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Title: Romola (Everyman's Library (Paper)) by George Eliot, Leonee Ormond, Beryl Gray ISBN: 0-460-87563-9 Publisher: Everyman Paperback Classics Pub. Date: April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Gorgeous and underrated
Comment: Romola is constantly called Eliot's weakest novel, with even serious critics reluctant to praise it. However, it was seen in the 19th century as Eliot's masterpiece. Some of the blame for the novel going out of fashion must rest with F.R. Leavis who said that "few will want to read Romola a second time, and few can ever have got through it once without some groans." If Leavis, viewed as one of the great literary minds, thinks this, then more average readers like us are bound to be put off.
True, the start of Romola is bogged down in detail, but it is introduced by a wonderful, stirring and majestic 'Proem' which sees the Angel of the Dawn sweeping across the Earth and loftily states how humanity is the same now as it was when Romola is set. After this, the notes are best ignored - consult them separately, and concentrate on getting into the book. It is a stirring and sometimes hard read, and moves one with awe at what Eliot has created - you really feel you are experiencing Florence in the 15th century. There is one scene that stands out for me - the haunting and almost surreal episode where Romola drifts by boat to an apparent coastal haven. Images of peace and life are reversed disturbingly.
So ignore Leavis and the dissenters. If you've read another Eliot, you'll like it. If you haven't, maybe start with something else, but come back, for it's a rewarding read
Rating: 5
Summary: Definitely worth her "best blood"
Comment: Given the majority of Eliot readers begin with Middlemarch, I found myself in the unique position of not only beginning with Romola, but also on a subject that I find most interesting. That of Renaissance Italy. Beginning at the death of the great Lorenzo di Medici in '92 I read this great novel twice. Once quickly as any other Twenty-First century paperback; the second, slowly, with more respect for the intellectual scope within the pages.
After the first attempt I was mildly disappointed. I came away with no true sense of the whole that is fifteenth century Florence and a bewilderment at the inconsistent central characterisation of Tito Melema and his golden-haired wife, Romola. The supporting actors were brilliant, from Fra Girolama's fantatical Catholicism to Bratti's salesmanship. But I was left disappointed, believing in the superficality of Tito, the maddening naivety of Tessa, and the almost puritanical martyrdom of Romola.
So I re-read it. Slowly.
It is now extremely clear why this great work of english literature is, as Eliot herself puts it, a "book of mine which I more thoroughly feel that I swear by every sentence as having been written with my best blood".
Each scene is mesmerically depicted, the infintesimal attention to details and Eliot's total control of her subject matter shines through.
Renaissance Florence wasn't so well depicted by its contemporaries.
From Tito's waking at the Loggia de' Cerchi to his final fall at the Ponte Vecchio his character moves through a full range as you would expect from a man in his early twenties. His child-like mesmerism coupled with his Greek tutorage gives rise to a cherubic man whom Florence loves. His fatal flaw is his desire for love and a single terrible lie he gives that, like Murphy's Law, evolves into a a stigma that alters his very persona. What is all the more damaging is that you truly believe he is unaware of the pain he causes. He is truly egocentric, in an almost blameless way. For Romola, you cold argue the opposite. Indeed she is potentially more culpable. Her fierce intellectualism is offset by a descent into a world of religious supersition, a world where religion is used as a political tool. Throughout she has the knowledge of where her actions will take her and a terrible sense of duty and restrains her. From the beginning, with the story we hear so often of Tito's escape from drowning, to his final near drowning at the hands of the mob, to his strangulation by his father there is a certain bitter justice until all that he leaves is his proud and world-scarred wife Romola and the innocence that he preserved with Tessa. Tito's move from innocent 'hero' to startled villain is an excerise in human failings. Yet it is not a sufficient single human tragedy, as Eliot says, "Florence was busy with greater affairs, and the preparation of a deeper tragedy".
In many respects 'Romola' is Eliot's King Lear. The parallels are many, including Baldessare's depiction. There is no Edgar, nor Edmund but the Fool is here in many guises. In taking one of Shakespeare's finest themes, Eliot has given true life to fifteenth century Florence and it is, perhaps, best encapsulated by Romola's final statement to Tessa's son, Lillo:
"There was a man to whom I was very near... who made almost everyone fond of him, for he ws young, and clever, and beautiful...I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds - such as make men infamous."
So, Eliot's 'Romola'. Read it, delight in it because it truly is, as the author can rightly claim, one of the finest works in english literature.
Rating: 5
Summary: I loved this book
Comment: Yes, it bristles with Glossaries and Appendices and Notes like so much barbed wire. (And if you actually read the Penguin editor's introduction, it's a sure thing you'll never read the novel: she makes it sound like about as much fun as chewing rocks.) But don't let all that deter you. You may have some rough going at the beginning, mostly because Latin and Greek scholarship is so important to the plot. Use the notes and they'll enhance your enjoyment of the story, but ignore them and you're still in for a thrilling tale gorgeously told. Tito Melema is one of the great characters in fiction, and he's someone we all know: a thoroughly despicable human being who has no idea he's anything but a nice guy. Eliot has wrought a dreamy and hair-raising hybrid of fiction and history, infused with her own astonishing insight and complicated sympathy and delivered in her matchless prose. I loved this book.
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Title: Daniel Deronda (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot, Terence Cave ISBN: 0140434275 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1996 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Felix Holt, the Radical (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot, Lynda Mugglestone ISBN: 0140434356 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Mill on the Floss (Oxford World's Classics) by George Eliot, Gordon S. Haight, Dinah Birch ISBN: 0192833642 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Adam Bede by George Eliot, Stephen Gill ISBN: 0140431217 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1980 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Scenes of Clerical Life (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot, Jennifer Gribble ISBN: 0140436383 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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