Introduction
Critical Introduction
Sheila A. Spector
- In the past few years, we have witnessed a regeneration of interest in Benjamin
Disraeli, with new attention being paid, according to Paul Smith, “to
aspects of his personality and œuvre inadequately recognized or analysed in
the standard accounts, especially his social and political ideas, his style of
self-presentation, and the significance of his Jewish origins and his assumption
of the romantic mode” (1). Key to this reevaluation is Disraeli’s
early novel, Alroy. While few went as far as Robert Blake, who labeled
Alroy “perhaps the most unreadable of his romances,” most
audiences have tended to dismiss it as Disraeli’s “Jewish
novel” (108). Referring to the book’s medieval Jewish subject
matter, the comment seems to imply that at best, Alroy might be of sectarian
interest to Jews, though it certainly could not have nearly the relevance of
Disraeli’s other books, like the “silver fork” novels of the
1820s, or the Young England trilogy of the 1840s. While not a major figure,
Disraeli did earn for himself a significant literary reputation, his œuvre
comprising over a dozen works of fiction, including an imaginary voyage, Byronic
romances, sentimental stories, social and political satires, and Victorian
novels. In their midst, this relatively short “dramatic romance,”
considered by Cecil Roth to be the first Jewish historical novel, seems somewhat
out of place, its content and form having apparently little relation to the
other novels, much less to the political career of the future prime minister of
England. But such a narrow view obscures the larger significance of Alroy (61).
- Completed just before he formally entered politics for the first time, in this
short “Jewish novel,” Disraeli comes to terms with his own identity
as a baptized Jew. Although the Jews had begun returning to England almost
immediately after their expulsion in 1290, they had since then been denied the
rights of citizenship. In the seventeenth century, the move for formal
readmission failed, and in the eighteenth, the Jewish Naturalization Bill was
repealed almost as soon as it was passed, in 1753. The result was that until
emancipation in 1858, Jews were denied the basic rights accorded to most
citizens, including restrictions on their ability to own land, to attend
universities and to hold political office. Having been baptized as a child,
Disraeli suffered under none of these legal disabilities. Yet, as an ethnic Jew,
he was vulnerable to attacks by Christians about his heritage and the sincerity
of his conversion, and to criticism by Jews that as an apostate, he had
abandoned his obligations to his people.1 Consequently, Disraeli felt compelled, on the personal
level, to rationalize his conflicting identity as a practicing Anglican who was
an ethnic Jew. Politically, he had to justify advocating a constitutionally
established national church, even though the relationship disenfranchised the
Jews. Finally, he needed, literarily, to progress beyond the romantic idealism
of his youth before he could achieve the conservative realism of his ensuing
political career. As the vehicle for attempting to resolve some of these
apparent contradictions, he created in Alroy a hybrid literary form in
which he superimposed Jewish and Christian archetypal structures on each other,
not to demonstrate the superiority of one religion over the other, but to
reflect his belief that, as he would later say in Tancred, “Christianity
is Judaism for the multitude.”2
Biographical Significance of Alroy
- One reason why Alroy has fallen through the cracks of literary history is
that like Disraeli himself, the novel is neither Jewish, in the sense that its
themes and characterizations conform to a Jewish ethos, nor Christian, the few
giaours in the book being minor characters who are vilified by the Muslims
populating twelfth-century Persia. Rather, in its portrayal of a young Jewish
hero attempting to survive in a non-Jewish world, Alroy reflects the
dilemma confronted by Disraeli himself, as a baptized Jew who, though remaining
a practicing Anglican throughout his life, still retained strong emotional ties
with his Jewish heritage.3
- As the literary representation of Disraeli’s “ideal
ambition,”4
Alroy reflects what the author imagined his life might have been like had
he had a Bar Mitzvah at the age of thirteen, instead of a baptism, on 31 July
1817. As a third generation Englishman of what was originally an Italian Jewish
family, Benjamin was raised by parents who regretted their own ethnicity.
Although his father Isaac D’Israeli himself never converted, after the
death of his own father and a quarrel with local synagogue leaders, he had his
children baptized, thus technically making available to them all the advantages
of British citizenship which, at that time, were denied to any English resident
who was not a member of the Church of England. Had he chosen to, Benjamin might
have obtained—though he did not—a university education, but he did
take advantage of the opportunity to hold public office, formally running for
the first time the year before Alroy was published. From the perspective
of early nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewry, Alroy emerges as
Disraeli’s Jewish surrogate, the failed messianic mission graphically
suggesting that in the author’s mind, at any rate, conversion was the only
viable means available to him of elevating the position of contemporary English
Jewry.5
- Throughout his life, Disraeli had an ambivalent relationship with the Jewish
community. According to Jewish tradition, two options alone are available to
those whose circumstances make adherence to their faith impossible: they could
become martyrs, dying rather than converting; or, as most notably in the case of
the Spanish Inquisition, they could become marranos, that is,
crypto-Jews, assuming the public demeanor of a Christian while practicing in
private whatever vestiges of Judaism they might manage. The apostate, in
contrast, was vilified, for regardless of the sincerity of his conversion, he
still abandoned his obligations to his people. In Disraeli’s case, the
problem was complicated by his close connections with English Jewry. Most of his
family, including his parents, were Jewish. In addition, Disraeli seems to have
been a less than enthusiastic convert, not agreeing until two weeks later than
his younger brothers to be baptized. Yet, all evidence indicates that once
converted, he remained a practicing Anglican throughout his life. Still, at the
same time, he created for himself a largely fanciful genealogy, claiming in
later life to have been descended from Spanish marranos fleeing the Inquisition.
- The sketchy history of the pseudo-messiah David Alroy provided Disraeli with the
ideal medium through which to project what his life might have been like had he
remained Jewish. As he indicates in his last footnote, Disraeli was first
attracted by what he assumed was Alroy’s bold arrogance. When Alroy was
asked by his captor how he knew that he was a messiah, he supposedly responded
that they might cut off his head, and yet, he would live. Of course, Alroy died,
but his challenge enabled him to avoid a fate far worse than decapitation. This
story, though attributed to the philosopher Moses Maimonides—as repeated
in the Chronologia Sacra-Profana A Mundi Conditu ad Annum M.5352 vel Christi
1592, dicta צמח דוד German
Davidis, of David Ben Solomon Gans (1541-1613), and derived from the
Shevet Yehudah (1553) of Solomon ibn Verga (second half of the
fifteenth-first quarter of sixteenth century) —is likely spurious. Rather,
the most common popular source of information about Alroy derives from Benjamin
of Tudela, a Jewish traveler of the late twelfth century, known primarily for
the diary account of his adventures.6
- Historically accurate information about Alroy is scant. Born during the turmoil
of the Crusades in the twelfth century, Menahem b. Solomon, as he was originally
named, was a charismatic leader whose knowledge of mystical lore enabled him to
persuade his followers that he was, indeed, the messiah. It is quite possible
that Alroy believed in his election, since his father, identifying himself as
the prophet Elijah, had a generation earlier circulated a letter among Jewish
communities in the east proclaiming an imminent ingathering of exiles under his
leadership. Menahem, in turn, changed his name to David al-Ro’i to imply
an association with the House of David. Around 1147, in an attempt to unite the
Jews of Kurdistan into a force capable of defeating the Seljuk Turks, Alroy
gathered the Jews of Azerbaidzhan, in the hope that he might conquer Edessa and
then the Holy Land. In preparation for his military exploit, he supposedly sent
messengers around the Baghdad area, and they, presumably exceeding their actual
instructions, told the Jews to assemble on their roof tops, from where they
would be transported to the Messiah. When the prophecy did not materialize, the
leaders of the Jewish community disavowed Alroy’s claim of messiahship,
while Persian authorities threatened retaliation. Apparently in collusion with
the authorities, the district governor bribed Alroy’s father-in-law to
assassinate the pseudo-messiah. Even after his death, though, the movement
retained faithful followers, known as Menahemites, who decades later spoke
fondly of their dead leader.
- In the novel, Disraeli uses the historical Alroy as a foil against which
indirectly to posit conversion as the third alternative to martyrdom and
crypto-Judaism. Here transformed into a biblical archetype, Alroy is introduced
as the Prince of the Captivity, the last remaining scion of the royal family;
and like Moses, David and Solomon, all of whom are frequently alluded to in the
novel, this David is destined to liberate his people from their state of
captivity, and to establish a Jewish kingdom organized according to Old
Testament law. Like his predecessors, however, he is also destined to fail, for
like them, he, too, falls in love with a non-Jewish woman who leads him away
from strict Jewish worship. As a result, the kingdom collapses, the Turks
re-conquer the Jews and kill Alroy, thus concluding the action where the novel
began, with the Jewish people in Hamadan under Turkish control. This cycle of
Old Testament history is doomed to be repeated, according to Christian
tradition, until the Jews accept the New Dispensation in which the circular
pattern of the Old Testament will be replaced by the linear Christ who will lead
His followers to rest in the spiritual New Jerusalem.
- In Alroy, Disraeli presents martyrdom as a romantic, though unviable
alternative. Faithful to his source, Disraeli has the Jewish king, when offered
the choice between the crescent and the sword, trick Alp Arslan into an
immediate decapitation, rather than the painfully slow evisceration that had
been planned for him. In this way, Alroy, like a Byronic hero, is able to retain
his noble dignity. Yet, on the practical level, Alroy’s martyrdom
nullifies the effect of his entire life, for his messiahship, in contrast to
Christ’s, left no permanent impact on his people, the only remnants of his
life being a few not particularly accurate accounts and, after 1833,
Disraeli’s idealized rendering of the sometime caliph.
- In contrast to the fictional Alroy, Disraeli, whose sincere conversion precluded
both martyrdom and crypto-Judaism, attempted to devise a median way by which to
combine the Old and New Dispensations into a religion through which people of
both faiths might flourish. A decade later, in the Young England novels of the
mid-1840s, he would introduce Sidonia as the archetypal wise Jew whose advice
was indispensable to the Christian heroes of the books; but in 1833, when
Alroy was first published, Disraeli had yet to determine what he
believed to be the appropriate relationship between the two faiths. At that
point, he could only demonstrate that as an idealized romantic figure, Alroy
could not accommodate himself to the realities of his world, and that by
extension, Disraeli’s own Christianity, not the treachery of the apostate,
would become the means by which the Victorian messianic figure would, in fact,
help emancipate contemporary Jews.
Political Significance of Alroy
- Alroy is usually excluded from the list of Disraeli’s political
novels, its twelfth-century Persian setting, populated primarily by Jews and
Muslims, giving most readers the initial impression of an exotic tale with no
immediate relevance. However, just as the hero is a projection of
Disraeli’s personal struggle with the contradiction between his religion
and his heritage, similarly, the setting provides Disraeli with the means by
which to allegorize the contemporary political conflict about the relationship
between throne and altar. With, on the one hand, a constitutionally established
church, and on the other, an increasingly pluralistic population, Great Britain
in the 1830s was forced not only to reexamine the relationship between church
and state, but actually to reconsider, in light of growing protests, the
propriety even of maintaining a national church at all. If, in the novel,
Alroy’s two main advisors, Jabaster and Honain, represent what from the
Jewish perspective would be interpreted as religious martyrs and
marranos, in terms of English politics, their stands correspond,
respectively, to the theocrats, those who wished to strengthen the
constitutional relationship between throne and altar, and the utilitarians,
those in favor of disestablishing the Anglican Church entirely. By displacing
the contemporary political debate onto a medieval Middle Eastern setting in
which Christians play only a minor part, Disraeli was able to objectify what
otherwise might have been too emotional a subject, especially when written by a
baptized Jew.7
- As a Tory, Disraeli supported the constitutional establishment of the Church of
England. Not simply a matter of religious exclusivity, the historical
relationship between throne and altar reflected the British belief that the two
institutions were mutually supportive, together providing the order, morality
and political liberty necessary for the commonweal. In 1815, two years before
Disraeli was baptized, Englishmen attributed their defeat of Napoleon in no
small measure to their established Church, considering the French affiliation
with Rome to have been debilitating. By the mid-1830s, however, the
constitutional establishment of the national church had come under attack. The
repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, and Catholic emancipation in
1829, though intended to reinforce Anglican hegemony, led latitudinarians to
demand further religious equality for all denominations, besides the Church of
England. From the other direction, during this period, the “Oxford
Tractarians,” who sensed in reform the attempt of government to exert
secular authority over the established church, began their attempt to move
Anglicanism back to its High Church tradition, as a median between Catholicism
and Protestantism. Ultimately, the two extremes would meet in the next decade in
the debate over whether or not to disestablish entirely the Church of England.
- For Disraeli, the constitutional issue was complicated by his ethnic heritage.
While he would support the elimination of those disabilities preventing Jews
from gaining the full rights of citizenship, at the same time, he consistently
endorsed the established Church. Although his early treatise, Vindication of
the English Constitution (1835), is frequently cited as an example of
Disraeli’s opportunism, written at the same time he affiliated himself
with the Tories, actually, it provides a theoretical analysis of the same
problem he explores from a fictional perspective in Alroy.
Recontextualizing the political debate from a polarity between high and low
church into the constitutional dialectic between, on the one hand, those who
advocated a theocracy, and on the other, utilitarians, Disraeli recommended the
synthesis achieved by a representative Protestant form of government, one in
which theology was continually adjusted to the current needs of the people, whom
the clergy represented:
The Church is part of our Constitution, and its character has changed in unison with that Constitution; the clergy in this country, thanks to that Reformation whose good fruits we have long enjoyed, both political and spiritual, are national; they are our fellow-subjects, and they have changed with their fellow-countrymen. Their errors were the errors of their age, and of their nation; they were no more. The Bishops who, under James the First, maintained the High Commission Court, under James the Second were the first champions of our liberties; the Establishment which, under Laud, persecuted to obtain Conformity, is now certainly our surest, perhaps our only guarantee of Toleration. (137)
According to Disraeli, the primary function of the national church is to provide social stability in a changing world. Given the transformations England underwent after the Tudors broke with Rome in the sixteenth century, the sense of nationality, he claimed, had been maintained since then in large part through the coordinated efforts of all social institutions:It is these institutions which make us a nation. Without our Crown, our Church, our Universities, our great municipal and commercial Corporations, our Magistracy, and its dependent scheme of provincial polity, the inhabitants of England, instead of being a nation, would present only a mass of individuals governed by a metropolis, whence an arbitrary senate would issue the stern decrees of its harsh and heartless despotism. (181-2)
In Disraeli’s view, the established Church provided England with its sovereign principle, that sense of patriotism needed to transform the aggregate of individuals into a cohesive nation.
- Unlike most of his other novels, in Alroy, Disraeli displaces the
contemporary political debate onto an exotic setting, transforming the major
events of Persian-Turkish history into the western archetype of empire. In
depicting the Middle East, Disraeli has been accused variously of recycling
descriptions contained in letters written during his grand tour of 1830-1, and
of misrepresenting the historical record, regarding both the Muslims and the
Jews.8 However, an examination of the supposed errors within
their fictional contexts suggests that Disraeli deliberately manipulated the
history and culture of twelfth-century Persia to produce an archetypal empire,
one that could evoke the spirit of Middle Eastern history, while simultaneously
reflecting the inverse of nineteenth-century Great Britain, that is, a world
without either representative government or an established Protestant church.
Focusing in on the time of the first two Crusades, Alroy telescopes the
clash between the older Arab dynasties and the invading waves of Turks, the very
brief period when the conquered Jews rose up against their Muslim oppressors.
- Historically, as Disraeli indicates in the Preface, the action of Alroy
revolves around the Seljuk Turks, a minor clan that dominated the Turkish world
from the mid-eleventh through the mid-twelfth century.9 Descended from a family of nomads, two grandsons of the
original leader gained power around 1040. The first, Chaghri, claimed Khurasan,
while the second, Toghril (r. 1038-63) moved west, eventually capturing Baghdad
in 1055, to become the supreme political authority within Iran and Iraq.
Chaghri’s son, Alp Arslan (r. 1063-72), and grandson, Malikshah (r.
1072-92), brought the empire to new heights of religious and secular
accomplishments, while defeating Byzantine forces. Finally, at Malikshah’s
death, his sons Berkyaruk ( r. 1092-1105) and Muhammad (r. 1105-18) lost much of
their power to other family members as the empire became decentralized,
ultimately to be divided into four geographical areas: Rum (i.e., Anatolia,
1077- 1307), Syria (1078-1117), Iraq (1118-94), and Kerman (1041-1186).
- Disraeli’s portrayal of the Seljuks is, as he himself admits, inaccurate;
yet, he does manage to incorporate some of the most significant elements, either
directly into the action, or indirectly, through the names of characters.
Probably the most widely known development of Seljuk rule involved the Assassins
(etymologically derived from hashish), a fanatical movement started around 1090
by a Shi’ite extremist, Hasan Subah. Opposing the authority of both the
Seljuk Sultanate and the caliphate, the Assassins targeted high-ranking
officials and theologians, evading capture by seeking shelter in the mountains
and traveling in disguise. A second association involves attempts by the
caliphate to gain independence from the Seljuks. At the same time that the
Crusaders were mounting their external attack, internally, a local regime in the
region of Khwarizm emerged to threaten the governing authority, finally
defeating the Seljuks in 1181. After that, Persia was overtaken by the Mongols.
- In Alroy, Disraeli rearranges historical events to dramatize the
inevitable collapse of an empire whose secular government is opposed by an
externally controlled religious authority.10 Key is the decisive Battle of Nihāwand, of the year
642, fought in the Zagros Mountains of western Persia. At the “battle of
battles,” as it was popularly known, the Arabs defeated the Persian
Empire, consolidating their rule by imposing Islam on the Zoroastrian
population. By anachronistically associating Alroy with the Battle of
Nihāwand, Disraeli creates the effect of an historical cycle in which the
Turks replicate the older victory of the Arabs, which has already been
replicated by Alroy’s forces in the first part of the novel. Thus, nation
follows nation in an inevitable cycle, not to be broken, it might be inferred,
until the civilizing efforts of the British Empire in the modern period.
- Within this cyclical context, Disraeli rearranges or reinterprets other
historical events to conform to the requirements of his narrative structure. The
initial conflict, Alroy’s killing, in defense of his sister Miriam, of the
prince Alschiroch, evokes Moses’s slaying of the Egyptian in Exodus
(2:12), while also alluding to Saladin’s uncle, Assudeen Sheerkoh
(Shirkuh?), who allied himself with the Fatimids in Egypt to defeat Christian
forces in 1169. As a reward, Sheerkoh was appointed chief minister, though he
died two months later. When a young man, according to John Malcolm’s 1815
History of Persia, Sheerkoh, whose name means “the lion of the
mountain,” had initially been forced to flee to Egypt after slaying a
high-born man who had insulted an unprotected female (1:379). In the novel,
Disraeli makes Sheerkoh the villain and Alroy the hero of the incident.
- Disraeli also manipulates history to enhance the major battle scenes of the
novel. In Part VII, Alroy consolidates his power by defeating Hasan Subah,
leader of the Assassins who played the secular and religious establishments off
against each other. Finally, at the climax, Alroy is anachronistically defeated
by Alp Arslan, here inaccurately transformed into the king of the Khwarizms.
- Within this medieval context, the significance of Alroy exceeds the
limits of a sectarian tale about a failed messiah. Rather, the crisis involves
matters of statecraft, the hero’s problem being how to organize a
government capable of addressing the interests of all factions of the
population. While it is tempting to impose a narrow Jewish interpretation on the
action, attributing Alroy’s downfall, like Samson’s, to his
marriage, in this case with the half-Christian half-Muslim Schirene, in fact,
the collapse of the empire occurs not, as Jabaster insists, because Alroy has
violated Jewish law, but because at that time and place, there existed no viable
system that would accommodate the needs of all of the people.11 In developing his novel, Disraeli deliberately undermines
the two alternatives—Jabaster and Honain, theocracy and
utilitarianism—demonstrating that they comprise what is actually a false
choice, the supposed opposites being mirror images of each other. Lacking the
representative Protestant government delineated in the Vindication,
Alroy’s empire is doomed to defeat.
- Jabaster, Alroy’s mystical teacher, represents the dangers integral to a
pure theocracy. At first glance, Jabaster would seem to personify an idealized
religious man. Living in the wilderness, he is a mystic who has devoted his life
to reestablishing the ancient cult of the biblical Israelites. After Alroy flees
Hamadan, Jabaster instructs him on the religious mission, giving his student the
talisman that would protect his life and provide access to the Tombs of the
Kings, where he would locate the sceptre of Solomon, symbol of his election.
Accompanied by the prophetess Esther, Jabaster would seem to represent
God’s will, the choice of Jerusalem over Baghdad reflecting the eternal
Jewish desire for redemption from exile.
- A closer examination of the details associated with Jabaster, however, suggests
that the ancient religion he advocates is really the moribund cult of a zealot
who cannot accommodate himself to the contemporary world. Unlike all of the
other major figures in the novel, Jabaster is not named for a biblical or
historical figure; rather, for him, Disraeli seems to have coined a neologism,
based on the Hebrew root יבש, yavash, meaning “to
be dried up.” Thus, Jabaster’s ancient cult is fundamentally but a
“dried up” form of religion. Similarly, his support of Alroy’s
messiahship is tinged with jealousy, he himself having failed a generation
earlier to lead the people: “I recall the glorious rapture of that sacred
strife amid the rocks of Caucasus. A fugitive, a proscribed and outlawed wretch,
whose life is common sport, and whom the vilest hind may slay without a bidding.
I, who would have been Messiah!” (Pt3Ch1). Even now, during the war,
Jabaster’s forces prove inadequate to their task—“The loss of
the division of Jabaster was also severe, but the rest of the army suffered
little” (Pt7Ch16); and during the decisive battle, he requires assistance
from Scherirah’s multicultural band of mercenaries. Yet, after the Muslims
are defeated, Jabaster demands that those same people be denied full rights of
citizenship, pressuring Alroy to establish a theocracy consistent with biblical
law:
‘Noble emir,’ replied Alroy, ‘return to Bagdad, and tell your fellow-subjects that the King of Israel grants protection to their persons, and security to their property.’
Similarly, the gift of Esther, the prophetess, is also undermined, her warnings about entering Baghdad, especially as associated with Ahab, apparently being motivated at least as much by jealousy as by spirituality.
‘And for their faith?’ enquired the envoy, in a lower voice.
‘Toleration,’ replied Alroy, turning to Jabaster.
‘Until further regulations,’ added the high priest. (Pt7Ch19)
- But if theocracy is revealed to be an unacceptable alternative, so, too, is the
utilitarianism of Honain. Though Jabaster’s brother, Honain has lived like
a marrano, assuming the external appearance of the Muslim world while keeping
his personal beliefs to himself. When they first meet, Honain saves
Alroy’s life, and recognizing Jabaster’s ring, invites Alroy to stay
in his home. In contrast to his brother, Honain is revealed to be a cosmopolitan
intellectual, wealthy, highly educated and greatly respected. As a physician,
Honain has access to the upper echelons of power, and exerts great influence on
the caliph. But as with Jabaster, his position, too, is undermined, for his
utilitarianism affords him material wealth at the cost of his soul. Ultimately,
his survival instincts transform him into the deaf-mute eunuch he has Alroy
pretend to be. Having surrendered his moral base, he has become an impotent
functionary, pandering, betraying, even murdering, all for the sake of base survival.
- By the end of the novel, there can be found little difference between Jabaster
and Honain. Although one uses God to justify his behavior, and the other
survival, both betray Alroy and plot murder. That Jabaster fails in his
assassination attempt does not suggest any moral superiority, only that Alroy is
protected by supernatural forces. In contrast, Honain’s successful
fratricide implies that the religious zealot has exceeded the limits of divine
approbation, while the pragmatic utilitarian has lost any spark of humanity.
- Ultimately, the problem lies neither with Jabaster nor Honain, but with
Alroy’s failure of leadership. Once he becomes caliph, Alroy realizes that
Jabaster’s dream of a theocracy is unfeasible in the contemporary world,
that “Universal empire must not be founded on sectarian prejudices and
exclusive rights” (Pt8Ch3). Yet, he lacks a positive theory of what
principles empire should be founded on. Having been written before Disraeli
developed his concept of the sovereign principle, the novel indicates only in
general terms what went wrong. But when the text is viewed from the perspective
of the Vindication, Alroy’s fatal error emerges as his inability to
recognize the fact that the pragmatic utilitarianism of Honain, which is
motivated strictly by self-interest, is as inimical to “Universal
empire” as is the narrowly defined theocracy advocated by Jabaster.
Although Alroy can sense the abstract need, he is incapable of effecting the
kind of church-state relationship by which to actualize the sovereign principle.
Living in pre-Reformation Asia, Alroy is doomed to fail.
Literary Significance of Alroy
- Mirroring the author himself, the literary structure of Alroy reflects
Disraeli’s attempt to combine Jewish and Christian components into a
coherent whole. Frequently referring to himself as the blank page between the
two Testaments, Disraeli likely meant that as a practicing Anglican who was an
ethnic Jew, he saw himself as the catalyst that might be used to rejoin the two
dispensations into a single universal religion. Over a decade after writing
Alroy, he would be able to clarify in Tancred what he
considered to be the relationship between the two faiths:
“And when did men cease from worshipping [pagan gods]?” asked Fakredeen of Tancred; “before the Prophet?”
At this point, though, before his somewhat eccentric theory had consolidated, Disraeli turned to his art as the vehicle for expressing his belief that “the English are really neither Jews nor Christians, but follow a sort of religion of their own, which is made every year by their bishops” (Tancred, 209).12 To that end, in Alroy he superimposes Old Testament archetypes over popular English literary forms to suggest that as the older faith, Judaism is but a romantic ideal, and by implication, it should be superseded by the more realistic manifestations of Anglicanism.13
“When truth descended from Heaven in the person of Christ Jesus.”
“But truth had descended from Heaven before Jesus,” replied Fakredeen; “since, as you tell me, God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, and since then to many of the prophets and the princes of Israel.”
“Of whom Jesus was one,” said Tancred; “the descendant of King David as well as the Son of God. But through this last and greatest of their princes it was ordained that the inspired Hebrew mind should mould and govern the world. Through Jesus God spoke to the Gentiles, and not to the tribes of Israel only. That is the great worldly difference between Jesus and his inspired predecessors. Christianity is Judaism for the multitude, but still it is Judaism, and its development was the death-blow of the Pagan idolatry.” (426-7)
- Most obviously, the language of Alroy reflects this union of English and
Old Testament stylistic traits. As Disraeli explains in the Preface to
the first edition, he has attempted to create an innovative form of metrical
prose:
As for myself, I never hesitate, although I discard verse, to have recourse to rhythm whenever I consider its introduction desirable, and occasionally even to rhyme. There is no doubt that the style in which I have attempted to write this work is a delicate and difficult instrument for an artist to handle. He must not abuse his freedom. He must alike beware the turgid and the bombastic, the meagre and the mean. He must be easy in his robes of state, and a degree of elegance and dignity must accompany him even in the camp and the market-house. The language must rise gradually with the rising passions of the speakers, and subside in harmonious unison with their sinking emotions. (Preface 1833)
Most of the early critics were immediately struck by the metrical variations found within Alroy (see Reviews), their reviews noting an eclectic aggregate of styles, including serious opera and the Gothic, Ossian, Byron and Shakespeare. Amid these secular forms, the stylistic devices of the Old Testament provide coherence for what otherwise would be an inconsistent conglomeration of motifs. Both Alroy and the Hebrew Bible are comprised of a variety of genres, ranging from lyrics to narratives; and both texts, though printed primarily in prose form, are actually highly poetic, being written in a distinctively metrical language. Similarly, underlying both is a kind of poetic parallelism in which lines can be broken down into members bearing both a logical and a metrical relationship to each other. To cite the passage quoted by the reviewer in The New Monthly Magazine:“Or sail upon the cool and azure lake
Although these lines were actually written in prose, they almost automatically render themselves into poetic members resembling lines from the Song of Solomon, in which the sound echoes the sense, Alroy and Schirene uttering parallel expressions of their love.
In some bright barque, like to a sea-nymph’s shell,
And followed by the swans.”
“There is no lake so blue as thy blue eye,
There is no swan so white as thy round arm.”
“Or shall we lance our falcons in the air,
And bring the golden pheasant to our feet?” &c.
- Consistent with the use of a hebraic metrical style, Disraeli includes numerous
passages from and allusions to the Bible. He names most of the Jewish characters
after ancient Israelites, and models many plot sequences after Old Testament incidents.
- The aggregate of styles reflects simultaneously Disraeli’s attitude
towards Judaism and towards contemporary culture. Because by 1833, the appeal of
high romanticism was waning, the combination of romantic and biblical devices
implies that the older literary style and the older faith were both sentimental
archaisms, published at a time, as many of Alroy’s reviewers
pointed out, when readers demanded a new, more realistic form of literature.
- Comparable to the style, the character of Alroy is a romanticized transformation
of an archetypal Old Testament hero. Like his biblical antecedents, Alroy is a
destined ruler who, after consolidating his leadership, is eventually brought
down by his own character flaws, in this case a combination of bad judgment in
the choice of advisors, and sexual weakness in trusting Schirene. But
Alroy’s psychological development is purely Byronic. He is a brooding,
charismatic, isolated, reckless, doomed figure, from the beginning manifesting a
sexually ambiguous attitude towards his sister.14 By relying heavily on dramatic interchange and soliloquy,
rather than narrative explanation, Disraeli lets Alroy, much as Byron had
permitted Manfred, reveal himself, in this case as the reluctant Hamlet, loath
to assume his destined role as Prince of the Captivity;15 and even though his failure is consistent with the Old
Testament prototype, his death is purely romantic. Eschewing the probable ending
that Alroy was killed by his father-in-law, Disraeli chooses the more dramatic
climax in which Alroy supposedly tricks his captor into beheading him.
- Finally, as with style and characterization, the narrative structure is produced
by a combination of Jewish and romantic archetypes. Identified in the Preface to
the first edition as a “dramatic romance,” Alroy’s
generic base is a distinctively Protestant literary form. As developed by
Spenser, justified by Milton, and popularized by Bunyan, the English
epic-romance revolves around the Christian hero who—whether in the
nationalistic guise of a St. George, the religious manifestation of an Adam, or
the popular representation of an everyman—traverses the linear path from
innocence to experience, all with the help of an external form of Grace.
Structurally, the action tends to be symmetrical; in the first half of the
narrative, the hero typically falters, lapsing into some form of a symbolic
House of Pride where he falls sway to the negative side of a highly polarized
moral system. Then, with the help of God, he is able to escape from the clutches
of evil and ascend to a symbolic House of Holiness, where he is educated in the
theology of moral virtue. After he is spiritually healed, he can defeat the
dragon of evil and unite with his beautiful lady. Thus, through the plot
sequence, the spiritual and the political merge as the hero’s regeneration
culminates with the social restoration symbolized by the marriage. In this
highly idealized genre, throne and altar coalesce into the constitutional union
of post-Reformation Great Britain.
- In contrast to this linear pattern, characteristic of Christian eschatology,
Jewish messianism tends to be cyclical. An outgrowth of their diasporean
experience, Jews think in terms of a circular pattern of exile and return,
culminating in the physical regeneration of Jerusalem. As already noted, this is
the archetypal structure found in Old Testament narrative, with Moses, David and
Solomon successively reenacting the pattern of rise and fall, as each attempts
and ultimately fails to reestablish the Jewish homeland. In merging the Jewish
and Christian forms, Disraeli superimposes the theology of the New Dispensation
onto the Jewish archetype, implying that the Jewish hero is doomed to repeat the
same dull round until, as with Disraeli himself, he accepts Protestantism as the
means of breaking free from the cycle. Because the novel takes place before the
Reformation, the hero has no means— i.e., Grace—by which he might
stop the circle from completing itself, so that even though he might himself
recognize the fallacies inherent in the Old Dispensation, there is no way he can
take advantage of the New. Structurally, Disraeli conveys Alroy’s dilemma
by extending the linear Christian archetype beyond its conventional length
until, at the climax of the novel, it is transformed into the Judaic circle as
Alroy is forced to martyr himself to the ancient cult which he has, in the
course of the novel, repudiated.
- The first eight parts of Alroy sketch out the typical Christian
narrative. Beginning in medias res, the story opens, in Part I, with
Alroy’s acceptance of his identity as Prince of the Captivity. Like Moses,
his biblical prototype, Alroy is a reluctant leader, being forced, after
committing murder in defense of his sister Miriam (the name of Moses’s
sister), in Part II, to flee to the wilderness. Part III focuses on the
preparation for his mission, as he is taught the mystical significance of his
destiny; in Part IV, he undertakes the perilous journey which, in Part V, leads
to Baghdad, the symbolic House of Pride, and then, in Part VI, Jerusalem, the
House of Holiness, where Alroy locates the sceptre of Solomon. Thus anointed,
the chosen one, in Part VII, defeats the Turks, and in Part VIII, marries
Schirene. In a Christian epic, the sceptre would signify the Divine Grace that
makes manifest the hero’s election, while simultaneously providing him the
weapon with which he will defeat evil. The Turkish infidels, of course,
represent the conventional antagonists of Western literature, while marriage is
the archetypal culmination of romance, the hero’s union with his lady
symbolizing the anticipated marriage of Christ and His Heavenly Bride, the Church.
- Unlike the Christian archetype, in which all of these symbolic acts are
idealized in terms of a clearly defined moral polarity, here, the dramatic
underpinnings introduce levels of realism that undercut the romantic veneer. Key
to the structure is the symbolic House of Holiness, Alroy’s trip to
Jerusalem in Part VI. Dissociated from the moral idealism of conventional
anagogy, this Jerusalem is an old, decaying city—in fact, a realistic
description of the Jerusalem Disraeli visited in 1831. The leader of the Jewish
community, Rabbi Zimri, is indistinguishable from anyone else in the
geographically limited Jewish quarter, and he studies with the 109-year-old
Rabbi Maimon. The synagogue they go to is located in a cemetery, and the lesson
they study “makes equal sense, read backward or forward.”
- Not an evil place, this city is simply moribund, so bound to its past that it
cannot accommodate itself to the present, much less prepare for the future. It
takes an outsider, the African pilgrim, to solve the rabbi’s riddle;
conversely, no one in the congregation is capable of responding to his.
Similarly, only the pilgrim recognizes Alroy as the chosen one, and it is he who
leads the future messiah out of the synagogue and towards the Tombs of the
Kings, where the sceptre of Solomon, quite fittingly, is located.
- This is not simply a matter of reversing the polarity, that is, of subverting
the religious significance of Jerusalem in order to privilege Baghdad, for
Turkish materialism is revealed to be as hollow as Jewish religiosity. As the
elaborate descriptions indicate, Baghdad is, as the inverse of Jerusalem, a city
of great wealth and beauty. Yet, if Rabbi Zimri proves unrecognizable, Honain
remains a prisoner to his disguise, prevented from ever announcing his true
identity; and if the Jews are mesmerized by what is conveyed as Talmudic
nonsense, Schirene, the caliph’s daughter, is bored, requiring the books
Honain smuggles in to occupy her mind. As the moral counterpart to the moribund
House of Holiness, this House of Pride is vacuous, thus implying not that Alroy
made the wrong choice in rejecting Jerusalem, but that he had no viable
alternative. Consequently, the archetypal climax is undercut. While the defeat
of the Turks and marriage with the lady love would conventionally end the story,
Alroy continues on, the last two chapters introducing the kind of realism that
transforms the Christian romance into a Jewish tragedy.
- As with the biblical prototypes, the hero’s fall results from his lack of
judgment: Alroy trusts the wrong people, and fails to establish an effective
form of government. Like Solomon, he engages in foreign modes of
worship—attending the mosque with Schirene; like Samson, he relinquishes
the source of his power—permitting Schirene to take his signet ring; and
like David, he is complicit in committing murder—providing Honain with
access to Jabaster. Having betrayed his mission, Alroy is deprived of the
sceptre, and is consequently executed. Not an evil man, Alroy is simply living
in the wrong time. Like the virtuous pagans in Dante’s Limbo, he exists
before the availability of Protestant Grace, and therefore, through no real
fault of his own, he is doomed to fail.
- Consistent with the other literary devices, the overlay of mysticism is used to
associate Judaism with older romantic beliefs that cannot be validated, and
therefore should not be relied on in the modern world. In virtually all cases,
the mystical import of symbols—whether Jabaster’s talisman,
Esther’s prophecies, astrological signs, or even the sceptre of
Solomon—is vitiated by reality. Significantly, none of the mystical omens
fulfills its expected supernatural role. Even though they are never actually
proven false, they are never validated, either. Rather, they seem basically
irrelevant to Alroy’s plight. Thus, at the climax of the novel, the
talisman, after having protected Alroy from Esther’s assassination
attempt, crumbles; and the sceptre, after permitting Alroy to commune with
Jabaster’s ghost, disappears. In sharp contrast to these mystical signs is
Alroy’s signet ring, the concrete symbol of the king’s very real
power. When Alroy permits Schirene to remove the ring from his finger, he quite
literally abandons his royal responsibilities, thus committing the truly
unforgivable sin of the novel.
- Disraeli’s own ambivalence about Alroy emerges most clearly through
the competition between the two voices he develops for the book, the
narrator’s and the editor’s. In contrast to conventional novels,
which are controlled by the narrator, here, that role is radically reduced,
even, in many chapters, completely eliminated from what Disraeli originally
called his “dramatic romance.” Quite significantly, Disraeli does
not within the text itself undermine the reliability of his surrogate, but only
restricts the narrator’s ability to convey to the reader his—the
narrator’s? the author’s?—real attitude towards the story of
Alroy. Contrasting sharply with the rather weak narrator is the
strong editor who dominates the critical apparatus. In the Preface to the first
edition, the editor announces in an almost defiant tone his creation of a new
literary form, one destined to revolutionize English letters.16 Then, in the eighty-two footnotes following the text, the
editor effectively undermines the romantic aura of the novel, incessantly
interrupting the narrative flow with what is more often than not extraneous
material about historical, geographical and cultural background. In the guise of
a supremely confident intellectual, the editor places Alroy in the context of
other false messiahs, using a variety of historical, philosophical and
theological sources—both Christian and Jewish—to denigrate as little
more than mystical superstition the romance his alter-ego, the narrator, is
trying to idealize.
- Beneath the bravado, however, the editor reveals himself to be as insecure as
the author himself. Significantly, the book concludes with a long footnote
containing a Latin passage describing the death of Alroy. Ostensibly quoted to
verify the ending of the novel, the Latin, while almost ostentatiously attesting
to the editor’s scholarship, seems also, like the flamboyant attire
sported by Disraeli at the time, to camouflage his underlying sympathy with the
novel, the content of the note justifying the most romantic decision made by the
narrator, that is, to reject Benjamin of Tudela’s description of
Alroy’s death in favor of the account spuriously attributed to Maimonides.
Similarly, when preparing the edition of 1846, while Disraeli cut the polemics
from the Preface, he still left intact most of the notes, and even permitted
Alroy to be reissued at the same time that he published the political
Young England trilogy.
- By 1844, when he introduced the character of Sidonia into Coningsby,
Disraeli seems to have resolved the contradictions implicit in his attitude
towards Judaism. With the novel set in Victorian England, he could both idealize
and minimize the impact of the Jew. As a wise, wealthy cosmopolitan, modeled at
least in part after Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (1808-79), Sidonia
countered the common anti-Semitic stereotypes of the kabbalistic, legalistic
Shylock, doomed to wander homeless until the Second Coming.17 At the same time, though, by limiting Sidonia to only a
handful of appearances in the novel, Disraeli marginalized the Jew. The total
effect was to turn Sidonia into a kind of Christ figure, available to assist
Coningsby’s development into a modern Christian hero, though not
interfering with his existence as an Anglican. Thus was Disraeli able to solve
his Jewish problem: By recasting Alroy as Sidonia, he was able to transform the
failed Jewish messiah into the Christian symbol of Grace.
Cultural Significance of Alroy
- Ultimately, the real significance of Alroy lies in the cultural
complexities that the novel exposes. In their attempt to unify the country after
the break with Rome, the Tudor propagandists, as they have been called,
developed a nationalistic myth revolving around the Calvinistic assumption that
the English were God’s elect, a belief that would foster traits of
xenophobia and chauvinism to culminate in centuries of British colonialism.18 As a member of Parliament, Disraeli would strive to
refocus British imperialism away from religious doctrine, and towards a
geopolitical policy predicated on spheres of influence gained through land
purchase. Although Alroy was written long before Disraeli’s ideas
about ethnicity and colonialism would crystallize, the novel’s perspective
on multi-culturalism and imperialism reflects a rejection of earlier attitudes,
as the future prime minister moved towards the more pragmatic politics of
Victoria’s British Empire.
- The most significant aspect of Disraeli’s national realignment involved
his belief that cultural tolerance was essential for the expanding empire. As
can be seen from the earliest
reviews of the novel, most readers in the 1830s preferred to ignore the
ethnically diverse population of Alroy’s fictional world, only one
criticizing the Jewish aspects of the novel. According to the reviewer for The London
Literary Gazette, “the very frequent invocation of the
Deity, which, though very fit for the Old Testament, and not misplaced in Jewish
history, revolts the mind by repetition in a fiction like this.” The other
reviewers generally ignored the question of ethnicity, treating Alroy
like any other English, that is, Protestant, novel, commenting about the genre,
characterization, style, setting, etc., though without considering how the
hero’s religion affected the action. In contrast, starting with Israel
Abrahams’ 1913-essay, “A
Masterpiece for the Week: Disraeli’s Alroy,’”
readers began taking the opposite approach, subordinating the novel’s
literary characteristics to its hero’s ethnicity, viewing Alroy as
a specimen of Jewish culture, as opposed to the British literary tradition. It
has only been since the end of the twentieth century, with the advent of
cultural studies, that we have developed the scholarly tools required for
exploring the complexities underlying the combination of an English novel,
written about a Jewish messiah who is opposed by Turkish Muslims, and in which
the Christians are marginalized to a few passing remarks about some atrocities
committed by the Franks.
- In his later fiction, especially Tancred, Disraeli would develop an
eccentric racial theory by which the three major monotheistic religions would be
unified, with Judaism as their historical root. But in this initial attempt to
expose the fallacies built into beliefs of Christian superiority, he undermines
any of the easy solutions that might obscure the very real conflicts that arise
in a multi-cultural society. Most obviously, in an idealistic romance, the
marriage between the Jewish Alroy and the half-Christian half-Muslim Schirene
would likely celebrate some kind of reunification among the three creeds, but in
Alroy, it provides the impetus for Jabaster’s insurrection (a
Jewish response to intermarriage), and Alp Arslan’s revenge (a Muslim
reaction to dishonor). Similarly, the blood-brother ritual of Alroy’s
ingesting Scherirah’s blood would be anathema to a Jew, just as Kisloch
the Kourd’s affinity for alcohol would be an abomination to a Muslim.
Finally, disloyalty within any group would automatically be condemned. But in
Alroy, most of these violations occur inter-culturally, that is,
between members of different ethnic or religious groups, so that the approbation
of what normally would be unacceptable behavior for members within particular
groups—like Jabaster’s dismissal of his own men’s destruction
of Muslim property—exposes the fundamental immorality underlying most
supposedly moral creeds.
- Towards the same end, Disraeli reverses the more usual treatment of Orientalism
in Romantic literature. In contrast to those writers whose lavish descriptions
of Asian treasures were designed to condemn the decadent East in favor, by
contrast, of the morally superior West, Disraeli used a variety of disparate
sources in order to expand the context from which to approach different
cultures. As the extensive notes appended to the novel indicate, in addition to
his own trip to the Levant in 1830-31, he used older histories and contemporary
travel literature, as well as studies written by Christians, Jews and Muslims,
about themselves and each other. The result is a panorama of cultural relativity
in which a given author’s perception is revealed to have been determined
by preconceptions that, more often than not, were unsympathetic to the subject
being discussed. For example, in the notes, Disraeli cites William
Enfield’s The History of Philosophy from the Earliest Periods,
Augustin Calmet’s An Historical, Critical, Chronological and
Etymological Dictionary of the Holy Bible, The Whole Works of
John Lightfoot, and Jacques Basnage’s The History of the Jews, from
Jesus Christ to the Present Time, all Christian texts that evince a
distinct antipathy towards Judaism, for his information about Kabbalism. Yet, in
the Preface, he asserts, regarding “the supernatural machinery of this
romance, it is Cabalistical and correct” (Preface 1833); and in the text,
he integrates the elements of Jewish mysticism smoothly into the narrative.
Similarly, in contrast to the notes, which echo the Christian denigration of Bar
Kokhba’s zealous resistance against the Romans (see Author's Note
10), the novel adheres to that very archetypal structure, that is, of a
doomed rebellion waged against colonial control. The effect of these
contradictions is to undermine any sense of cultural superiority, forcing us to
accept each nation within its own context.
- The cultural relativity inherent in Alroy can be associated with new
attitudes towards imperialism in the post-Napoleonic world. Under Victoria,
Great Britain would continue to expand, but land purchase would supplant the
older policy of military conquest, and mandated protection would replace
colonial control. Through his representation of Alroy’s failed messianic
movement, Disraeli was able to expose the shortcomings of the older expansionist
policies in preparation for his political advocacy of the new.19 Set in the twelfth century, Alroy allegorizes the
problems associated with colonial government, from the need to employ
mercenaries, who, by definition, have no more loyalty for one conquering army
than for another, to the impossibility of establishing an equitable system of
governance, because, being predicated on the principles espoused by the
colonizer, it will inevitably suppress core beliefs of the colonized—the
disparity between the two frequently having provoked the military conquest in
the first place. Thus, as Alroy knows when he first sets out on his messianic
mission, but then forgets after he becomes emperor, Scherirah and his band of
outlaws will always be loyal to the highest bidder, and despite the apparent
sincerity of their professed friendship, they will just as easily transfer their
allegiance to the next colonizing power. The outlaws themselves express their
amoral creed after Alroy has conquered Asia:
‘Drink,’ said Kisloch the Kourd to Calidas the Indian; ‘you forget, comrade, we are no longer Moslemin.’
‘Wine, methinks, has a peculiarly pleasant flavour in a golden cup,’ said the Guebre.
‘I got this little trifle today in the Bazaar,’ he added, holding up a magnificent vase studded with gems.
‘I thought plunder was forbidden,’ grinned the Negro.
‘So it is,’ replied the Guebre; ‘but we may purchase what we please, upon credit.’
‘Well, for my part, I am a moderate man,’ exclaimed Calidas the Indian, ‘and would not injure even these accursed dogs of Turks. I have not cut my host’s throat, but only turned him into my porter, and content myself with his harem, his baths, his fine horses, and other little trifles.’
‘What quarters we are in! There is nothing like a true Messiah!’ exclaimed Kisloch, devoutly.
‘Nothing,’ said Calidas; ‘though to speak truth, I did not much believe in the efficacy of Solomon’s sceptre, till his Majesty clove the head of the valiant Seljuk with it.’
‘But now there’s no doubt of it,’ said the Guebre. ‘We should indeed be infidels if we doubted now,’ replied the Indian.
‘How lucky,’ grinned the Negro, ‘as I had no religion before, that I have now fixed upon the right one!’
‘Most fortunate!’ said the Guebre. ‘What shall we do to amuse ourselves to-night?’
‘Let us go to the coffee-houses and make the Turks drink wine,’ said Calidas the Indian.
‘What say you to burning down a mosque?’ said Kisloch the Kourd.
‘I had great fun with some Dervishes this morning,’ said the Guebre. ‘I met one asking alms with a wire run through his cheek, so I caught another, bored his nose, and tied them both together!’
‘Hah! hah! hah!’ burst the Negro. (Pt7Ch8) - In addition to gaining loyalty, colonizers, as Alroy learns, find it difficult
to devise forms of government that will accommodate the needs of the indigenous
population, while still fulfilling their own requirements. Given its history,
the Middle East provided the ideal setting for exposing the fallacies underlying
the doctrine of military conquest. Citing variously Robert Ker Porter’s
Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, John
Malcolm’s Sketches of Persia, Edward Gibbon’s History of
the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, George Sandys’s
Relation of a Journey . . . Containing a Description of the Turkish
Empire, of Ægypt, of the Holy Land, of the Remote Parts of Italy, and
Lands Adjoyning, and Edward Daniel Clarke’s Travels in Various
Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as his own travels in the
nineteenth century, Disraeli implies the futility of imperialism. Through the
text, which is set in the period when Christians attempted to conquer the Holy
Land, the notes remind us that throughout history, the Persians, Romans,
Hebrews, Mongols and successive waves of Turks had all attempted to control the
area, in the name variously of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism;
yet, all had failed. In the nineteenth century, what was then called Palestine
was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. For Great Britain, which sought a foothold
in the area, the question was whether or not a military engagement would be
efficacious. Alroy, a novel about a single imperial cycle within a
3000-year period of comparable cycles, foreshadows Disraeli’s preference
for a mandate gained through land purchase.
- Closely related to the question of colonial expansion, Disraeli’s attitude
towards Zionism is also foreshadowed in this novel. Complementing the Jewish
messianic belief in a return to Jerusalem, Christian millenarians in the
Romantic Period advocated resettlement projects that would fulfill their own
theological imperative, that the Jews be scattered to the four corners of the
world in preparation for the Second Coming.20 Consequently, the British were very interested, both for
political as well as religious reasons, in gaining a foothold in Palestine.
Throughout his political career, Disraeli would advocate a policy of land
purchase, not for colonizing by the British, but for settlement by European Jews
who would rely on Great Britain for protection. Again, this attitude can be
detected in Alroy, which demonstrates the impossibility of effecting in
the post-biblical world a viable form of government predicated on religious
principles alone. Just as the biblical kingdom had failed, so, too, would
Jabaster’s theocracy, given the multi-cultural population that would of
necessity be excluded from his narrow doctrine. Rather, the failure of
Alroy’s messiahship seems to imply the necessity of replacing the
succession of empires with a geopolitical agreement, ultimately under the
control of the British government, with its constitutionally established
representative Protestant church, an alternative not available to Alroy in the
twelfth century, though to be advocated by Disraeli in the nineteenth.
- In the final analysis, Alroy can best be viewed as a transitional novel, marking Disraeli’s personal shift from being a Jewish convert to an Anglican Protestant, his professional change from being a writer to a politician, the national progression from the Romantic to the Victorian era, and, finally, the imperial adjustment from conquest and colonizing to land purchase and diplomacy. Through the apparently narrow sectarian tale of a brief period in medieval Jewish history, Disraeli was able to focus on the problems he associated with older attitudes, while projecting the direction he thought should be taken over the rest of the nineteenth century. As such, The Wondrous Tale of Alroy, as it was originally titled, is wondrous, indeed, for its analysis of the cultural conflicts in southwest Asia, involving Christians, Muslims and Jews, still resonates today in the area from Afghanistan through the Middle East.
Notes
1. A half-century later, as Minna Rozen points out, Disraeli was still thought of as a Jew, William Gladstone (1809-98) considering "his Jew feelings . . . the most radical and the most real, and so far respectable, portion of his profoundly falsified nature," and Otto von Bismark announcing that "Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann!" (quoted in "Pedigree Remembered, Reconstructed, Invented: Benjamin Disraeli between East and West," in The Jewish Discovery of Islam), 49. In the accompanying note, Rozen also notes that "The more conservative biographers are either reluctant to touch the subject or disregard it" (p. 70, n3).
2. As Rozen illustrates in "Pedigree Remembered, Reconstructed, Invented," Alroy is far from the only novel in which Disraeli explores his personal problems. Rather, throughout his life, Disraeli would use his fiction as the vehicle through which to develop his theories about the relationship between his Jewish ethnicity, Christian religion and British citizenship. Alroy, however, is the only book written about a strictly Jewish subject.
3. In "Disraeli's Jewishness Reconsidered," Todd M. Endelman asserts "that it would not be an exaggeration to say that Disraeli was obsessed with his Jewishness." See the bibliography for the most accurate biographies. William Flavelle Monypenny, and George Earle Buckle. The Life of Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield, the older standard, has been superceded by Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography.
4. The phrase "ideal ambition" derives from a passage quoted in the Monypenny-Buckle biography: "In Vivian Grey I have portrayed my active and real ambition; in Alroy my ideal ambition" (1:185).
5. In later books, notably Coningsby and Tancred, Disraeli would introduce the figure of Sidonia, the wise, detached, international financier as his surrogate, but in the early 1830s, he turned to Alroy, the "prince of the captivity" whose ambitions resulted in martyrdom, as his fictional representation.
6. The diary of Rabbi Benjamin ben Jonah of Tudela in Navarre, who apparently traveled to Rome and western Asia between 1165 and 1173, is still the best source of information available about the career of David Alroy (rpt. pp. 358-61).
7. Daniel R. Schwarz interprets Alroy in terms of Disraeli's "opposition to rationalism and utilitarianism" in Disraeli's Fiction.
8. The letters Disraeli wrote while on his Middle Eastern travels of 1830-31 have been reprinted in Letters, I:126-204.
9. On the history of the Seljuk Turks, see Fussell G. Kempiners, Jr.'s entry, "Seljuk Dynasty," in the Encyclopedia of Asian History, 3:409-11. More extensive studies can be found in the work of J. A. Boyle and Gary Leiser.
10. Good sources of information on the history of the Arabs are Wilson B. Bishai, Islamic History of the Middle East: Backgrounds, Development, and Fall of the Arab Empire, and Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples.
11. Taking a different approach, Richard A. Levine asks whether Alroy's flaw might be viewed in terms of "a commitment to traditional principles and to the Hebraic past? And, by Disraeli's own qualification, the Hebraic past must also include Christian tradition."
12. Rozen interprets Tancred as "a parable dealing with Britain's role in the East, and, in particular, relations between East and West" (62).
13. John Vincent notes that "At first sight, Alroy is a poor man's Sir Walter Scott, with a touch of poor man's Byron."
14. Much of the sexual suggestiveness was eliminated from the second and subsequent editions, published after 1846. This was the same time when Disraeli was working on Tancred (published in 1847), and preparing to run again for office (he was elected in 1847, and remained Tory MP for Buckinghamshire until 1876).
15. Although a historical title, the "Prince of the Captivity" also, according to Rozen, "expresses the sharp dichotomy between nobility and captivity—a dichotomy which is a recurring theme in Disraeli's perception of himself" (58).
16. To be more accurate, much of the polemic is not new to The Wondrous Tale of Alroy but was repeated from the Preface to Contarini Fleming, published the year before, in 1832.
17. Rozen also sees in the character of Sidonia traces of Nathaniel Meyer Rothschild (1777-1836) and Moses Montefiore (1784-1862) (58).
18. This is the approach taken by Edwin Jones, in his study, The English Nation: The Great Myth.
19. Vincent considers Alroy "Disraeli's anti-imperialist novel" (70; rpt. p. 430).
20. On Christian Zionism in the Romantic Period, see "Christian Zionists," Part III of Joseph Adler, Restoring the Jews to Their Homeland: Nineteen Centuries of the Quest for Zion, 93-116. For post-Romantic British restorationists, see pp. 132-167.