George Eliot (English George Eliot; real name Mary Ann Evans, Mary Ann Evans; November 22, 1819 - December 22, 1880, London) - English writer.

In 1841 she moved with her father to Foleshill, near Coventry.

In 1846, Mary Ann anonymously published a translation of D. F. Strauss's Life of Jesus. After the death of her father (1849), she did not hesitate to accept the position of assistant editor at the Westminster Review and in 1851 she moved to London. In 1854, her translation of “The Essence of Christianity” by L. Feuerbach was published. At the same time, her civil marriage began with J. G. Lewis, famous literary critic, who also wrote on scientific and philosophical topics. In the first months of their life together, Mary Ann completed a translation of Spinoza's Ethics and in September 1856 turned to fiction.

Her first work was a series of three stories that appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in 1857 under the general title Scenes of Clerical Life and under the pseudonym George Eliot. Like many other writers of the 19th century (George Sand, Marco Vovchok, the Brontë sisters - “Carrer, Ellis and Acton Bell”, Krestovsky-Khvoshchinskaya) - Mary Evans used a male pseudonym in order to arouse in the public a serious attitude towards her writings and caring for the integrity of your personal life. (In the 19th century, her works were translated into Russian without disclosing her pseudonym, which was inclined as male name and surname: “a novel by George Eliot”). Nevertheless, Charles Dickens immediately guessed a woman in the mysterious “Eliot”.

Anticipating her future and best creations, “Scenes” are full of sincere memories of the former England, which did not yet know the railways.

Published in 1859, Adam Bede, an enormously popular and perhaps the best pastoral novel in English literature, brought Eliot into the forefront of Victorian novelists. In “Adam Beede” George Eliot wrote about the times of her father’s youth (England at the end of the 18th century), in “The Mill on the Floss” (1860) she turned to her own early impressions. The heroine of the novel, the passionate and spiritual Maggie Tulliver, has much in common with the young Mary Ann Evans. The most substantive of Eliot's "rural" novels is Silas Marner. The characters live lives that are convincing in the eyes of the reader; they are surrounded by a concrete, recognizable world. This is Eliot's last "autobiographical" novel. Romola (1863) tells the story of 15th-century Florence, and the paintings of Renaissance Italy are as read from books as they were fed by the memories of the “scene” of bygone England. In the novel Felix Holt the Radical (1866), returning to English life, Eliot revealed the temperament of a keen social critic.

Eliot's universally recognized masterpiece is the novel Middlemarch; published in parts in 1871-1872. Eliot shows how a powerful desire for good can be ruined by hidden weakness, how complexities of character nullify the noblest aspirations, how moral degeneration befalls people who were not initially bad at all. Eliot's last novel, Daniel Deronda, appeared in 1876. Lewis died two years later, and the writer devoted herself to preparing his manuscripts for publication. In May 1880 she married an old family friend, D. W. Cross, but died on December 22, 1880

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George Eliot(English George Eliot; real name Mary Ann Evans, Mary Ann Evans; November 22, 1819 - December 22, 1880, London) - English writer.

In 1841 she moved with her father to Foleshill, near Coventry.

In 1846, Mary Ann anonymously published a translation of D. F. Strauss's Life of Jesus. After the death of her father (1849), she did not hesitate to accept the position of assistant editor at the Westminster Review and in 1851 she moved to London. In 1854, her translation of “The Essence of Christianity” by L. Feuerbach was published. At the same time, her civil marriage began with J. G. Lewis, a famous literary critic who also wrote on scientific and philosophical topics. In the first months of their life together, Mary Ann completed a translation of Spinoza's Ethics and in September 1856 turned to fiction.

Her first work was a series of three stories that appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in 1857 under the general title Scenes of Clerical Life and under the pseudonym George Eliot. Like many other writers of the 19th century (George Sand, Marco Vovchok, the Brontë sisters - “Carrer, Ellis and Acton Bell”, Krestovsky-Khvoshchinskaya) - Mary Evans used a male pseudonym in order to arouse in the public a serious attitude towards her writings and caring for the integrity of your personal life. (In the 19th century, her works were translated into Russian without disclosing her pseudonym, which was inflected like a man’s first and last name: “a novel by George Eliot”). Nevertheless, Charles Dickens immediately guessed a woman in the mysterious “Eliot”.

Anticipating her future and best creations, “Scenes” are full of sincere memories of the former England, which did not yet know the railways.

Published in 1859, Adam Bede, an enormously popular and perhaps the best pastoral novel in English literature, brought Eliot into the forefront of Victorian novelists. In “Adam Beede” George Eliot wrote about the times of her father’s youth (England at the end of the 18th century), in “The Mill on the Floss” (1860) she turned to her own early impressions. The heroine of the novel, the passionate and spiritual Maggie Tulliver, has much in common with the young Mary Ann Evans. The most substantive of Eliot's "rural" novels is Silas Marner. The characters live lives that are convincing in the eyes of the reader; they are surrounded by a concrete, recognizable world. This is Eliot's last "autobiographical" novel. Romola (1863) tells the story of 15th-century Florence, and the paintings of Renaissance Italy are as read from books as they were fed by the memories of the “scene” of bygone England. In Felix Holt the Radical (1866), returning to English life, Eliot revealed the temperament of a keen social critic.

Eliot's universally recognized masterpiece is the novel Middlemarch; published in parts in 1871-1872. Eliot shows how a powerful desire for good can be ruined by hidden weakness, how complexities of character nullify the noblest aspirations, how moral degeneration befalls people who were not initially bad at all. Eliot's last novel, Daniel Deronda, appeared in 1876. Lewis died two years later, and the writer devoted herself to preparing his manuscripts for publication. In May 1880, she married an old family friend, D. W. Cross, but died on December 22, 1880.

George Eliot's life is not rich in external events. They say that happy nations have no history, or rather that their history is uninteresting, and George Eliot was very happy for most of her life. The monotony of her life, almost exclusively filled with spiritual and mental interests, will appear especially vividly before us if we compare it with the life of another famous writer, George Sand. The fate of George Sand could provide abundant material for not one, but for several novels: she had to endure all the suffering of an unsuccessful family life and a break with her husband, she had numerous romantic hobbies, and, finally, she took a fairly active part in political life France, even during the revolution of 1848, she edited one socialist newspaper. She had periods of intoxicating happiness, followed by periods of acute suffering and spiritual emptiness; George Eliot had nothing like this: the course of her life was much smoother and calmer. But if you look at life not from the point of view of external events, but from the side of its internal content, then it will be impossible not to admit that, despite the apparent monotony, her life was extremely interesting and could serve great topic for a psychological study.

The most characteristic feature of George Eliot as a person is her amazing seriousness. In the days of her early youth, living on her father's farm, later being one of the co-editors of the Westminster Review in London and finally becoming a famous writer, she amazes us with her surprisingly serious and deep attitude towards life and towards people, her greedy desire for knowledge. Religious and philosophical questions were not just interesting food for the mind for her: they worried and tormented her, she took them to heart the way others usually take matters of personal life to heart. Reading Strauss, Spinoza or Comte was a whole event for her.

But, despite her passionate love of knowledge and love of study, George Eliot was not at all what is usually called a “bookish person.” She was very affectionate and knew how to love, which is proven by the fact that she had so many friends, especially among women. Her letters to her friends (for example, Mrs. Congrave, Miss Hennel), written at a time when she had already achieved fame, breathe such warmth, such sincerity and simplicity, she so enters into all the small details of their lives and so appreciates every manifestation of them. sympathy for oneself, that sometimes it is difficult to believe that this is written by a famous writer to the most ordinary, insignificant people. There was not a shadow of vanity or arrogance in her. She was very kind and, in addition to the interest that people inspired in her as material for psychological observations, she always took a sincere part in their fate; as a result, according to the general opinion of everyone who knew her, communication with her was so unusually attractive. They say that she was amazingly able to calm, encourage and console anyone who turned to her. She was quite a good man, and this is felt in her writings. Despite all the external monotony and monotony, her life was full of a wide variety of spiritual interests: science, literature, music, painting - all this constituted for her the subject of the greatest pleasures. She passionately loved nature and, walking alone somewhere in a field or even in the secluded alleys of a London park, she experienced such wonderful moments that only very few people can experience.

Let us cite one story that very accurately characterizes George Eliot, from her great friend, Mrs. Bodishan. When Lewis died, she went some time later to visit George Eliot, who was then already 60 years old and who was terribly upset by the death of her loved one. This is how she describes her impression of this visit: “I spent an hour with Mary Ann,” she writes in one letter, “and I cannot tell you how sweet she was. I completely calmed down about her, although she is terribly thin and looks like a shadow in her long black dress. She said that she had an awful lot to do and that she should be healthy, because “life is so amazingly interesting. We both admitted ours to each other.” Great love to life".

It is this love of life, shining through in every line of her works, that makes main reason that joyful, reconciling impression that all the novels of this great writer leave in the reader’s soul.

Mary Ann Evans, who later became known as George Eliot, was born in the small town of Griff, in Warwickshire. Her father, Robert Evans, came from poor family and began life as a simple carpenter; then, by his labor and energy, he achieved that he became a prosperous farmer, enjoying the general respect of his neighbors for his extensive and varied knowledge of agriculture. He was a courageous, honest man, who later served as the prototype for the hero of his daughter’s best novel, “Adam Bede.” Her mother was very kind woman, who loved her children and husband extremely much, and was a wonderful housewife. In this patriarchal, hardworking family, completely immersed in daily household chores, the future writer grew and developed, and her best, most artistic works, such as “Adam Bede”, “The Mill on the Floss”, “Silas Marner”, are devoted to the description of this, familiar to her from childhood, the life of the English village.

In addition to Mary Ann, the Evans had two more children: daughter Christina and son Isaac. Christina was much older than her sister and stayed away from the younger children, who were unusually friendly with each other.

Little Mary Ann was not at all like a “phenomenal child”: she was a lively, playful girl who did not like to sit in one place and was always ready for all sorts of mischief. It was difficult for her to even learn to read and write, which, however, was not due to inability, but to her extreme liveliness. Already in these early years, one characteristic feature appeared in her, which remained throughout her entire subsequent life; I’m talking about her extraordinary affection and passionate, jealous attitude towards the object of her affection. As a child, her brother Isaac was such an object: the description of Mapy and Tom in The Mill on the Floss contains many autobiographical details. The girl always waited for her brother's return from school on Saturdays, like a holiday, and when he came, she did not lag behind him one step and tried to imitate him in everything. The children had fun on the farm with its large orchard, behind which flowed a river abounding in fish. Fishing was one of the favorite pastimes of little Mary Ann and her brother.

When Mary Ann was about eight years old, a serious crisis occurred in her childhood life: her brother was given a pony, and he was so carried away by this new fun that he began to disdain his sister and almost everything. free time dedicated to his horse. The coldness of her brother terribly upset the girl and forced her to withdraw into herself. In general, as she grew older, her character changed, and she became more and more thoughtful and serious. When people came to visit her father on business, or when guests generally gathered at the farm, she usually climbed into a corner somewhere and sat motionless there for hours, attentively listening to what the adults were talking about. She herself later writes about herself in a letter to Miss Lewis (1839): “When I was still a very small child, I could not be satisfied with what was happening around me, and constantly lived in some special world created by my imagination. I was even glad that I didn’t have any comrades, so that when I was free I could indulge in my dreams and invent all sorts of stories in which I was the main one. actor. Can you imagine what kind of food such dreams were supplied with? various novels, which fell into my hands early."

She became addicted to reading very early, but she had few books at home, and from frequent re-reading she knew them all almost by heart. Her favorite books were Aesop's fables and Defoe's The History of the Devil. Having entered the boarding school of Miss Wellington in Newgenton, she greedily attacked reading and read everything that came into her hands.

One of the boarding house teachers, Miss Lewis, became very fond of Mary Ann; Good relations between them remained even after the girl left the boarding school, so they often corresponded. She was very religious and passed this feeling on to her beloved student.

Mary Ann studied very well, and when she moved from the Newjanton boarding school to Miss Franklin's boarding school in the nearby city of Coventry, she positively became the pride of her teachers. She was especially good at writing compositions and studying music. The precocious, serious, silent girl kept aloof from her friends and did not get along with any of them. Her friends treated her with involuntary respect, realizing that she was much higher than them in intelligence and knowledge, but they did not love her, they considered her dry and boring. One of these ex-girlfriends says that the whole class was once extremely amazed when they accidentally learned that this same Mary Ann Evans, who seemed so cold and inaccessible to them, was writing sentimental poems in which she complained about loneliness, an unsatisfied thirst for love, and so on. Mary Ann differed from her friends in her appearance as well as in her abilities and development. She seemed much older than her age and at 12-13 years old she looked like a real little woman. They say that one gentleman, who came to the boarding house on some business, mistook a thirteen-year-old girl for a certain Miss Franklin, who at that time was already a very respectable old maid.

Returning home for the holidays, Mary Ann no longer indulged in various children's pranks and games as before. All this had long ago ceased to occupy her, and here, as at school, she sat reading whole days and even nights, to the great displeasure of her mother, whose economic heart could not come to terms with the fact that her daughter wasted so many candles sitting at her desk. with your books. However, the parents were very proud of their smart and learned daughter, and her success in the boarding school was a great joy for them. They spared no expense on her education and gave her complete freedom to study and read as much as she liked. The girl arranged Sunday school on her father’s farm and worked there with peasant children.

In 1855, she completed her education and returned home, where she had to devote herself entirely to caring for her sick mother, whose health was deteriorating. In the summer of the same year, the mother died, and some time after the death of the mother eldest daughter Mr. Evans got married, so seventeen-year-old Mary Ann remained the only mistress in her father's house.

George Eliot was very ugly. “A small, thin figure, with a disproportionately large head, a sickly complexion, a fairly regular, but somewhat massive nose for a woman’s face, and a large mouth with protruding “English” teeth,” the late Kovalevskaya, who taught mathematics at the Stockholm University, describes her in her memoirs. university and met her during her stay in London. True, Kovalevskaya adds that the unpleasant impression made by George Eliot’s appearance disappeared as soon as she began to speak - she had such a charming voice and so charming was her whole personality. She further quotes the words of Turgenev, this famous connoisseur and admirer of female beauty, who said about George Eliot: “I know that she is bad-looking, but when I am with her, I do not see it.” Turgenev also said that George Eliot was the first to make him understand that you can fall madly in love with someone completely ugly woman. But the fact is that both Turgenev and Kovalevskaya met Mary Ann at a time when she was already at the top of her game. literary fame. Everyone willingly forgave the famous writer for her painful thinness, her old appearance, and her ugly facial features and, despite all this, they found her charming; but such an attitude, of course, did not exist towards the daughter of a simple farmer, who had not yet declared herself in anything and was distinguished only by her ugly appearance and love of serious pursuits. One must think that the men she encountered in her youth did not share Turgenev’s enthusiastic opinion of her feminine attractiveness. The element of courtship and falling in love, which plays such an important role in a woman’s life, was almost completely absent from her life - and this circumstance, of course, influenced the development of her character.

Returning home from boarding school, Miss Evans was completely imbued with evangelical ideas inspired by the teacher Miss Lewis, and, absorbed in thoughts of God and the salvation of the soul, tried to subordinate her life to ascetic religious principles. Being in London for the first time with her brother, she never went to the theater, considering it a sin, and spent most of her time visiting London churches. During this first stay in London, the strongest impression on her was made by Greenwich Hospital and the ringing of the bells in St. Paul's Church. In her village she led a very active life, managing all the household chores on the farm, and although this occupation was not at all to her liking, she nevertheless conscientiously performed all her household duties and was an excellent housewife. Dairy farming took especially a lot of time and work from her, and later, having already become a famous writer, George Eliot showed with some pride to one of her friends that one of her hands was slightly wider than the other, which was a consequence of the intense churning of butter that she was engaged in in youth.

She constantly worked on her education, continued to study German and Italian, and also devoted part of her time to philanthropy. But all this, of course, could not satisfy the young girl, full of thirst for knowledge and intellectual demands, so that lonely life in an abandoned, remote village sometimes seemed to her unbearably boring and monotonous. She separated from her brother long ago; their childhood friendship gave way to simple good relations, based on family ties, and not on a community of spiritual interests. Her brother was a man of a completely different type - a efficient, practical owner who loved hunting, all kinds of sports and was quite content with the company of neighboring farmers. He did not understand his sister's interests and aspirations and laughed at her religious hobbies. He especially attacked her constant sitting behind books and her disdainful attitude towards her appearance. In his opinion, she was not at all what a young girl of her age should be. She herself later said to herself: “I then looked like some kind of owl, which was a common subject of indignation for my brother.” She loved her father very much, but it is clear that the old farmer, who spent his entire life in the village, could not be a true companion for a young girl studying classical languages ​​and painfully thinking about questions about God and the purpose of the universe. The only person to whom Miss Evans could pour out her soul was her former teacher, Miss Lewis, and from her letters to her we can get an idea of ​​the young girl's mood at that time. From these letters it is clear that she worked diligently at her education and studied a wide variety of subjects; they mention history, literature, the study of Latin verbs, chemistry and entomology, and finally even philosophy. But since she was then interested mainly in questions of religion, she read religious books with particular enthusiasm, for example, Pascal’s “Thoughts,” the letters of Hannah More, the biography of Umberfield, “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a à Kempis and others. Deep faith in God and work on her moral improvement - this was the main content of her spiritual life at this time. She was one of those deep, self-centered natures in which there lives a constant desire for something great and eternal, lying beyond the phenomena of everyday life, and in her early youth this mystical desire for infinity found complete satisfaction in religion.

“Oh, if we could live only for eternity, if we could realize its proximity,” she writes to Miss Lewis. “The wonderful, clear sky stretched above me arouses in me some inexpressible feeling of delight and desire for highest perfection"Many of her letters breathe the same enthusiastic, ecstatic religious mood; she has decided to forever renounce personal happiness and devote her life to the realization of the Christian ideal. For example, she writes to Miss Lewis: "When I hear that people are getting married and get married, I always think with regret that they increase the number of their earthly attachments, which are so strong that they distract them from thoughts of eternity and God, and at the same time are so powerless in themselves that they can be destroyed by the slightest a breath of wind. You will probably say that all I can do is live in a barrel to become a real Diogenes in a skirt, but this is not true, because although I sometimes have misanthropic thoughts, in fact I do not sympathize with misanthropes at all. Nevertheless, I still think that the happiest people are those who do not count on earthly happiness and look at life as a pilgrimage, calling for struggle and hardship, and not for pleasure and peace. I do not deny that there are people who enjoy all earthly joys and at the same time live in complete unity with God, but for me personally this is completely impossible. I find that, as Dr. Johnson says concerning wine, complete abstinence is easier than moderation."

The young girl's religious mood resulted in her first literary work, a poem conceived during her solitary walks through the woods surrounding her father's farm. In this poem, as if feeling the proximity of death, she says goodbye to what was most dear to her on earth - nature and her books - and happily prepares for the transition to another life. The poem was published in the spiritual magazine "Christian Observer" and after that Miss Evans wrote nothing more in the field of fine literature for 17 years. But, despite the serious character of Miss Evans and her sincere penetration of Christian principles, youth still took its toll, and we see that the ascetic renunciation of life and its joys was not so easy for her. In many letters to Miss Lewis and to her aunt (a Methodist preacher who later served as her model when creating the type of Dinah Maurice in Adam Beede), she laments that various “vain inclinations” prevent her from fully devoting herself to the fulfillment of her duty, that “ her main enemy is her imagination." In addition, she was sometimes very burdened by the monotony village life and the constant loneliness in which she was. " Lately I somehow feel especially vividly that I am alone in the world... - she writes to Miss Lewis. “I don’t have anyone who would be included in my joys and sorrows, to whom I could pour out my whole soul, who would live the same interests as me.”

Miss Evans was about 21 years old when her brother married, and her father, having rented him a farm, moved with his daughter to the neighboring city of Coventry. The transition from a secluded rural life to a city life had a great impact on the young girl. Here she met the circle intelligent people, with whom I got along very well; thanks to them, she had to face ideas and views that were completely new to her, which produced a whole revolution in her worldview. The circle of her new acquaintances consisted of the local manufacturer Mr. Bray, a very intelligent and well-read man, who studied philosophy and phrenology in his free time, and his wife’s family - her sister, Miss Sarah Hennel, who later became Miss Evans’s closest friend, and her brother , Mr. Charles Hennel, author of the famous work of his time, “On the Origin of Christianity,” in which he comes to the same conclusions as Strauss in his “Life of Christ.” All these were people interested in science and literature and following the mental life of their time. Many of the outstanding writers and figures visited them, for example the historian Froud, Emerson, Robert Owen.

This encounter opened up a whole new world for Mary Ann. She soon became close friends with Mr. Bray himself and his family; They saw each other often, read together, studied languages, studied music, talked and argued about all sorts of subjects, and under the influence of such frequent communication with people of a different way of thinking, she began to have doubts about the steadfastness of religious dogmas. The above-mentioned book by Mr. Charles Hennel, “On the Origin of Christianity,” had a particularly strong effect on her in this regard. She writes to Miss Lewis: " Last days I am completely immersed in the most interesting of all the studies in the world, and to what result it will lead me, I still don’t know: maybe to one that will amaze you... I hope that separation will not affect our friendship, unless you You won’t want to turn away from me due to a change in my views.”

The revolution that took place in Miss Evans's religious views affected her life primarily in that she stopped going to church. Her wholehearted, sincere nature always made her strive to reconcile her beliefs with life. Just as before she was completely absorbed in thoughts about God and refused all pleasures so as not to disturb her religious mood, so now, when her views had changed, she did not want to be a hypocrite and perform the external rituals of religion. This led to a major quarrel with the father, who was a man of the old school, deeply religious and could not indifferently tolerate such free-thinking in his daughter. Relations between them became so strained that Mr. Evans instructed his solicitor to find other tenants for their newly decorated house in Coventry, and he himself wanted to move in with his eldest married daughter. Mary Ann intended to live by her labor and had already found a position as a teacher at a girls' boarding school in Lymington, but thanks to the intervention of their friends and Mr. Isaac Evans, the old man decided to make peace with his daughter and everything remained as before. George Eliot later told her second husband, Mr. Cross, that no episode in her life had left behind so many painful memories and remorse as this quarrel with her father. Essentially, she considered herself right, but believed that with more meekness and compliance on her part, this clash could be significantly mitigated.

When life returned to its normal course, the young girl began her studies with renewed energy. When she moved to the city, she found herself with a lot of free time, because here she did not have to worry about the household, as in the village. In addition, it was much more convenient to get books here, and there were people next to her, always ready to provide all possible support for her studies. She did not study like an amateur, for a pleasant pastime: teaching was then the main thing in life for her, and thanks to persistent and long work, she reached the point that she could stand on the same level with the most educated and even learned people of her time.

After the change that took place in her worldview, she began to study philosophy with particular enthusiasm. In her letters dating back to this period, there is nothing indicating the suffering that usually accompanies such strong mental crises as the transition from faith to unbelief. On the contrary, all her letters breathe with extraordinary cheerfulness and enthusiastic readiness to work on a new path. The change in her religious beliefs did not in the least affect the very essence of her worldview: being left “without dogma,” she retained all her previous views on the moral tasks and aspirations of man. She writes to Mrs. Pearce (Mr. Bray’s sister): “...I desire nothing so passionately as to take at least some part in the crusade to liberate the truth. Although now my actions are no longer dependent on the fear of eternal torment , nor from the hope of eternal bliss, I still continue to deeply believe that the only possible happiness lies in the subordination of one’s will to the Highest principle, in the constant striving for the ideal.”

The early years of life in Coventry were a very happy time for Miss Evans. After a monotonous life in the village, she completely came to life, finding herself in the intelligent circle of Mr. Bray. Having cast off her former asceticism, she enthusiastically indulges in those very “vain” pleasures that she had previously so resolutely denied, and, having gone to London for a while with her friends, she attends theaters and concerts with great zeal, and art galleries and other attractions. In a letter to Miss Sarah Hennel, she writes: “I hope that you, like me, are enjoying the wonderful spring weather! How long it takes to learn to be happy! I am now beginning to make some progress in this area and hope for to prove to myself the injustice of Jung's theory, which claims that as soon as we find the key to life, it opens the gates of death for us. I will never believe that youth is the happiest time in life. What a gloomy prospect for the progress of nations and the development of individuals. the most mature and enlightened age is considered the least happy! Childhood is good only in novels and in memories. For the child himself, it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is incomprehensible to adults. All this shows that now we are happier than when we were seven years old. When we are forty years old, we will be happier than we are now. This is a very reassuring doctrine, which is worth believing in.”

By a strange coincidence, in relation to George Eliot herself, this calming doctrine actually turned out to be true: the happiness of love, creativity and fame - all of this unexpectedly rushed over her just when she was about forty years old.

In 1844, Miss Evans began her first literary work, a translation of Strauss's Life of Christ. This translation cost her a lot of work: she worked on it for almost three years and later admitted that she had not spent as much work and effort on any of her novels as on this translation. She was very conscientious about her task and even learned Hebrew in order to be able to check all the quotations given by Strauss. By that time she was already quite fluent in Greek and Latin. Towards the end the translation tired her somewhat; in her letters there are often complaints about this stultifying work, that “she is sick with Strauss,” and so on.

But nevertheless, when the translation was completed and handed over to Mr. Chapman (the future publisher of the Westminster Review), she soon began again to translate the work - Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, which was also published by Chapman, and to the works of Spinoza. In general, Mary Anne apparently intended to introduce the English public to a number of translations of classical works on philosophy.

But, plunging into the depths of abstract philosophical thinking, Miss Evans at the same time was far from alien to the questions that worried her contemporaries. She was an enthusiastic fan of George Sand and read her novels, although she did not share her views on love and family. She was also interested in the works of Rousseau and the newest French socialists. When the revolution of 1848 broke out in the West, Miss Evans followed with passionate attention all the vicissitudes of this great struggle, and in her letters there are many warm, heartfelt words about the revolution. So, she writes to Mr. John Sibrey: “I’m terribly glad that you have the same opinion as I do about a great nation and its deeds. Your enthusiasm makes me all the more happy because I didn’t expect it at all. I thought you didn’t have revolutionary fire, but now I see that you are completely “sans cullotisch” and do not belong to the number of sages for whom reason dominates feeling so much that they are not even able to rejoice at this great event, which goes so far beyond the limits of everyday life.. I thought that we were now going through such difficult days when no great popular movement was conceivable and that, in the words of Saint-Simon, a “critical” historical period had arrived, but now I am beginning to be proud of our time. I would gladly give a few years of my life. “To be there now and look at the people of the barricade bowing before the image of Christ, who first taught people brotherhood.” “Poor Louis Blanc!” she later writes to Mr. Bray. “The newspapers plunge me into terrible despondency. However, let me be ashamed for calling him poor! The day will come when the people will erect a magnificent monument to him and all those people who in our sinful days they maintained a deep belief that the kingdom of Mammon would come to an end... I simply adore the man who decided to proclaim that inequality of talents should lead not to inequality of reward, but to inequality of duties."

However, it should be noted that the young girl’s enthusiastic sympathies for the French revolutionaries and her passion for the ideas of the socialists were all purely platonic in nature. She herself always stood aloof from public life and, despite her theoretical sympathy for socialism, never took any part in the socialist movement that began in England in the 1860s. She had a completely different nature, and she was always much more interested in issues of art and philosophy than in politics and public affairs. Her temporary fascination with the French Revolution coincided precisely with the period of her most passionate interest in philosophy. Miss Edith Simcops tells in her memoirs of George Eliot that one day, when she was walking with Miss Evans in the neighborhood of Coventry and talking about philosophy, the young girl exclaimed passionately: “Oh, that I could reconcile the philosophy of Locke with Kant! I wish I could live." In one of her letters to Miss Hennel, she writes that she is going to take up independent work and write a study "On the superiority of the consolations provided by philosophy over the consolations provided by religion."

But despite the consolations brought by philosophy, her personal life at that time was very sad. Her father became dangerously ill, and the young girl, who herself constantly suffered from terrible headaches and nervous breakdown, had to devote almost all her time to caring for him. Her father's illness and her own almost constant ill health took a heavy toll on her mood. In addition, she was involuntarily sometimes overcome by the consciousness that youth was passing (she was already 28 years old), that best years lived, and although she tried to console herself with philosophical reflections that the older a person is, the more capable he is of rational enjoyment of life, but one must think that these consolations were not particularly effective. At least, from her letters it is clear that she had to experience many bitter moments under the influence of such thoughts. So, for example, she writes to Miss Hennel: “Imagine the unpleasant situation of a poor mortal who wakes up one fine morning and sees that all the poetry that filled his life just yesterday evening has suddenly disappeared somewhere, and he is left alone to face the harsh and prosaic world of tables, chairs and mirrors. This is how it happens at all stages of life: the poetry of girlhood passes, the poetry of love and marriage, the poetry of motherhood, and finally even the poetry of duty disappears, and then we ourselves and everything around us appear to us. in the form of some pitiful combinations of atoms... Sometimes I am attacked by some strange insanity, completely opposite to the delirium that makes the patient assume that the body fills all space. On the contrary, sometimes it seems to me that I am becoming increasingly narrower. I’m getting smaller and getting closer to a mathematical abstraction - to a point.”

Her father's health was deteriorating, and Miss Evans had very little free time for herself. Nevertheless, she nevertheless undertook a new work - the translation of Spinoza's Political-Theological Treatise. Spinoza was one of her favorite writers, and she undertook the translation to make it accessible to Mr. Bray, who did not know Latin language. Studying Spinoza and translating it gave her great pleasure, but she could hardly do it because she spent days and nights at the bedside of her dying father.

Mr. Evans died in May 1849, and after his death Mary Ann was left completely alone in the world. The death of her father greatly undermined her already poor health, so her friends persuaded her to spend a year abroad, in Switzerland, to strengthen her strength. She went with the Brays to Italy and then settled in Geneva, where she spent about a year. The complete change of scenery and the mild Swiss climate brought her great benefit: She became very healthy, her nerves became stronger, and she returned to England with renewed vigor. She was very pleased with her stay in Geneva. The wonderful Swiss nature especially gave her a lot of pleasure. “I like Geneva more and more every day,” she writes to Mrs. Bray. “The lake, the town on its shores, the villages with pretty houses surrounded by greenery, and the majestic snowy mountains in the distance - all this is so beautiful that somehow I don’t I believe that you are on earth. Living here, you can completely forget that there are such things as need, labor and suffering. The constant contemplation of this beauty acts on the soul like chloroform. I feel that I am beginning to plunge into some kind of pleasant state. close to unconsciousness...

But this rest did not last long. As soon as Mary Ann recovered somewhat and became accustomed to her new life, she again took up her studies, and, above all, her unfinished translation of Spinoza.

In addition, Miss Evans studied a little higher mathematics and listened to physics lectures by the then famous Professor de la Riva. After living for about a year in Geneva, she returned to England and, after staying for some time with her brother on the farm and with the Brays in Coventry, she settled in London and began to live by literary work. Mr. Bray's close friend, Chapman, who published her philosophical translations, invited her to be co-editor of the Westminster Review, which came to him from the hands of Mill, and she with great joy embarked on a new path of journalistic activity for her.

The Westminster Review, to which Miss Evans now began to contribute close participation, was at that time the main organ of English positivists, around which such outstanding writers and scientists as Spencer, Lewis, Harriet Martini, historians Froude, Grote and others were grouped. Miss Evans rented a room from the family of the publisher, Mr. Chapman, and was a very active member of the editorial board.

She not only wrote monthly critical articles, but also performed various rough journal work, read manuscripts and kept proofs. Of her critical essays, the most interesting is the article on women writers, entitled “Silly novels by lady-novelists.” In it, the future writer is extremely disapproving of women's creativity; It is characteristic that she reproaches the English writers of her time mainly for their ignorance of folk life. Let us cite the following words, showing her view of the tasks of the writer-novelist: “Art should stand as close to life as possible; it replenishes our personal experience and expands our knowledge about people. The duty of a writer who undertakes to depict the life of the people is especially sacred. If we get incorrect ideas about the manners and conversations of some marquises and counts, then the trouble will not be particularly great; but it is important that we establish the right attitude towards the joys and sorrows, towards the work and struggle in the lives of people doomed to a hard working existence, and literature should help us with this. "Anyone who is familiar with the novels of George Eliot will involuntarily be struck by their correspondence with the theoretical requirements expressed in the above lines.

At the beginning of her stay in London, Miss Evans was somewhat carried away by the new atmosphere for her literary world, which she now finds herself in. Meeting various outstanding people, attending concerts, theaters and public lectures, literary meetings that took place weekly in the editorial office - all this at first seemed extremely interesting and tempting for a girl who had spent her whole life in a village and a small provincial town. But soon all this noisy cycle of London life and constant stay among strangers began to tire her very much. She was especially burdened by her complete loneliness. With the death of her father she lost the only person, who was necessary and who needed her cares: despite the purely masculine mentality, there was too much feminine and maternal in her nature to be satisfied exclusively with mental and literary interests. The older she got, the stronger and stronger this need for a family, for a loved one became. But she apparently considered her personal life already over and did not count on anything in the future. “What ugly old hags we are all becoming,” she writes sadly to Miss Hennel. “Maybe one day something extraordinary will happen to me, but so far nothing has happened except the dinner bell and the arrival of new proofs.” .

She really had no idea then what “extraordinary events” awaited her in the very near future. Of all her new acquaintances, she became closest to Herbert Spencer, then still an aspiring writer, who had only published his Social Statics. Friendship with him, according to George Eliot herself, was the brightest thing in her London life. “Without him, my existence here would be rather bleak,” she writes to Miss Hennel. Spencer introduced her to Lewis, who was destined to play such an important role in her life.

Lewis was one of the most popular English journalists at that time. He was a very versatile educated man and possessed great writing talent, but for a real scientist he lacked depth and thoroughness. As one of the English critics correctly put it about him, he was “a journalist in philosophy and a philosopher in journalism.” He did not contribute anything new to science, but many of his works are still very famous and have been translated into foreign languages, including in Russian (“History of philosophy in the biographies of its main figures”, “Physiology of everyday life”, “Life of Goethe”, “Oposte Comte and positive philosophy”). As a person, Lewis, according to everyone who knew him, was unusually likable: he was a lively, enthusiastic, witty person who brought animation everywhere. With his appearance and manners, disheveled hair and beard, loud voice and constant gesticulation, he amazed the prim English society and seemed like some kind of foreigner in it. He led a very active lifestyle, traveled a lot, studied a wide variety of branches of knowledge, wrote magazine articles, tried his hand at fiction (wrote two novels: "Rantron" and "Pink, White and Lilac") and even once portrayed a harlequin in a troupe of traveling actors. Thackeray said of him that he would not be at all surprised if one fine day he saw Lewis riding through the streets of London on a white elephant.

Lewis was married and had three sons, but separated from his wife a few years after their wedding. At the time he met Miss Evans through Spencer, he was living in London as a single man and publishing a weekly newspaper, the Leader. The first impression he made on Miss Evans was rather unfavorable. She writes about him to Miss Hennel that “in appearance he is something like Mirabeau in miniature,” and refers with slight irony to his noisy manners and constant gaiety. But this first impression, apparently, soon faded: they often saw each other on editorial business, and between these people, so different in everything, close, friendly relations were gradually established, which, imperceptibly for both, turned into a completely different kind of feeling. Miss Evans's letters to friends take on a completely different character: a new, cheerful flow appears in them, and the name Lewis appears more and more often. “We had a very good evening last Friday,” she writes to Miss Hennel. “Lewis, as always, was entertaining and witty. He, somehow against my will, gained my favor.” After a while she writes again: “Yesterday I was in French theater, and today I’m going to the opera to listen to “William Tell.” Everyone is very kind to me, especially Mr. Lewis, who has completely won my heart, despite the fact that at first I did not particularly like him. He is one of the few who are actually better than they seem. This is a man with a heart and conscience, only pretending to be some kind of frivolity and recklessness."

Lewis becomes her regular guest and accompanies her to theaters, concerts and other public places. The letters show that their closeness is increasing. She writes to Miss Gennel: “I haven’t written to you all this time because I was very busy: I moved to another apartment, and there was a lot of fuss with this move. In addition, I promised to do some work for a certain person, who, perhaps, is still lazier than me, so I don’t have a single free minute.” This lazy person was none other than Lewis, for whom she read the proofs of his newspaper.

When Lewis fell ill, Miss Evans was extremely alarmed by this, became his sister of mercy and undertook to do all the required literary work for him. In her letters, there are sometimes hints of an impending turning point in her life, of her intention to go abroad for a while, although she does not write anything definite. “I begin my 34th year happier than any of the previous ones,” she writes to Miss Hennel, but does not explain what this happiness actually consists of. Therefore, all her family and friends were incredibly surprised when she suddenly, without warning anyone or consulting anyone, went abroad with Lewis.

Getting together with a married man and living openly with him as his wife was such a bold step that no one could have expected from a quiet, silent, even a little dry girl, completely immersed in philosophy, in her literary works and, apparently, never didn't think about love. As Kovalevskaya rightly notes in her memoirs of George Eliot, in order to understand the full significance of this act, one must remember the terrible stiffness and oppression of decency prevailing in English society. Miss Evans's relatives were so scandalized by her "immorality" that they broke off all relations with her; the vast majority of acquaintances also abandoned it; even the Brays, with whom she had such a sincere and long-term friendship, were extremely dissatisfied with the change that had taken place in her life, and a small quarrel occurred between them, which, however, lasted no more than a year. But despite the general indignation that fell upon her from all sides, Miss Evans was truly deeply happy. In her life, happiness took a long time to arrive and came completely unexpectedly, when she had already stopped hoping for the possibility of it. And the need for this happiness was always very strong in her: she was terribly burdened by her loneliness, by the fact that there was not a single person “who needed her and whose life would be worse without her.”

Let us cite her letter to Mrs. Bray, written a year after leaving abroad. From this letter it is clear how she herself looked at her union with Lewis: “I consider my relationship with Mr. Lewis to be the most profound and serious fact in my life. I fully understand that you may be mistaken in many ways about me, especially since You don’t know Mr. Lewis at all and, besides, we haven’t seen each other for so long that you can easily assume some changes in my views and character, which in reality do not exist... I’ll tell you only one thing: not in theory, In practice, I do not recognize fleeting, easily broken connections. Women who are satisfied with this kind of relationship do not act as I did. If such an uninfected person as you calls my relationship with Mr. Lewis “immoral,” then I can explain. this to myself, only remembering what complex and varied elements people’s judgments are made of. And I always try to remember this and treat those who judge us so harshly. However, from the vast majority we could not expect anything other than the most severe sentence. . But we are so happy with each other that all this is not difficult to bear."

Miss Evans indeed never had to repent of her bold decision. Their twenty-four year old living together was a model of family happiness. It is remarkable that time did not change their relationship at all, and many years after their rapprochement, they both rejoiced at the thought of spending the evening together, like some kind of lovers. In George Eliot's letters and diaries there are constant references to Lewis and her love for him.

So, in 1865, 10 years after their rapprochement, she writes in her diary: “George is terribly busy again. How I love his constant good spirits, his intelligence, his warm caring for everyone who needs him! This love is best part my life." The strength of their relationship is largely due to the fact that, in addition to love, their lives were filled with a wide variety of intellectual interests, which were higher for both of them than anything else in the world. George Eliot took a very active part in the scientific activities of her husband, so the same as he - in her literary works. Lewis loved Miss Evans passionately. The role she played in his life can be seen from an excerpt from his diary.

Speaking about his friendship with Spencer, he adds: “I am extremely indebted to him. Acquaintance with him was for me a bright ray in one very difficult, barren period of my life. I abandoned all ambitious plans, lived day by day and was content with daily troubles Communication with him again aroused my energy and revived the love for science, which was already dying in me. To Spencer I owe another, much more important and profound revolution in my destiny: through him I met Mary Ann - this meant knowing her; to love, and from then on it began for me new life. I owe all my success and all my happiness to her. God bless her."

For Lewis's sons, George Eliot was a real mother. From her correspondence with them it is clear that she was involved in every little detail of their children's lives and treated them with purely maternal care. The boys called her "mother" and loved her very much. From all this it is very clear how wrong those were who were so ardently indignant at Miss Evans for destroying someone else's family, while she, on the contrary, created a real one. family life for Lewis and his children.

Mary Ann Evans was an Englishwoman who knew what she wanted. She was brought up on the Gospel, but changed it to a free way of thinking and went to London to try her luck.

After eight years as an editor at the Manchester Review, Mary Ann published Adam Bede (1859) under the male pseudonym George Eliot. In this and subsequent works, The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Silas Marner (1861), she depicts rural life in her native Warwick-shire, exposing its hypocritical morality.

Disregarding convention, the writer lived with the philosopher and critic George Henry Lewis (1817-1878) from 1854 until his death. (Having forgiven his wife for the birth of two illegitimate children, Lewis could not, according to the laws of that time, obtain a divorce until the birth of a third child from the same father.)

Lewis's death in November 1878 shocked Eliot. She mourned for a whole year, and then decided to marry John Cross, a devoted friend of Lewis, who was twenty years younger than her. Mary Ann did what she set out to do, and despite Cross's indifference to love affairs, their marriage was celebrated on May 6, 1880, at St. George's Church in London.

The honeymoon in Europe was terrible. A marriage to an overworked, gray-haired woman old enough to be his mother drove Cross into despair. Concerned about signs of her husband's mental illness, Mary Evans consulted a doctor upon arrival in Venice, describing incidents of madness in the Cross family and her fears.

During the conversation, John Cross jumped from the hotel balcony into the canal. He refused help from rescuers, but was pulled out. (The reason for this suicide attempt was not discovered until the seven-volume collection of George Eliot's letters, edited by Gordon S. Haight, was published in 1950.)

Mary Ann Evans endured the hardships of an unhappy marriage for almost eight months. The crosses lived for some time in country house in Whitley, near Haslemere, Surrey, and then moved to the London area of ​​Chelsea. In October, Mrs. Cross began to suffer from kidney stones and fell ill. Two months later, on December 18, the couple went to a Saturday concert.

Mary Ann caught a cold and was diagnosed with laryngitis. At first it was believed that she would recover, but a few days later she relapsed. The doctor prescribed a drink and an egg beaten with cognac. The patient complained of pain in. right kidney. Early on the morning of October 22, Dr. Andrew Clark found the patient lying on her back with her eyes closed, her pulse slow and her breathing weak. In the medical history, he wrote: “Loud wheezing can be heard under the stethoscope.”

A few hours before her death, on December 22, 1880, Mary whispered to John Cross: “Tell them that my left side is very sore.” The medical report read: “The cold went down to the pericardial sac and caused cardiac arrest.” So, George Eliot died of pericarditis, i.e. inflammation of the pericardial sac.

The funeral took place after Christmas. Friends insisted on burial in the Poets' Closet of Westminster Abbey, but its abbot rejected their requests. The influential T. H. Huxley, whose opinion was listened to, wrote: “George Eliot not only great writer, she is a woman whose life and views were in complete contradiction with the Christian rite of marriage and the dogmas of Christian teaching..."

George Eliot was buried in an unconsecrated plot of Highgate Cemetery in north London after a simple service in the chapel. After carefully selecting and editing what his wife had written, Cross was able in 1885 to publish an “account” of her life, from which all unattractive and controversial points were excluded. Cross died in 1924.

English literature

George Eliot

Biography

Eliot George (pseudonym; real name Mary Ann Evans, Evans) (November 22, 1819, Arbury, Warwickshire - December 22, 1880, London), English writer.

Mary Ann (later shortened to Marian) was born in a small rural parish in the heart of England. “George Eliot” is her pseudonym, under which she published her first story, “The Sorrowful Lot of the Reverend Amos Barton” (1857), which she compiled with two others in the collection “Scenes from the Life of the Clergy” (1858), and with which she signed her subsequent works. In her youth, she attended educational institutions for girls and read a lot, replenishing the meager diet of knowledge that was given out there. She stayed with her father, caring for him until his death in 1849, then moved to London. In October 1853 she challenged public opinion, when she met the scientist and writer J. G. Lewis, who separated from his wife, but could not, according to English law, dissolve his marriage. The long life together of Marian and Lewis had a beneficial effect on their common destiny: both were able to realize their talent. Lewis wrote a series of studies that earned him a name, and Marian Evans became George Eliot.

George Eliot combined the gift of an artist with an analytical mind. She was one of the most educated women of the era, closely followed the development of philosophical, sociological and natural scientific thought, edited the literary section of the Westminster Review for many years, translated into English “The Life of Jesus” by D. F. Strauss, “The Essence of Christianity” by Feuerbach and "Ethics" of Spinoza. An open-minded man, she welcomed French revolution 1848, although for England she considered only the path of gradual reforms acceptable. Her worldview could be called radical conservatism.

The life of George Eliot, not rich bright events, lived in accordance with its inherent heightened sense of duty to loved ones and love of order and regularity, was marked by exceptional spiritual and intellectual activity. The authority of the writer was enormous, one might say, indisputable, both in the sphere of literature and morality. They looked at her as a mentor, a teacher of life. She was called the Sibyl. Queen Victoria herself was her zealous admirer. Prominent writers different generations, from the seasoned Turgenev to the young Henry James, visited Prior's House, the London residence of the Lewises, to show George Eliot their respect and sympathy.

George Eliot wrote seven novels, stories, essays and poems. Her work, like that of her contemporary Anthony Trollope, became the link connecting the English social-critical novel of the 1830−1860s. (Dickens, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell) and psychological prose of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In many ways, the views and creative attitudes of George Eliot were determined by the philosophy of positivism. She owes him, in particular, the importance she attached to heredity and the conviction that a person’s actions in his youth influence both his own destiny and the destinies of those around him. In the stories and novels “Adam Bede” (1859), “The Mill on the Floss” (1860) and “Siles Marner” (1861), the writer gravitated toward depicting the everyday, while striving for extreme accuracy and objectivity in the drawing. Here she was helped by the experience accumulated over thirty years of living in the province. And since from her youth she was distinguished by a penetrating mind, a tenacious gaze and an excellent memory, then her fellow countrymen, reading these books and later written “Middlemarch” (1872), only wondered where Mr. Eliot got such a thorough knowledge of their parish affairs, gossip and everyday stories: they could not help but “recognize” its characters.

Beginning with the historical novel Romola (1863), in which Savonarola was introduced, the writer sought to saturate the novels - Felix Holt, Radical (1866), Daniel Deronda (1876) - with philosophical, political and sociological material. But it was precisely “politics” that she was least successful in; here her manner sometimes became overly informative, if not poster-like. But precisely at three latest novels the writer's skill manifested itself most powerfully - the mastery of revealing in writing human personality, individual character in all its multidimensionality, inconsistency and ambiguity. A character cast in the flesh of living, intense, beating and rebellious feelings: “The intensity of passions in Middlemarch permeates not only the plot, but also the image Each chapter has its own trajectory of strong feelings The sophistication of the novel lies in George Eliot’s interpretation of feeling as an important factor determining human behavior" (English literary critic Barbara Hardy). “Middlemarch” is not named here by chance: this is George Eliot’s most perfect work - a wide panorama of English life in the first third of the 19th century, an artistic cross-section of the entire society in miniature, an encyclopedia of the human heart.

Eliot George (1819-1880) - English writer. Real name: Mary Ann Evans. She was born on November 22, 1819 in a rural parish on the Arbury estate in Warwickshire in central England. Educated in educational institution for girls. She spent the first part of her life caring for her father. After the death of his father in 1849, he decides to move to London. In 1853, despite the opinion of the London public, she began to live with the scientist and literary figure J. G. Lewis, who was still married at that time. This union had a beneficial effect on the destinies of both. Lewis became widely known for a number of studies he wrote, and Mary Ann became a writer under the pseudonym George Eliot.

The writer's life was quiet, but intellectually and spiritually rich. George Eliot had enormous authority in the literary field, she was widely known not only in her country, but also in Russia, Queen Victoria herself was among her admirers. The writer has written seven novels, stories, essays and poems. Literary activity George Eliot began in the late 50s of the nineteenth century, her first book “Scenes from the Life of the Clergy” was published. Eliot is considered one of the most educated women of that era; for a long time she was the editor of the literary magazine Westminster Review and was involved in translating foreign books into English. Her most significant work is “Middlemarch”. First, in 1871, its first part was published, and in 1872 the second was published. The last novel, entitled “Daniel Deronda,” appeared in 1876.

After the death of J. G. Lewis in 1878, the writer devoted all her time to publishing his manuscripts. In 1880, George Eliot remarried to family friend D. W. Cross. The writer died in London on December 22, 1880.