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George Eliot herself had recognised Spinoza's importance some year before Arnold paid the philosopher this elaborate double-edged compliment. In a letter to Charles Bray in 1849 she wrote, diagnostically: "What is wanted in English is not a translation of Spinoza's works, but a true estimate of his life and system. After one has rendered his Latin faithfully into English, one feels that there is another yet more difficult process of translation for the reader to effect, and that the only mode of making Spinoza accessible to a larger number is to study his books, then shut them out and give an analysis." Since she began writing fiction only months after finishing work on the Ethics, it is plausible to consider Eliot's novels as attempting this larger project of Spinozan translation But the detached voice speaking in this letter widens its import beyond the personal, for what animates Eliot here is an issue with a much broader horizon than private ambition: she is hinting at a more general correlation between Spinoza and contemporary British thought. Spinoza has become a crucial figure, she is insisting, one who speaks relevantly to the intellectual predicaments and debates of the mid-nineteenth century. (en) |
