Eliot was not a poet in the largest, truest sense,
she was still less an essayist in that genial, widely sympathetic sense
which has adorned English literature with so many noble books of comment on
the foibles and the virtues of man. Her manner is heavy, her thoughts
philosophical, her purpose doctrinal: and the result is far from
satisfactory to the lover of fine essay-writing.
She needs the glow of her imagination, the depth of her emotions, to
relieve and lighten the burden of her thoughts. But in her essays she is
less wise, less racy and expressive, than in the didactic passages of her
novels. She could best make her comment on the ways of life while
describing a character or studying an action. These additions to her
narrative and conversation are, to the thoughtful reader, among the best
portions of her novels, for they give meaning to all the rest, and throw a
flood of light on the hidden facts of life. She is never so great, so wise,
so profoundly inspired by her theme, as in many of these passages.
There is need, however, in her case, of the large surrounding life of her
novels in order to draw out this wisdom and inspiration. Her essays lack in
the fine sentiment and the fervid eloquence of the chorus-utterances in her
novels. They give little evidence that she would have attained to great
things had she followed the early purpose of her life. In view of what she
has written in the shape of essays, no one can regret that she confined her
chief efforts to her imaginative prose creations. Yet her essays have a
special value on account of their subjects, and they will be read by many
with a hearty appreciation, simply because they were George Eliot's. No one
thoroughly interested in the work done by the great realistic novelist can
afford to overlook her essays, even if they do not nearly touch the highest
mark in their kind.