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PARTISAN REVIEW
decay; the dust and withered remnants with which they are apt to
be covered, only enhancing for the awakened perception the
impressiveness either of a sublimely penetrating life, as in the twin
green leaves that will become the sheltering tree, or of a pathetic
inheritance in which all the grandeur and the glory have become a
sorrowing memory.
This "poetic" faculty bestows upon Daniel the ability to see through
discrepancies in daily phenomena. As he walks through the Jewish
neighborhood, he encounters a series of unsavory characters. The text
implies that he does not condemn these random figures, in part because
he understands the various historical conditions that create them. Addi–
tionally, as he interprets the decay around him, he considers the spiri–
tual possibilities. The poet in him-the spirit, perhaps-allows him to
weigh the competing meanings present in the scene. Daniel simultane–
ously sees both the potential for sublime glory (and the opportunity for
spiritual renewal) and permanent decay. Still unsure of his own spiritual
roots, surrounded by a history that can be read as vibrant or dying, his
poetic facuity, according to the narrator, prevents the typical kind of
stereotyping one might see from a British gentleman. In the process, he
receives an education that is more than the simple acquisition of knowl–
edge, rather, Daniel the poet acquires ways to comprehend knowledge.
At this point, these observations-that of the Jew as poetic history or
as Western decline-hold each other in check. Although Daniel has been
raised to regard Judaism suspiciously, his instincts permit him to reserve
judgment. At the end of his philosophic contemplations and physical
perambulations (through the Jewish section of Frankfurt), Daniel enters
a shul, and we further sense the dissonance between his admiration for
Jewish custom and his own British sensibility. The service moves Daniel
powerfully, as the setting, the prayers, and the spiritual material alert
him to judaism's seemingly everlasting yet tortured history:
The Hebrew Liturgy, like others, has its transitions of litany, lyric,
proclamation, dry statement, and blessing; but this evening all were
one for Deronda: the chant of the
Chazan's
or Reader's grand wide–
ranging voice with its passage from monotony to sudden cries, the
outburst of sweet boys' voices from the little quire, the devotional
swaying of the men's bodies backwards and forwards, the very
commonness of the building and the shabbiness of the scene where
a national faith, which had penetrated the thinking of half the
world, and moulded the splendid forms of that world's religion,
was finding a remote, obscure echo-all were blent for him as one
