Phantastes

I had noted that many passages in Phantastes are mostly poetry, but I didn't realize this until I approached the end: the reason many (even most) passages are poetry is because Phantastes is a poem. Yes, the entire book is a long and meandering poem, and will make more sense (and seem less poorly written) if viewed as poetry rather than novel. It also probably explains why I had enormous difficulty getting through it--I was attempting to read it as a novel.

This quotation from chapter 16 refers to a character the protagonist meets, but arguably describes the entire story: "[S]he seemed removed into that region of phantasy where all is intensely vivid, but nothing clearly defined."

More than with Lilith, there's something Bradburyesque show more about Phantastes; if none of it evokes the feeling of Bradbury's overall body of work, then specifically Dandelion Wine--there's something of that here. I strongly felt that Dandelion Wine was poetry (in substance if not form), sung to the memory of youth; Phantastes is definitely poetry, more so because unlike Bradbury, MacDonald is evidently an actual poet. That becomes much more evident in the later chapters of Phantastes, where MacDonald creates little poems of his own in addition to the German Romantic poetry that he has quoted at times throughout the book.

Because of this, the book is much more challenging than its length (about 190 pages in my edition) suggest. It took me roughly two months to read, although that was partly for being distracted by other books.

Like Lilith, Phantastes is highly impressionistic. Dreamlike quality? I'm not sure I would say it feels dreamlike overall, but MacDonald's way of describing physical setting is extremely similar to what someone with a good memory might write down in a dream notebook. Writers wanting to evoke the surreal or, more generally, to describe imaginatively rather than photographically, should probably study Phantastes. show less

This is not your father's fantasy. This is a new realm. Do not come here expecting a coherent storyline, and everything neatly wound up. But if you want to dream more vividly than you ever have at night, if you want to see images more clearly than anything Hollywood has to offer, if you want to read that which you will never forget- then here is where you can rest. This is probably not a book that will explicitly change your worldview. It will rather implicitly change it, winding it's way into the inner depths of your mind, taking root, and blossoming in all you see and do afterward. You will have an irresistible urge to look for fairies under every doily, and see the world as magically as Amelie does. As I read it, the world opened up, show more and I understood, for a brief moment, the numinous around me- and so knew that of God.

No. Knowing is the wrong word. At least, not in our modern sense of the word. I did not understand it. But I knew it. It was present, not around me, but within me.

This is what Phantastes can do for you, if you read it intimately. show less

[Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women] by George MacDonald.

“Alas, how easily things go wrong
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain
And life is never the same again.”

A bildungsroman; first published in 1858 it is one of the earliest book length prose fairy stories. Anodos is 21 years old when he sees a fairy figure in a desk that he inherited from his late father, she tells him about fairy land and next morning he awakens in a forest and his adventures and his quest for love lead him into the land of the fairies. This is a Victorian novel which is chock full of repressed sexuality and MacDonald has been careful to remind his readers it is a Romance for Men and Women, although children show more would come to no harm if they chanced to pick it up. Phantastes has been cited as the first book length fantasy story for adults.

When Anodos wakes up in fairy land he is enchanted by the flowers which seem to be home for the fairies, but there is danger in the enchanted land as the fingers of the evil ash and alder trees threaten to destroy him. The episodic story gets going when he discovers the marble statue made by Pygmalion, Anodos sings to the statue of a beautiful woman which promptly comes to life and floats away towards the forest, Anodos is compelled to follow and his pursuit of image leads him onto further adventures. He catches up with her, but after enticing him into a cave and sending him to sleep he awakes to find himself imperilled by the alder tree. He meets kind maternal women who warn him about foolish love and he meets more sinister women one of whom tricks him into opening a door where he finds his own shadow that appears black and evil in the light of the sun. Anodos begins to gain satisfaction from his shadow and when he meets a maiden/woman dancing happy as a child who carries a globe in her hands, she tells Anodos he must not touch her globe, but then says if he does it must be very gently; Anodos does, but the maiden draws away and says he must not touch it again, but:

“I put out both my hands and laid hold of it. It began to sound as before. The sound rapidly increased, till it grew a low tempest of harmony, and the globe trembled, and quivered, and throbbed between my hands. I had not the heart to pull it away from the maiden, though I held it in spite of her attempts to take it from me; yes, I shame to say, in spite of her prayers, and, at last, her tears. The music went on growing in, intensity and complication of tones, and the globe vibrated and heaved; till at last it burst in our hands, and a black vapour broke upwards from out of it; then turned, as if blown sideways, and enveloped the maiden, hiding even the shadow in its blackness. She held fast the fragments, which I abandoned, and fled from me into the forest in the direction whence she had come, wailing like a child, and crying, “You have broken my globe; my globe is broken—my globe is broken!”

After this encounter, which feels like a rape or defloration, Anodos must journey on through other parts of fairy land, eventually arriving at a fairy palace where he learns more about love and enchantment. He must sacrifice himself for an honourable, more reputable love in the fairy world, and he must be forgiven for his past demeanours, before he can arrive back in the real world. The central story has dreams within dreams and tales within tales as MacDonald weaves his magical allegory, but some parts work better than others. Characterisation is not MacDonalds strongest attribute as the reader does not gain much insight into Anodos, although much of the story is written in the first person. We see him learn from experience, but in a fantasy story it is the world outside of the hero that should hold our interest and this is where MacDonald is at his best. The author was a Christian Minister and a poet and it is his knowledge and love of poetry that seems to be the major influence for his writing in Phantastes. Every chapter starts with a quote; notably from the early English canon; Chaucer, Spenser, Lyly and Sir Philip Sidney, but also from the German Romantics. There are new songs and poems by MacDonald that are a feature of Phantastes woven into the text rather like Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, although in my opinion MacDonald never reaches those heights. MacDonalds book must be admired as an early example of English fantasy literature, which obviously influenced later Victorian authors: Walter De La Mare, Lewis Carroll, J M Barrie, and C S Lewis. Reading today it still contains some striking passages, but its central theme does not hold strongly throughout the story and I am sure that some readers will find the poems and songs a distraction, however I think they add to the enchantment. It does not have the panache, humour or memorable characters which I find in Lewis Carrolls work which is the nearest comparator, but still a worthwhile read and so 3.5 stars. show less

George MacDonald's Phantastes, an early fantasy novel published in 1858, is narrated by a young man, Anodos, who has just come into his inheritance and is transported to Fairy Land on his twenty-first birthday. While there, he meets with many strange beings, temptations, beauties, and poetry, always searching for the elusive woman he knows only as the Marble Lady. Indeed, he rescues her from imprisonment and claims a place in her affections, only to find that she is destined for another, a "nobler man." Much of the story deals with Anodos's various temptations and sins, as he wanders through this strange realm and slowly conquers his own weakness.

There are giants, there are dark woods. There are ominous villains and deceptions laid for show more the pure in heart. There are small cottages buried in the deep forests, havens of safety amidst the wildness. The journey is about two things: the search for the ideal, and the discovery of one's own inner darkness, personified here by the shadow that clings to Anodos. It distorts his relationships and wearies his soul with its constant unwelcome presence. This is high fantasy with so many elements I enjoy; I should LOVE it, but I don't somehow.

Every now and then there is a flash of kindred knowing—as when MacDonald speaks of the old woman in the cottage, promising Anodos that even in his worst distress, she knows something "too good to tell" that would reconcile him to it all. But the majority of the tale was so slow moving, so plotlessly weaving, such a mishmash of episodic events.

C. S. Lewis famously wrote of Phantastes that it baptized his imagination, and as a tribute he included MacDonald as a character in The Great Divorce. I wish I could appreciate this work as Lewis and so many other readers have, but George MacDonald remains an author I simply can't warm to. Which is odd, because he has influenced several of my favorite authors and seems to have been influenced himself by other writers I enjoy (such as William Morris and Lord Dunsany). It isn't his heretical universalism, as vehemently as I disagree with him on that head. I don't know what it is; we just don't resonate.

I feel like reading Dunsany now; I think he achieves what MacDonald only reaches for here. show less

this early book of fantasy begins well, with one of the best descriptions of being in a dream ever written. It falls off towards the end as it morphs into a sermon on the morality of self sacrifice. Nonetheless, the strain begun here runs to Morris, then Eddison and Cabell, and, at last, to Tolkien. A very good read, unless you are a fantasist of violence, complete and total.

One of my favorite books, but not one of the best books I’ve read by any objective measure; its language is awkward even considering its age, its poems can plod, and it wanders into innumerable diversions. But this book was fundamentally formative for my teenaged self and I love it in its weird, genuine, imaginative way. Each chapter begins with a quote from another work, and a lot of those have stuck with me through the years. For instance: “When bale is highest, boote is nighest” (which means, roughly, “help is nearest when things are worst”). Or this portion of the Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton::

“‘Fight on, my men!’, Sir Andrew says,
“A little I’m hurt but yet not slain!
I’ll but lie down and bleed awhile
And then show more I’ll rise and fight again!” show less

Teniendo en cuenta la antigüedad del texto (1858) se lee estupendamente y tiene trozos muy interesantes. Pero creo que si éste libro lo hubiera pillado hace unos años, lo habría disfrutado mucho más, con la inocencia que requieren los cuentos de hadas más clásicos.
...Y que cada vez que Anodos se pone a cantar le atizaría con un bate.