06 August, 2007

The roar on the other side of silence

Here’s AS Byatt on George Eliot:

When I was younger it was fashionable to criticise Eliot for writing from a god’s eye view, as though she were omniscient. Her authorial commenting voice appeared old-fashioned. It was felt she should have chosen a limited viewpoint, or written from inside her characters only. I came to see that this is nonsense. If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist. We were taught to laugh at collections of “the wit and wisdom of Eliot”. But the truth is that she is wise - not only intelligent, but wise. Her voice deepens our response to her world. [...]

[H]ere is Dorothea struggling with newlywed misery: “That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”

Indeed, we see ourselves as we want to see ourselves, and that is the extent of our self-reflection. Who can take the horrible truth?

(Link via PrufrockTwo.)