Talk:Daniel Deronda

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)


 * While the defeat of Austrian forces at Sadowa on 3 July 1866 led indirectly to the transfer of Venezia to Italy, is there any record of Italian forces being at the battle? --Hors-la-loi 14:01, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Kabbalah
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)

Here is the explicit reference to Kabbalah in the text. Its from the OUP edition (ISBN 0192817876) page 406 Chapter 38 in the section entitled 'Mordecai'. Top of the page:

"hence it was that his imagination had constructed another man who would be something more ample than the second soul bestowed, according to the tradition of the Cabbalists (sic), to help out the insufficient first - who would be a blooming human life, ready to incorporate all that was worthiest in an existence whose visible, palpable part was burning itself fast away."

Then on page 427 Mordecai talks about himself in terms of the Gilgul, or Cycle of Lives (Reinicarnation), a Kabbalistic tenet of Kabbalah:

"It was the soul fully born within me, and it came in my boyhood. It brought its own world - a medieval world, where there were men who had made the ancient language live again in new psalms of exile. They had absorbed the philosophy of the Gentile into the faith of the Jew, and they still yearned toward a centre for our race. One of their souls was born again within me, and awaked amid the memories of their world. It travelled into Spain and Provence; it debated with Aben-Ezra; it took ship with Jeduda ha-Levi; it heard the roar of the Crusaders and the shreiks of tortured Israel. And when its dumb tongue was loosed, it spoke the speech they had made alive with the blood of their ardour, their sorrow, and they martyred trust: it sand with the cadence of their strain... ... While it is imprisoned in me, it will never learn another."

Spain and Provence were major centres of Kabbalah, the famous School of Provence being the first to print a book on the subject, the Bahir (Book of Illumination). Whether Eliot believed in these ideas or whether she was inspired by them in a poetic/conceptual sense is up for debate but the ideas are there, and are hinted at elsewhere too. For instance, the name Kalonymos, which is given to the character who helps Deronda once he has understood who he is, is the name of a major Kabbalist from Spain (in Catalonia I believe). There's no reason to suppose Eliot may not have heard or read about all this through her friendship with Immanuel Deutsch. ThePeg (talk) 12:10, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

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)


 * I don't have time to fix it up but the references to Said's criticisms are in his book "Culture and Imperialism" - he devotes quite some analysis to Daniel Deronda in that book. While being a huge fan of Said, I must say he is way off the mark - I just wonder how closely he read the novel to be honest. His main criticism is that Eliot advances a mythic view of Palestine as an "empty place" that needs civilising, thus legitimating historical claims that deny Palestinian nationhood. The novel does quite the opposite - a young character is sidelined early in the novel for his delusional view of the Middle East as an "empty place". The novel deconstructs the issue to some extent: Daniel has no firm sense of what on earth is in Palestine; he is motivated by very vague desires: love for Mirah, devotion of Mordecai, acceptance of Judaism... --150.101.207.19 (talk) 01:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Daniels Grandfather
i just finished reading this and it states that the grandfather is a physician, and general scholar. Was he also a rabbi as stated in the article? and should it not mention his being a physician? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brokencalculator (talk • contribs) 19:56, 26 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Daniel's Grandfather was a physician and scholar of some distinction. He was not a rabbi. Nonpareilles (talk) 06:13, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

=I added a few details to the plot summary. Nonpareilles (talk) 12:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Problem in Intro?
Is it potentially mistaken to call this "the only novel set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day" (or something to that effect -- sorry for potential paraphrase)? The novel's set in 1864-5 -- that is, about a decade before it was written. Further, the chapter on crinoline (and in particular, the ending thereof), seems to specifically see the novel as set "in the past," as, that is, another historical novel (and Middlemarch is only about 30-40 years past, right?) So I think this might be a wrong not to hit, especially in the opening graf... does someone have a source maybe for the claim that Deronda is significantly different from Eliot's other, historical novels?

Summortus (talk) 16:37, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I think the point is that all of her other novels are set in the England of her childhood - ie the 1830s - or in Renaissance Italy (Romola). Daniel Deronda is set much closer to the time of its writing. But you're right. Its not exactly contemporaneous. Pegasuswhiterose (talk) 12:20, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Supposed rewrites of the book
The article says that efforts were made to rewrite the book excising the Jewish sections and then goes on to say that Jewish versions of the book did the opposite, abbreviating the non-Jewish sections.

I suspect neither of these are true, but would like to see citations. The first suggestion is probably a garbled reference to F R Leavis's bald suggestion that the Jewish aspects of the book don't work and could be profitably removed with the novel renamed as 'Gwendolen Harleth;'. It would, of course, have been impossible for anyone to rewrite George Eliot's book in English other than George Eliot herself.

As for the idea that Jewish versions of the book took out the non-Jewish sections, well I'd like to see a shred of evidence for this, please. If I don't see it, I'll remove the line. as inaccurate. Pegasuswhiterose (talk) 12:24, 30 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Nineteenth century translations of novels were often quite loose and inexact. That's what's referred to in the article when mentioning the Jewish-oriented versions, and I suspect also at least in part when mentioning the Judaism-deemphasising versions... AnonMoos (talk) 12:36, 30 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Pegasuswhiterose asked, rightly, for citations. You haven't given us any. Or any specific example of such a translation. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 18:25, 30 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Whatever -- I didn't add those paragraphs to the article, and I'm not defending them to the death. I was just pointing out that they're not as prima facie implausible as Pegasuswhiterose seems to think (in the context of translations). AnonMoos (talk)`


 * This comment refers to the suggestions that such cuts might with benefit be made, in both directions, but I can't find the slightest evidence that either was actually done (nor that nineteenth century translations habitually did so). SamuelTheGhost (talk) 11:36, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

On the Hebrew translations we have the following: Perhaps the fact that the 1899 and 1976 comments are phrased as suggestions for possiblle action implies that such action had never been taken.
 * 1893: Hebrew translation by David Frischmann, published in Warsaw (info from WorldCat)
 * 1899: essay in the Ha-Shilo'ah periodical calls for gentile sections to be deleted (Guardian BooksBlog)
 * 1976: Shmuel Werses writes "If someone were to excise ... all the chapters which tell of these Gentiles ... the story would lack almost nothing" (assorted blogs)

Support for the Leavis view
I'vve come across this viewpoint in a blog. It deserves mention. Does anyone know of a WP:RS taking the same line? SamuelTheGhost (talk) 09:38, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

jews are not so well portrayed
just started listening to BBC audiobook in first chapter, the jewish pawnbroker is, to modern ears, a repulsive racist trope — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.17.105 (talk) 18:11, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Narrow emphasis
The discussion here is very narrow and ignores much (most?) of the novel. When I have finished re-reading it I will try and add things. Rwood128 (talk) 20:57, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Mordecai
Mordecai is NOT Ezra Cohen. The paragraph must be revised. 2A01:827:1D8:7900:A570:345B:69F2:4A22 (talk) 20:10, 16 October 2023 (UTC)