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قراءة كتاب The Ethics of George Eliot's Works

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The Ethics of George Eliot's Works

The Ethics of George Eliot's Works

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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itself.

It is another agency than Savonarola’s now that brings her back once more to take up the full burden of her cross.  She goes forth not knowing or heeding whither she goes, “drifting away” unconscious before wind and wave.  These bear her into the midst of terror, suffering, and death; and there, in self-devotedness to others, in patient ministrations of love amid poverty, ignorance, and superstition, the noble spirit rights itself once more, the weary fainting heart regains its quiet steadfastness.  She knows once more that no amount of wrong-doing can dissolve the bond uniting her to Tito; that no degree of pain may lawfully drive her forth from that sphere of doing and suffering which is hers.  She returns, not in joy or hope, but in that which is deeper than all joy and hope—in love; the one thought revealed to us being that it may be her blessedness to stand by him whose baseness drove her away when suffering and loss have come upon him.  But Death—the mystery to which we look as the solver of all earthly mysteries—has resolved for her this darkest and saddest perplexity of her life.  Tito is gone to his place: and his baseness shall vex her no more with antagonistic duties and a divided life.  There is no joy, no expressed sense of relief and release; no reproach of him other than

that implied one which springs out of the necessities of her being, the putting away from her, quietly and unobtrusively, the material gains of his treasons.  The poor innocent wrong-doer, Tessa, is sought for, rescued, and cared for; and is never allowed to know the foul wrong to her rescuer of which she has been made the unconscious instrument.  Even to her the language is that “Naldo will return no more, not because he is cruel, but because he is dead.”

One direct trial of her faith and patience remains, through the weakness and apparent apostasy of Savonarola.  Has he, through whom first came to her definite guidance amid the dark perplexities of her life, been always untrue? has the light that seemed through him to dawn on her been therefore misleading and perverting?  In almost agonised intentness she listens for some word, watches for some sign, which shall tell her it has not been so.  She outrages all her womanly sensibilities by being present at the death-scene, in hope that something there, were it but the uplifting of the drooping head to the clear true light of heaven, shall reassure her that the prophet was a true prophet, and his voice to her the voice of God.  But she watches in vain.  Without word or sign that even her quick sure instinct can interpret, Savonarola passes into “the eternal silence.”  What measure of overshadowing darkness and sorrow then again fell over her life we are not told: we only know how that life passed from under this cloud also into

purer and serener light.  This perplexity also solves itself for her in the path of unquestioning acceptance of duty, human service, and human love; and as she treads this path, the mists clear away from around Savonarola too, and she sees him again at last as he really was, in the essential truthfulness, nobleness, and self-devotedness of his life.

Of the after-life little is told us, but little needed to be told.  We have followed Romola thus far with dulled intelligence of mind and soul if we cannot picture it clearly and certainly for ourselves.  Love that never falters, patience that never questions, meekness that never fails, truth clear and still as the light of heaven, devotedness that knows no thought of self, a life flowing calmly on through whatever of sorrow and disappointment may remain toward the perfect purity and blessedness of heaven.  Few, we think, can carefully study the character and development of Romola del Bardo and refuse to endorse the verdict that Imagination has given us no figure more rounded and complete in every grace and glory of feminine loveliness.

The sensational fiction of the day has laboured hard in the production of great criminals; but it has produced no human being so vitally debased, no nature so utterly loathsome, no soul so hopelessly lost, as the handsome, smiling, accomplished, popular, viceless Greek, Tito Melema.  Yet is he the very reverse of what is called a monster of iniquity.  That

which gives its deep and awful power to the picture is its simple, unstrained, unvarnished truthfulness.  He knows little of himself who does not recognise as existent within himself, and as always battling for supremacy there, that principle of evil which, accepted by Tito as his life-law, and therefore consummating itself in him, “bringeth forth death;” death the most utter and, so far as it is possible to see, the most hopeless that can engulf the human soul.

The conception of Tito as one great central figure in a work of art would scarcely, we think, have occurred to any one whose moral aim was other than that which it is the endeavour of these remarks to trace out in George Eliot’s works.  The working out of that conception, as it is here worked out, would, we believe, have been impossible to any one who had less strongly realised wherein all the true nobleness and all the true debasement of humanity lie.

Outwardly, on his first appearance, there is not merely nothing repellent about Tito; in person and manner, in genial kindly temper, in those very forms of intelligence and accomplishment that specially suit the city and the time, there is superficially everything to conciliate and attract.  It is almost impossible to define the subtle threads of indication through which, from the first, we are forced to distrust him.  Superficially, it might seem at this time as if with Tito the probabilities were equal as regards good and evil; and that with Romola’s love thrown into the scale,

their preponderance on the side of good were all but irresistible.  Yet from the first we feel that it is otherwise—that this light, genial, ease-loving nature has already, by its innate habitude of self-pleasing, foreordained itself to sink down into ever deeper and more utter debasement.  With the “slight, almost imperceptible start,” at the accidental words which connect the value of his jewels with “a man’s ransom,” we feel that some baseness is already within himself contemplated.  With the transference of their price to the goldsmith’s hands, we know that the baseness is in his heart resolved on.  When the message through the monk tells him that the ransom may still be available, we never doubt what the decision will be.  Present ease and enjoyment, the maintaining and improving the position he has won—in short, the “something that is due to himself,” rather than a distant, dangerous, possibly fruitless duty, howsoever clear.

The one purer feeling in that corrupt heart—his love for Romola—is almost from the first tainted by the same selfishness.  From the first he recognises that his relation to her will give him a certain position in the city; and he feels that with his ready tact and Greek suppleness this is all that is needed to secure his further advancement.  The vital antagonism between his nature and hers bars the possibility of his foreseeing how her truthfulness, nobleness, and purity shall become the thorn in his ease-loving life.

In his earlier relations with Tessa, there is nothing more than seeking a present and passing amusement, and the desire to sun himself in her childish admiration and delight.  He is as far as possible from the intentional seducer and betrayer.  But his accidental encounters with her, cause him perplexity and annoyance; and at last it seems to him safer for his own position, especially

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