GRANDCOURT IN GEORGE ELIOT’S ‘DANIEL DERONDA’ AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2020-4-117-127Keywords:
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Schopenhauer, philosophy and literature, ethical and aesthetical wholeness of novel, Victorianism, literary character.Abstract
For the first time in Russian studies of George Eliot, one of the central characters of her only novel about contemporary English life, Daniel Deronda, is under analysis. The character of Grandcourt is looked at as the writer’s distinctive reflection on her reading and comprehension of Arthur Schopenhauer’s book Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818). The author of the essay gives the facts of the very serious, profound and critical reading of this book by George Eliot. The essay shows in what ways this kind of reading influences the ideological and artistic structures of the novel. It is specially demonstrated how George Eliot’s thorough knowing of Schopenhauer’s book and the thoughts this knowing generates reflects on the image of Grandcourt. It is stressed in the article that the character of Grandcourt is not simply to illustrate some passages of the philosophical system of the German thinker. It is argued that Schopenhauer’s concepts of Man, his role and place in the world cause George Eliot’s deep ontological thinking of human existence and its meaning; the German philosopher’s speculations lead Eliot to the indirect dialogue and dispute with Schopenhauer as it happens in some works by Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy and other authors of the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. The author of the article demonstrates artistic principles and means with the help of which George Eliot reconsiders the main notion of Schopenhauer’s system – Wille (Will), which transforms into rampage of subjectivity, unrestrained egoism and egotism, despotism, aggression, disdain of Other, moral violence and rapture of it, rejection of common sense and practical logic, the triumph of ‘nature’, seen merely as an instinct, deletion of such notions as self-analysis and self-criticism, human sympathy, compassion, friendship, love to others. Some special emphasis is put on Eliot’s arguing against Schopenhauer’s gender anthropology. It is stressed in the article that, parallel to ontological disagreement and with the help of this polemics, Eliot through the image of Grandcourt both ironically and dramatically sharpens some moral ill-being of contemporary English high society.References
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