“For if we had a keen vision and sense of even ordinary human feeling, 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.” One of the greatest lines in all of literature.
"I meant to do it" is one of my favorite scenes of this entire book. It shows the delightful love blindness Lydgate has, which poses such a conflict to his rational, scientific, quantitative worldview. Plus, seeing your inclusion of Eliot's quotes in Substack font really places in her own stratosphere with her prose and word choices. I loved this book, keep your notes coming
I re-read Middlemarch for the first time in decades and cringed over and over again both at what it told me about the behaviour of my earlier male selves (and maybe even the current one a little) and for my gender in general. I enjoyed it so much.
I also liked your note about (paraphrasing) still recognising the same old human same old in classic lit. So true of books like Middlenarch but I find the same flashes of recognition in the most seemingly alien of places - Chinese poetry from 1500 years ago about small children or people at Plato’s symposiums jostling to sit next to the handsome guy…
I would fully read a spinoff/retelling of Lydgate’s Paris backstory. Even better if it was done well, like a sort of Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea situation.
“For if we had a keen vision and sense of even ordinary human feeling, 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.” One of the greatest lines in all of literature.
Strongly agree
"I meant to do it" is one of my favorite scenes of this entire book. It shows the delightful love blindness Lydgate has, which poses such a conflict to his rational, scientific, quantitative worldview. Plus, seeing your inclusion of Eliot's quotes in Substack font really places in her own stratosphere with her prose and word choices. I loved this book, keep your notes coming
I re-read Middlemarch for the first time in decades and cringed over and over again both at what it told me about the behaviour of my earlier male selves (and maybe even the current one a little) and for my gender in general. I enjoyed it so much.
I also liked your note about (paraphrasing) still recognising the same old human same old in classic lit. So true of books like Middlenarch but I find the same flashes of recognition in the most seemingly alien of places - Chinese poetry from 1500 years ago about small children or people at Plato’s symposiums jostling to sit next to the handsome guy…
I would fully read a spinoff/retelling of Lydgate’s Paris backstory. Even better if it was done well, like a sort of Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea situation.
This is my next read. Just finished "Pride and Prejudice" and Dostoyevsky's "Demons" -- which are strangely twin novels. No seriously - wrote about it here: https://www.cognitivefilms.org/p/a-demons-seductive-embrace
Very excited to get started on Middlemarch.
There's so much good George Eliot though, people get obsessed with the big chonkers but for instance Silas Marner is a masterpiece