Читать книгу George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy - George Willis Cooke - Страница 7

It was while living at Foleshill, and amidst the intellectual influences of awakening radicalism, that Marian Evans undertook her first literary labor. This was the translation of the Leben Jesu of David Strauss. A book so daring in its interpretations of the origin of Christianity excited much attention, and especially among those who had broken away from the old religious beliefs. The work of translation was at first undertaken by Miss Brabant, who soon married Charles Hennell. Then the task was taken up by Marian Evans, who gave three years to it, renewing her Hebrew studies for the purpose, and the book was published in 1846. The work was thoroughly done, so much so that Strauss complimented the translator on its accuracy and correctness of spirit. Concerning the translation the Westminster Review had this word of praise to offer: "We can testify that the translator has achieved a very tough work with remarkable spirit and fidelity. The author, though indeed a good writer, could hardly have spoken better had his country and language been English. The work has evidently fallen into the hands of one who has not only effective command of both languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation, combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style which impart to the volumes before us the air and the spirit of an original. A modest and kindly care for his reader's convenience has induced the translator often to supply the rendering into English of a Greek quotation when there was no corresponding rendering into German in the original. Indeed, Strauss may well say, as he does in the notice which he writes for this English edition, that, as far as he has examined it, the translation is et accurata et perspicua."

The book had a successful sale, but Marian Evans received only twenty pounds, and twenty-five copies of the book, for her share of the translation. A little later she translated Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, receiving fifty pounds for this labor. It was published in 1854, but the sale was small, and it proved a heavy loss to the publisher. While translating Strauss she aided a friend interested in philosophical studies (probably Charles Bray) by the translation, for his reading, of the De Deo of Spinoza. Some years later she completed a translation of the more famous Ethica of the same thinker. It was not published, probably because there was at that time so little interest in Spinoza.

The execution of such work as this, and all of it done in the most creditable and accurate manner, indicates the thoroughness of Marian Evans' scholarship. Though she doubtless was somewhat inclined to accept the opinions she thus helped to diffuse, yet Miss Simcox tells us that "the translation of Strauss and the translation of Spinoza were undertaken, not by her own choice but at the call of friendship; in the first place to complete what some one else was unable to continue, and in the second to make the philosopher she admired accessible to a friendly phrenologist who did not read Latin. At all times she regarded translation as a work that should be undertaken as a duty, to make accessible any book that required to be read; and though undoubtedly she was satisfied that the Leben Jesu required to be read in England, it would be difficult to imagine a temper more naturally antipathetic to her than that of its author; and critics who talk about the 'Strauss and Feuerbach period' should be careful to explain that the phrase covers no implication that she was at anytime an admirer or a disciple of Strauss. There are extremes not only too remote but too disparate to be included in the same life."

Marian Evans did not become an admirer or disciple of Strauss, probably because she preferred Charles Hennell's interpretation of Christianity, It is certain, however, that she was greatly affected by Feuerbach, and that his influence was ever after strongly marked in her thinking. The teachings of Charles Bray and Charles Hennell had prepared her for the reception of those of Feuerbach, and he in turn made her mind responsive to the more systematic philosophy of Comte. Bray had taught her, along with Kant, to regard all knowledge as subjective, while Hennell and her other friends had shown her the objective falsity of Christianity. Thus her mind was made ready for Feuerbach's leading principle, that all religion is a product of the mind and has no outward reality corresponding to its doctrines. According to Feuerbach, the mind creates for itself objective images corresponding to its subjective states, reproduces its feelings in the outward world. In reality there is no objective fact corresponding to these subjective ideas, but what the mind conceives to exist is a necessary product of its own activity. The mind necessarily believes in God, which is man's way of conceiving his species and realizing to himself the perfect type of his own nature. God does not exist, and yet he is a true picture of man's soul, a necessary product of his feeling and consciousness. All religious ideas are true subjectively, and Christianity especially corresponds to the inward wants and aspirations of the soul. To Feuerbach it is true as a poetic interpretation of feeling and sentiment, and to him it gives the noblest and truest conception of what the soul needs for its inward satisfaction.

The influence of Feuerbach is to be seen in the profound interest which Marian Evans ever took in the subject of religion. That influence alone explains how it was possible for one who did not accept any religious doctrines as true, who did not believe in God or immortality, and who rejected Christianity as a historic or dogmatic faith, to accept so much as she did of the better spirit of religion and to be so keenly in sympathy with it. It was from the general scepticism and rationalism of the times she learned to reject all religion as false to truth and as not giving a just interpretation of life and its facts. It was from Feuerbach she learned how great is the influence of religion, how necessary it is to man's welfare, and how profoundly it answers to the wants of the soul. Like so many keen minds of the century, she rejected, with a sweeping scepticism, all on which a spiritual religion rests, all its facts, arguments and reasons. She knew only nature and man; inspiration, revelation, a spiritual world, had no existence for her. Yet she believed most thoroughly in religion, accepted its phenomena, was deeply moved by its spiritual aims, yearned after its perfect self-renunciation. Religion was to her, however, a purely subjective experience; it gave her a larger realization of the wants of humanity, it revealed to her the true nature of feeling. To Feuerbach she owed this capacity to appreciate Christianity, to rejoice in its spiritual aims, and even to accept it as a true interpretation of the soul's wants, at the same time that she totally rejected it as fact and dogma.

In the spring of 1851 she was invited to London by John Chapman, to assist him in the editorship of the Westminster Review, Chapman had been the publisher of her translations, and she had met him in London when on the way to the continent the year before. He was the publisher of a large number of idealistic and positivist works, representing the outspoken and radical sentiment of the time. The names of Fichte, Emerson, Parker, Francis Newnian, Cousin, Ewald, H. Martineau, and others of equal note, appeared on his list. The Westminster Review was devoted to scientific and positivist views, and was the organ of such writers as Mill, Spencer, Lewes and Miss Martineau. It was carefully edited, had an able list of contributors, but its advanced philosophical position did not give it a wide circle of readers. It gave careful reviews of books, and had able departments devoted to the literature of each of the leading countries. Marian Evans did much of the labor in preparing these departments and in writing special book reviews. Her work was thoroughly done, and shows wide reading and patient effort. Her position brought her the acquaintance of a distinguished and brilliant company of men and women. Under this influence her powers widened, and she quickly showed herself the peer of the ablest among them. Herbert Spencer has said that at this time she was "distinguished by that breadth of culture and universality of power which have since made her known to all the world." We are told by another that "her strength of intellect, her scholarship and varied accomplishments, and the personal charm of her manner and conversation, made a deep impression on all who wore thrown into her society."

Dr. Chapman then lived in the Strand, and Marian Evans became a member of his family, sharing in its interests as well as in its labors. She was extremely simple in her habits, went but very little into society, and gave herself almost exclusively to her duties and to metaphysical studies. A fortnightly gathering of the contributors to the Review was held in Mr. Chapman's house, and on these occasions she came to know most of the scientific and positivist thinkers of England at that time. Harriet Martineau invited her to Ambleside, and she was a frequent guest at the London residence of Sir James and Lady Clarke. She visited George Combe and his wife at Edinburgh in October, 1852, going to Ambleside on her return.

While assisting Mr. Chapman, Marian Evans contributed only one article, beyond her editorial work, to the pages of the Westminster Review. The work she did, almost wholly that of digesting and reviewing new books, could have been little to her taste. It must have been a drudgery, except in so far as it aided her in the pursuit of her studies. Occasionally, however, she must have found a task to her mind, as when, in the summary of current English literature for January, 1852. she had Carlyle's Life of Sterling in hand. Her notice of the book is highly appreciative of Carlyle's genius, and full of cordial praise. This passage gives her idea of a true biography:

We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently to the task of the biographer—that when some great or good personage dies, instead of the dreary three or five volumed compilations of letter, and diary, and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds of the reading public have not the chance, nor the other third the inclination, to read, we could have a real "Life," setting forth briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims and achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies) the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on the formation of character than any other kind of reading. But the conditions required for the perfection of life writing—personal intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the beauty and the depth of familiar things, and the artistic power which seizes characteristic points and renders them with life-like effect—are seldom found in combination. The Life of Sterling is an instance of this rare conjunction. Its comparatively tame scenes and incidents gather picturesqueness and interest under the rich lights of Carlyle's mind. We are told neither too little nor too much; the facts noted, the letters selected, are all such as serve to give the liveliest conception of what Sterling was and what he did; and though the book speaks much of other persons, this collateral matter is all a kind of scene-painting, and is accessory to the main purpose.

The earliest of the regular articles, and the only one printed while she was the associate editor of the Review, is on "The Lady Novelists." It appeared in the number for July, 1852, and contained a striking discussion of woman's place in literature, a defence of woman's right to occupy that field she can best cultivate, with a clear and just criticism of several of the most prominent among lady novelists. She was quite full in her treatment of Jane Austen and George Sand, praising as well as criticising with insight and fine discrimination. At the outset she defines literature as an expression of the emotions, and gives a remarkably clear and original description of its functions.

Her editorial connection with the Westminster Review continued for about two years, until the end of 1853. For the next three years she was a contributor to its pages, where there appeared "Woman in France: Madame de Sablé," in October, 1854; "Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," October, 1855; "German Wit: Heinrich Heine," January, 1856; "The Natural History of German Life," July, 1856; "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," October, 1856; and "Worldliness and other-Worldliness: the Poet Young," January, 1857. Two other articles have been attributed to her pen, but they are of little value. These are "George Forster," October, 1856, and "Weimar and its Celebrities," April, 1859. The interest and value of nearly all these articles are still as great as when they were first published. This will justify the publication here of numerous extracts from their most salient and important paragraphs. As indicating her literary judgment, and her capacity for incisive characterization and clear, trenchant criticism, reference may be made to the essay on Heine, which is one of the finest pieces of critical writing the century has produced.

Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age; no echo, but a real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth studying; a surpassing lyric poet, who has uttered our feelings for us in delicious song; a humorist, who touches leaden folly with the magic wand of his fancy, and transmutes it into the fine gold of art—who sheds his sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a wit, who holds in his mighty hand the most scorching lightnings of satire; an artist in prose literature, who has shown even more completely than Goethe the possibilities of German prose; and—in spite of all charges against him, true as well as false—a lover of freedom, who has spoken wise and brave words on behalf of his fellow-men. He is, moreover, a suffering man, who, with all the highly wrought sensibility of genius, has to endure terrible physical ills; and as such he calls forth more than an intellectual interest. It is true, alas! that there is a heavy weight in the other scale—that Heine's magnificent powers have often served only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days. Yet, when all coarseness, all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of exquisite poetry, of wit, humor and just thought. It is apparently too often a congenial task to write severe words about the transgressions committed by men of genius, especially when the censor has the advantage of being himself a man of no genius, so that those transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous; he, forsooth, never lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piquancy to a coarse allusion, and his indignation is not mitigated by any knowledge of the temptation that lies in transcendent power. …

In Heine's hands German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull, becomes, like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic, brilliant; it is German in an allotropic condition. No dreary, labyrinthine sentences in which you find "no end in wandering mazes lost;" no chains of adjectives in linked harshness long drawn out; no digressions thrown in as parentheses; but crystalline definiteness and clearness, fine and varied rhythm, and all that delicate precision, all those felicities of word and cadence, which belong to the highest order of prose. And Heine has proved that it is possible to be witty in German; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that German was pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant does it become under his management. He is far more an artist in prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm development which belongs to Goethe's style, for they are foreign to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to the manifold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its effects. Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow: he alternates between epigrammatic pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and daring piquancy; and athwart all those there runs a vein of sadness, tenderness and grandeur which reveals the poet.

The introduction to this article contains a wise comparison of wit and humor, and makes a subtle discrimination between them. German wit she finds is heavy and lacking in nicety of perception; and the German is the only nation that "had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of European wit and humor" previous to the present century. In Heine she found both in a marked degree, so that he is unlike the other writers of Germany, having a flavor and a spirit quite his own.

Her essays on Dr. Cumming and the poet Young were largely of a theological character. They are keen in their thrusts at dogmatic religion, sparkling with witty hits at a make-believe piety, and full of biting sarcasm. Her entire want of sympathy with the men she dissects, makes her sometimes unjust to them, and she makes them worse than they really were. The terrible vigor of her criticism may be seen in her description of Dr. Cumming and his teaching. She brings three charges against him, and defends each with ample quotation, wit, sarcasm, argument and eloquence. She finds in his books unscrupulosity of statement, absence of genuine charity, and a perverted moral judgment. These essays much resemble Thackeray's dissection of Swift for their terrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or 1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen psychological insight was shown here in a manner as brilliant and as accurate as in any of her novels. She may have done injustice to the circumstances under which these men were placed, their religious education, the social conditions which aided them in the pursuit of the lives they lived; and she may not have been quite ready enough to deal charitably with those who were blinded, as these men were, by all their surroundings and by whatever of culture they received; but she did see into the secret places of their lives, and laid bare the inner motives of their conduct. It was because these men came before the world as its teachers, holding up before it a special ideal and motive for its guidance, that she criticised them. In reality they were selfish, narrow, worldly; their teaching came from no deep convictions, nor from a high moral purpose; and hence her criticism. She laid bare the shallowness of their thoughts, the selfishness of their purposes, and the spiritual unfruitfulness of their teachings. Criticism so unsparing and so just, because based on the most searching insight into character and conduct, it would be difficult to find elsewhere.

Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is not the slightest leaning towards mysticism in his Christianity—no indication of religious raptures, of delight in God, of spiritual communion with the Father. He is most at home in the forensic view of justification, and dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than as an experience. He insists on good works as the sign of justifying faith, as labors to be achieved to the glory of God, but he rarely represents them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow of a soul filled with divine love. He is at home in the external, the polemical, the historical, the circumstantial, and is only episodically devout and practical. The great majority of his published sermons are occupied with argument or philippic against Romanists and unbelievers, with vindications of the Bible, with the political interpretation of prophecy, or the criticism of public events; and the devout aspiration, or the spiritual and practical exhortation, is tacked to them as a sort of fringe in a hurried sentence or two at the end. He revels in the demonstration that the Pope is the Man of Sin; he is copious on the downfall of the Ottoman empire; he appears to glow with satisfaction in turning a story which tends to show how he abashed an "infidel;" it is a favorite exercise with him to form conjectures of the process by which the earth is to be burned up, and to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce being caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Romanists, Puseyites and infidels are given over to gnashing of teeth. But of really spiritual joys and sorrows, of the life and death of Christ as a manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of sympathy with that yearning over the lost and erring which made Jesus weep over Jerusalem, and prompted the sublime prayer, "Father, forgive them," of the gentler fruits of the Spirit, and the peace of God which passeth understanding—of all this, we find little trace in Dr. Cumming's discourses.

Even more severe is her account of the poet Young. She speaks of him as "a remarkable individual of the species divine." This is her account of his life:

He is on the verge of fifty, and has recently undergone his metamorphosis into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a psalmist, a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the "Last Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuate between rhapsodic applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a parliamentary career, and angling for pensions and preferment with fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his imperfect success, and has determined to retire from the general mendicancy business to a particular branch; in other words, he has determined on that renunciation of the world implied in "taking orders," with the prospect of a good living and an advantageous matrimonial connection. And no man can be better fitted for an Established Church. He personifies completely her nice balance of temporalities and spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the momentousness of death and of burial fees; he languishes at once for immortal life and for "livings;" he has a vivid attachment to patrons in general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, with something more than official conviction, the nothingness of earthly things; and he will feel something more than private disgust if his meritorious efforts in directing man's attention to another world are not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His secular man believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic attire for "an ornament of religion and virtue;" hopes courtiers will never forgot to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes begging letters to the King's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar than Golgotha and the skies; it walks in graveyards, or it soars among the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and rebukes, and knows no medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. If it were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers it would be wise and agreeable to be indecent or to murder one's father; and, heaven apart, it would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave. Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is to be humbled by being reminded of its "relation to the stalls," and frightened into moderation by the contemplation of death-beds and skulls; the angel is to be developed by vituperating this world and exalting the next; and by this double process you get the Christian—"the highest style of man." With all this, our new-made divine is an unmistakable poet. To a clay compounded chiefly of the worldling and the rhetorician, there is added a real spark of Promethean fire. He will one day clothe his apostrophes and objurgations, his astronomical religion and his charnel-house morality, in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive; for this divine is Edward Young, the future author of Night Thoughts.