| Summary: | The composer Julius Klesmer in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, ‘a felicitous mix of the German, the Sclave, and the Semite’, and a self-confessed ‘Wandering Jew’, embraces a mode of transnational living and working that challenges the English narrowness of Gwendolen Harleth at the same time as it complicates the novel’s overall journey towards proto-Zionism through Mordecai and Daniel. In this paper, I show how central the figure of the composer is to the novel’s negotiation of nationalism, transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism. The novel’s musical allusions, especially comparisons to specific historical composers, strengthen Klesmer’s identity as, simultaneously, a representative of an array of Jewish musical talent and a proponent of cosmopolitanism which transcends national and racial boundaries. Moreover, Klesmer provides an intersectional counterpoint to the female Jewish musicians in the novel, exposing the allowances of the Zionist project – which I also consider in tandem with Eliot’s essay ‘The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!’.
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