What a wonderful thing waking is! The time of the ghostly moonshine passes by, and the great positive sunlight comes. A man who dreams, and knows that he is dreaming, thinks he knows what waking is; but knows it so little, that he mistakes, one after another, many a vague and dim change in his dream for an awaking. When the true waking comes at last, he is filled and overflowed with the power of its reality. So, likewise, one who, in the darkness, lies waiting for the light about to be struck, and trying to conceive, with all the force of his imagination, what the light will be like, is yet, when the reality flames up before him, seized as by a new and unexpected thing, different from and beyond all his imagining. He feels as if the darkness were cast to an infinite distance behind him. So shall it be with us when we wake from this dream of life into the truer life beyond, and find all our present notions of being, thrown back as into a dim, vapoury region of dreamland, where yet we thought we knew, and whence we looked forward into the present. This must be what Novalis means when he says: "Our life is not a dream; but it may become a dream, and perhaps ought to become one."
From The Portent by George MacDonald
A Few Words About Words
1 hour ago
9 comments:
Distilled George, that's what that is. 200 proof.
An apropos thought from Ella Wheeler [who left an unsigned calling card at the Motel earlier today]:
Her final words in her autobiography The Worlds and I: "From this mighty storehouse (of God, and the hierarchies of Spiritual Beings ) we may gather wisdom and knowledge, and receive light and power, as we pass through this preparatory room of earth, which is only one of the innumerable mansions in our Father's house. Think on these things".
Thanks, Mush.
Should I decide to get off the pot someday (I am this close) where would you recommend is a good place for me to begin with Mr. MacDonald?
Or maybe, if you could keep only one, which one?
Dear Mizz E and Mr f/zero (and any others who may stop by), please add yours too.
Thanksyoumuch!
Rick
Tough question. Chesterton would say The Princess and the Goblin would be the place to start. Lewis would recommend Phantastes.
The Princess and Curdie which is the sequel to The Princess and the Goblin is one of my favorites and can be read as a standalone.
There are passages in Lilith that are just unbelievable and will absolutely resonate with you. It's actually one of MacDonald's later works, but it has such a harmonic with The War that you might want to consider it as a place to start. With this one caveat, knowing that you and I are much alike, don't start it if you are feeling depressed. It might get a little heavy.
Most, if not all of these, are text or HTML downloads on Project Gutenberg.
I have a favorite hardcopy which I think I got on a trip to Providence, it's called The Heart of George MacDonald and includes The Princess and Curdie, The Golden Key, excerpts from several novels, sermons, and poems. The editor is Rolland Hein.
Thanks, Mush. I think for now I'll get a few of them and then they will be handy. One step at a time. It probably sounds strange, but as much as I would love to enjoy the books, I don't want to. Even, if not especially, in an unconscious way, don't want to be influenced by them.
It's been interesting to arrive at similar places (as you and Julie and DoJo have said) without me and Mr. MacDonald knowing how each of us got there. It validates both of our work, in a way -- not that his needs it. It pays some reverence to the source as well -- I hope.
Yet, in the case of the movie, Book of Eli, seeing where that writer decided to go (we are told what is the book he carries) helped me decide what is not in Sam's envelope. Not at all that that writer decided a bad thing. It's just that intuitively I once knew (and now thankfully remember) that in Sam's envelope might be something else. "Bible" itself is a saturated word. One must never just say "Bible". But it's a start, of course, toward it's point, which merely only begins at the surface.
Anyway, I don't know at any time what's in the envelope anymore than Sam does or a reader. Often, I think: how the hell could I? I only ever have hunches.
But we intends to find out.
Do you have Mr. MacDonald's phone number, by any chance?
I think it was Hemingway that listed a surprising (to me at the time) number of painters as having influenced him. Poets and writers will look at pictures or listen to music. Painters and musicians will read books and poems. We will watch great films. Art, in whatever form, is a precipitant. All that stuff that's swirling around in solution solidifies and takes a visible form.
I doubt that you have to worry too much about being overly influenced as to style or ideas by MacDonald or Lewis -- or Hemingway or Faulkner, for that matter. As with 'Eli', you may find, in both a positive and negative way, that there are bits now visible on the bottom that you had not been able to see before, but it was there, in your solution, all the time.
I'm not telling you to read or not. That's up to your own sense of art and direction, just don't worry about accusations of influence. You're not getting what you're getting from anyone else.
Thanks, Mush.
I just ordered:
The George McDonald Treasury: Princess and the Goblin, Princess and Curdie, Light Princess, Phantastes, Giant's Heart, At the Back of the North Wind, Golden Key, and Lilith
What a country..
Also..
In me notesbook I haz an upcoming chapter titled: "The North Wind".
I'll be filing that under: Jeepers
Back of the North Wind is another great one, and The Light Princess is really fun. You're going to have a good time.
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