"The Mystical World of George MacDonald" Movie Script
The following is the script I wrote for my movie on George MacDonald. I'm supplying it because I've been asked by various people from other countries about using it on their GMD websites and adding subtitles to the movie which they would then upload to YouTube (or whoever) for their country.
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The Mystical World of George MacDonald
Script by Charles W Seper Jr
PIC OF PLATO
Do you know where the word phantasm comes from? It comes from Plato's name and his notion that there was such a thing as objective reality but that the five senses of the body didn't pick it up correctly, so reality he thought, was a somewhat hazy world for all people. Reality is fuzzy.
SHAKESPEARE PIC
William Shakespeare in The Tempest said:
SHOW LETTERS OVER PHOTO
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
PIC OF DREAMS (2)
Do we even know when we're asleep or when we're truly awake? Could the reality we experience when we're asleep be made of the same substance we experience when we're awake? Are the two somehow tied together by a fabric of consciousness that we intuit, yet don't quite understand? Is this world of sleep and dreams the spirit world that religions speak of? And are there just the two worlds? Could there be more, perhaps many? Are these other worlds just parallel dimensions of the one we experience when awake but running on their own separate, yet connected, time lines like a many faceted diamond?
INSERT MAGICAIN PIC (LEVI) MAYBE MORE THAN ONE
It’s a profound mystery. There are those who have spent most of their lives trying to comprehend this mystery, would-be magicians for instance, who think they can pull on the puppet-master's strings and change the world to their liking. The Magician first seeks out a way to access the spirit world, to glimpse its inner workings and hopefully to converse with those who reside there. He then goes out in search of relationships between these two worlds, and therein lies what he believes to be magical correspondences and the ability to control them. He, so often wrapped in his own lust for power, never for a moment considers that perhaps these are things he was never meant to understand, let alone control.
SHOW ELIXIRS COVER
From Ronald Taylor's translation of The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffman:
SHOW LETTERS OVER PHOTO
I came to feel that what we call simply dream and imagination might represent the secret thread that runs through our lives and links its varied facets; and that the man who thinks that, because he has perceived this, he has acquired the power to break the thread and challenge that mysterious force which rules us, is to be given up as lost.
DANIEL & ANGEL PIC
There are also those, like Abraham or Daniel of the bible, whom the world has found it reasonable to refer to as the mystic, that is, someone who has had direct contact with the divine, yet not through their own initiation, but rather, because the divinity drew them in. And like the magician, the mystic also walks in two worlds following a trail of breadcrumbs, never knowing for sure where it will lead. But unlike the magician, the mystic never went out in search of breadcrumbs. The trail came looking for him. And that trail, Abraham and others like him, referred to as The Word Of The Lord.
SHOW LETTERS: The Word Of The Lord
SUMERIAN RUINS AND PAINTING OF ZIGGURAT PICS
We can't, of course, know what the ancients meant by that phrase. We do know that, like many spiritual words and phraseology we find in the bible, that the earliest known use of them came from the Sumerians who were in all likelihood the forefathers of Abraham's family. But in searching out the Sumerian writings we still don't get any solid notion of what was meant when they referred to the word of the Lord. Sometimes it may seem the Jews and the Sumerians both meant something akin to an actual voice discernable to the ears. Other times they seem to be talking about a kind of intuition—an inner knowledge. And still other times they seem to be recounting a dreamlike vision full of things that they don't quite understand. The language of the angels would seem to be that of symbolism and metaphor. This is most often the language of dreams and ...
FADE IN FAIRY PIC
the language spoken in the land between the worlds, that place known to Romantic authors as the land of fairy (or faerie). And when writers try to communicate the knowledge of this enchanted land they often communicate it in the same form in which they received it. Perhaps they do this because they simply know no other way of expressing that which they themselves never fully comprehend.
GMD PIC
George MacDonald, known best today for his fairytales, both for children and adults, said:
LETTERS OVER PIC
The Greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.
...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.
He goes on to say that Nature rouses that something which is, "...deeper than the understanding—the power that underlies thought."
CHESTERTON PIC
G.K. Chesterton said of MacDonald:
...when he comes to be more carefully studied as a mystic, as I think he will be when people discover the possibility of collecting jewels scattered in a rather irregular setting, it will be found, I fancy, that he stands for a rather important turning point in the history of Christendom, as representing the particular Christian nation of the Scots. As protestants speak of the morning stars of the reformation, we may be allowed to note such names here and there as morning stars of the reunion.
GMD Pic
George MacDonald had a profound effect on his readers. Oddly, while he is best remembered today for his fantasy tales, materialism had a terrible, strong hold on the inhabitants of the 19th century, and so, it was his novels that made him popular in his own day. But even in his novels the reader will find a strong touch of the metaphysical that so dominated his thoughts. MacDonald drew an enjoyment from reading books even as a young boy that encompassed all the typical poetic elements of elusiveness that so engage the mystical minded.
ABERDEEN PIC
By his late teens, as a student at King's College in Aberdeen, young George was already reading Shelley, Coleridge, James Hogg, and Tom Moore while also finding time to write poetry of his own. He had a powerful intellect, winning 3rd prize in Chemistry and 4th in Natural Philosophy, subjects he would lecture on years later at a Ladies' College to earn some much needed money. For a time he seriously considered going into medicine, but lack of funds forced him to retire the notion, and instead he devoted his energy to literature and languages. In time, having graduating with his Master of Arts, but still having no clear cut career choice, he decided to enter Highbury College where he would try his hand at theology. After two years there, he finally set upon what would seem to be his rightful course in life, that of a church minister.
KING'S COLLEGE PIC
It must be said that the majority of the people in his congregations took to the young preacher. However, his conscience would never allow him to speak anything he believed to be untrue, especially regarding God, the bible, or the faith, and so, he found himself at odds with clergymen and deacons nearly everywhere he tried to preach in these early days, mainly because of what some thought to be at least a somewhat Universalistic outlook and his anti-predestination stance, which in Calvanist Scotland at that time would have been considered something closing in on heretical. MacDonald only lasted around two years as a fulltime preacher. During this time, however, he had his first book published. Within and Without, a book length poem, appeared in 1855. George MacDonald was thirty one. And while it may seem that all his years of schooling had failed to bring him a substantial income, it was at least becoming clear what the future had in mind for him.
PHANTASTES COVER
In 1857 he had a second book of poetry published, but in 1858 his groundbreaking fairytale for adults—Phantastes—met with great success and finally put him on the map as a fiction writer. The map would have to adjust.
LEWIS PIC
C.S. Lewis, the author of The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, Out of the Silent Planet and several other classics, regarded MacDonald in as high esteem as one author can hold another. He quoted from him in nearly every book he wrote even putting together, George MacDonald an Anthology, taken mostly from MacDonald's religious writings.
ANTHOLOGY COVER
It was Phantastes that first introduced Lewis to MacDonald. He spoke of it in the introduction to his anthology:
It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought--almost unwillingly, for I had looked at the volume on that bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions--the Everyman edition of Phantastes. A few hours later I knew I had crossed a great frontier... What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptize ... my imagination.
Phantastes opens with a quote from Novalis, part of which says:
NOVALIS PIC
One can imagine stories without rational cohesion and yet filled with associations, like dreams, and poems ... full of beautiful words, but also without rational sense and connections ....
....
In a genuine fairy-story, everything must be miraculous, mysterious, and interrelated, everything must be alive, each in its own way.
FAIRY PIC
Phantastes is a book full of stories that would be disconnected from one another with the exception that one person, Anodos [pronounced "Ặ'nŏthŏs" in Greek], is a part of them all just as we are always within our dreams however detached they may seem. Anodos is the central character of Phantastes. He arrives in the land of fairy by way of awakening in the morning after his twenty first birthday to find that his surroundings are much different than that to which he is accustomed to seeing in his bedroom. A stream is running through it now, and a path by the stream rambles to a wooded area. Anodos gets up and washes in the stream. Other events in the story lead us to surmise some time later that this washing may symbolize an important event. The young man decides to follow the path into the woods, but interestingly, when he gets to the tree line he leaves the path and instead forges his own way through the woods, all the while, chastising himself for having done so because his instincts were telling him to stay to the path. Later in the story, Anodos follows another stream into a castle:
LETTERS:
According to my custom since I first entered Fairy Land, of taking for a guide whatever I first found moving in any direction, I followed the stream from the basin of the fountain. It led me to a great open door ...
Anodos is from the Greek and can mean several things pertaining to a path, but in this case MacDonald makes use of the clearest general meaning of the word--without a path.
LETTERS: WITHOUT A PATH
FAIRY/SHADOW PIC
The young wanderer will spend many days in this new world meeting along the way several inhabitants of the land, the most important of which are women, and one thing that is most particularly neither man nor woman, but a shadow, a shadow which is very persistent in its pursuit of Anodos. Just prior to this Anodos is put back onto the path by the tenants of a small cottage in the woods, but after meeting the shadow he is seized with terror and thinks no longer of the path, but of fleeing the shadow. This shade is no different than the mirror image we all have while standing in the sun except this particular silhouette heeds no consideration as to the sun's position or even cares if there is a sun. It is simply unrelenting. The gloomy darkness which Anodos refers to as his, "demon shadow", plays the role of a deceiver. It suggests the things he sees in the fairy world are something different than they really are and even hides things from his vision.
As his days unfold in this strange land, Anodos, by the help of the many strangers he meets upon the way, would learn, by and by, to follow the paths they locate for him. This comes at the price of losing his pride, and as the final strands of his pride disappear, so does the image of his shadowy companion. One of the strangers Anodos meets in this country is a knight whose rusty armor is, bit by bit, made clean from the blows of noble battles. This provides us with a secondary metaphor that is symbolic of losing one's pride. At its heart that is what this story is about. And, it is essentially what the majority of all great tales have to teach us. They're directions for the cleaning up of the soul and of the soul's chief source of decay--pride. There was still, and always would be, a big part of the country parson in George MacDonald.
GMD PIC
He says in a letter to his uncle, James MacDonald:
LETTERING:
...the conviction is, I think, growing upon me that the smallest events are ordered for us, while yet in perfect consistency with the ordinary course of cause and effect in the world. I am strongly inclined to think that whatever has a moral effect of any kind on our minds, God manages for us ... How far the events of those who do not at all seek to serve Him are controlled by him ... is a question about which I have no opinion at all--at least not a settled one.
PIC OF ST FRANCIS
That reads very much like the typical, ordinary, everyday thoughts of a mystic, someone whose mind is always tearing away at the veil of materialism. And it takes a mystical kind of mind to both hear and to follow--the word of the Lord. It’s a mind that's always listening, always at work intuiting the deeper things within the sphere of his/her existence. MacDonald almost seems to embrace quietism in a passage from his novel, What's Mines, Mine.
LETTERING:
When you have got quite alone, sit down and be lonely ... fold your hands in your lap, and be still. Do not try to think anything ... by and by, it may be, you will begin to know something of nature. Nature will soon speak to you, or not until, as Henry Vaughn says, some veil be broken in you.
ZIGGURAT PAINTING PIC
The ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia weren't the only ones to have no clear notion as to what that term--the word of the Lord--meant. Theologians have disagreed for 2,000-years as to what it signifies when presented in biblical passages. Some say it refers to the Torah only (the first five books of the bible). Some say it refers specifically to prophecies that designate themselves as being the word of the Lord. Others say that New Testament authors were speaking of the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament) since that's what they most likely used and quoted from most often. Still others point to the ten commandments. And most importantly of all, Jesus, the Word that became a living, breathing human representing God himself within the cosmic play--The Book of Life. It may be that all are correct to some degree. We may, however, find in MacDonald something that suggests a new way of envisioning this phrase.
ABRAHAM/PATH PIC
When Abraham heard the word of the Lord, he was told, or perhaps intuited, that he was to, "Get up and go to a land that I will show you." We can't help but wonder if he even had any notion as to which direction he was to set off in. The text mentions nothing of how Abraham was to find his way to this new place. Yet he does find it. How? We may surmise that Abraham followed the natural course of events in his daily life, that he traveled the route that made itself available to him, that he listened to an inner voice while following outward signs. This is exactly what Anodos does in Phantastes. And, when he begins to meander off-course, a situation will present itself that tells him he's off-track, and a better path-choice will open up to him. We may suggest here that MacDonald is trying with his novel to teach us a new meaning of--the word of the Lord. It is very simply--a path. It is a path full of symbolic meanings in everyday occurrences, a path with obstacles that must be traversed, a path with choices that await our choosing, and with those choices comes the fashioning of our character.
GMD AS MR GREATHEART PIC
Pilgrim's Progress was a story that set a mold for followers of the path. It's a prototype that's been adhered to by most great authors at some point in their lives ever since.
LILI AS CHRISTIANA PIC
It’s the idea of a voyager taking a journey and what happens to him along the way. Or, perhaps we should rather say, what he learns and becomes while navigating the path.
LEWIS PIC
C.S. Lewis used this mold for almost every story he wrote. His characters were nearly always going places, having adventures along the way, and building character in the process whether they were traveling to Mars, Venus, Narnia, or taking a bus ride through Purgatory. It's no surprise that we find his literary father, George MacDonald, also employing this same storybook device so very often.
GMD PIC
He tells of people traveling through dream worlds, taking trips through mirrors to strange lands, following a silver thread through mountain caves, and even traveling to the back of the north wind. Obedience to one's conscience is at the heart of the journey and a willingness to be led.
LETTERING:
From Volume 2 of Unspoken Sermons MacDonald says, "Obedience is the joining of the links of the eternal round. Obedience is but the other side of the creative will. Will is God's will, obedience is man's will; the two make one."
It's when Anodos learns to play his role in the eternal round that his journey finally comes to an end.
TORAH/BIBLE PIC
If we think of--the word of the Lord--as being merely a literary work, a particular bible for instance, or the Torah (as many Jews do in fact believe), we are left with something that may be a great help to us in our most cogent hours of study and reflection, yet something utterly devoid of value at other moments. If we're lost in a cave no bible will tell us which passage to take. Nor will the Torah tell you which direction is north in a land of darkness beneath the earth. It's in these hours of desperation that the word of the Lord takes on a greater meaning for us and something more personal as well. Holy books are written for the many. Intuiting the voice of God, a voice not of reason but simply of direction, is a personal experience that comes with making a choice, whether choosing a passage in a cave, a mate, a career, or a home. In a nutshell, it’s the bequest of wisdom. We may find several choices available to us at times that seem equally agreeable or disagreeable, with no clear way of deciding between them. Here we may do well to follow MacDonald's advice to: "fold your hands in your lap, and be still ... until ... some veil be broken in you." C.S. Lewis takes the passage in a cave metaphor to an unimaginable level in his sci-fi novel, Perelandra.
GMD WITH CONTEMPORARY WRITERS
George MacDonald reached his greatest popularity during the 1870's. In 1872 a call came from the fashionable lecture tour company--Redpath & Fall of Boston--for him to consider a tour of the United States. He accepted, and the tour ensued during the winter of 1872-73.
LOUISA PIC
Going with MacDonald would be his wife, Louisa,
GREVILLE PIC
and their eldest son, Greville.
HARBOR SHIP PIC
They arrived in Boston Harbor on September 30 aboard the Cunard SS Malta.
During the tour MacDonald would lecture on the subjects of Robert Burns, Shakespeare (particularly Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth), Tom Hood, Tennyson, and Milton. The poetry of Robert Burns was at its height in the USA during this period, and subsequently it was on the topic of Burns that MacDonald was asked to lecture more often than not.
HALL PIC
His lectures were a great success. His second lecture was in the big city of Boston at the Lyceum Concert Hall where he spoke to standing room only crowds of over 2,800. In fact, he sold out many auditoriums he spoke in, even having filled all 3,500 seats of the Philadelphia Opera House.
Although the MacDonald's time in America was one busy with work, they did take the opportunity to visit a few sights. They saw Niagara Falls; watched Edward Askew Sothern in the role of Lord Dundreary in his humorous play Our American Cousin; saw Sir Walter Scott's play--Guy Mannering; took in a piano recital by Anton Rubinstein;
BOOTH PIC
BOOTH AUDIO OVER PIC GRADUALLY
and even saw the famous actor--Edwin Booth--brother to John Wilkes Booth, play the role of Hamlet.
PICS OF:
TWAIN
HOLMES
WARNER
EMERSON
REID
MORAN
George MacDonald would make several lifelong friends in America, many of them literary giants. Among them were Samuel Clemmons, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Dudley Warner, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Whitelaw Reid, and the painter--Thomas Moran.
HAUNTED HOUSE
It was a painting by Moran of a haunted house that inspired MacDonald's poem: The Haunted House.
MALTA SINKING PIC
Interestingly, the Cunard SS Malta which brought the MacDonalds to America sunk in 1889 near Kenidjack Castle off the coast of Cornwall in Land's End, England. The wreck is in sections and lies in about 10 meters of water. Today it's a popular destination for divers. She was built in 1865, was over 300 feet in length, weighed a little more than 2,000 tons, and could carry nearly her weight in cargo. All passengers escaped, and most of the cargo was recovered as well.
GMD PIC
MacDonald was as far from being a religious fundamentalist as a Christian could be, and yet at the same time had an unquestionable fondness for his bible. But he never let his fondness cloud his judgment. The scholar in MacDonald would question any biblical passage that he felt would cast God in an unsavory light or that didn't stand to reason—how could he not and keep his integrity? It was more than mere scholarship and philosophy that caused him to question the concept of eternal torture however; his God-given conscience travailed at the very thought of such a state for any soul to be in.
LETTERING:
Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin.... Punishment, I repeat, is not the thing required of God, but the absolute destruction of sin. What better is the world, what better is the sinner, what better is God, what better is the truth, that the sinner should suffer—continue suffering to all eternity? Would there be less sin in the universe? Would there be any making-up for sin? Would it show God justified in doing what he knew would bring sin into the world, justified in making creatures who he knew would sin? What setting-right would come of the sinner's suffering? If justice demand it, if suffering be the equivalent for sin, then the sinner must suffer, then God is bound to exact his suffering, and not pardon; and so the making of man was a tyrannical deed, a creative cruelty. But grant that the sinner has deserved to suffer, no amount of suffering is any atonement for his sin. To suffer to all eternity could not make up for one unjust word.
GMD PIC
Of course many people accused George MacDonald of Universalism because of his stance on hell; however, it wasn't that MacDonald thought there couldn't be a hell, but rather, that if there was such a state, either no one would go there or that they wouldn't stay there long if they did. He instead thought that hell might be more of a metaphor symbolizing hardships in this life, a "refining fire", that was only meant to last as long as was needed to bring about repentance in the sufferer. Otherwise it would seem pointless.
GMD PIC
George MacDonald's deepest convictions concerning the bible, biblical inspiration, and what it takes to truly be a Christian were probably best summed up in a letter he wrote to an unidentified woman that had written him (apparently expressing disapproval), asking why he had left so much of the old faith behind. It may be the most important document ever written against the core of Christian fundamentalist teaching—biblical infallibility.
LETTERING OVER PIC
Have you really been reading my books, and at this time ask me what have I lost of the old faith? Much have I rejected of the new, but I have never rejected anything I could keep, and have never turned to gather again what I had once cast away. With the faith itself to be found in the old Scottish manse I trust I have a true sympathy. With many of the forms gathered around that faith and supposed by the faithful to set forth and explain their faith, I have none. At a very early age I had begun to cast them from me; but all the time my faith in Jesus as the Son of the Father of men and the Savior of us all, has been growing. If it were not for the fear of its sounding unkind, I would say that if you had been a disciple of his instead of mine, you would not have mistaken me so much. Do not suppose that I believe in Jesus because it is said so-and-so in a book. I believe in him because he is himself. The vision of him in that book, and, I trust, his own living power in me, have enabled me to understand him, to look him in the face, as it were, and accept him as my Master and Savior, in following whom I shall come to the rest of the Father's peace. The Bible is to me the most precious thing in the world, because it tells me his story; and what good men thought about him who know him and accepted him. But, the common theory of the inspiration of the words, instead of the breathing of God's truth into the hearts and souls of those who wrote it, and who then did their best with it, is degrading and evil; and they who hold it are in danger of worshipping the letter instead of living in the Spirit, of being idolaters of the Bible instead of disciples of Jesus.... It is Jesus who is the Revelation of God, not the Bible; that is but a means to a mighty eternal end. The book is indeed sent us by God, but it nowhere claims to be His very word. If it were—and it would be no irreverence to say it—it would have been a good deal better written. Yet even its errors and blunders do not touch the truth, and are the merest trifles—dear as the little spot of earth on the whiteness of the snowdrop. Jesus alone is The Word of God.
With all sorts of doubt I am familiar, and the result of them is, has been, and will be, a widening of my heart and soul and mind to greater glories of the truth—the truth that is in Jesus—and not in Calvin or Luther or St. Paul or St. John, save as they got it from Him, from whom every simple heart may have it, and can alone get it. You cannot have such proof of the existence of God or the truth of the Gospel story as you can have of a proposition in Euclid or a chemical experiment. But the man who will order his way by the word of the Master shall partake of his peace, and shall have in himself a growing conviction that in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge....
One thing more I must say: though the Bible contains many an utterance of the will of God, we do not need to go there to find how to begin to do his will. In every heart there is a consciousness of some duty or other required of it: that is the will of God. He who would be saved must get up and do that will—if it be but to sweep a room or make an apology, or pay a debt. It was he who had kept the commandments whom Jesus invited to be his follower in poverty and labour....
GMD PIC
Something else that troubled George MacDonald just as deeply was the Calvanistic stance on predestination. He would write of the subject later in life: "I well remember feeling as a child that I did not care for God to love me if he did not love everybody."
Fortunately for young George, his father had similar reservations concerning Calvinism.
GMD SENIOR PIC
George MacDonald Senior would write to his son in 1850:
Like you, I cannot by any means give in to the extreme points either of Calvinism or Arminianism, nor can I bear to see that which is evidently gospel mystery torn to pieces by those who believe there is no mystery in the scriptures and therefore attempt to explain away what is evidently for the honor of God to conceal. I see so much of mystery in nature, and so much of it in myself, that it would be a proof to my mind that the scriptures were not from God were there nothing in them beyond the grasp of my own mind.
LILITH COVER
MacDonald's greatest work was probably his last fantasy—Lilith, a novel spoken of in reverent tones by thinking Christians the world over. Even his own family lightheartedly referred to it as "the revelation of St. George". MacDonald used his stories as a platform to teach us his unique insights into spiritual matters.
RONALD PIC
His son Ronald tells us that his father felt that, although denied a regular church pastorate, God had given him his writing skills to replace it with. He would not waste his gift simply to supply the reader with sentimentality. Instead he uses the finale of Lilith to make two broad and refined statements. The first is a short discourse on the problems inherit within psychology. Freud and his contemporaries were already building a reputation at the turn of the 20th century that largely took advantage of the materialistic ideology that was by now in full steam. In another decade or so,
CHESTERTON PIC
G.K. Chesterton would be holding well publicized debates with
WELLS PIC
H.G. Wells
DARROW PIC
Clarence Darrow, and
SHAW PIC
George Bernard Shaw on topics concerning religious belief.
GMD PIC
The psychological notion of mystical states of consciousness somehow magically being produced in our minds, by our minds, and without our knowledge of it, brought about dismay to the intellect of MacDonald. It brought scorn and laughter to the mind of Chesterton. But, much of the rest of the world seemed ready to accept such a proposal without question (and apparently without much thought). MacDonald addresses this topic while allowing Mr. Vane to have a conversation with his self. Or was it his self that he was conversing with?
LETTERING:
In moments of doubt I cry,
"Could God Himself create such lovely things as I dreamed?"
"Whence then came thy dream?" answers Hope.
"Out of my dark self, into the light of my consciousness."
"But whence first into thy dark self?" rejoins Hope.
"My brain was its mother, and the fever in my blood its father."
"Say rather," suggests Hope, "thy brain was the violin whence it issued, and the fever in thy blood the bow that drew it forth.—But who made the violin? and who guided the bow across its strings? Say rather, again—who set the song birds each on its bough in the tree of life, and startled each in its order from its perch? Whence came the fantasia? and whence the life that danced thereto? Didst thou say, in the dark of thy own unconscious self, 'Let beauty be; let truth seem!' and straightway beauty was, and truth but seemed?"
Man dreams and desires; God broods and wills and quickens.
When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when Another gives it him, that Other is able to fulfill it.
SPIRITUALISTS PIC
Let us remember that MacDonald wrote this great work at the turn of that century where Spiritualism, along with its comrades, occultism and magic, were being practiced at an all-time high throughout both America and Great Britain. It held a particular attraction for writers of the day; from Tennyson to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but also for society at large; from American First Lady, Mary Lincoln, to British Prime Minister, William Gladstone. It was also being examined by some of MacDonald's closest friends (much to his chagrin), such as
LADY TEMPLE PIC
Lady Cowper-Temple
RUSKIN PIC
...and John Ruskin.
MIRROR PAINTING PIC
Lilith's central character, Mr. Vane, traveled to another world through a mirror many years before MacDonald's friend Lewis Carroll would send young Alice on adventures through her looking glass. We must remember that Mr. Vane never initiated the experience, but rather, he was drawn in to this other world by the power of God. On Lilith's final pages, MacDonald preaches his staunchest warning yet to occultists who would like to knock down the doors that bar us from forbidden worlds rather than wait to be drawn in by God.
LETTERING:
I have never again sought the mirror. The hand sent me back: I will not go out again by that door! "All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come." [Quoting Job 14:14]
Now and then, when I look round on my books, they seem to waver as if a wind rippled their solid mass, and another world were about to break through. Sometimes when I am abroad, a like thing takes place; the heavens and the earth, the trees and the grass appear for a moment to shake as if about to pass away; then, lo, they have settled again into the old familiar face! At times I seem to hear whisperings around me, as if some that loved me were talking of me; but when I would distinguish the words, they cease, and all is very still. I know not whether these things rise in my brain, or enter it from without. I do not seek them; they come, and I let them go.
DOOR PIC
The mysticism of Mr. Vane, and the only mysticism George MacDonald will allow for in the life of a Christian, is one that comes with a large dose of self restraint. "I wait; asleep or awake, I wait", he says. The kind of spiritual adventure that occurred in the life of Mr. Vane should not be expected by all Christians. Nor should those who undergo such an experience be thought of as more blessed than others. MacDonald might also have added the refrain, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed". Among the central attainments that Mr. Vane took from his explorations were patience, self restraint, and forbearance—the very things he least expected to come away with when he started his journey. If hell is getting what you want until you're sick of it, as C.S. Lewis once suggested, perhaps heaven, at least in some measure, is getting what you least expect.
LILITH COVER AGAIN
Lilith is a marvel of English literature. There's never been anything like it in the least except for MacDonald's own Phantastes completed some forty years earlier. And while neither book has ever had the wide following most of the author's fans would have hoped for, it could well be that these books were only meant to be read and comprehended by a select few. MacDonald probably wouldn't have had it any other way.
GMD PIC
George MacDonald might have done a good many other things with his life had there been more time to do them. He was a pretty fair carpenter and a fine leather worker. One of his hobbies was making new bindings for old books. He could read German, French, Italian, Dutch, Greek, Latin, and Spanish and could have easily spent his days immersed in translator's work. His first published literary effort was a translation of the German poems of Novalis which MacDonald published himself in a small run for friends and family in 1851. In 1876 Strahan published his translations again of Novalis along with songs and poems by Luther, Heine, Goethe, and others from both German and Italian. MacDonald had two thorns in his side: bad lungs due to constant bouts with bronchitis and asthma which made physical labor difficult, and the complete lack of common sense among those who sat in positions of authority at the church he was pastor of for such a short time, and it was because of these adversities that he became a writer.
In his younger years, despite his damaged lungs, he was said to have been quite an athlete—a swift and cunning boxer.
GMD W SONS CLOSEUP ON GMD AND THEN TRUCK OUT TO SEE THE SONS
Starting in the mid 1870's, he was able to live in Italy during the winter months. This did wonders for his lungs and brought new vigor to him. As can be seen in this photograph taken on or slightly before 1879 of George MacDonald with several of his sons standing against a rocky hillside in Italy, and although in his late forties, Macdonald still looks like the best athlete in the bunch, with an obvious boxer's build about him. Young Maurice would die of tuberculosis later that year.
TRUCK TO MAURICE IN THE PIC
MARY PIC
Incidentally, Wilfred Dodgson, the brother of Lewis Carroll, taught MacDonald's daughter, Mary, to box. She was a very atheletic girl. Sadly, tuberculosis, or consumption as it was called in those days, would also take her life a short time later as well.
CAROLINE GRACE PIC
A few years later, their daughter, Caroline Grace would also succumb to TB, as would her only child at the age of nine.
The MacDonalds would also live to see their eldest daughter
LILY PIC
Lily, die before them, again—of TB. It would go on to take the lives of their daughter-in-law, and even some of their grandchildren. They began to refer to tuberculosis as the family attenednt.
GMD OLDER PIC
Despite his success as a writer, MacDonald would struggle financially most of his life. There was a split in the ownership of one of his publishers, after which, despite selling more of them now, he found that he could not get nearly as much for his books as he had years earlier.
GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY PIC
Louisa would die in 1902, three years before her husband. The deaths of his wife, and his daughter, Lily, particularly traumatized him. Yet he would always talk of how very little adversity he had faced in his life, as though he were specially blessed among men. His final years would have a bleakness in them however. His mind became increasingly foggy, and he stopped writing altogether in 1897.
GMD PIC
About this same time, he came down with a severe skin disease that was so painful he could barely sleep for at least two full years. It's not known exactly what occurred, some think it was a stroke, but around 1900 he lost his ability to talk and never regained it. The only blessing it seemed was that, with the loss of his voice, his skin conditioned cleared up, he was able to sleep again, and his mind became brighter. Still, he quietly awaited his death, seldom leaving the house for the last seven years of his natural life. But, though full of sadness, he never lost his faith that there was a greater good coming to him—something too good for him to know, as he so often would write. Greville tells us that he appeared to be waiting for his wife to come through the door one final time to take him to his true home, and that whenever anyone came to the house, he would look up with anxious eyes to see who it was, and once having seen that it was not his beloved Louisa, would let out a sigh and go back to his vigil. One cannot help but be reminded of the closing words of Lilith through the voice of Mr. Vane as he looks forward to his time of departure when he will see his Lona once again.
LETTERING:
"I wait; asleep or awake, I wait... Novalis says, 'Our life is no dream, but it should and will perhaps become one.'"
GMD OLDEST PIC
George MacDonald went to his rest at nearly eighty one years of age, September 18, 1905, and while much of his contemporary Scotland doted on his novels during his lifetime, many years later through influential authors like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, it was his fantasy stories—his fairytales for children and adults alike—that would finally take the forefront in the public's admiration just as he believed they eventually would. A centenary celebration was held in 1924 in honor of what would have been George MacDonald's one hundredth birthday.
GKC PIC
G.K. Chesterton was chairman of the event.
PROGRAM PIC
While a program survives showing the featured speakers and singers, some of them MacDonald's own sons and daughters, we have no transcription of all the wonderful speeches and anecdotes that must have been presented that day. We can imagine though that Chesterton's wit would have been at full throttle, and he might well have at some point given a humorous talk on the importance of fairy stories such as this from his essay, The Dragon's Grandmother.
LETTERING:
I listened to what he said about the society politely enough, I hope; but when he incidentally mentioned that he did not believe in fairy tales, I broke out beyond control. "Man," I said, "who are you that you should not believe in fairy tales? It is much easier to believe in Blue Beard than to believe in you. A blue beard is a misfortune; but there are green ties which are sins. It is far easier to believe in a million fairy tales than to believe in one man who does not like fairy tales. I would rather kiss Grimm instead of a Bible and swear to all his stories as if they were thirty-nine articles than say seriously and out of my heart that there can be such a man as you; that you are not some temptation of the devil or some delusion from the void. Look at these plain, homely, practical words. 'The Dragon's Grandmother,' that is all right; that is rational almost to the verge of rationalism. If there was a dragon, he had a grandmother. But you—you had no grandmother! If you had known one, she would have taught you to love fairy tales. You had no father, you had no mother; no natural causes can explain you. You cannot be. I believe many things which I have not seen; but of such things as you it may be said, 'Blessed is he that has seen and yet has disbelieved."
CLOSEUP OF PHILIP, THEN TRUCKING OUT
MacDonald's sons, Greville and Ronald, would also go on to author several books. They never reached the success of their father, but Ronald's son, Philip, would go to Hollywood in 1931 and become one of the most successful detective novelists and screen writers ever. He wrote stories for such notable characters as Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, even Perry Mason, while also doing stories and screen adaptations for John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, John Houston, and Agatha Christie among scores of others. His last great novel, The List of Adrian Messenger, would become a classic film of the 1960's starring such notables as Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, and Frank Sinatra. He also trained equestarin horses and raised great danes. Philip died in 1980 having kept the MacDonald legacy of writers a long and healthy one. The world may never see another one like it. But just maybe, one is enough.
ROLL CREDITS
Labels: George MacDonald Script
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