George Eliot’s #Spinoza

N.a.v. het bericht dat Clare Carlisle op 6 december 2018 voor de London Spinoza Circle zal spreken over “George Eliot’s Spinoza” [cf.] ontdekte ik twee dingen die ik hier graag doorgeef en vasthoud.

[1.] dat Clare Carlisle onlangs opnieuw George Eliot’s vertaling van Spinoza’s Ethica heeft geredigeerd.

"Eliot's translation of Spinoza's Ethics was completed in early 1856, but she could not agree terms with her publisher (Bohn) and it was shelved. Though considered by another publisher in 1859 it did not see the light of day until it was published in Salzburg in 1981. The text is useful because it give us some clues about how Eliot animated her fictional characters." Aldus Nathan Uglow ["Spinoza's Ethics". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 June 2002, cf.]

"Ethics of Benedict Spinoza", Translated by George Eliot; edited by Thomas Deegan (Salzburg studies in Romantic reassessment). Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universitat Salzburg, 1981  xi, 259 p.
Reprint New York: Edwin Mellen Press Ltd , 1981,  270 pages

Het ziet er dus naar uit dat er een nieuwe uitgave van deze eerste Engelse vertaling van de Ethica door George Eliot op komst is.

[tussendoor] Ik had de volgende blogs over George Eliot

14-05-2009: “Luisteren naar meedenken met Spinoza;” via welke  geluisterd kan worden naar de lezing van  Moira Gatens (University of Sydney), "Compelling Fictions. Spinoza and George Eliot on Belief and Faith"

16-12-2009: George Eliot (1819 - 1880) Spinozistische en Feuerbachse invloeden op haar 'experimenteel filosofische' romans

09-03-2010: Rebecca Goldstein over ideeënromans [o.a. Middlemarch By George Eliot (1873)]

22-12-2011: Spinoza aangevuld. Tot nadenken aanzettende literatuur als tweede weg naar vrijheid  [over Moira Gatens, Spinoza’s Hard Path to Freedom, dat vooral over George Eliot gaat]

22-01-2014: Joe Hughes over George Eliot en Spinoza in Engeland

17-06-2014: Hoe het zit met het dynamische en procesmatige bij Spinoza

Nu ontdek ik:

[2.] Miriam Henson, “George Eliot's Middlemarch as a Translation of Spinoza's Ethics.”In: George Eliot Review, 2009: 40, 18-26 [cf. en PDF] Het essay begint aldus:

In 1846 John Chapman of Newgate Street published a translation of David Strauss's Das Leben Jesu. Although no translator was accredited, this book was the result of two years' arduous work by Mary Ann Evans, the woman who would later achieve renown as George Eliot. Strauss's presentation of Jesus is that of a historical figure; he denies his divine status, and suggests that the miracles written about in the Gospels are mythic in nature. Although Mary Ann was distressed by Strauss's destruction of all the 'miraculous and highly improbable' elements of the Gospel, she too had, for some time, been unable to regard Jesus as the Son of God; after reading Charles Hennell'sAn Enquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity in 1838 she suffered a loss of faith and ceased her church attendance in 1842.1 The religious and scientific climates of the period were changing: by 1842 Mary Ann had read the work of the geologist Charles Lyell and, ten years later, Herbert Spencer presented his theory of evolution in the Westminster Review under her management; elements of each anticipated  Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species of 1859. Although the change occurred gradually, the increasing secularization of intellectual thought, and the lack of a divinely endorsed role model, placed the nature of morality under scrutiny.

Mary Ann translated two further philosophical texts which could be considered to offer alternative systems of morality: Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity and Benedict de Spinoza's Ethics, both of which reject the idea of a Judaeo-Christian creator god: Feuerbach's 'god' is a projected ideal of human nature, whereas Spinoza's equivalent is immanent in all substance. Both writers influenced her fiction, but it is especially interesting to consider her relationship with Spinoza as she became convinced that a simple translation was not sufficient to make his ideas available:

What is wanted in English is not a translation of Spinoza's works, but a true estimation 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 and give an analysis. (Letters, 1,321)

Hilda M. Hulme believes that she effects this analysis through her literature and that her acknowledged masterpiece Middlemarch is such a 'process of translation'.2 It is certainly noteworthy that it was the very year Mary Ann finished translating the Ethics that she turned to writing fiction. This raises the question of the capabilities of fiction for moral education: is it the case that Middlemarch is 'a true estimation' of Spinoza's system of morality, and why did Eliot choose to write a novel rather than a philosophical treatise of her own?