Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Chapter XXIII
He meets the knight again and becomes his squire. It turns out the child the knight attempted to save died of her wounds inflicted by the dragon the knight has killed. Does this suggest that even ideals are not perfect?

I particularly liked the knights thoughts about Faerie Land because they seem positive, practical and applicable to much more than Faerie Land:

“Somehow or other,” said he, “notwithstanding the beauty of this country of Faerie, in which we are, there is much that is wrong in it. If there are great splendours, there are corresponding horrors; heights and depths; beautiful women and awful fiends; noble men and weaklings. All a man has to do, is to better what he can. And if he will settle it with himself, that even renown and success are in themselves of no great value, and be content to be defeated, if so be that the fault is not his; and so go to his work with a cool brain and a strong will, he will get it done; and fare none the worse in the end, that he was not burdened with provision and precaution.” “But he will not always come off well,” I ventured to say. “Perhaps not,” rejoined the knight, “in the individual act; but the result of his lifetime will content him.”

Why does the knight check himself when he mentions, "My wife-"?

Anodos senses evil and ends up battling a wolf-like brute until he becomes unconscious.

Chapter XXIVI
Apparently the loss of consciousness was more than a fainting spell, Anodos has died and he lays in a coffin and the lady he loves says, "He has died well". I do not see why he seems so happy about being in this condition. He comes to the conclusion that blessedness is assured in giving each other love instead of taking each other's love. He also decides that:

All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This is possible in the realms of lofty Death. “Ah! my friends,” thought I, “how I will tend you, and wait upon you, and haunt you with my love.”

Then he becomes aware of life again.

Chapter XV
After having regained his life in the real wordl Anodos sums up the meaning of his quest:

Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing that I had lost my Shadow.

He also seems looks forward toward death as a good that is always coming in the hope that he will then return to the old woman with the young eyes. In closing he also says:

What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good. And so, Farewell.

I am not sure how to restate this in the manner of its meaning in a way I understand but it sounds like:

1 Corinthians 10:13 English Standard Version (ESV) No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

This is commonly condensed and quoted as, "God won’t give you more than you can handle". It seems to conflict a little with what the knight admitted to and advised earlier. What do you think?

David wrote: "Chapter XXIII
He meets the knight again and becomes his squire. It turns out the child the knight attempted to save died of her wounds inflicted by the dragon the knight has killed. Does this sugge..."

Another knight's thought about Faerie Land:

" which a man is compelled to meet and treat as real existences, although all the time he feels foolish for doing so."


David wrote: "Why does the knight check himself when he mentions, "My wife-"?"

I think for him speaking about her with Anodos is not an easy task. Anodos is his competitor and he had woken her to life. Now Anodos is knight's squire and friend

David wrote: "Anodos senses evil and ends up battling a wolf-like brute until he becomes unconscious."

This ceremony and what it is for in the book is a big question for me. It looks like a medieval mystery (no wonder that the knight is bewitched) and turns out to be a bloody sacrifice (hint to paganism?). For the last moment, I doubted if Anodos was right or confused as usual.

David wrote: "What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good."

My interpretation differs. I would associate it more with 1 Corinthians 13:12: "For now we see through a glass, darkly." Anodos is affirming what the old woman with the young eyes showed him and which was revealed to him in the joy transcending death: the great goodness behind even apparent evils, which even those evils taught him to recognize. Think of how the girl whose bauble he cruelly shattered came back to him a woman wiser and nobler.

I was surprised MacDonald decided to end on this platitude, because it seems (at most) a secondary theme of the book, compared with, say, disinterested love. The late MacDonald scholar (also a scholar of Lewis Carroll) John Docherty suggested that Anodos's spiritual development is never fully consummated in the conclusion. I think Phantastes may be fairly criticized on this point, and quite a few others. But I also think Phantastes to the end fundamentally succeeds as an experiment in using Romantic and fairy-tale imagery to explore the nature of imagination, desire, and love. Moreover, though it is far from a polished and mature literary work, it has a subtle psychical coherence that can still attract sympathetic minds and open imaginations. Hence its enduring (though quiet) influence.

Rex wrote: "and which was revealed to him in the joy transcending death"

I was happy for him and his newfound contentment, but I do not think he was taking everything into consideration, lying there conscious but otherwise inert for all eternity, as far as he knew. He seemed to me to be weirdly happy experiencing one of the more horrifying possibilities of death, rather than transcending it. In his favor, it would be nice to see how the course of certain events turn out after him but there would be a limit to it, I think. It is also nice for him to be alone with his thoughts and still be in good company, but how long can he keep that up?

There is also something overly compensatory, acutely farsighted, and disturbingly welcoming regarding his fixation on “A great good [i.e., his real death] is coming—is coming—is coming to thee, Andodos"

When I finished I immediately started rereading. I had totally forgotten the beginning--his 21st birthday, unlocking his father's desk, finding the fairy woman inside who foretells his journey. Then the next morning, the washbasin overflowing and giving rise to the stream flowing into Faerie.

This is another book I've read recently that I think would benefit enormously from a second read. The first time through, I'm reading for what happens next, and too many connections fail to sink in. The second time through, I think a lot of subtext would be more apparent.

I have to admit in preparing to moderate this book, I was barely able to will myself through it the first time before we officially started. The second time around I got a lot more out of it, and the discussion here which is always enjoyable, made the book more tolerable.

One thing for me that was hard to shake was my repulsion to all of the Faerie related hoaxes that were going on at the time, some with some serious proponents/victims like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which just makes me shake my head not wanting to admit. I had also read that the book was "horribly Victorian". I am not sure if that played a part, but at times it seemed to go beyond something that was just old fashioned. As a proto-modern fantasy, it was fun to notice the roots, similarities, and inspirations of other authors, like Lewis Carroll, James Barrie, L. Frank Baum, C.S. Lewis and even the romanticism and nature themes still being played out today in works like Avatar.

It was mostly fun suspending belief and going along with Anodos as he slowly soaked in certain life lessons, sometimes multiple times, or not at all. That last bit of impulsiveness got him unnecessarily killed. However I found a few of the book's themes disagreeable.

Most disagreeable was the old wrongheaded trope that "materialism/science ruins everything" and that seeing things as they are and calling them by their proper names is a vice that takes away from their romantic beauty. For example, the dismissive naming the a multiplying glass and a kaleidoscope the boy carried somehow robbed him of the beauty by which he formerly described them which represents some higher form of truth. I understand that imagination can be a sufficient condition for comfort, but I do not understand imagination as a necessary condition for beauty, natural awe, or truth.

I also have a problem with the idea that death is some great good that is coming for reasons I mentioned in a previous post, not to mention being in the company of people who seem fixated on it like Anodos seems to be doing is rather scary. It seems one thing to not fear death, but something else completely to welcome it in order to be fulfilled.

David, while I understand the complaint about MacDonald's apparent snub of rationalistic and empirical modes of understanding in Phantastes, keep in mind that MacDonald was trained as a scientist himself, with a university degree in chemistry and physics. He would later lecture in these areas to keep himself financially afloat, and he followed Darwin's voyages with interest. His other adult fantasy, Lilith, explicitly invokes the wonder of the physical sciences.

However, MacDonald was entirely convinced that imagination is fundamental to science; as he put it, observation answers questions, but only imagination, the faculty of invention, can ask the questions. "The construction of any hypothesis
whatever is the work of the imagination." (Compare Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge.... It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.")

Moreover, MacDonald was insistent that the works of science—our attempts to subjugate and control Nature—must be of secondary value to the gifts of spirit and body we primitively receive from Nature. Thus the poet or contemplative may understand Nature, in a key sense, better than the scientist, by getting at a more fundamental truth than material composition and by seeing it within a fuller framework. He shared this belief with the other Romantics—and with it, personally, I am in complete agreement.

I suspect, therefore, that you have misconstrued the episode with the multiplying glass and kaleidoscope. But I'm not sure how to describe my interpretation of that episode concisely, so I won't attempt that now.

@ Rex. Per your post I put a little more thought into it and tried to put a different spin on it.

The toys he carried were a multiplying glass and a kaleidoscope. I sighed and departed.

Perhaps the vice was not seeing the toys as the ordinary toys that they were, but dismissing them for being ordinary. Are we also to believe the destruction of the globe was a good thing, including the materialistic reason for it, because we later learn of the favorable consequences?

If we allow that, then we may need to re-title the book, "A Series of Fortunate Disenchantments", for the book would then seem to be a string of disenchatments, one after the other. Sometimes the disenchantment is something Anodos needs to learn to cope with and sometimes it is Anodos doing the disenchanting, as he did for the Marble Lady, twice, leading to further disenchantment for Anodos.

But then I am reminded of this and it detracts from the story for me again:

THEY WHO BELIEVE IN THE INFLUENCES OF THE STARS OVER the fates of men, are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. . .
MacDonald, George. Phantastes, Chapter XII. Hendrickson Publishers. Kindle Edition.

If I translate that correctly he seems to be saying, "Astrologists are closer to knowledge (things we are sure are true, that are true) about the universe than astronomers". It also makes me wonder what is this truth he is talking about and how is one nearer to this truth in feeling? I could also interpret that as "Astrologists only feel they are closer to the truth than astronomers do". I have met some astrologists that feel that way, but I don't think that is what MacDonald was going for here.

David wrote: "It was mostly fun suspending belief and going along with Anodos as he slowly soaked in certain life lessons, sometimes multiple times, or not at all. That last bit of impulsiveness got him unnecessarily killed."

Though I totally agree with the first sentence, I can not agree with the second. He was the only one in place who saw the Evil of the ceremony (mass killing by the way) and, I suppose, should act to stop it. I think of it as of heroic death, not as of 'got him unnecessarily killed.' If there is a reason to sacrifice your life, it is to save the lives of others.

Like many, I often forget the beginning and all storyline while reading. I was grateful to the author that Anodos from time to time remind us he is no more in Faerie Land, those remarks made me recall the whole story.

However, when I remembered this in the midst of Chapter XXIV it made the experience of the dead Anodos even creepier for me.

Alexey wrote: "I can not agree with the second. He was the only one in place who saw the Evil of the ceremony (mass killing by the way) and, I suppose, should act to stop it. I think of it as of heroic death, not as of 'got him unnecessarily killed."

I guess you are right. I was thinking he could have tried harder to convince his knight that something evil was going before trying to take on things alone. However on re-reading the relevant passages it seems more clear that the intention was that Anodos alone sensed the evil and that the knight was not going to play a part until it was too late for Anodos.

It is said that in literature you never want to stand by the hero, because those who do end up being killed (see Odysseus as one such hero). That seems to work here too if you consider the Knight as the proper hero and Anodos, standing too close to the knight as his squire, acting heroically and paying the price.

David wrote: "It is said that in literature you never want to stand by the hero, because those who do end up being killed (see Odysseus as one such hero). That seems to work here too if you consider the Knight as the proper hero and Anodos, standing too close to the knight as his squire, acting heroically and paying the price."

Especially dangerous for a sidekick to take the place of the hero, what Anodos had to do in this chapter.

By the way, almost until the end of the chapter, I was sure that Anodos was indeed acting impulsively and would get into another scrap. Only the knight's words in the next chapter convinced me entirly that Anodos act was the right one.

Since this book is considered an early modern-fantasy book we have a tendency to compare it to books that came after it. However, It slowly dawned on me to compare it to Dickens' A Christmas Carol published 15 years earlier in 1843. I did not press the matter because I was only dimly aware of it at the time, but among several similarities to A Christmas Carol I think the strongest is when Anodos was going through the doorways of his past, present, future, and even that forth and final door that suggests it represents his death.

Are there any other similarities to A Christmas Carol or other books we should note here?

Regarding that fourth door. If that door was death, I suppose it could have revealed the events of his actual death, of which maybe there is some rule, like no spoilers, that prevents him from seeing when and how he dies. But if the door was just a peaceful scene after his death, as Anodos describes later, I wonder why he seemed prevented from remembering the other side of door number four?

David wrote: " Are there any other similarities to A Christmas Carol or other books we should note here?..."

Actually, it reminded me a lot of some of Shakespeare's comedies where characters leave the "main land" and enter into another world, whether it's an island, as in The Tempest, or a forest. In this case, I am thinking specifically of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

There's a problem in Athens between lovers that begs for a solution. The characters enter a wood populated by fairies. All sorts of craziness goes on in fairy land, but the problem between mortals eventually gets resolved and they emerge from their experience all the wiser.

Puck's speech at the end references the experience as a dream--similar to what some of us felt about Anodos' entrance into fairyland.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream...

For me, the most powerful line is when he summarizes, very briefly, his experience:

for now I could love without needing to be loved again.

This move completely flips on its head the way we so often find ourselves loving others in life. We love others, and when they reciprocate, it allows us to continue to love.
What MacDonald is getting at here is the transformation that has taken place in Anados where he can now love without reciprocity, and without requisition.

David wrote: "It was mostly fun suspending belief and going along with Anodos as he slowly soaked in certain life lessons, sometimes multiple times, or not at all."

Yep. Suspending belief is basically the only thing that helped me get through this too. Definitely enjoyable once I let go of the need for it to "make sense". Like an abstract painting, this reading didn't necessarily need to "represent" anything in order to be of value.

Kyle wrote: "For me, the most powerful line is when he summarizes, very briefly, his experience:

for now I could love without needing to be loved again.

This move completely flips on its head the way we so of..."

This line was the turning point for me too.

I don't know if this has been expressed already, we experience the journey not only along with Anodos, but also not beyond him. We don't get a bird's-eye view or alternative perspectives. So what didn't make sense to him doesn't make sense to us. I wonder what details would emerge upon a second reading, now that we know he had to grow from an immature self-centered juvenile into maturity centered on selfless love.

I found the preceding comments especially thoughtful. Given the seeming randomness in the first half of the book, it was satisfying to begin to discover substance in latter chapters. At the same time I agree substantially with David’s reservations.

It seems to me that “willing” oneself through the book is a fairly high price to pay for commonplace lessons skirting the edge of preachiness. I found its central characters to be archetypes used ultimately to illustrate this or that moral.

One can admire P as imaginative for its time, but today we experience ever more vivid works of imagination in print, on television, and in film. In that context, P is outdated and unremarkable.

What I admire most about P is its descriptive language, particularly its descriptions of places. I will long remember Anodos’ bedroom, the Marble Lady’s cave, the fairy palace, the cottage in the forest, and more. I will not remember the story line.

P is not a book I would normally pick up, so I appreciate being prompted to read it by this group and to benefit from the discussions on this site.

Gary wrote: "P is not a book I would normally pick up, so I appreciate being prompted to read it by this group and to benefit from the discussions on this site."

My sentiments exactly.

The book was surprisingly good. And I think, MacDonald was good in managing meandering plot, I did not have to force myself through. Though some chapters and stories are still vague for me.

OK, these last chapters had my mind going like a ping-pong ball bouncing back & forth. Anodos seems to have found a purpose, has moved form being a child (although he IS 21!) to being a man, has found contentment, yet he does not fear death & seems to welcome it. He's dead but full of spiritual awareness, then poof, he's alive and headed home to "begin the duties of my new position" (HOH?) and wondered "could I translate the experience of my travels there (Fairy Land), into common life?"

Do we think he can?