Romola (Penguin Classics)
George Eliot
Language: English
Pages: 688
ISBN: 0140434704
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
One of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative novels, Romola is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years following the expulsion of the powerful Medici family during which the zealous religious reformer Savonarola rose to control the city. At its heart is Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar, married to the clever but ultimately treacherous Tito whose duplicity in both love and politics threatens to destroy everything she values, and she must break away to find her own path in life. Described by Eliot as 'written with my best blood', the story of Romola's intellectual and spiritual awakening is a compelling portrayal of a Utopian heroine, played out against a turbulent historical backdrop.
of himself, for her resistance to find any strong vent. As that fluent talk fell on her ears there was a rising contempt within her, which only made her more conscious of her bruised, despairing love, her love for the Tito she had married and believed in. He nature, possessed with the energies of strong emotion, recoiled from this hopelessly shallow readiness which professed to appropriate the widest sympathies and had no pulse for the nearest. She still spoke like one who was restrained from
pet votary of San Marco, if you liked; but you are wise enough to know that effective dissimulation is never immoderate.’ ‘If it were not that an adhesion to the popular side is necessary to your safety as an agent of our party, Tito mio,’ said Giannozzo Pucci, who was more fraternal and less patronising in his manner than Tornabuoni, ‘I could have wished your skill to have been employed in another way, for which it is still better fitted. But now we must look out for some other man among us who
the crucifix which Fra Domenico wanted to carry into the fire and must not be allowed to profane in that manner. After some little resistance Savonarola gave way to this objection, and thus had the advantage of making one more concession; but he immediately placed in Fra Domenico’s hands the vessel containing the consecrated Host. The idea that the presence of the sacred Mystery might in the worst extremity avert the ordinary effects of fire hovered in his mind as a possibility; but the issue on
utmost possible good to Baldassarre, what was the amount of that good or enjoyment compared to the possibilities of enjoyment to Tito. It was a choice between a plant which had shed its seed and a plant teeming with a hundred heads.’ 2. nidus: nest. 3. ‘It is good… revere the right?’: Aeschylus, Eumenides II, 517 – 25 (the passage is George Eliot’s translation). CHAPTER 12 , The Prize is Nearly Grasped 1. all charm and loveliness: a deleted passage in the manuscript here reads, ‘with all
since have taken his flight; windows and terraced roofs were alive with human faces; sombre stone houses were bright with hanging draperies; the boldly soaring palace tower, the yet older square tower of the Bargello, and the spire of the neighbouring Badia, seemed to keep watch above; and below, on the broad polygonal flags of the piazza, was the glorious show of banners, and horses with rich trappings, and gigantic ceri, or tapers, that were fitly called towers – strangely aggrandised