Romola, de George Eliot

“George Eliot’s humanity colors all her other gifts - her humor, her morality, and her exquisite rhetoric.” HENRY JAMES

           Romola est un roman qui, parmi le public anglophone, a bien moins de succès que les autres romans de son auteure, alors qu'il n'a rien à envier sur le niveau qualitatif au reste de la production romanesque d'Eliot. L’intrigue prend place dans la Florence du XVe siècle, en avril 1492, au lendemain de la mort de Laurent le Magnifique, et s’achève en mai 1509. De nombreux passages ralentissent il est vrai l’intrigue, Eliot ayant inséré de nombreuses digressions sur les machinations politiques entre différents partis, visant en particulier à expulser la famille Médicis et ses fidèles, ainsi qu’à contrer l’influence du frère dominicain Girolamo Savonarola (en français, Jérôme) qui dénonça violemment la corruption de l’Église et la dictature florentine.

'[he] denounced with a rare boldness the worldliness and vicious habits of the clergy, and insisted on the duty of Christian men not to live for their own ease when wrong was triumphing in high places, and not to spend their wealth in outward pomp even in the churches, when their fellow-citizens were suffering from want and sickness. The Frate carried his doctrine rather too far for elderly ears; yet it was a memorable thing to see a preacher move his audience to such a pitch that the women even took their ornaments, and delivered them up to be sold for the benefit of the needy' (p. 6)

          Néanmoins, bien que le contexte historique et politique singulier occupe une place importante du roman, Romola est avant tout un roman d’Eliot, et l’on reconnaît son style, ses préoccupations morales une fois passé le « Proem » qui ouvre le roman, au cours duquel un Esprit, une Ombre du temps du roman visite la Florence du XIXe siècle, faisant part des changements qui ont lieu entretemps, et constatant que d'autres choses à l'inverse restent permanentes.

'The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never alters in the main headings of its history - hunger and labour, seed-time and harvest, love and death.' (p. 1)

' [...] look at the faces of the little children, making another sunlight amid the shadows of age; look, if you will, into the churches, and hear the same chants, see the same images as of old - the images of willing anguish for a great end, of beneficent love and ascending glory; see upturned faces, and lips moving to the old prayers for help. These things have not changed. [...] the little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty; and men still yearn for the reign of peace and righteousness- still own that life to be the highest which is a conscious voluntary sacrifice.' (p. 7 et 8)

             Toutefois, il me semble qu’il y a une autre raison qui explique l’insuccès de George Eliot parmi le lectorat, qu’il soit anglophone ou francophone. Virginia Woolf l’avait déjà mis en exergue par sa formule selon laquelle Middlemarch est écrit pour un public adulte, les « grown-up people ». En effet, il me semble que la morale d’Eliot va à rebours complet de nos attentes vis-à-vis de la vie en général, attentes qui sont encouragées, considérées comme légitimes par la société, a fortiori celle d’aujourd’hui. Ce à quoi les romans d’Eliot s’attaquent, c’est cette croyance, fermement ancrée chez beaucoup de gens (et en particulier pour les plus jeunes), selon laquelle le bonheur est accessible, qu’il réside dans la multiplication des plaisirs, des satisfactions, et que l’avenir nous réserve cela à foison. Dans tous les romans d’Eliot, des personnages, dont le degré de naïveté et d’égoïsme varie, font l’expérience amère de la vie, qui, loin de se révéler être une suite ininterrompue de plaisirs, de satisfaction, où leur moindre désir est comblé, et, de par leur propre imprudence, folie, inconscience, font l’expérience amère d’une souffrance résultant de leurs propres actions, souffrance qui en changera certains (Gwendolen Harleth dans Daniel Deronda), d’autres non (Hetty Sorel dans Adam Bède).

Dans le présent roman, le personnage de Tito Melema, l’époux de Romola, a pour unique but de vivre agréablement, confortablement, plaisamment, et s’imagine que sa vie en sera toujours ainsi une fois qu’il sera riche et influent. Il évite aussi toute situation de contrariété, de déplaisir, et c’est ainsi qu’il prendra la décision lourde de conséquences d’abandonner son père adoptif réduit en esclavage, et qu’au lieu de se mettre à sa recherche et de payer sa rançon, préfère utiliser les bijoux qui lui ont été légués comme capital de départ pour refaire sa vie à Florence (où il a échoué à la suite d’un naufrage au tout début du roman). Son fils Lillo, de même, à la fin du roman, dans les erreurs habituelles de la jeunesse et suivant les traces de son père, aspire à une vie riche en honneurs et en plaisirs, qu'il assimile au bonheur.

En parallèle, Romola a passé toute sa vie à prendre soin de son père devenu progressivement aveugle, et voit en l’arrivée de Tito, jeune homme charmant dont la beauté séduit tout son entourage, la promesse d’un bonheur nouveau, d’une vie différente de celle qu’elle a connue jusque là. Lorsque le caractère de Tito se révèlera à elle dans tout son égoïsme, Romola voit sa vie intérieure et ses convictions bouleversées, et s’éveillera petit à petit à une vision de la vie de plus en plus proche de l’auteure.

" 'I should not like that sort of life' [en parlant de la vie du père de Romola, mort aveugle et sans les honneurs auxquels il a tant aspiré], said Lillo. 'I should like to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy besides - something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of pleasure.'
'That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man can be great - he can hardly keep himself from wickedness - unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo - you know why I keep tomorrow sacred: he had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds they are capable of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, - "It would have been better for me if I had never been born." (p. 582-583)

              La morale d’Eliot est assez simple si on la résume, bien plus complexe lorsqu’on la saisit dans toutes ses nuances dans le cadre du roman. Outre qu’elle remet en cause la croyance du bonheur et du plaisir, elle s’attache surtout à ériger une morale du devoir, dans un monde sans Dieu et en dehors de toute religion. Savonarola a, jusqu’à un certain degré, la sympathie d’Eliot : malgré un certain égoïsme, une volonté de gloire personnelle, elle reconnaît que les fins qu’il poursuit (un gouvernement populaire, un monde de vertu individuelle) sont nobles et la fin tragique qui lui est réservée est moins méritée et est surtout le fruit d’une populace irrationnelle à la recherche d’un bouc émissaire. Romola d’ailleurs trouvera dans le frère dominicain un refuge spirituel temporaire, bien qu’elle finisse par s’en affranchir lorsque ce dernier refuse, au nom des fins qu’il poursuit, d’intercéder en faveur de son parrain bien-aimé, Bernardo del Nero. Romola restera constamment fidèle, dans la mesure de ses moyens, à la mémoire et aux dernières volontés de son père, contrairement à Tito qui prendra le chemin inverse en abandonnant puis en reniant son père adoptif, Baldassare Calvo.

Cette morale du devoir, de la souffrance silencieuse, sera consacrée lorsque Romola, désirant fuir son mari suite à sa trahison, se verra persuadée par Savonarola de retourner à son foyer et d’accomplir son devoir de femme. Décision, posture de l’auteure qui en offusquerait beaucoup, et qui m’a moi-même surpris : en effet, la logique, devant un mari tyrannique, serait de s’en séparer et de mener une nouvelle vie, mais George Eliot, plaçant le devoir au-dessus de tout, s’en tient à sa vision du devoir contre le plaisir, englobant dans ce dernier la volonté égoïste de fuir et de renier ses devoirs. Eliot s’oppose à la logique selon laquelle chacun ne se soumet qu’à sa propre volonté, et défend une vision où l’être humain renonce à sa propre volonté, et se soumet à une loi supérieure (celle du devoir) seule voie selon elle de la sagesse et capable de créer un monde plus vertueux et d’en atténuer les souffrances. En d’autres termes, Eliot nous pousse à renoncer à notre volonté, notre indépendance, de choisir la voie la plus difficile, la plus douloureuse, au lieu d’emprunter la voie la plus agréable, la plus facile.

Cependant, comme tout grand auteur, Eliot reconnaît que son système ne saurait s’appliquer dans tous les cas, et que la ligne entre le devoir de renoncement et le devoir de rébellion est floue, et qu’il serait réducteur de voir son système moral comme un système de soumission sans conditions. Du moins, ce système, que l’on soit ou non d’accord avec, nous permet de nous questionner sur nos idées préconçues, héritées de notre société, qui met le primat absolu sur la volonté et la liberté individuelles, sur la recherche du plaisir, et qui en creux renie toute appartenance, tout devoir, même envers nos plus proches parents.

« ‘You assert your freedom proudly, my daughter. But who is so base as the debtor that thinks himself free?’

There was a sting in those words, and Romola’s countenance changed as if a subtle pale flash had gone over it.

‘And you are flying from your debts: the debt of a Florentine woman; the debt of a wife. You are turning your back on the lot that has been appointed for you – you are going to choose another. But can man or woman choose duties? No more they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother. My daughter, you are fleeing from the presence of God into the wilderness.’

As the anger melted from Romola’s mind, it had given place to a new presentiment of the strength there might be in submission […]

‘My father, you cannot know the reason which compel me to go. None can know them but myself. None can judge for me. I have been driven by great sorrow. I am resolved to go.’

‘I know enough […] You are not happy in your married life […] I have a divine warrant to stop you, which does not depend on such knowledge. […] But you chose the bond [of marriage] : and in willfully breaking it […], you are breaking a pledge. […] Of what wrongs will you complain, when you yourself are breaking the simplest law that lies at the foundation of the trust which binds man to man – faithfulness to the spoken word? […] And to break that pledge you fly from Florence: Florence, where there are the only men in the world to whom you owe the debt of a fellow-citizen. […] There is hunger and misery in our streets, yet you say : “I care not; I have my own sorrows; I will go away, if peradventure I can ease them.” The servants of God are struggling after a law of justice, peace and charity, that the hundred thousand citizens among whom you were born may be governed righteously; but you think no more of this than if you were a bird, that may spread its wings and fly whiter it will in search of food to its liking. […] As if you, a wilful wanderer, following you own blind choice, were not below the humblest Florentine woman who stretches forth her hands with her own people, and craves a blessing for them; and feels a close sisterhood with the neighbour who kneels beside her and is not of her own blood; and thinks of the mighty purpose that God has for Florence; and waits and endures because the promised work is great, and she feels herself little. […]

‘ You are seeking your own will, my daughter. You are seeking some good other than the law you are bound to obey. But how will you find good? It is not a thing of choice: it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience. I say again, man cannot choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your duties, and what will you find, my daughter? Sorrow without duty – bitter herbs, and no bread with them.” […]

‘ […] What! The earth is full of iniquity – full of groans – the light is still struggling with a mighty darkness, and you say, “I cannot bear my bonds; I will burst them asunder; I will go where no man claims me”? My daughter, every bond of your life is a debt: the right lies in the payment of that debt; it can lie nowhere else. In vain will you wander over the earth; you will be wandering for ever away from the right.’ […] The higher life begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce our own will to bow before a divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. […] If there is wickedness in the streets, your steps should shine with the light of purity; if there is a cry of anguish, you, my daughter, because you know the meaning of the cry, should be there to still it.  […]

‘My husband… he is not… my love is gone.’

‘My daughter, there is the bond of a higher love. Marriage is not carnal only, made for selfish delight. See what that thought leads you to! It leads you to wander away in a false garb from all the obligations of your place and name. […] Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron is sharp – I know, I know – it rends the tender flesh. The draught is bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup – there is the vision which makes all life below it dross for ever.’ (p. 357-362)

“All that ardour of her nature which could no longer spend itself in the woman’s tenderness for father and husband, had transformed itself into an enthusiasm of sympathy with the general life. She had ceased to think that her own lot could be happy – had ceased to think of happiness at all: the one end of her life seemed to her to be the diminishing of sorrow.” (p. 388)

" [...] there comes a moment when the soul must have no guide but the voice within it." (p. 490)

             L’autre originalité d’Eliot, qui me semble surtout un héritage de la tragédie antique (dont elle était une grande lectrice), est la manière dont elle caractérise ses personnages. Suivant le principe d’Aristote, ses personnages ne sont ni tout à fait mauvais, ni tout à fait bons. Un mauvais roman ou un mauvais auteur aurait tôt fait de faire de Tito, le mari qui cause tant de souffrances à Romola, un personnage caricatural, en en renforçant la méchanceté pour qu’il s’attire l’antipathie complète du lecteur dans les actions indignes qu’il commet envers sa femme. Mais bien qu’il soit un personnage profondément égoïste, Tito, malgré tout, inspire davantage de pitié et de compassion que de haine pour le lecteur averti. Eliot, dans sa narration caractéristique, retrace le cheminement de la pensée de Tito par l’usage extensif du discours indirect libre, en pointe les errements, les raisonnements fallacieux qu’il se tient à lui-même pour se justifier. Tito n’est pas un personnage qui veut délibérément infliger des souffrances à son entourage : à l’inverse, il leur souhaite de vivre dans le continuel plaisir qu’il s’est fixé pour objectif, et la vue des souffrances lui est particulièrement désagréable. Mais c’est en vue de se préserver d’éventuelles souffrances, en poursuivant son propre plaisir, que Tito en vient à faire souffrir Romola, et Baldassore.

'For he had convinced himself that he was not bound to go in search of Baldassare. He had once said on a fair assurance of his father's existence and whereabout, he would unhesitatingly go after him. But, after all, why was he bound to go. What, looked at closely, was the end of all life, but to extract the utmost sum of pleasure? And was not his own blooming life a promise of incomparably more pleasure, not for himself only, but for others, than the withered wintry life of a man who was past the time of keen enjoyment, and whose ideas had stiffened into barren rigidity? Those ideas had all been sown in the fresh soil of Tito's mind, and were lively germs there: that was the proper order of things - the order of nature, which treats all maturiy as a mere nidus for youth. Baldassare had done his work, had had his draught of life: Tito said it was his turn now. [...] It was the joy that was due to him and was close to his lips, which he felt he was not bound to thrust away from him and so travel on, thirsting. Any maxims that required a man to fling away the good that was needed to make existence sweet, were only the lining of  human selfishness turned outward: they were made by men who wanted others to sacrifice themselves for their sake. [...] Having once begun to explain away Baldassare's claim, Tito's thought showed itself as active as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way through all the tissues of sentiment. His mind was destitue of that dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher than a man's animal care for his own skin: that awe of the Divine Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of manking simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have any sanctity in th absence of feeling. 'It is good', sing the old Eumednies, in Aechylus, 'that fear should sit as the guardian of the soul, forcing it into wisdom - good that men should carry a threatening shadow in their hearts under the full sunshine; else, how shall they learn to revere the right?' That guardianship may become needless; but only when all outward law has become needless - only when duty and love have united in one stream and made a common force.' (p. 115-116)

« It was a characteristic fact in Tito’s experience at this crisis, that no direct measures for ridding himself of Baldassare ever occurred to him. All other possibilities passed through his mind, even to his own flight from Florence; but he never thought of any scheme for removing his enemy. His dread generated no active malignity, and he would still have been glad not to give pain to any mortal. He had simply chosen to make life easy to himself – to carry his human lot, if possible, in such a way that it should pinch him nowhere; and the choice had, at various times, landed him in unexpected positions. The question now was, not whether he should divide the common pressure of destiny with his suffering fellow-men; it was whether all the resources of lying would save him from being crushed by the consequences of that habitual choice.’ (p. 224)

            De même, le père de Romola, Bardo de' Bardi, tient souvent, sans se rendre des mortifications qu'il inflige à sa fille, des propos que l'on qualifierait aujourd'hui de "sexistes", tenant pour vérité universelle que la femme dispose de capacités intellectuelles limitées, bien qu'il reconnaisse que sa fille soit largement plus instruite que la moyenne de son sexe et qu'il lui témoigne de la gratitude pour le soin et l'amour qu'elle lui a prodigués durant ses dernières années. Et malgré cet aspect déplaisant, couplé à son côté ridiculement pédant, son envie de laisser une trace dans le domaine de la recherche littéraire, le fait qu'il ait vécu toute sa vie parmi ses livres et écrits, entraînant sa fille dans une semi-réclusion intellectuelle, ce père est tendrement aimé de Romola, de son auteure aussi (qui dans la vraie vie a pris soin de son père malade jusqu'à ses trente ans environ) qui cherche à susciter notre compassion à son encontre, lui qui a passé la majorité de sa vie, en vain finalement, à vouloir écrire un livre qui lui assurera l'immortalité.

'I said not that I could wish thee other than the sweet daughter thou hast been to me. For what son could have tended me so gently in the frequent sickness I have had of late? [...] And thou hast a man's nobility of soul: thou hast never fretted me with thy petty desires as thy mother did. It is true, I have been careful to keep thee aloof from the debasing influence of thy own sex, which their sparrow-like frivolity and their enslaving superstitions, except, indeed, from that of our cousin Brigida, who may well serve as a scarecrow and a warning. [...] I cannot boast that thou art entirely lifted of that lower category which Nature assigned thee. [...] thou art, nevertheless - yes, Romola mia', said the old man, his pedantry again melting into tenderness, 'thou art my sweet daughter, and thy voice is as the lower notes of the flutes, "dulcis, durabilis, clara, pura, secans aëra et auribus sedens,", according to the choice words of Quintilian; and Bernardo tells me thou art fair, and thy hair is like the brightness of the morning, and indeed it seems to me that I discern some radiance from thee. Ah! I know all else looks in this room, but thy form I only guess at. Thou art no longer the little woman six years old, that faded for me into darkness; thou art tall, and thy arm is but little below mine. Let us walk together.'
The old man rose, and Romola, soothed by these beams of tenderness, looked happy again as she drew his arm within hers, and placed in his right hand the stick which rested at the side of his chair. ' (p. 54-55)

          Romola est une des héroïnes les plus attachantes de l’univers d’Eliot : elle a d’indéniables qualités, surtout un sens du devoir filial indéfectible, mais sa volonté naïve de bonheur, ses illusions sur la vie la rendent touchantes lorsqu’elle se rend compte qu’elle a fait un mauvais mariage et qu’elle ne sera sans doute jamais heureuse au sens où elle l’entendait. Sa nature farouche la pousse à tout abandonner, son mari ainsi que la ville dans laquelle elle est née, et c’est ce dernier abandon que Savonarola pointe comme sa principale erreur de jugement. Bien qu’elle se soumette au raisonnement du dominicain, Romola n’en garde pas moins sa volonté farouche, et loin d’être une disciple obéissant sans conditions, elle trouvera la force de s’opposer à son maître spirituel, puis de discerner son désir de gloire personnelle, qui lui feront couper contact avec lui, sans toutefois lui enlever sa compassion lorsque ce dernier sera condamné et exécuté.

             Enfin, soulignons, à l’instar d’Henry James, que la principale force d’Eliot réside dans sa capacité d’observation, qui donne ces longs paragraphes nous plongeant dans l’intériorité des personnages, mais aussi  ces petites scènes touchantes semblables à des tableaux : ce sont ces petites descriptions, où les rapports invisibles entre personnages sont décelables par de minuscules détails, qui font un des grands charmes des romans d’Eliot. Sur le plan de la vraisemblance, Romola m’a frappé par les rebondissements, les coïncidences totalement invraisemblables qu’il contient : héritage là encore de la tragédie antique, les personnages étant voués à un destin inéluctable de par les actions qu’ils ont commises, sorte de justice divine qui finit tôt ou tard par rattraper les personnages aveuglés par leur propre égoïsme.

« As Romola said this, a fine ear would have detected in her clear voice and distinct utterance, a faint suggestion of weariness struggling with habitual patience. But as she approached her father and saw his arms stretched out a little with nervous excitement to seize the volume, her hazel eyes filled with pity: she hastened to lay the book on his lap, and kneeled down by him, looking up at him as if she believed that the love in her face must surely make its way through the dark obstruction that shut out everything else.» (p. 50)

« He cared so much for the pleasures that could only come to him through the good opinion of his fellow-men, that he wished now he had never risked ignominy by shrinking from what his fellow-men called obligations. But our deed are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness; and that dreadful vitality of deeds was pressing hard on Tito for the first time. » (p. 161)

           Il est à déplorer que George Eliot semble condamnée à un lectorat réduit, encore plus en France. Romola ne sera sans doute jamais disponible en français et c’est bien dommage. L’écriture d’Eliot se caractérise par cette relative immobilité due à ses longues plongées intérieures, une morale du devoir allant à rebours complet des valeurs d’une société basée sur le plaisir et le narcissisme : ajoutez à cela un contexte historique qui peut être difficile à suivre et qui ralentit encore davantage l’action, et vous avez un roman tel que Romola qui n’a guère de chances de séduire le lectorat majoritaire. Mais c’est souvent le signe qu’on tient là un chef-d’œuvre, ce que ce roman est indubitablement…