Romola (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Romola! The very name strikes fear into the most ardent Eliot devotees! Many start and never finish it and British universities seem only too willing to consign it to the dusty recesses of literary didn't-quite-make-its. Indeed, if there is such a thing as a popular perception of Romola, or indeed of Eliot's state of mind as she was writing it, it is of the great Victorian sage forgetting to smile: being at her most worthy, her most didactic while presenting neither the sparkling repartee of a Mrs Poyser, girlish malefactions of a Hetty Sorrel nor indeed the dynamic introspections of a Dorothea Brooke. And yet this seems entirely wrong and unfair - as I discovered having just finished it - not I might add, out of duty, but because it was a rip-roaring good read!!

The only reason I can ascribe to this long-standing prejudice to Eliot's first mature masterpiece is the novel's arcane setting in 15th century Florence. This is decidely not a comfortable fictional zone: Renaissance Italy - complete with an all-star walk-on cast of historical figures from Machiavelli to Savonarola with the smoke-clouds of ritual burnings and religious/political extremism - seems to require an imaginative leap too far from readers normally asked to mind-travel to the comparatively slower and knowable space of Victorian England of 1830s to 1870s.

And yet, it is entirely worth the effort! Some patience is required to stick with the novel for the first 40 pages as the reader - like the handsome young Tito, shipwrecked in a new land - struggles to make sense of the new sights and voices in the vastly drawn Renaissance tapestry before him. Yet the foods, the sounds, the smells and Florentine market-places waft enticingly from the novel along with a dizzying display of erudition. But despite the novel's intricate and pain-staking scholarship, it is no dull sermon or philosophical discourse. Aside from the public life of the real-life 'historical' characters, the real heart of the book lies with the fictionalised Romola and Tito, and the description of the slow but inexorable destruction of their marriage in the crushing claustrophic domestic sphere. This is Eliot not on foreign soil but determinedly on her own ground - and she is at her subtle and incisive best.

One of the areas the book explores is how doing the right thing becomes a question of just one or two degrees and how a slight case of moral slipperiness - or the self-justifying desire to live in comfort and avoid pain - can lead to a moral vaccuum bordering on fully-fledged sociopathy. The character Tito most reminded me of was Dorian Gray - albeit with a fiendishly clever political mind - and the gradual unfurling of his motives (unknown even to himself) and his reasoning was scintillatingly done. Perhaps what makes Eliot such a compelling and interesting moralist is that she makes such a good case for both sides!

Whilst reading this novel, I feared it would be over-taken by the larger and worthier schemes of Florentine religion and politics, but the main thrust of the story was grippingly paced with some breathless, and some might say, totally audacious coincidences worthy, of far lower-brow contemporary sensation novels. There are points where the strains of the author are consciously felt over the work that turned her, by her own decription, from a young to an old woman: you can perhaps see the cogs of this novel working more than in any other - particularly in the third and final part, where occasionally the problem of writing about history and real people obtrudes into the plotting. This in no way, impaired the rich five-course satisfaction of the book. It was a real page-turner. There are some books you finish and want to kiss (if that doesn't sound too pretentious/twee!) because you are so grateful to them for entertaining you. Romola was a definite double-smacker!

The story was interesting enough, taking place in the time of Savonarola, Florence's religious leader, recounting the intrigues of Tito, a charming scholar with questionable morals. Tito marries Romola and starts his crusade towards prestige, power and wealth, prepared to crush anyone who poses an obstacle, including Romola. Machiavelli plays himself and Dante is cited frequently. Most Italian philosophers, painters, sculptures, architects are mentioned. The amount of name-dropping is head-spinning.

Just an example of a reference-infested paragraph: "It is well said, Romola. It is a Promethean word* thou hast uttered," answered Bardo, after a little interval in which he had to lean on his stick again, and to walk on. "and I indeed am not to be pierced by the shafts of Fortune. My armour is the aes triplex* of a clear conscience, and a mind nourished by the precepts of philosophy.'For men' says Epictetus,* 'are disturbed not by things themselves, but by their opinions or thoughts concerning those things.' And again, 'whosoever will be free, let him not desire or dread that which it is in the power of others either to deny or inflict: otherwise, he is a slave.' And of all such gifts as are dependent on the caprice of fortune or of men, I have long ago learned to say, with Horace-who however, is too wavering in his philosophy, vacillating between the precepts of Zeno and the less worthy maxims of Epicurus, and attempting, as we say, 'duabus sellis sedere'*-concerning such accidents, I say, with the pregnant brevity of the poet-'Sunt qui non habeant, est qui non curat habere.'* He is referring to gems ..."

And it goes on. Bardo, the scholar, is talking to his daughter Romola. Just like my dad used to talk to me. For the words or phrases marked with * you have to read the explanatory notes at the back of the book. For the rest, you are on your own. Good luck!