"C.S.Lewis "George MacDonald. An Antology" (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

as soon as you have mastered its contents, and the words (those of Lempriere
would have done) are going to be forgotten as soon as you have mastered the
Myth. In poetry the words are the body and the "theme" or "content" is the
soul. But in myth the imagined events are the body and something
inexpressible is the soul: the words, or mime, or film, or pictorial series
are not even clothes-they are not much more than a telephone. Of this I had
evidence some years ago when I first heard the story of Kafka's Castle
related in conversation and afterwards read the book for myself. The reading
added nothing. I had already received the myth, which was all that mattered.
Most myths were made in prehistoric times, and, I suppose, not
consciously made by individuals at all. But every now and then there occurs
in the modern world a genius-a Kafka or a Novalis-who can make such a story.
MacDonald is the greatest genius of this kind whom I know. But I do not know
how to classify such genius. To call it literary genius seems unsatisfactory
since it can coexist with great inferiority in the art of words-nay, since
its connection with words at all turns out to be merely external and, in a
sense, accidental. Nor can it be fitted into any of the other arts. It
begins to look as if there were an art, or a gift, which criticism has
largely ignored. It may even be one of the greatest arts; for it produces
works which give us (at the first meeting) as much delight and (on prolonged
acquaintance) as much wisdom and strength as the works of the greatest
poets. It is in some ways more akin to music than to poetry-or at least to
most poetry. It goes beyond the expression of things we have already felt.
It arouses in us sensations we have never had before, never anticipated
having, as though we had broken out of our normal mode of consciousness and
"possessed joys not promised to our birth." It gets under our skin, hits us
at a level deeper than our thoughts or even our passions, troubles oldest
certainties till all questions are reopened, and in general shocks us more
fully awake than we are for most of our lives.
It was in this mythopoeic art that MacDonald excelled. And from this it
follows that his best art is least represented in this collection. The great
works are Phantastes, the Curdie books, The Golden Key, The Wise Woman, and
Lilith. From them, just because they are supremely good in their own kind,
there is little to be extracted. The meaning, the suggestion, the radiance,
is incarnate in the whole story: it is only by chance that you find any
detachable merits. The novels, on the other hand, have yielded me a rich
crop. This does not mean that they are good novels. Necessity made MacDonald
a novelist, but few of his novels are good and none is very good. They are
best when they depart most from the canons of novel writing, and that in two
directions. Sometimes they depart in order to come nearer to fantasy, as in
the whole character of the hero in Sir Gibbie or the opening chapters of
Wilfred Cumbermede. Sometimes they diverge into direct and prolonged
preachments which would be intolerable if a man were reading for the story,
but which are in fact welcome because the author, though a poor novelist, is
a supreme preacher. Some of his best things are thus hidden in his dullest
books: my task here has been almost one of exhumation. I am speaking so far
of the novels as I think they would appear if judged by any reasonably
objective standard. But it is, no doubt, true that any reader who loves
holiness and loves MacDonald-yet perhaps he will need to love Scotland
too-can find even in the worst of them something that disarms criticism and