C.S. Lewis liked to tell the story of how as a young man he happened to pick up a cheap, pocket-edition of a novel in a railway station. He bought it on a whim, he later recalled; he had passed by it maybe a dozen times before; but it had a profound affect on him. Not that it converted him or anything; that came later; but it immersed him in ideas which to him gained more meaning as his views of God changed and developed. He later said that the book “baptized my imagination”.
That book which Lewis so idly picked up to pass the time on a train was Phantastes, by George MacDonald, a Scottish minister of the mid-Victorian Era, who is largely forgotten today, but who in his time had a fair amount of popularity as a writer and who influenced a generation of fantasy writers. Lewis later wrote: “I have never concealed the fact that I regard MacDonald as my master, indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.”
MacDonald came from a strict Protestant Scottish background; yet although he moved away from rigid Calvinist theology, he retained a love and respect for the people and the culture in which he was raised. His father was a man of unshakable principle, who passed on to his son a deep respect for Holy Writ, but also a love of old folk tales, which shaped his imagination. In that, I see echoes of my own father, a pastor in a conservative Lutheran denomination who was also a science fiction fan and who taught me, I think without realizing it, that the two were not necessarily incompatible.
As a young man, MacDonald discovered the German Romantics, like the philosopher and poet Novalis, and E.T.A. Hoffman, whose stories formed the basis of the Nutcracker Ballet and Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffman. It's funny how reading about fantasy authors always seems to lead back to earlier ones: Lewis was inspired by MacDonald; MacDonald was inspired by Novalis; and I daresay Novalis could point to earlier writers who inspired him, going back ad infinitum to when God decided to create the Universe as a fanfic.
MacDonald became a minister in a Nonconformist Evangelical sect, (that is, an English Protestant denomination which did not follow the Anglican Church of England); but his preaching did not always conform to Nonconformist doctrine and some of the more influential members of his congregation disapproved of him. He took to writing to supplement his meager clerical income and eventually left the pulpit and began writing full time.
Among his writings were a few volumes of poetry, some collections of sermons and several novels that we would today call Christian Romance, but his most influential works were his fantasies, mostly written for children, but a couple intended for grown-up audiences.
Phantastes was his first attempt at a novel. It was written in 1858 and drew from the tradition of the German Märchen, or fairy-tales; and it matches the definition that Tolkien gives of a Fairy-story: the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches. Its protagonist is a young man named Anodos, who, at the invitation of his fairy grandmother, finds himself on a journey through Fairy Land.
The plot of the book is dreamlike and episodic; more a succession of moments than of incidents. Some of these moments come back to us later, as Anodos's encounter with the girl with the golden globe; others seem completely irrelevant, except maybe to add to the general sense of otherworldliness, as in the village of the distorted faces. The story tends to meander, as Anodos is unsure about what his goals are for most of the book; although he early on determines that he will not turn back and go home; he will go forward and see where his path leads him.
Perception plays an important theme in the book. In an early chapter, Anodos has the opportunity to watch a garden full of flower fairies playing in the moonlight; but later, due largely to his own failings, he loses the ability to see them, except as near-subliminal impressions on the edges of his senses. He has many encounters with mortals and other creatures living in the Fairy Realm, but that aspect becomes invisible to him.
He spends a night at the cottage of a farmer and his family. The farmer's wife is a wise and kindly matron who gives Anodos comfort and advise after a terrifying experience in the forest; but her husband is a jolly, hearty realist who laughs at fairy tales and is oblivious to the fact that he lives with one foot in Fairy Land himself.
In another house, he opens a door he was told not to touch – Anodos has a regrettable tendency to ignore Fairy Tale prohibitions and to forget warnings until it is too late – and gains a malevolent shadow which becomes his unwanted companion for much of the rest of the book. The shadow has a power to disenchant anything upon which it falls, and sucks all the wonder and joy out of the world around him. Later still, he finds himself imprisoned in an enchanted tower whose impervious walls disappear in the moonlight, but which re-materialize around him every sunrise.
When Anodos enters Fairy Land, he is essentially walking into a story, and this becomes another theme of the book as other people's stories intersect and intertwine with his own. At one home he reads a story about Sir Percivale and the Alder-Maiden, a magical creature inhabiting an alder tree who manifests as a beautiful woman. Shortly afterward, he meets a knight in rusted armor, who has had a similar encounter with the Alder-Maiden and lured to his near-destruction. In penance, the knight has dedicated himself to fighting creatures of evil and worthy adversaries, and has vowed that he will not polish his rusted armor until it has been burnished clean by the blows of his foes. Anodos meets the knight on a few other occasions, and quietly notes, by the condition of his armor, how the knight is progressing in his redemption.
In the middle of the book, Anodos spends a time in a fairy palace, where his shadow is seemingly powerless. He discovers an immense library in the palace and spends several days there immersing himself in the books. And immerse is the correct word, because with each book that he reads, he finds himself living the book. If it is a work of fiction, he becomes its protagonist; if it is a book of history, he becomes the figures being written about. Even if it is a work of natural history or something as dry as metaphysics, he feels like he is inside, personally making the discoveries.
He describes one book which tells of a planet whose orbital cycle is centuries long, and so an inhabitant born in one season will likely never see the next. These inhabitants do not have gender the same way humans do, and do not reproduce sexually; and as he reads about these curious creatures, Anodos finds himself on that planet, trying to explain terrestrial biology to them.
Another lengthy chapter relates a E.T.A. Hoffmann-esque story about a young Prague student named Cosmo who acquires an enchanted mirror. He finds that there is a beautiful woman reflected in the mirror, and he becomes obsessed by communicating with her. He sees that she seems unhappy appearing in his ratty student lodging, and so he takes pains to neaten it up, and stow away some of the more unpleasant oddments he had collected, like a skeleton which obviously revolted her. He picks up an extra job so that he can afford some nicer furnishings for her.
In time, he establishes enough confidence between them that she will speak to him, and he learns that the reason she is so unhappy is because she is a prisoner of the mirror and that when he looks for her in it, Cosmo is summoning her against her will. She appreciates the kindness he has tried to show her, but begs Cosmo that if he truly loves her, he would break the mirror and free her, even though it might mean he never sees her again. But before he can do this, the demonic figure who placed the enchantment on the woman and who sold Cosmo the mirror steals it from him; and Cosmo must search to find the mirror and the girl.
Women play an important role in Anodos's story, and most of the significant characters he meets are female. Many of these can be classed as Wise Women, who give him good counsel and support when he most needs it.
At the very start of the story, his journey into Fairy Land is presaged by his encounter with a tiny woman who emerges from a cubby in an old desk. She claims to be his grandmother, which Anodos has difficulty believing. “How do you know that?” she teases. “I dare say you know something of your great-grandfathers a good deal further back than that, but you know very little about your great-grandmothers on either side.” She extends the invitation for him to visit Fairy Land, but we see nothing more of her, unless some of the other characters he meets are his grandmother in other guises.
Another protective, nurturing woman is the Beech Tree, a kindly analogue to the treacherous Alder-Maiden, who shelters him in the dark and sinister forest. As Anodos has longed to visit Fairy Land, so has she longed to become an actual woman. She gives him a girdle of her leaves which protects him against evil. For a while anyway; (yes, he loses it). She loves him, but Anodos doesn't seem to really appreciate this until later.
Perhaps the most important of these wise women is the Old Woman with the Young Eyes who lives in a Foursquare House on a spit of land surrounded by fierce waves. The doors of the house lead Anodos to scenes from his past and present. The Old Woman later gives him the opportunity to perform a great good.
With all these wise and kindly women, you might expect there to be a few bad ones as well, and there is one femme fatal, the Alder-Maiden who seduces men to their doom. She appears as a beautiful woman, but her back is hollow, like a rotted-out tree. Her presence looms over the early chapters, and despite being repeatedly warned against her, when Anodos finally does meet her, he mistakes her for someone else and is taken in by her wiles. The fact that she insists on always following him and never letting him get a good look at her backside doesn't strike him as odd until it is too late. But once Anodos escapes her clutches, she ceases to be an important threat in the book. She is more of a plot device than a character, unlike the wistful, loving Beech Tree, who also appears only briefly, but who comes across as a person with feelings and desires.
Since this is a fantasy novel, you might also expect there to be a damsel in need of rescue, and there is one. Anodos comes across secluded bower in which a beautiful woman entombed in a block of translucent alabaster. Captivated by her beauty, and certain that she is somehow alive in her prison, he sings to her. He has never been much for singing previously in his life, but since entering Fairy Land he found himself inspired to song, and even has developed a talent for it. If you Tolkien's habit of breaking into verse from time to time annoying, you really aren't going to like MacDonald. Songs and poems weave their way in and out of Anodos's story. Here, Anodos has a wild surmise that if he sings to the White Lady, he can somehow awaken her. It works; his song summons her back to life; but instead of embracing him in gratitude for rescuing her, the Lady flees the site of her imprisonment, seemingly without even noticing him.
MacDonald plays with our expectations. A Hero who saves the Distressed Damsel can usually expect to get at least an affectionate smooch for his troubles. And if he doesn't immediately, then that's just another obstacle which he will ultimately overcome. Anodos spends much of the book searching for his White Lady, only to have to come to grips with the realization that she is not destined for him.
At a crucial point in the story, finds the Lady again, once again under an enchantment; and again he sings to break the spell. But he impetuously embraces her, violating one of the rules of the Fairy Palace, and again he loses her. As Anodos chases after the Lady, he is besieged by a mob of Kobolds, who mock him saying, “You shan't have her, you shan't have her, he! he! he! She's for a better man; she's for a better man, how he'll kiss her! how he'll kiss her!”
In frustration, Anodos replies, “Well. If he is a better man, let him have her.” and the Kobolds are silenced. In that moment he realizes the lesson that Cosmo learned in the story he read earlier: that if he truly loves a woman, he cannot treat her as his possession, but must give consideration for her feelings and and respect for her choices. It's a bitter lesson, and Anodos does not fully come to peace with it right away, but this understanding marks a turning point in his adventures.
And this brings me to what might be the main underlying theme of the book. Anodos spends much of the book trying to be the Hero of his own story, but his repeated failures hinder him. The meandering plot of the book might seem like the fault of the storyteller, but in a real sense, it reflects the vacillation and proneness to distraction of the character. As the White Lady sadly says of him at a later point, “There was something noble in him, but it was a nobleness of thought, and not of deed. He may yet perish of vile fear.”
At first, Anodos strives to be the Hero who Saves the Fair Maiden and Wins Her Heart; and he does earn her gratitude, and a certain amount of affection; but not her love. After his sojourn in the Foursquare House, the Old Woman with the Young Eyes bids him, “Go, my son, and do something worth doing.”
With her guidance, he meets with two brothers who are in need of a companion to help them fight a trio of giants; and although he is not as mighty a warrior as they, he finds he has something he can bring to their quest. He has some skill in fencing which will aid in battle; but more importantly, his gift of song encourages their spirits and strengthens their resolve when they are in doubt.
But the encounter with the giants goes nothing like what they expected. All three giants are beaten and slain, but the victory comes at a bitter cost. Anodos does not feel like a hero; and in his state of dejection and self-doubt, he falls prey again to his Shadow.
It is not until near the very end that Anodos finds his place; not as a hero, but by taking on the role of sidekick, acting as a squire to his friend, the Knight of the Once-Rusted Armor, who has emerged from his own trials and redemption. And ultimately, Anodos does find an opportunity to perform an act of true heroism.
In re-reading Phantastes, I am struck by how unlike a traditional fantasy it is. It lacks a significant villain or threat to overcome; it likewise lacks a sense of building dramatic tension, or even a direction much of the time. And yet, the book is full of moments which stick with the reader. Which is why C.S. Lewis offered this view of his mentor:
“If we define Literature as a n art whose medium is words, then certainly MacDonald has no place in its first rank – perhaps not even in its second. … But this does not quite dispose of him even for the literary critic. What he does best is fantasy – fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And this, in my opinion, he does better than any man.”
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