14. Svengali: The master manipulator
Svengali is a fictional character in George du Maurier’s 1895 novel Trilby. Svengali is a Jewish man who seduces, dominates and exploits Trilby, a young English girl, and turns her into a famous singer. The French author’s portrayal of Svengali is often considered to be highly anti-Semitic.
The word “svengali” has come to refer to a person who, with evil intent, dominates, manipulates and controls a creative person such as a singer or an actor. In a court of law, a “Svengali defense” is a legal tactic that purports the defendant to be a pawn in the scheme of a greater, and more influential, criminal mastermind.
In Du Maurier’s novel, Trilby O’Ferrall is a half-Irish girl working in Paris as an artists’ model and laundress. She is tone deaf, but Svengali hypnotizes her and transforms her into a diva called La Svengali. Under his spell, she becomes a talented singer, performing always in an amnesiac trance. At a performance in London, Svengali is stricken with a heart attack and is unable to induce the trance. Incapable of singing in tune on her own, Trilby is subjected to “laughter, hoots, hisses.” Not having been hypnotized, she is baffled. Although she can remember living and traveling with Svengali, she can’t remember anything about her singing career.
Trilby was one of the most popular novels of its time. Published serially in Harper’s Monthly magazine in 1894, it was released in book form in 1895 and sold 200,000 copies in the US alone.
Author George Orwell wrote that the novel was overtly anti-Semitic. He believed that Du Maurier attributed all of Svengali’s villainous and rapacious qualities to the character’s Judaism. While Du Maurier does introduce another Jew into the work who possesses more virtuous qualities, he is careful to note that this is due to his Sephardi ancestry. Du Maurier seems to believe that having Jewish blood gives one an advantage. According to Orwell, this type of anti-Semitism was popular in Du Maurier’s time.
Trilby is set in the 1850s in an idyllic bohemian Paris. Literary critic Luc Sante wrote that the novel had a “decisive influence on the stereotypical notion of ‘bohemia’” and that it “affected the habits of American youth, particularly young women, who derived from it the courage to call themselves artists and ‘bachelor girls,’ to smoke cigarettes and drink Chianti.”
On stage and screen, the character of Svengali was first portrayed by American actor Wilton Lackaye. He created the role in the 1895 stage play Trilby and the 1915 silent film of the same name. In London, the role was performed on stage by Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
The general story has been used for multiple movies. For example, John Barrymore assumed the role in the 1931 film Svengali, co-starring Marian Marsh as the hapless Trilby.
In 1983, Peter O’Toole and Jodie Foster co-starred in a modernized made-for-TV version of the story. The movie is titled Svengali, but the names of the characters were changed. In the story, aspiring young singer Zoe Alexander (Foster) is coached by a famous and brutal former stage performer, Anton Bosnyak (O’Toole), in the hopes of landing a record deal.
The term “Svengali” was used to comedic advantage in an episode of the sitcom Seinfeld. In the scene, Jerry, Elaine and George are hanging out in Jerry’s apartment, and Elaine is talking about the man she is dating – a psychiatrist named Dr. Reston. He is very controlling, but every time she tries to end the relationship, he talks her out of it. She refers to him as a Svengali but inadvertently mispronounces the word. This is how the conversation goes: Elaine: He’s like a Svenjolly. Jerry: (correcting her) Svengali. Elaine: What did I say? Jerry: Svenjolly. Elaine: Svenjolly? I did not say Svenjolly. Jerry: (turning to his friend) George? George: Svenjolly. Elaine: I don’t see how I could have said Svenjolly.
Jerry: Well, maybe he’s got, like, a cheerful mental hold on you.