1863
My friend Richard Colmer noticed my interest in the Inklings and asked me if I had read George Macdonald. I had to admit that I wasn’t. He encouraged me to try this old Scottish player. He had much influence on a group of literary Christian intellectuals, especially C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. And his influence extended beyond that flock. One that immediately comes to mind is goalkeeper Chesterton. Others include Lewis Carroll, W. H. Auden, and Madeleine L’Engle. He also had some exposure to Henry Longfellow, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
After checking the products, I chose McDonald’s Phantastes. Probably inspired by what C.S. Lewis said about this book. “A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great border.” “What it actually did for me was a conversion, a baptism of my imagination (where death It came in.)
It turned out to be a fortuitous choice.
George MacDonald was born in Scotland in 1824. His family were farmers, but were especially literate, and included Celtic scholars and literary figures. His mother read multiple languages, and his father had a voracious appetite for intellectual interests. Books were scattered around the house. MacDonald’s health was weak, and he suffered from asthma and tuberculosis for many years.
Although he was raised in a Calvinist-leaning Congregational church, his family had multiple Christian affiliations ranging from Catholicism to the Scottish Episcopal Church. Although he was interested in pursuing medicine, he ultimately decided to become a pastor. MacDonald he was ordained a Congregational minister in 1850. His universalist tendencies were unpopular and his salary was cut in half. Perhaps you are encouraging him to consider other options. He half-heartedly tried several other settlements, then taught and edited at the University of London, and finally turned to writing.
His first novel was published in 1863. And between his writing and public speaking tours he was able to make a living. At the age of 53, he received a national pension for his work. This allowed him to continue writing in Italy for the next 20 years. He returned to England in his 1900 and moved into a cottage that his son Robert had built for him. MacDonald died five years later and his ashes were buried in the British cemetery in Bordighera, Italy, along with his wife Luisa and his daughters Lila and Grace.
As mentioned above, Macdonald had a wide influence, especially among Christian intellectuals. In addition to Lewis and Chesterton, MacDonald was also a major influence on JRR Tolkien. At least in his childhood and adolescence. People who research such things have suggested that the writing of The Hobbit was influenced. However, as one observer has noted, at some point Tolkien came to criticize MacDonald for being a preachy and didactic allegorist. Tolkien also had feelings about his friend Lewis.Especially Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia Annals. But he didn’t say much about it publicly.
about Phantastes. This plot features the main character Anodos. Anodos means “pathless” in Greek and is my favorite choice, alluding to Zen usage found in works such as the great koan collection Mumon no Mon.
It’s not that MacDonald is an expert on Buddhism, much less Zen. However, other translations of “anodos”, “ascent” or “rise”, also work. Anyway, when Anodos wakes up in his room, he realizes that he is now in fairyland. He embarks on an adventure through the fairy world. Through this exploration, he moves from an experience of love that is little more than lust, to a deeper discovery of divine love.
Although at this point in my life I don’t have much patience for fantasy in general. Phantastes It takes me to the front. I quickly had to let go of my desire to make a coherent journey and instead allow the picaresque nature of a genuine spiritual path, or perhaps a pathless path, to unfold. It certainly provided me with a reward for sticking with it.
If I’m following correctly, Anodos begins with blank eyes, bound by his own desires and unable to see beyond these constraints. I don’t know if he goes on a journey for some dream or just because of some mysterious intervention. However, once he embarks on the journey, through various experiences such as being protected by others, he finds himself, his ego, and even his body in a secondary place. Through this, he increasingly understands how he is connected to others. Near the end, he surrenders completely and dies a kind of death. I’m not sure if this is literal or figurative in the novel. But from there, he comes back as the person he is going to be. It is unknown whether there will be further adventures.
McDonald’s opens up a world of wonders. He uses the imagination as a thread between our everyday life and the divine life.
in Phantastes, MacDonald outlines a spiritual journey. He taps into the Romantic spirit of the time and draws as much on the fairy tale tradition as on Christian universalism. I can understand both why he is less well known today and why we would all be better off if he were better known.
For me, one of the most interesting elements McDonald introduces is shadows. When Anodos opens the cupboard, despite being warned not to, a shadow-like creature emerges, a strange and unpleasant creature that is more than a physical shadow, or maybe even less. I’m attached to it. He wrestles with it throughout a significant portion of the story.
One of the most memorable images for me in the novel shows how Anodos and his shadow interact.
“One day, as I passed by the villa, a lovely fairy child came out with two mysterious toys in each hand. One was the tube through which the fairy-talented poet saw the same thing everywhere. The other is what he sees when he combines images of beauty, collected by his own choice from all the regions he has traveled, into new forms of loveliness. There was a halo of light around the child’s head. As I stared at him in amazement and joy, something dark crept up behind me and the child stood in my shadow. He was an ordinary boy wearing a coarse straw hat with a wide brim. The sun was shining from behind through its brim. The toys he had were a magnifying glass and a kaleidoscope.I sighed and walked away”
If the unfolding wonders are the path taken by Anodos, his shadow is the opposite. The shadow is doubt, actually the worst kind of skepticism. It suffocates wonder because of its naked materialism. It suppresses imagination and ways of wonder.
As Robert Lee Wolf writes in his book: golden key “The shadow represents pessimistic and cynical disillusionment, worldly wisdom that destroys beauty, childish and simple pleasures, the joy of friendship and love. It is the enemy of innocence, generosity, optimism and imagination. .”
haven’t read it golden key (Either MacDonald or Wolff) However, in preparing this review, I came across references to and frequent criticisms of Robert Wolff’s distinctly Freudian approach. Phantastes. I think people tend to read MacDonald’s books in a Jungian or neo-Jungian way. I feel sorry for you. And we all read such texts through our own eyes.
In a way, I agree with the fact that MacDonald was born 32 years before Sigmund Freud, and is actually old enough to be Freud’s father. Furthermore, MacDonald was born 51 years before Jung, making him old enough to be Jung’s grandfather. McDonald’s position is completely pre-psychoanalytic. And part of it is that in his spirituality the shadow is something to be overcome and then transcended, if not suppressed.
At the moment, I am primarily looking at the mystical writings of the world, but I do believe that MacDonald is a mystic, meaning that he seeks to find deep wisdom, or perhaps, in his words, “God.” There is little doubt that we are pilgrims on the spiritual path we desire. Guidance on your own path. Challenge and invitation is a bit more of a judgment from my perspective. If you’re lucky, a little more.
I also have a sensibility that is at least potentially psychoanalytic, more Jungian than Freudian. This perspective permeates our cultural assumptions. For me, for example, the shadow is something hidden, something that needs to be filled and integrated. Following an old tradition, MacDonald names the shadow as the part of the human being that obstructs one’s path and must be set aside or overcome.
For me, of the many influences that shape the way I see the world, Zen is the most influential. Here I realized that doubt is a big problem throughout the history of Buddhism. Although not the same as McDonald’s shadow, this is a cruel skepticism that blinds one to wonder. In Zen, doubt is transformed. Get baptized if you can. It is no longer seen as an obstacle, but rather as a tool, or even a vehicle. Great doubt produces great faith, which blossoms into great awakening.
Of course, all of these must be fulfilled and addressed.
What I find fascinating is the middle ground between his mundane, self-centered life and the kind of ultimacy MacDonald calls “love.” The arc of his journey goes from selfish love to transcendent love. The middle ground between two loves, the small and the great, is found through imagination.
For me, McDonald’s imagination resonates with the sense of sambogakaya in Mahayana’s trikaya. His three bodies of Trikaya, Nirmanakaya, Dharmakaya and Sambhogakaya evoke the wild, multidimensional nature of reality. This isn’t McDonald’s world, but you can see that it’s mapped out well. And for me, it shows how difficult it is to reconcile the mystique of world religions.
Nirmanakaya is a world of history. The novels represented by Anodos and the bookmarks of his life before and after his adventures. In Buddhism, the Dharmakaya is a vast openness, which for MacDonald is God. Or love.
Mahayana also has Sambhogakaya, the realm of magic. I call it the third place. And perhaps it’s McDonald’s imagination. At least a variation on the theme. Another word to describe this place is “mysterious.”
In my own life, I have felt increasingly guided to this third place. The world of history is the place where we usually live. We are born, we grow old, and we die. Among many things. Each appears, interacts, and then disappears. Great conditions and flow. Everything was interconnected. And behind something, below, or perhaps more precisely all the way, and something at the same time. Or, in Zen, there is nothing. Wild open. The sky. Perhaps in Western terms, at least some version of God.
What interested me about this book was how he approaches third place. In the novel MacDonald showed the power of imagination. magic. dream. wonder. Partly, but never completely in our hands. We have some of it, but most of it is beyond our knowledge. We learn to play in it.
So. nice book. and directions explanation.
Check it out.
It might be very helpful.
