A Pilgrim in Narnia

The Fantastic Imagination: An Essay on Fantasy Theory by George MacDonald

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

This essay is a great find, originally an introduction to the collection of The Light Princess and Other Fairy Tales. With George MacDonald’s characteristic wit, it forms a nice partnership with C.S. Lewis’ “On Stories” and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “On Fairy-stories“–and indeed may have influenced them. MacDonald considers the way meaning works in fairy tales and fantasy stories, summarizing it with the iconic saying,

“the business of the painter is not to teach zoology.”

And certainly Lewis must have known this quotation when he wrote his “On 3 Ways of Writing for Children“:

I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

MacDonald thinks about fantasy-writing theory. Echoing John Donne, he writes, “and man may, if he pleases, invent a little world of his own, with its own laws.” Those laws must be consistent or the story falls:

Law is the soil in which alone beauty will grow; beauty is the only stuff in which Truth can be clothed; and you may, if you will, call Imagination the tailor that cuts her garments to fit her, and Fancy his journeyman that puts the pieces of them together, or perhaps at most embroiders their button-holes. Obeying law, the maker works like his creator; not obeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it a church.

I hope you enjoy this great piece that sets the stage for a 20th c. conversation about fantasy literature, even peeks forward to reader response theories or the last generation.

That we have in English no word corresponding to the German Märchen, drives us to use the word Fairytale, regardless of the fact that the tale may have nothing to do with any sort of fairy. The old use of the word Fairy, by Spenser at least, might, however, well be adduced, were justification or excuse necessary where need must.

Were I asked, what is a fairytale?

I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale; then read this and that as well, and you will see what is a fairytale. Were I further begged to describe the fairytale, or define what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.

Many a man, however, who would not attempt to define a man, might venture to say something as to what a man ought to be: even so much I will not in this place venture with regard to the fairytale, for my long past work in that kind might but poorly instance or illustrate my now more matured judgment. I will but say some things helpful to the reading, in right-minded fashion, of such fairytales as I would wish to write, or care to read.

Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses; but it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law. Nothing lawless can show the least reason why it should exist, or could at best have more than an appearance of life.

The natural world has its laws, and no man must interfere with them in the way of presentment any more than in the way of use; but they themselves may suggest laws of other kinds, and man may, if he pleases, invent a little world of his own, with its own laws; for there is that in him which delights in calling up new forms–which is the nearest, perhaps, he can come to creation. When such forms are new embodiments of old truths, we call them products of the Imagination; when they are mere inventions, however lovely, I should call them the work of the Fancy: in either case, Law has been diligently at work.

His world once invented, the highest law that comes next into play is, that there shall be harmony between the laws by which the new world has begun to exist; and in the process of his creation, the inventor must hold by those laws. The moment he forgets one of them, he makes the story, by its own postulates, incredible. To be able to live a moment in an imagined world, we must see the laws of its existence obeyed. Those broken, we fall out of it. The imagination in us, whose exercise is essential to the most temporary submission to the imagination of another, immediately, with the disappearance of Law, ceases to act.

Suppose the gracious creatures of some childlike region of Fairyland talking either cockney or Gascon! Would not the tale, however lovelily begun, sink once to the level of the Burlesque–of all forms of literature the least worthy? A man’s inventions may be stupid or clever, but if he does not hold by the laws of them, or if he makes one law jar with another, he contradicts himself as an inventor, he is no artist. He does not rightly consort his instruments, or he tunes them in different keys. The mind of man is the product of live Law; it thinks by law, it dwells in the midst of law, it gathers from law its growth; with law, therefore, can it alone work to any result. Inharmonious, unconsorting ideas will come to a man, but if he try to use one of such, his work will grow dull, and he will drop it from mere lack of interest. Law is the soil in which alone beauty will grow; beauty is the only stuff in which Truth can be clothed; and you may, if you will, call Imagination the tailor that cuts her garments to fit her, and Fancy his journeyman that puts the pieces of them together, or perhaps at most embroiders their button-holes. Obeying law, the maker works like his creator; not obeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it a church.

In the moral world it is different: there a man may clothe in new forms, and for this employ his imagination freely, but he must invent nothing. He may not, for any purpose, turn its laws upside down. He must not meddle with the relations of live souls. The laws of the spirit of man must hold, alike in this world and in any world he may invent. It were no offence to suppose a world in which everything repelled instead of attracted the things around it; it would be wicked to write a tale representing a man it called good as always doing bad things, or a man it called bad as always doing good things: the notion itself is absolutely lawless. In physical things a man may invent; in moral things he must obey–and take their laws with him into his invented world as well.

“You write as if a fairytale were a thing of importance: must it have meaning?”

It cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in it than the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and the fairytale would give no delight. Everyone, however, who feels the story, will read its meaning after his own nature and development: one man will read one meaning in it, another will read another.

“If so, how am I to assure myself that I am not reading my own meaning into it, but yours out of it?”

Why should you be so assured? It may be better that you should read your meaning into it. That may be a higher operation of your intellect than the mere reading of mine out of it: your meaning may be superior to mine.

“Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?”

If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much.

At all events, the business of the painter is not to teach zoology.

But indeed your children are not likely to trouble you about the meaning. They find what they are capable of finding, and more would be too much.

For my part, I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit. An allegory must be Mastery or Moorditch.

A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sips every wholesome flower, and spoils not one. The true fairytale is, to my mind, very like the sonata. We all know that a sonata means something; and where there is the faculty of talking with suitable vagueness, and choosing metaphor sufficiently loose, mind may approach mind, in the interpretation of a sonata, with the result of a more or less contenting consciousness of sympathy. But if two or three men sat down to write each what the sonata meant to him, what approximation to definite idea would be the result? Little enough–and that little more than needful. We should find it had roused related, if not identical, feelings, but probably not one common thought. Has the sonata therefore failed? Had it undertaken to convey, or ought it to be expected to impart anything defined, anything notionally recognisable?

“But words are not music; words at least are meant and fitted to carry a precise meaning!”

It is very seldom indeed that they carry the exact meaning of any user of them! And if they can be so used as to convey definite meaning, it does not follow that they ought never to carry anything else. Words are live things that may be variously employed to various ends. They can convey a scientific fact, or throw a shadow of her child’s dream on the heart of a mother. They are things to put together like the pieces of dissected map, or to arrange like the notes on a stave. Is the music in them to go for nothing? It can hardly help the definiteness of a meaning: is it therefore to be disregarded? They have length, and breadth, and outline: have they nothing to do with depth? Have they only to describe, never to impress? Has nothing any claim to their use but definite? The cause of a child’s tears may be altogether undefinable: has the mother therefore no antidote for his vague misery? That may be strong in colour which has no evident outline. A fairtytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweeps you away: do you begin at once to wrestle with it and ask whence its power over you, whither it is carrying you? The law of each is in the mind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another man feel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, to another of soothing only and sweetness. To one, the cloudy rendezvous is a wild dance, with a terror at its heart; to another, a majestic march of heavenly hosts, with Truth in their centre pointing their course, but as yet restraining her voice. The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.

I will go farther.–The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is–not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.

The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding–the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.

“But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!”

Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there!

One difference between God’s work and man’s is, that, while God’s work cannot mean more than he meant, man’s must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is a layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God’s things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time things that came from thoughts beyond his own.

“But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?”

I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, “Roses! Boil them, or we won’t have them!” My tales may not be roses but I will not boil them.

So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.

If a writer’s aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to be understood, but to escape being misunderstood; where his object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.

The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must–he cannot help himself–become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.

If any strain of my “broken music” make a child’s eyes flash, or his mother’s grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.

THE END

Posted in Creative Writing, Fictional Worlds, On Writing, Original Research | Tagged allegory, books, C.S. Lewis, faerie, fantasy, Fictional Universes, George MacDonald, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Donne, literature, On Fairy-Stories, On Stories, Reader Response Theory, The Light Princess | 37 Comments

The Problem of Good: Thinking about God and Evil with “The Giver”

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

One of the great questions that fixes the attention of thinkers in our generation about the existence of God is the Problem of Evil. The argument is so simple it is almost sublime. I summarize the argument here in this Prezi (if it doesn’t work on your screen, click here):

https://prezi.com/embed/5b9upclbw4ea/?bgcolor=ffffff&lock_to_path=0&autoplay=0&autohide_ctrls=0&landing_data=bHVZZmNaNDBIWnNjdEVENDRhZDFNZGNIUE1iN0hWaklaR1ZjV1B2dC9UYmtuZWZSWFRvRklBME9veWlGbkdaS1JRYz0&landing_sign=UhFaJ_4Dd1o0O5_tWMhy4fgt0GrZjRwYSP1jeFX3UMc

Usually, God is defined in these three key ways:

Omnipotence: God is able to do all things that can possibly be done.
Omnibenevolence: God is all-good, all loving, without evil.
Omniscience: God knows all things which can be known.

Granted these three things, we are left with what I call the Omnitrilemma:

There is evil in the world and people suffer. Yet, God is powerful enough to stop evil, is totally good, and knows perfectly well it will occur. One of the attributes most fall:
God does not know that evil will occur, or
God is not willing to stop the evil, or
God is not able to stop the evil.

Granted that God knows evil will happen—even I know that!—and is able to stop the evil, why might God not be willing to? This is the problem of evil? As C.S. Lewis put it:

“If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.” The Problem of Pain, 16.

In teaching, I’ve discovered that few students have problems grasping this logic. Philosophers can make it more precise, but the steps are pretty clear. Even people who believe in God can appreciate the logic as it sits. Beyond the intellectual steps, we feel the contradiction of a good, strong God who created a world with such pain. I push the point home in class by listing the most deadly disasters of history: storms, wars, disease, and childbirth. But anyone who has held a dying child, or has felt lost in the fog of depression, or has felt their dreams slip away knows that something isn’t right.

In thinking about this problem, though, we not only have a Problem of Evil. We also have a Problem of Good. I lay the problem out here in this Prezi (again, if it doesn’t work on your screen, click here):

https://prezi.com/embed/lwukojwec7s_/?bgcolor=ffffff&lock_to_path=0&autoplay=0&autohide_ctrls=0&landing_data=bHVZZmNaNDBIWnNjdEVENDRhZDFNZGNIUE1iN0hWaklaR1ZjV1B2dC9UYmpPeGh6UWxINkY4b3pWL0JmNHQ4djUzWT0&landing_sign=uxtniwIZz__fp3Vsg9ZZsP-VFWUngyKuoQ1kJhRxgkw

The reverse logic swings the pendulum the other way. What would a world without evil look like? C.S. Lewis anticipates this question:

“We can, perhaps, conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of this abuse of free will by His creatures at every moment: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound-waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void” (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 24).

A world where evil was not allowed is a world in which we have no real freedom. We might protest, though: Is that freedom really important? Here are some consequences of a world without evil:

without evil we wouldn’t be able to develop traits like patience or appreciation or thankfulness
what would be the use of courage or honour or bravery without evil?
what would the world be without a sense of risk?
it is probably true that there wouldn’t be true love without free will—love has to be chosen freely; it can never be contrived

Perhaps you aren’t convinced. In class I used a book and a film to drive the Problem of Good home.

First, I used The Giver by Lois Lowry. It is a brilliant book that immediately captures the problem of a world where evil is disallowed:

“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.” Thus opens this haunting novel in which a boy inhabits a seemingly ideal world: a world without conflict, poverty, unemployment, divorce, injustice, or inequality. It is a time in which family values are paramount, teenage rebellion is unheard of, and even good manners are a way of life. But Jonas has been chosen for something special. When his selection leads him to an unnamed man -the man called only the Giver -he begins to sense the dark secrets that underlie the fragile perfection of his world” (Digital Book Jacket).

Despite all its flaws, the recent film starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, and Brenton Thwaites does capture the world of Sameness in The Giver. I think the trailer captures some of the uniformity that is meant to protect people from evil:

The Giver in book form is more complex it how it understands the evil behind the good veneer of the totalitarian state–the pretended utopia. The movie, however, does capture how a world without pain means we will live in a world without love.

This little clip can’t quite do it justice, but in the film we discover that the two concepts are entwined. In order to eradicate prejudice and hatred, we eradicate differences, thus losing individuality. And in order to get rid of pain, we must lose the risk that allows us to love. Lowry’s invention of a young adult dystopia invites us to ask “what if?” questions and play out some of the answers. In doing so, we discover that love, courage, and truth are dangerous things.

The second approach I took in introducing the Problem of Good was to watch the film, The Invention of Lying. This brilliant Ricky Gervais-Jennifer Garner film has an unusual premise:

It sounds like an idea that religious people–people who claim to believe in Truth–could sign up for: a world where we simply aren’t capable of lying. But as the film explores, beyond social embarrassment, a world without lies lacks great things. What do we gain in a world with lies? The opportunity to not tell the truth means:

we get fiction and fantasy
we get belief and hope
we get love
we get Ricky Gervais

What do we lose in a world with the potential of telling a lie? Is the loss worth it?

We can never know. These fictions allow to explore utopias. I had always thought that “utopia” came from the Greek eu + topos, i.e., “good + place” It actually came from ou + topos, i.e., “no + place.” Though I think we can read ambivalently, “utopia” is a nowhere place because a place of human existence without pain or loss or evil is impossible. It always slips into totalitarianism or inhumanity (and the latter is usually the result of the former).

While the world we live in seems a poor fit to the God that believers worship, that inconsistency that we call the Problem of Evil leads us always to the Problem of Good. Unless we are free to do evil, we can never do good. Unless we are free to lie, we can never have hope. Unless we are free to dishonour, we can never be faithful. And unless we are free to hate, and free to display our hatred to the world, we can never be free to love.

Posted in Thoughtful Essays | Tagged apologetics, C.S. Lewis, Jennifer Garner, Lois Lowry, philosophy, Ricky Gervais, The Giver, The Invention of Lying, the Omnitrilemma, The Problem of Pain, theology, utopia | 14 Comments

The Sorrows of Young Goethe

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

Let me tell you a story.

In the summer of 1772, 245 years ago, a young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe took a position articling in Wetzlar, Germany. He wasn’t a very good lawyer, however, and spent most of his time “lying in the grass beneath a tree, philosophizing with his friends” (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 5)–a job usually more suited to city workers than lawyers. Often, he would walk to the quaint village of Garbenheim and sit in the village square enjoying the quaintness of the scene, reading his Homer or the Bible, and talking to the villagers. He often sat in the shade of the linden tree, sketching the scene or reading or writing notes, and occasionally indulging the neighbourhood children with some money for a treat.

Not too long after he went to Wetzlar, in early June he went to a ball and a young woman caught his eye. Her name was Charlotte Buff. She was a simple country girl, beneath his social stature, but he was captivated. He was haunted by her beauty and lively charm, so he pursued her, not knowing that she was engaged to be married already to a personable young man named Christian Kestner.

Charlotte Buff was the second oldest of eleven children, the daughter of a widowed military officer. After her mother’s death, she gave herself lovingly to her family, caring for the children in her energetic, witty and unassuming way. Goethe fell in love with Charlotte’s domestic bliss and her inspiring ability to bring lightheartedness to any occasion. He was taken with the children, and was kind to Charlotte’s brothers and sisters, helping out as the occasion arose.

Interestingly, he became close friends with her betrothed, Christian Kestner, who had a “calm and even behaviour, clarity of opinions, and firmness in action and speech” (Werther, 6). As the character of Werther says in Goethe’s novel, “No doubt about it, [he] is the best fellow on the earth” (54). They had a mutual respect for each other, and Kestner called Goethe a talented genius, a man of character with a vivid imagination. He noted in letters to friends that Goethe was prone to “violent emotion,” but worked hard at a self-control that worked well with his independent spirit.

For Goethe, the summer was idyllic, with the friendship between he, Charlotte, and Kestner blossoming into full bloom in the joyous beauty of the countryside. They were inseparable, and Goethe felt that the friendship was smooth and painless.

Reading Kestner’s diaries, though, we see that that was not his impression. He trusted Goethe, and knew that they were friends, but as he was at work, Goethe would spend his days with Charlotte. When Kestner returned home, he felt the annoyance of Goethe. Goethe was frustrated, to be sure, but felt like being with Charlotte was a kind of reward, a great happening in the longing he had for her (recalling the words of Peter Abelard, who had fallen in love with the forbidden Heloïse).

How long could this love triangle withstand tension? Goethe felt like it was completely innocent—and it seems that according to social convention, it was innocent. But the tension must have been unbearable. Goethe’s echo in the voice of Werther is intriguing: “we should treat children as God treats us; He makes us happiest when He leaves us our pleasant delusions” (42). It seems he would prefer to remain in his delusions about their relationship than face the truth.

Finally, in mid-August, Charlotte told Goethe not to expect her to return his love. He became quite depressed, and within a month Goethe returned to the city, leaving without warning, simply leaving a note that said, “I am alone now, and may shed my tears. I leave you both to your happiness and will not be gone from your hearts.”

For those who have read The Sorrows of Young Werther, this will seem vaguely familiar. More than “vaguely,” actually. The parallel with Werther is pretty remarkable–and a little frightening, considering how the novel ends. In the second half of the novel, the main character—Werther, in love with “Charlotte” who is betrothed to another—descends quite dramatically to the point of suicide. Does this too parallel Goethe’s experience? Did Goethe commit suicide?

Well, like Werther, Goethe moved to the city to work, away from Charlotte and Kestner. And, like Werther, he fell in love again and was again disappointed, for he loved a young woman of a higher class who was, again, wedded to another person.

Historical sources suggest that Goethe was in some sort of depression. He heard a rumour—untrue, but shocking to him—that his good friend von Goué had committed suicide. He wrote to Kestner—yes, they are still on writing terms—that “I honour the deed,” but “I hope I shall never trouble my friends with news of such a kind” (Werther, 8-9). Then, three weeks later, a young gentleman named Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem shot himself.

Jerusalem was a law student with Goethe and was also a sharp writer and thinker. He took a job as a secretary to the ambassador of Braunschweig, just as Werther took clerk position in the novel. As a secretary he worked in his free time on painting and poetry and philosophy, occasionally attending the social functions.

Jerusalem struggled in Wetzlar, however. He had been rejected by high society and even though he was reasonably fashionable and polite, he did not make friends easily—he called Goethe, one of our most enduring authors, a “fop” and a “scribbler.” Unfortunately, his rejection by the aristocracy was personally troubling, and he fell in love with another man’s wife. He began to brood in Wetzlar, taking long, lonely moonlit walks.

As his passion for the married woman hit its peak, he wrote a popular article in defense of suicide; it is quite similar to Werther’s defense of suicide in the novel. In the novel, Charlotte’s fiancé is going on about his scruples over keeping guns, and Werther places a gun to his head in mock suicide. He reacts strongly. “it isn’t loaded,” Werther counters. “Even if it isn’t, I cannot imagine how a man can be so foolish as to shoot himself; I find the mere thought repellent.” (55)

They then have a discussion of morality where Werther suggests suicide is a great thing done by great men, suggesting that, “it would be as misconceived to call a man cowardly for taking his own life, as it would be to say a man who dies of malignant fever was a coward” (58). There is no agreement around the table on this question.

Returning to Goethe’s real life friend, Jerusalem, we find that Jerusalem wrote of the woman he loved, “I do not believe she cares for gallant amours, and in any case her husband is extremely jealous; so his love finally put paid to his heart’s ease and peace of mind” (9). One night, Jerusalem borrowed some pistols from a friend, saying that he was going to go on a trip. He dismissed his servants, wrote a note—which we still have—and shot himself at his desk. He bled throughout the night and died not long after being discovered in a pool of blood on the floor. Werther’s fate was precisely the same. And just as Werther does in the novel, Jerusalem left a copy of Lessing’s play Emilia Galotti on his desk.

Goethe was clearly thrown off by the suicide, writing to Kestner, “The poor fellow! … he is in love. It was loneliness, God knows, that ate away at his heart” (9). In the end, though, Goethe does not follow the fate of his friend Jerusalem and his character Werther.

The Sorrows of Young Werther is an intriguing “what if?” story. The first half of the novel is really a semi-autobiographical story of his falling for Charlotte–cleverly disguised as Lotte in the novel–and loving her even when it is impossible that she might return his love. The second half, after he is unsuccessful in love once again, is not Goethe’s story, precisely. It is the story of Jerusalem, who surrendered to his passions—or had the courage to surrender, if you believe the argument. The second half of Werther is the path that Goethe could have taken, but didn’t.

What if Goethe had lost himself to his passion like Werther had? Jerusalem was, for Goethe, the path not taken, the road not travelled. And there are other cautionary tales in the novel, warnings of paths that Goethe could have taken—madness and murder—but did not.

Instead, Goethe moves on. For his part, he retained a healthy correspondence with Kestner, but did not pursue Charlotte again. He wrote the novel we read in about a month in 1777, 240 years ago, and it became an international best seller. There was a kind of “Werther Fever” that erupted when Napoleon took a copy on his campaign in Egypt (as American Presidents are often photographed with books that become bestsellers). Young men all over Europe read the book and started dressing like Werther. Pilgrimages to Germany became a regular feature of the literary world, and the Romantic period saw Werther as a kind of ideal story, one lost in unrequited love and living only for love. There was even reputed to be a rash of copycat suicides, each one leaving the copy of their favourite play covered in blood.

Goethe, however, came to hate the book. Although it created a new literary movement, he wished he had chosen not to be so dangerously autobiographical. He also exposed the real Charlotte to public scrutiny—something he never intended. He recognized the book’s power to move young lovers, but he hated being famous for it. Really, he was the world’s first international celebrity. But he did better work than this, he thought. His creation of the character Faust is probably his most important literary work, but his scientific work is important—he is the first to theorize that colours appeared in a spectrum, a play of darkness and light. Clever fellow.

I think he is probably a jerk for writing a best-selling novel at 24 years old, and then snubbing superstardom. But he really captures some key things about the shifting cultural understandings of love. It is also a book I make my students read, knowing some will loathe it and others fall in love. It is a novel that defined a generation–actually, one that changed every romance story after it. Yet it is still, for a lover of books, simply a light summer read.

Posted in Thoughtful Essays | Tagged canon, epistolary fiction, European Literature, Faust, German Literature, Goethe, love, Napoleon, Reading, Romance, Romanticism, suicide, the Romantic Movement, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Werther Fever, writing | 17 Comments

Is Narnia an Allegory? (A Friday Feature from the Vault)

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

No. It’s not.

While tempted to leave it at that and produce the shortest blog of history, I think it is important to let the Narnian himself address the question. C.S. Lewis was, after all, a literary scholar who had written an entire academic book about the development of medieval allegory (The Allegory of Love). He knows what allegory is, when it works well, and how to use it when it is the best genre to use. He liked Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and George Orwell‘s Animal Farm. He himself wrote an allegory, The Pilgrim’s Regress, and never chose to do so again.

When Lewis turned to writing for children and his earlier science fiction books, he could have easily chosen allegory. Instead, he wrote fairy tale and space romances. J.R.R. Tolkien hated allegory “in all its manifestations” (see his 2nd edition foreword to The Fellowship of the Ring). Lewis did not dislike allegory, but he saw greater potential elsewhere. Here is a paraphrase of a note in a letter to Fr. Peter Milward on Sep 22nd, 1956:

Into an allegory a writer can put only what he already knows: in a myth he puts what he does not yet know and could not come to know in any other way.

This is the adventure of fantasy writing. There was far too much unknown in Narnia and in the Ransom books for Lewis to leave them in allegory.

Yet, again and again, from the letters he answered, through published reviews, to academic conversations today, people talk about the allegorical elements in Narnia, and sometimes even call them allegories. Lewis and Tolkien protested similar treatments of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, publishing responses to critics who went astray. But if theses stories really aren’t allegories, how come so many think they are?

This is partly answered in Lewis’ rhetorical question to Wayland Hilton Young on Jan 31st, 1952: “is it possible for any man to write a fantastic story which another man can’t read as an allegory?” Readers experience a kind of gestalt effect: distinctions blur and new images emerge in our reading. It is part of what makes reading a dynamic, adventurous undertaking. It is why we reread books, over and over again.

The other part of the answer is probably equally hopeless to combat.

Clearly, we have no idea what we mean by the word “allegory.” If asked, doubtless educated readers would say something like, “stories where the characters or objects in the story have a one-to-one relationship with some idea or thing in the real world.” When we are pushed to say what this relationship is, it falls apart. The Ring of Power that Frodo must carry is what? Nuclear weaponry? Our dark tendency to dictatorship? Original sin? If we disregard what the author was doing and what his contextual conversations were like, then I suppose the ring could be anything.

Of course, then, we aren’t really saying anything about the text we are reading anyway.

Both Lewis and Tolkien denied this one-to-one relationship existed in their work. It isn’t that there isn’t symbollic value in saying, for example, that Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom is like Christ’s Passion. Or that the undragoning of Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a good image of conversion. And it doesn’t mean that mythopoeic writers are speaking to real life conversations about power and faith and culture.

But calling them “allegory” tells us more about the reader than it does about the books themselves.

I thought it would be helpful to let Lewis himself explain. To Lucy Matthews on Sep 11th, 1958, he wrote:

You’ve got it exactly right. A strict allegory is like a puzzle with a solution: a great romance is like a flower whose smell reminds you of something you can’t quite place.

His most extensive response in letters, though, was to a Mrs. Hook on Dec 29th, 1958. It is such a helpful reading of Lewis’ own writing project that it is worth quoting at length:

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
29 Dec 1958
Dear Mrs Hook
By an allegory I mean a composition (whether pictorial or literary) in wh. immaterial realities are represented by feigned physical objects e.g. a pictured Cupid allegorically represents erotic love (which in reality is an experience, not an object occupying a given area of space) or, in Bunyan, a giant represents Despair.
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair represents Despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, ‘What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?’ This is not an allegory at all. So in ‘Perelandra’. This also works out a supposition. (‘Suppose, even now, in some other planet there were a first couple undergoing the same that Adam and Eve underwent here, but successfully.’)
Allegory and such supposals differ because they mix the real and the unreal in different ways. Bunyan’s picture of Giant Despair does not start from supposal at all. It is not a supposition but a fact that despair can capture and imprison a human soul. What is unreal (fictional) is the giant, the castle, and the dungeon. The Incarnation of Christ in another world is mere supposal: but granted the supposition, He would really have been a physical object in that world as He was in Palestine and His death on the Stone Table would have been a physical event no less than his death on Calvary.
Similarly, if the angels (who I believe to be real beings in the actual universe) have that relation to the Pagan gods which they are assumed to have in Perelandra, they might really manifest themselves in real form as they did to Ransom.
Again, Ransom (to some extent) plays the role of Christ not because he allegorically represents him (as Cupid represents falling in love) but because in reality every real Christian is really called upon in some measure to enact Christ. Of course Ransom does this rather more spectacularly than most. But that does not mean that he does it allegorically. It only means that fiction (at any rate my kind of fiction) chooses extreme cases….
Thank you for the kind things you say about my other works.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis

Posted in Feature Friday, Fictional Worlds, On Writing | Tagged allegory, books, C.S. Lewis, children's literature, Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, fantasy, Fictional Universes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narnia, Ransom Trilogy, Reading, Science Fiction, The Fellowship of the Ring, writing | 21 Comments

On The Importance of Having a Permit, Or Truth-Telling and Our Response to Charlottesville

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

I am a university teacher, and my classroom is a space for many views. It is not quite a “safe space” for any idea. As a participant in the discussion, you would be responsible for slander or plagiarism. You could be expelled for saying something in class, though it has never happened. You are being marked, so making up evidence will probably go badly for you. I expect respect for one another, so although we may mock an idea we don’t mock one another. I expect students to be respectful to guests as they are to me and their peers. Although it is not an all-out space for cold hard facts—we are flesh and blood, not intellectual robots—it is a space for truth-telling, even if the truth is painful.

Although it is not an all-out space for cold hard facts—we are flesh and blood, not intellectual robots—it is a space for truth-telling, even if the truth is painful.

With this in mind, I once invited a white supremacist to address my class. My masters thesis was on antisemitism, and I was teaching a class on religious and anti-religious bigotry, following a class I called “The Anguish of the Jews,” a history of antisemitism. This was in a five-year period where my classes all had this kind of edge. Several times I taught “Atheism, Agnosticism, Atheism, and Belief,” “Religion and the End of the World” (with a focus on cults), and several classes on Islam, terrorism, and the so-called clash of civilizations. I was very interested in the fault lines between various groups, especially as these continental plates moved and shifted and crashed together. I liked debate, and loved what that environment did for student learning.

As part of this crash of ideas, I invited a neo-Nazi to my classroom. He preferred the term racialist, which is how I would have introduced him to students. He is part of a movement that takes up ideas of white purity and European heritage, sometimes mixing it with Christian exclusivism. He wasn’t the first white supremacist I met in Prince Edward Island, but he was the only one I knew that would speak openly about it.

So I invited him to share his views with my students.

Why would I do this? The answer is simple, really: I want to live in a world where people with stupid ideas aren’t inhibited from saying them aloud. Stupidity that is oppressed will grow out of its own energy, fueled by its martyr status. Stupidity that is suppressed will go underground, breeding in increasingly dangerous ways. We have seen this recently in North America and Europe, where movements many thought were dead show new militancy. The anger and frustration against immigrants and people of colour often caught on tape in numerous roadside and grocery store rants are from voices that have been long suppressed. Now that these words are said, they are now in the world and we really know the heart of the ranter, who is our neighbour.

Like I said, it is important for people with stupid ideas—or even stupid people—to say things out loud. Active suppression contributes to the recent balkanization of ideas and radicalization of young people—especially to Islamism, but also to nationalism, racialism, environmental terrorism, and actions against the LGBTQ community. I am against the Canadian laws that imprisoned Ernst Zündel, the notorious holocaust denier and antisemite. As despicable as his ideas are—and as dangerous as they are in the hands of young people—the use of post-9/11 security laws to jail him only legitimized his position. I think it is fine that Canada expelled him and that the Trump administration barred him from the U.S. Perhaps Germany was right to jail him given their history, but I’m not sure. When we evil suppress ideas they breed more evil. I do not mourn his recent passing.

In the end, the local white supremacist didn’t come to my class. He lacked the courage to do so, and I was secretly glad. I believe my students were intelligent enough to slice through his ideas, but I’ve come to realize that truth-telling requires certain contexts. Raw ideas in the cold world are not always as true as the facts behind them. Anyone who has been overheard by the victim of their gossip, or has tried to talk to a kid about sex, or has had to tell a horrible secret, or has sat with a dying person with regrets, or has been an “other” in a dominant culture, knows that truth-telling is done in a context.

The ability to perform contextually sensitive truth-telling comes by many names. Contemporary culture calls it good leadership. The ancient Chinese, Hebrews, and Greeks called it wisdom. St. Paul called it telling the truth in love, and Jesus’ life was both speech and silence, action and submission.

Truth in human context is never just the bald truth of mathematics, digital coding, or colour contrast.

And so Charlottesville. Dear Charlottesville, dear Virginians, dear Americans, I am so sorry for your violence, for your hurt. I grieve for Heather Heyer, the fallen policemen, and America’s lost youth.

Though it’s a day’s drive from Charleston to Charlottesville, anyone who has spent any time in America knows that the murders at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church—a young white man walked in and killed a bunch of seniors and young people praying, including their pastor—are never far from American experience. As soon as I heard of the “Unite the Right Rally” in Charlottesville, I knew there would be trouble. Symbols are never innocent, and a protest filled with swastikas, semi-automatics, Confederate battle flags, and racist placards is going to become violent.

The result was deadly. Dozens hurt, two police troopers lost, and one young woman killed, though she was a half-mile from the epicenter of the rally.

Two questions:

What is the President’s role in the moments after such a tragedy?

What is the Christian response to this issue?

One of the first things I remember seeing on TV was the launch of the spaceship Challenger. One of the astronauts was Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher, so classrooms all over the world were tuned in. I remember my teacher being so stunned as the aircraft exploded that she forgot to turn the TV off. Later, the Good Morning America President, Ronald Reagan, left us with these iconic words about why bad things happen: “It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.”

That was my first vision of a President in childhood, and it’s hard to forget it. I remember as a college student how Bill Clinton, beleaguered by the Oklahoma City bombing, tried to forge a path of balance between discipline and liberty, and drew Billy Graham to the platform for a Christian response to “Christian” terrorism. Barack Obama’s Sandy Hook and Charleston speeches were moving and supportive. Even George Bush, whose Iraq war has led to so much unnecessary suffering, was able to connect and show how deeply he felt the 9/11 tragedy.

So, thinking of our two questions, how should President Donald Trump have responded? These are his first words:

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

With no reference to the act against the victims of terrorism, this President showed his true qualities. The fascination in the media has been about the “racist” remarks of the President. It isn’t what he said that’s racist, but the fact that he tried to hold together those who “cherish our history and our future,” with no differentiation of blame. To quote the President on a previous terrorist attack, “we have to say the words,” we have to name the enemy. If he was just responding to a riot then his statement is fine, provided it is followed with a sense of strength and purpose. It was not followed by such a statement, and a riot is not all that happened.

The next day, Trump did follow up with a statement condemning neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups, but used a press conference the following day to clarify that he wants to condemn violence and hatred on all sides.

How should the President respond?

He should respond like a President, with truth and honour, showing vision and courage and wisdom that rises above the indignity of the tragedy to show the dignity of his office. A President sides with the victims of terrorism. This President should respond as he would if the terrorist was brown or had an Arab accent: to condemn in no uncertain terms the act and all those that are connected with it. Full stop. Then, with more wisdom but some of the courage of George Bush, to move against the perpetrators. As Bush said following 9/11, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” Would that this President could back his many disavowals of white supremacists by holding their feet to the fire.

If this President were half the man of Bush, Obama, or Reagan–or even a quarter of the human being–he would have know when to speak and what to say.

Instead, this President has responded by claiming that he was waiting to know all the facts. And he will continue to respond to criticism with this statement, made in the first press conference on another question:

“if anyone disagrees you can leave the room right now.”

How should the President respond? He should respond like a President, comforting the hurt and leading America to grander future.

There will come a time to know all the facts, a time when protestors and counter-protestors will be charged, where police forces will be criticized, where policy and court challenges will clarify and blame, where cooler heads will recognize the alt-Right is not the same as conservativism, or that it was not one thing that happened in Charlottesville but many. Republicans will go through a terrifying period of soul-searching where they try to find out what they lost about conservative values and normal people in their hunt for conservative power and populism. There will come a time when alarmist media and critics will see the damage they are doing when they leave out the whole story for the sake of their progressive vision.

The wounded will heal, the dead will be laid to rest, and we will come to speak of Charlottesville the way I discuss things in my classroom. But, Mr. President, the time for that kind of conversation is not while the bodies of terrorist victims are still warm and the wounded are still being triaged.

Trump’s focus on the neo-Nazi permit to protest, besides being a shockingly selective picture of what happened, shows that the President does not have wisdom in his speech. There will be a time to think about permits, but the time is not now. A young one is dead.

The President should know this. My kid did.

How do Christians respond?

Christians are part of a Semitic religion that began in Asia with African roots, where its God came to Earth as a poor Jewish carpenter’s son whose skin tone is more like your average mideast Arab than any American white supremacist.

Christians reject all claims to racial supremacy. We are a global, intergenerational community that is more ethnically diverse than any institution on earth. Our vision for heaven is multicultural, as is our vision for our communities.

We are part of a faith that has at its centre the giving up of power, the laying down of our selves, the call to meekness as we follow the example of Christ on the cross. Christians reject all power leveraged against the weak and all acts of terror.

Contrary to what the President said, Christians are not American first, but seek to infuse America with the heart of the gospel, which is the self-sacrificial love of Christ.

Christians pray for victims and the victimizers. And where they live in that community they cook meals, donate money, open doors, and give support to the bereaved and the broken.

Christians unite with the oppressed, stand by the persecuted, and support those who are victimized—with no reservations about lifestyle or policy.

Christians condemn in no uncertain terms the ideologies of race and fear that come from Ernst Zündel, the KKK and groups like David Duke’s alt-right movement. This worldly pattern is Rome and not Jerusalem, and we reject it and all temptations to give them an inch of our allegiance.