Classical Bookworm

Tolstoy on Free Will

Why did millions of men set about killing each other, if it had been known ever since the world began that it is both physically and morally bad?

...

The contradiction seems insoluble: in committing an act, I am convinced that I am committing it according to my own good pleasure; examining this act in terms of its being part of the common life of mankind (in its historical significance), I am convinced that this act was predetermined and inevitable. Where does the mistake lie?

...

...there are two sorts of acts. One depends, the other does not depend on my will. And the mistake that produces a contradiction come only from the fact that I wrongly transfer the consciousness of freedom, which legitimately accompanies any act connected with my I, with the highest abstraction of my existence, to my acts committed jointly with other people and depending on the coinciding of other wills with my own. To determine the boundaries of the domains of freedom and dependence is very difficult, and the determining of those boundaries is the essential and sole task of psychology; but observing the conditions of the manifestation of our greatest freedom and greatest dependence, it is impossible not to see that the more abstract our activity is and therefore the less connected with the activity of others, the more free it is, and, on the contrary, the more our activity is connected with other people, the more unfree it is.

The most strong, indissoluble, burdensome, and constant connection with other people is the so-called power over other people, which in its true meaning is only the greatest dependence on them.

—Leo Tostoy, "A Few Words Apropros of the Book War and Peace" [The Russian Archive, March 1868]

The man was a genius.

“Daniel Deronda” by George Eliot

What a fascinating book. Daniel Deronda is the story of a young Jewish man who is adopted and raised as an Englishman with no knowledge of his parentage, but is nevertheless drawn to things Jewish and eventually discovers, to his deep joy, that he is also a Jew. He befriends a dying Zionist philosopher, Mordecai, who is looking for someone to carry on with his work after he is gone, which is exactly the sort of meaningful work that Deronda had been longing for. The idea of spiritual transmission not only of identity and virtue but also of mission and vision is central to this work, and, according to my limited knowledge, it seems a very Jewish idea. When Deronda marries Mordecai's sister, Mirah, he completes his role as both receiver and progenitor, a link in a chain that is to continue until the end of time.

Mordecai's Zionism is complex and is presented in such a subtle, personified way that not once did I feel that it was Eliot who was arguing. Mordecai's vision was for a Jewish state that would be not just a homeland and haven for persecuted Jews, something all other peoples enjoy, but also a gift to the world. The good and the great of the Jewish nation would be brought together to lift up not only their low and ignorant brethren, but also their neighbours and the world.

"...Each nation has its own work, and is a member of the world, enriched by the work of each. But it is true, as Jehuda-ha-Levi first said, that Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core of affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and weak and to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us."

Daniel Deronda: Openness

His nature was too large, too ready to conceive regions beyond his own experience, to rest at once in the easy explanation, 'madness,' whenever a consciousness showed some fullness and conviction where his own was blank. It accorded with his habitual disposition that he should meet rather than resist any claim on him in the shape of another's need...

The more exquisite quality of Deronda's nature—that keenly perceptive sympathetic emotiveness which ran along with his speculative tendency—was never more thoroughly tested. He felt nothing that could be called belief in the validity of Mordecai's impessions concerning him or in the probability of any greatly effective issue: what he felt was a profound sensibility to a cry from the depths of another soul; and accompanying that, the summons to be receptive instead of superciliously prejudging. Receptiveness is a rare and massive power, like fortitude; and this state of mind now gave Deronda's face its utmost expression of calm beningnant force—an expression which nourished Mordecai's confidence and made an open way before him. He began to speak.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

I just can't get over Eliot's ability to put words to such subtle and ineffable human qualities, qualities which I think are quite out of fashion these days. Condescending charity is certainly popular enough, but that is not what is going on here. Deronda is putting himself at the service of a near total stranger, about whom he knows little, and who even repels him slightly. He doesn't give hand-outs; he gives his hand, open.

Daniel Deronda: Poetry in Common Things

The fact was, notwithstanding all his sense of poetry in common things, Deronda, where a keen personal interest was aroused, could not, more than the rest of us, continously escape suffering from the pressure of that hard unaccommodating Actual, which has never consulted our taste and is entirely unselect. Enthusiasm, we know, dwells at ease among ideas, tolerates garlic breathed in the middle ages, and sees no shabbiness in the official trappings of classic processions: it gets squesmish when ideals press upon it as something warmly incarnate, and can hardly face them without fainting....But the fervour of sympathy with which we contemplate grandiose martyrdom is feeble compared with the enthusiasm that keeps unslacked where there is no danger, no challenge—nothing but impartial mid-day falling on commonplace, perhaps half-repulsive, objects which are really the beloved ideas made flesh. Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy:—in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda: "I will wait till after Christmas"

What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worth while to set about anything we are disinclined to.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda: Boats and Horses

I'm about half way through Daniel Deronda now and I thought I'd post about some of the things I've noticed so far. Eliot seems to draw on two main sources for her imagery: boats and horses. Daniel and Mirah meet on the water, literally, when he plucks her out of the Thames while engaging in his favourite sport, rowing.

His old love of boating had revived with the more force now that he was in town with the Mallingers, because he could nowhere else get the same still seclusion which the river gave him.

Then there is Mrs. Glasher, the sea captain's widow, described as a "lost vessel after whom nobody would send out an expedition of search," and Grandcourt, "in harbour with his colours flying, registered as seaworthy as ever." I also know that sailing figures prominently in the climax of the plot, so I'm on the lookout for more nautical themes.

It's impossible to miss the equine imagery around Gwendolyn and those who court her. She tosses her head like a rebellious colt countless times, and riding is her favourite pastime.

"Yes, indeed: I never like my life so well as when I am on horseback, having a great gallop. I think of nothing. I only feel myself strong and happy."

Daniel Deronda: On Beauty

Outsiders might have been more apt to think that Klesmer's position was dangerous for himself if Miss Arrowpoint had been an acknowledged beauty; not taking into account that the most powerful of all beauty is that which reveals itself after sympathy and not before it. There is a charm of eye and lip which comes with every little phrase that certifies delicate perception or fine judgment, with every unostentatious word or smile that shows a heart awake to others; and no sweep of garment or turn of figure is more satisfying than that which enters as a restoration of confidence that one person is present on whom no intention will be lost. What dignity of meaning goes on gathering in frowns and laughs which are never observed in the wrong place; what suffused adorableness in a human frame where there is a mind that can flash out comprehension and hands that can execute finely! The more obvious beauty, also adorable sometimes—one may say it without blasphemy—begins by being an apology for folly, and ends like other apologies in becoming tiresome by iteration; and that Klesmer, though very susceptible to it, should have a passionate attachment to Miss Arrowpoint, was no more a paradox than any other triumph of manifold sympathy over a monotonous attraction.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Score one for the girls with nice personalities!

War & Peace

The buzz around the new translation of War and Peace prompted me to get a hadcover copy before it went out of print (like Anna Karenina did). I knew it would be big but I had no idea how big. Here is a picture of me standing in front of it:

Well, OK, that's not me, it's a stunt double, but you get the idea. It's the size of a bleeping dictionary. I wasn't planning to read it any time soon, but I can feel myself getting lured by others embarking on the mammoth project. Most notable are the members of the Russian Reading Challenge led by Sharon of Ex Libris. There are also two Yahoo groups reading the book soon, Classic Books (they're giving it 3 months) and WarPeace08 (who are taking 4 months). I'm not sure I'm ready to get into it just yet (I still haven't finished Don Quixote!) but it's tempting. At any rate, the book sure looks grand on my shelves!

Daniel Deronda: Loving his Neighbour

Daniel had the stamp of rarity in a subdued fervour of sympathy, and activity of imagination on behalf of others, which did not show itself effusively, but was continually seen in acts of considerateness that struck his companions as moral eccentricity. 'Deronda would have been first-rate if he had more ambition' —  was a frequent remark about him. But how could a fellow push his way properly when he objected to swop for his own advantage, knocked under by choice when he was within an inch of victory, and, unlike the great Clive, would rather be the calf than the butcher? It was a mistake, however, to suppose that Deronda had not his share of ambition: we know he had suffered keenly from the belief that there was a tinge of dishonour in his lot; but there are some cases, and his was one of them, in which the sense of injury breeds — not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but — a hatred of all injury.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

I think I like this guy.

Daniel Deronda: Colonial Possessions

'I'll tell you what I am thinking of, Nannie. I will go to Canada, or somewhere of that sort.' (Rex had not studied the character of our colonial possessions.)

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Hey, what's that supposed to mean?!?

I had to laugh at this:

Rex would have seemed a vision of the father's youth, if it had been possible to imagine Mr. Gascoigne without distinct plans and without command, smitten with a heart sorrow, and having no more notion of concealment than a sick animal;...

Yup, he's a chip off the old block!