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In his new book, On the art of loving what is written. Mikael Enckell returns to his favourite themes: Judaism, psychoanalysis and its roots in Judaism, antisemitism, philosemitism, and the importance of the written word. The core of this collection is four essays on women in whose lives these themes are conspicuous. Enckell underlines the relation between the repressed and marginalized position of these authorships and the closeness of women to concrete, external as well as to spiritual, interior dimensions of existence. He likens this predicament to that of Jewish literature, which for so long was marginalized and which simultaneously addresses concrete material conditions and spiritual spheres, as if the unattainability of social rewards creates space for the most essential questions and experiences.
The first essay is called George Eliot and the riddle of philosemitism or the love of the forerunners [Georg Eliot och filosemitismens gåta eller kärleken till föregångarna]. Born in 1819, Eliot was an unconventional woman of letters, living with a married man and author for 25 years until he died. They were both “religious atheists”. My understanding of this concept is that it refers to the awe and veneration that arises facing the unexplicable, when dogma and certainty about things we know nothing about are lost.
Eliot made her debut as a writer rather late, but attracted attention and became widely read. In the public opinion of her time she was superseded only by Dickens. Enckell focuses on Daniel Deronda from 1876 in which the young man, Deronda, doesn't know his origins. He gets involved with a Jewish woman, Mira, and her dying brother Mordechai, who, rightly, is convinced that Deronda's origin is Jewish and gradually commissions Deronda to carry out his own mission: a Zionist action plan to save his people.
Enckell thus reflects over the strong Jewish theme introduced in a British novel by a non-Jewish writer in an antisemitic environment, before the time of Herz