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1tomcatMurr
I don't know if this is useful, but here are some very very preliminary notes I made on TLV about 10 years ago when I read it for the first time. I never had the chance to develop them into something more coherent,but they might be useful to someone.
perhaps a group read and discussion of this story might be in order. It's quite short.
Anyway, I apologise for the diffuse nature of these scribblings. (I"m not sure if I even understand half of them myself anymore.)
...
George Eliot at her most Dostoevskyan. The first five paragraphs are superb. Standing alone as a mid Victorian testament of loneliness and isolation. Eliot’s usual prescience.
...Concieve the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were self –evident except one, which was to become self- evident at the close of a summer’s day, but in the meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science would fasten like bees on that one proposition, which had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end by sunset.
I know she was clairvoyant. There are so many hints of it throughout her books. And now this story deals outright with it. The loneliness of the central character is so real, so plagued by other people…The individual plagued by a sense of his own weirdness: a spectrum of oddity from Shelley to Woolf: Frankenstein’s loneliness among the alps, the monster’s acute awareness of his own developing powers of consciousness are both combined in this one figure; Orlando with his/her serial destinies and genders drifting through the corridors of a huge mansion while the servants whisper.
Perhaps Bertha is Gwendolen were Latimore to have met her.…What to make of the colouring motive: white and green.
Latimore’s clairvoyance raises the central Eliot issue: the relationship between plot, destiny and chance: his prevision of his marriage is both an issue of destiny: does his causing the marriage result from his having already seen it, or would it have happened anyway? It also fulfils a central fact of narrative structure: that all significant events must happen twice. Narrative is constructed around the pair. And the secret. Archer’s revelation acts on us somehow like the revelation of hearing other people’s thoughts does on the central character.
...
perhaps a group read and discussion of this story might be in order. It's quite short.
Anyway, I apologise for the diffuse nature of these scribblings. (I"m not sure if I even understand half of them myself anymore.)
...
George Eliot at her most Dostoevskyan. The first five paragraphs are superb. Standing alone as a mid Victorian testament of loneliness and isolation. Eliot’s usual prescience.
...Concieve the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were self –evident except one, which was to become self- evident at the close of a summer’s day, but in the meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science would fasten like bees on that one proposition, which had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end by sunset.
I know she was clairvoyant. There are so many hints of it throughout her books. And now this story deals outright with it. The loneliness of the central character is so real, so plagued by other people…The individual plagued by a sense of his own weirdness: a spectrum of oddity from Shelley to Woolf: Frankenstein’s loneliness among the alps, the monster’s acute awareness of his own developing powers of consciousness are both combined in this one figure; Orlando with his/her serial destinies and genders drifting through the corridors of a huge mansion while the servants whisper.
Perhaps Bertha is Gwendolen were Latimore to have met her.…What to make of the colouring motive: white and green.
Latimore’s clairvoyance raises the central Eliot issue: the relationship between plot, destiny and chance: his prevision of his marriage is both an issue of destiny: does his causing the marriage result from his having already seen it, or would it have happened anyway? It also fulfils a central fact of narrative structure: that all significant events must happen twice. Narrative is constructed around the pair. And the secret. Archer’s revelation acts on us somehow like the revelation of hearing other people’s thoughts does on the central character.
...
3rainpebble
My thoughts & reflections upon completing the group read of The Lifted Veil on the Virago Group last year. And by the by, most of them hated it.
I did not find this to be a lovely book, but I am not going to be considered a very literate person after my little point of view is down on paper, so to speak.
I thought The Lifted Veil to be quite brilliant. As I read, I felt myself looking into the man's mind and also found myself to be momentarily taking on his mental persona as well. I was not bored. I was not piqued. I was not grossed out. The book did not depress me, nor did it make me nervous nor anxious. I was nothing but a person within another person's ill mind. There was very little within the book that was literal and not simply in his mind.
Yes, I thought it very different and rather brilliant; much as I did Dracula when I read it the for first time.
And I am one who could not read past the treatment of the horse in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.
Sorry ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I shall, most likely, be the only one here with this opinion. But, then too, I am probably the only one here who has been on a psyche ward for depression, anxiety and panic attacks as well. I cannot say if that colored my reading of this book or not.
I did not find this to be a lovely book, but I am not going to be considered a very literate person after my little point of view is down on paper, so to speak.
I thought The Lifted Veil to be quite brilliant. As I read, I felt myself looking into the man's mind and also found myself to be momentarily taking on his mental persona as well. I was not bored. I was not piqued. I was not grossed out. The book did not depress me, nor did it make me nervous nor anxious. I was nothing but a person within another person's ill mind. There was very little within the book that was literal and not simply in his mind.
Yes, I thought it very different and rather brilliant; much as I did Dracula when I read it the for first time.
And I am one who could not read past the treatment of the horse in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.
Sorry ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I shall, most likely, be the only one here with this opinion. But, then too, I am probably the only one here who has been on a psyche ward for depression, anxiety and panic attacks as well. I cannot say if that colored my reading of this book or not.
4avaland
>3 rainpebble: interesting! Was the Virago crowd generally not a fan of Eliot or just not a fan of this book?
After all this discussion, I had to go (granted somewhat belatedly) find out when I bought my copy of The Lifted Veil at the library sale and whether I had actually written anything about it. It seems, after some digging, that I read in early 2008 not long after I bought it (late 2007). I was not really writing much for reviews then, but I found a few lines of comment in my thread on the 2008 75 book challenge group.
"A small novella with afterword published separately by Virago/Penguin. A tale of a sensitive man's clairvoyance, his alienation and despair. It by no means lives up to her novels, but is quite good. I enjoyed her use of the supernatural to tell her story, to make her story! It rounds her out a little more in my mind and just adds to her overall genius, imo. "
Clearly, it wasn't a memorable read over the long term for me, as I don't remember much about it now.
After all this discussion, I had to go (granted somewhat belatedly) find out when I bought my copy of The Lifted Veil at the library sale and whether I had actually written anything about it. It seems, after some digging, that I read in early 2008 not long after I bought it (late 2007). I was not really writing much for reviews then, but I found a few lines of comment in my thread on the 2008 75 book challenge group.
"A small novella with afterword published separately by Virago/Penguin. A tale of a sensitive man's clairvoyance, his alienation and despair. It by no means lives up to her novels, but is quite good. I enjoyed her use of the supernatural to tell her story, to make her story! It rounds her out a little more in my mind and just adds to her overall genius, imo. "
Clearly, it wasn't a memorable read over the long term for me, as I don't remember much about it now.
