Phantastes Chapters XIII through XIV

[David]

Chapter XIII
A story within a story. The story of Cosmo von Wehrstahl. Now Anodos indicates a little Faerie trickles into the world of men and this seems like a reflection of the world of men in Faerie Land.

More on the authors Cosmo has been reading. Albertus Magnus and Cornelius Agrippa
https://crossref-it.info/textguide/fr...

After reading the entire story, I am confused about what the shopkeeper is up to when after selling the mirror to Cosmo says:

“Sold for the sixth time! I wonder what will be the upshot of it this time. I should think my lady had enough of it by now!”

Is the trying to emotionally torture the lady in the mirror, why?

Cosmo hits upon a theme of the book when he says out loud:

“What a strange thing a mirror is! and what a wondrous affinity exists between it and a man’s imagination! For this room of mine, as I behold it in the glass, is the same, and yet not the same. It is not the mere representation of the room I live in, but it looks just as if I were reading about it in a story I like. All its commonness has disappeared. The mirror has lifted it out of the region of fact into the realm of art; and the very representing of it to me has clothed with interest that which was otherwise hard and bare; just as one sees with delight upon the stage the representation of a character from which one would escape in life as from something unendurably wearisome.

Apparently the mirror and imagination may be the key to giving Anodos back what his shadow has robbed him of.

I have to put two and two together here, but I am supposing that Cosmo is fatally stabbed in his attempt to break the mirror by the mirror's new owner, Von Steinwald. What should we learn from the story of Cosmo? If you love something, die (sacrifice yourself) setting it free? Sounds familiar. . . This seems worth thinking about too, maybe in relation to free will?:

“I love thee as—nay, I know not what—for since I have loved thee, there is nothing else.” He seized her hand: she withdrew it. “No, better not; I am in thy power, and therefore I may not.”

Chapter XIV
Anodos finally catches the statues dancing and I have a feeling he is going to sing again.

[Alexey]

David wrote: "What should we learn from the story of Cosmo? If you love something, die (sacrifice yourself) setting it free? "

I suppose yes, and in this story, it is amplified - even a momentary doubt to do this costs Cosmo a life in the end. So the lesson may be: you cannot own what you love, nor even think that you can own.

And I am also puzzled by the character of the shopkeeper, what is his role, what is he up to?

[Rex]

According to recent critical appraisals of Phantastes, the visit to the fairy library is the central point of the story around which the rest is symmetrically constructed. The Cosmo tale is thus a miniature expressing the core problem of the work, which can be formulated several ways but involves themes of masculinity, art, beauty, desire, possession, selfishness, and sacrifice.

I note that we don't see the mother-figure here, suggesting this theme may be of only secondary importance. By contrast, the figure of the mother is central in MacDonald's other adult fantasy, written much later in life, Lilith.

[Gary]

I have to confess that I’ve been having trouble engaging with Phantastes. The language, the characters, even the story itself haven’t worked for me. I need a new way into the book. I know that C.S. Lewis thought very highly of MacDonald’s writing in general and Phantastes in particular. Why is that I wondered.

In a lengthly Preface he wrote for his own compilation of extracts from MacDonald, Lewis shares some of his thoughts about our author. The following quotations are all from George McDonald: An Anthology (1946).

"If we define Literature as an art whose medium is words, then certainly Macdonald has no place in its first rank—perhaps not even in its second. There are indeed passages . . . where the wisdom and (I would dare to call it) the holiness that are in him triumph over and even burn away the baser elements in his style: the expression becomes precise, weighty, economic; acquires a cutting edge. But he does not maintain this level for long. The texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at times fumbling. Bad pulpit traditions cling to it; there is sometimes a nonconformist verbosity, sometimes an old Scotch weakness for florid ornament . . . sometimes an over-sweetness . . ."

This rings true for me. Why then does Lewis admire Phastastes?

"What he [MacDonald] does best is fantasy— fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopœic. And this, in my opinion, he does better than any man.

"In a myth—in a story where the mere pattern of events is all that matters— . . . Any means of communication whatever which succeeds in lodging those events in our imagination has, as we say, ‘done the trick’. After that you can throw the means of communication away.

"The great works are Phantastes, the Curdie books, The Golden Key, The Wise Woman, and Lilith. From them, just because they are supremely good in their own kind, there is little to be extracted. The meaning, the suggestion, the radiance, is incarnate in the whole story: it is only by chance that you find any detachable merits."

Perhaps we should view Phantastes through this lens, wherein MacDonald is a myth-maker and not a writer in the conventional sense, and see where it takes us.

[Gary]

Here’s a first cut at reading Phantastes as Myth. As Lewis suggests I’m not paying much attention to style or to particulars. The setting should be outside of normal time and space. Check. Its characters should be understood as archetypes rather than individuals. Anodos, as has been observed in earlier posts is Everyman, a seeker. The stream that rises in Andros’ room is a Link between the everyday world and the mysterious other world. The fairies Anodos meets are Guides to this other world. The Lady of the Beech is Goodness, loving and kind but not always there. The Maiden of the Alder is Deception that leads Everyman astray. The Ash is malevolent Evil that preys on Everyman. The Knight is the Hero who although diminished by failings seeks to redeem himself through his own exertions. The Fairy Palace is a Garden of Eden where every need is fulfilled but where Everyman is admonished to “Touch Not” the Great Lamp. We know what’s coming next, don’t we? I’m not sure what the Shadow is. Rationality? Uncertainty? The Mundane World intruding on Mythic World? Anyone have ideas about this?

When you attend to the overall pattern and mythos of the story instead of the florid and long-winded language, instead of the paper-thin characters, and instead of the loosely connected string of incidents, it appears at least to me in a new light. This is not a modern way of engaging with story and it takes a shift of perspective to appreciate. So far this has worked for me. I wonder if it might work for others.

[Tamara]

Gary wrote: "Here’s a first cut at reading Phantastes as Myth. As Lewis suggests I’m not paying much attention to style or to particulars. The setting should be outside of normal time and space. Check. Its char..."

That's an interesting approach. But I think the correspondences you set up and the way you describe them lend themselves closer to allegory than to myth.

Whether we see it as myth or as allegory, I'm wondering what's the point? Is McDonald taking us on an excursion to fairy land to experience it as myth or allegory with no other purpose in mind? Does he just want us to abandon ourselves to the experience? I honestly don't know.

I love mythology, but I'm used to myths having some sort of overarching purpose. They generally shed light on some aspect of the human experience. I'm having a hard time figuring this work out because the protagonist seems to drift along from one thing to another with no rhyme or reason.

I guess I'm just not getting it.

[Roger]

The central room with the throne is the seat of the ego, wretched and lonely as it is. The surrounding rooms are where the dancing happens, but if the ego goes deliberately in then the dancing stops. The ego must wait for just the right moment when the impulse comes, and then follow it, and then he can see the dance.

[Rex]

Tamara wrote: "Whether we see it as myth or as allegory, I'm wondering what's the point? Is McDonald taking us on an excursion to fairy land to experience it as myth or allegory with no other purpose in mind? Does he just want us to abandon ourselves to the experience? I honestly don't know."

I'm going to get a bit lengthy here. I would first point out that the story is going somewhere--it has a symmetrical structure buried beneath the apparent aimlessness, and by the end I think it will be clear that this is, among other things, a coming-of-age story which the protagonist will not leave the same person.

The article I linked above states the two traditional critical approaches to Phantastes have been (1) psychoanalytic, that is, seeing MacDonald as using the story to explore his own psyche; and (2) as a synthesis of tropes from German Romanticism and other sources. With regard to (1), some have read Phantastes as an expression of (or attempt to work through) personal neuroses. There is as well something that seems almost Jungian in MacDonald's focus on the unconscious and imaginative as primary modes of experience. The archetypal flatness of all MacDonald's characters is suggestive; even the protagonist is a shallow projection, a vehicle for reader.

One could also add to these approaches the moral tack of authors like Chesterton, Lewis, and Le Guin. As Gary quoted, Lewis admired Phantastes as a myth: not as an especially admirable work of craftsmanship, but rather as a narrative possessed by or pointing to something a lot bigger than itself. Although Ursula Le Guin has not written much (to my knowledge) on MacDonald, his influence on her is clear--you may, for instance, recognize the appearance of something resembling Anodos's shadow in The Wizard of Earthsea. Le Guin, like MacDonald, used her fantasy to create a moral universe in which goodness becomes apparent. G. K. Chesterton's main praise of MacDonald was that MacDonald implanted in the reader his conviction in the goodness and beauty at the core of the most mundane people and things. There are no "commoners" in Phantastes because, under the surface, nobody and nothing are truly common.

Put that together, and you can see Phantastes as a kind of guide to spiritual maturation. It is first a mirror in which we ought to recognize our own shadow, our own destructive impulses, our own Ash and Alder. It is second an attempt to envision how the soul can be reformed, how it can escape its oppressive internal fancies and discover "endless forms of beauty informed of truth"--a drama all played out on the glass of the imagination, which MacDonald believed operates more deeply than rational apprehension.

It's noteworthy, I think, that MacDonald never wrote anything like Phantastes again until almost the end of his life, when he returned to the form with Lilith. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with this experiment and turned to other literary forms, namely the realistic novel and the children's fairy-tale. But I think it's clear regardless that MacDonald aims not just to entertain, but to touch and instruct on a level deeper than the discursive mind can reach.

More on this, perhaps, when we get further along in the story.

[David]

Rex wrote: "It is first a mirror in which we ought to recognize our own shadow, our own destructive impulses, our own Ash and Alder. "

The following passage from Chapter IV suggests, at least the possibility, that Anodos is himself casting the shadowy hand of the Ash Tree gnarled fingers:

I reflected in a moment, that if this were indeed a shadow, it was useless to look for the object that cast it in any other direction than between the shadow and the moon. I looked, and peered, and intensified my vision, all to no purpose. I could see nothing of that kind, not even an ash-tree in the neighbourhood. Still the shadow remained. . .

Then later after Anodos visits the Ogre the concept of Anodos' shadow is used more explicitly to represent his vices.

Being a Christian minister, I am sure MacDonald's intention here is to get us to reflect on this, turn our thoughts inward and take an honest look at ourselves in a moral of the story fashion. What kinds of shadows would "we" cast?

[Rex]

Also note the parallel between the grasping hand of the Ash and Anodos's destructive grasping of the girl's orb.

[Susan]

Rex wrote: "Tamara wrote: "Whether we see it as myth or as allegory, I'm wondering what's the point? Is McDonald taking us on an excursion to fairy land to experience it as myth or allegory with no other purpo..."

Very helpful, thanks, Rex. I’m having no trouble if I read at the level of story; it’s only when I try to pin down every specific symbol and allegorical meaning that I get lost.

BTW, I just reread his children’s story In Back of the North Wind, and the real meaning of it all only became clear to me toward the end — but that’s a didactic tale and left me angry about the manipulative behavior of some of the characters—a very Victorian story with the upper and lower classes in their places.

[Tamara]

Rex wrote: "Put that together, and you can see Phantastes as a kind of guide to spiritual maturation. It is first a mirror in which we ought to recognize our own shadow, our own destructive impulses, our own Ash and Alder. It is second an attempt to envision how the soul can be reformed..."

As Sue said, this is very helpful. It requires me to put on a different lens as I continue reading. So . . . back to the drawing board.

[Gary]

Tamara wrote: "But I think the correspondences you set up and the way you describe them lend themselves closer to allegory than myth"

I agree. Lewis himself notes that MacDonald's fantasy "hovers between the allegorical and the mythopœic." Although I don't see a straightforward connection with what one thinks of as classic myth, I wanted to honor Lewis' contention. Archetypes are often a key aspect of myth, and they afforded me one way to engage with the text within the context of Lewis's critique. It's interesting to note that Lewis indentified Kafka as another modern myth maker.

[Gary]

If we discount Phantases as literary art, and overlook its thin plot and flat characters, what are we left with? One might say a work of imagination that unfolds new perspectives and possibilities to the reader who is open to what may be unspoken but is implicit in the narrative. Rex noted that G.K. Chesterton praised MacDonald as a writer who “implanted in the reader his conviction in the goodness and beauty at the core of most people and things.” C.S. Lewis suggested something along the same line. Is the sense and import of Phantases unstated? Should we be attending less to particulars and more to our general experience? Should we expect to reach the end of the book before we see its over-arching structure and theme? Is this getting a bit mystical? I am patient.

[Kyle]

From Chapter XIII
Sometimes it seemed only to represent a simple story of ordinary life, perhaps almost of universal life; wherein two souls, loving each other and longing to come nearer, do, after all, but behold each other as in a glass darkly.

MacDonald definitely making a reference to the "love" chapter in the Bible that gets read at a lot of weddings. "Through a glass darkly"? Straight up 1 Corinithians 13:12

[Kyle]

Gary wrote: "If we discount Phantases as literary art, and overlook its thin plot and flat characters, what are we left with? One might say a work of imagination that unfolds new perspectives and possibilities ..."

Gary, I like your approach regarding being patient with the text as we attend to the general experience rather than the particulars. The different chapters seem less and less connected to a "plot" and more and more evocative of a feeling. What that feeling is, definitively, may not be determined until finishing the book.

[Alexey]

Kyle wrote: "The different chapters seem less and less connected to a "plot" and more and more evocative of a feeling. What that feeling is, definitively, may not be determined until finishing the book."

I can't agree more. But I think the disengagement is temporal and soon we return to the development of the plot.

[Chris]

I have sort of gotten bogged through the Cosmo story and beyond. This just felt like a retelling of what has already happened to Anodos and his white lady from the cave. And as we move beyond this section to the next, again, I felt like a retelling. What am I missing?

[Ashley]

Chris wrote: "I have sort of gotten bogged through the Cosmo story and beyond. This just felt like a retelling of what has already happened to Anodos and his white lady from the cave. And as we move beyond this ..."

Yeah, definitely! I think we're supposed to see different reflections of the same story. I'm just not really sure why....