George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss.
I will start by asking you: have you ever experienced words? How they add in with each other to steal the power of senses; sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. Often for me, it is poetry that makes me feel this the most. Mostly with feelings rather than senses.
Often the description parts in books, I find myself ignoring the most. Boring and taking up spaces for the actual story (as in Zola’s or Maupassant’s books). I guess I’m not the first to think this way and I can say I was wrong. Because in a book, while the story serves as a common thread between the pages, langage is essential in its independence. Using its tricks to create meaning that is beyond the usual.
This extract to me is the perfect example of what I’m trying to touch on. This text is a mentor on how to use language to build ideas that surpass reality, time or any other learned notion.
How do the words combine through structure and meaning to incorporate imagination into the mundane ?
First we will study the structure of the text; an inventory of nature, then we will dive into the image of the eyes as a portal of ambiguity.
This extract follows the structure of a contemplative description. Adding into the detailed scene : colors, scents, shapes. Almost as a microscopic view on each part, it seems to me that they stand at the same distance, as in a picture or a painting.This description has a funnel form : each object coming within another; described often without transitions or full stops, but “and”, “or”, “with”. Connections words that don’t take too much space from the sentence itself.
This structure is constructed as a zoom in, listing each element from general to peculiar, starting with the landscape as a whole, slowly focusing on details, people, animals.
The author takes time detailing beside the objects themselves, detailing the relationship between the elements of nature with each other, as in a love at first sight or a meeting : “and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace.”
This intention of reunion can be highlighted also with the signs, connecting the two words with the hyphen : nouns, adjectives, even verbs; making no grammatical sense.
There’s a sense of hurry in the description due to the lack of comas and the overflowing word coming from each side of the sentence. Nature offers so many different things there’s no pauses to breathe. The immensity of nature surpasses the human condition. While nature has a voice : “ Listen to its low placid voice” can have feelings “the loving tide”, “the voice of one who is deaf and loving” . Nature can possess human qualities, The Mill and The Floss (as names) are the starting point of the descriptions while people : wagoner, little girl, are just a part of the landscape.
Us readers, we feel small as being reminded of our lack of time and our short-lived condition, our constant need to be quick. While nature takes its time, it has no break in its beauty.
Further on, here, the reader is assigned the role of a follower, a follower of the sight, as it runs through the landscape. All of the words making this text build images, beautiful images may I add : “patches of dark earth”, “curtain of sound”, “diamonds jets of water”, “red light shines out under the deepening gray of the sky”.
Language and words set up imaginary scenes but still communicative to the reader in order to convey meaning. The author creates images instead of sticking to sensory descriptions, painting with words. All of the scenes depicted have very visually sensitive details.
The focal point used enhances this power of visuals. In fact, all of what the reader can witness all comes from the eyes. The gaze is the story teller. When the narrator stops onto another person, the wagoner for example, who also has a perception of the scene. Only what can be described is what can be imagined : “That honest wagoner is thinking of his dinner” what he sees isn’t shared. The gaze has its limits.
“See how they stretch their shoulders'”, the author explores the limits of the character’s gaze but also the reader’s, no one beside the narrator can fully see. Us readers, see through the words.
Those limits may trick us into thinking that this point of vue is a form of truth, the reality of what it sees. I will add ambiguity to this statement. Reminding us that to create those images, the eyes use imagination to express best what’s in front of them. The eyes do not work alone, they are connected to the mind.
To the subjects of the sight is added affection, emotions : “I am in love with the moistness”. But also memory, the narrator behind the eyes, plays with memory and how it takes part in the present moment : “I remember those large dipping willows, I remember the stone bridge.” They have a double vision, they recall the moment they’ve seen it, while admiring it now.
Memory is studied as the sight, between the elements of the story but also between the author and reader relationship : “I was going to tell you” the (story)teller, insinuating a past conversation with the reader which can never be found, as it is the first chapter of the book.
At the end of the extract, we have been fooled. By all the details, all the images, all of the beauty. None of it was real.We can question this dreamlike scenery, that the narrator confirms to have already experienced in the past : “on the very afternoon I have been dreaming of '' How much of it is a dream, how much of it is a memory and how much of it was reality?
To finish off, there is still a lot to unpack within this extract alone, and I’ve tried to use no other resources than the text on its own. What is special about this text is that it does not settle for realistic descriptions. It has multiple dimensions within itself that mix the representations of truth, imagination, reality, memory and Beauty. All of those concepts are being confronted in the same structure and in an equal manner, to create a landscape that isn’t submissive to any notions.
I can see a bit of Plato in George Eliot writing and conceptualization ; encouraging us to get out of the dismal cave that is reality to go and search for beyond.
But can we trust the eyes of another to achieve this form of elevation?