Fairy Tales.

Earlier today I read the first few sections of "The Light Princess" by George MacDonald, which I hadn't done in a little while. It's such a strange little story about a princess who gets cursed on her christening to have no gravity -- both physically and spiritually. She's completely light -- she floats up to the ceiling and she views everything as a joke.

I love my little collection of George MacDonald's fairy tales. Each of these little stories [except "The Giant's Heart"; I didn't like that one] are wondrous, and floaty, and beautiful, but also deep. For instance, there's this glorious moment, which C.S. Lewis alludes to in his writings, in "The Golden Key," at which Mossy and Tangle see shadows from a land that they cannot see, and they long to go to "the land from whence the shadows fall." Or there's a moment in "The History of Photogen and Nycteris" in which the two future lovers see each other for the first time and do not understand the other's fear of the day or the night.

There's something about a fairy tale that can, in a simple way, express the deep realities of our souls. Last night I was with a group of friends, and we discussed the Disney movies and how some of those early movies (like Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty) rang with deep truth. This is the same way that I felt about The Last Unicorn -- something about that novel rung a deep chord with me, and I still can't quite get over it yet.

MacDonald knew this when he wrote his fairy tales. In his essay, "The Fantastic Imagination," he said:

"If a writer's aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to 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. ... 

... 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. ..." 

          (George MacDonald, from The Complete Fairy Tales, 10)

I love that. "If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it." And wake that music he does, with such phrases and tunes like:

"He [Mossy] had not gone far before the sun set. But the rainbow only glowed the brighter. For the rainbow of Fairyland is not dependent upon the sun as ours is. The trees welcomed him. The bushes made way for him. The rainbow grew larger and brighter; and at length he found himself within two trees of it. 

It was a grand sight, burning away there in silence, with its gorgeous, its lovely, its delicate colours, each distinct, all combining. He could now see a great deal more of it. It rose high into the blue heavens, but bent so little that he could not tell how high the crown of the arch must reach. It was still only a small portion of a huge bow. ..." 

                        (George MacDonald, "The Golden Key," from Ibid., 121)

It's amazing what a few lines of text can do. You can almost see that heavenly rainbow which hides the Golden Key at its feet. Or, later on in the story, the flying fish that goes to find Mossy; or the shadows which fall from an ethereal land that is better and more joyous than ours.

I find it interesting that I have mentioned fairy tales only very briefly on this blog. In truth, I believe that there is no better vehicle of True Mythology than the fairy tale -- it almost does not need interpretation. (MacDonald himself says the following: "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... you... should know what it means?" (Ibid., 7)) The Fairy Tale is glorious because it is a Meta-Mythology. It is a Myth about the Myth. It is an Allegory beyond Allegory.

Bah. It's hard to talk about it, or to express exactly what I mean by that. Hopefully, reader, you get the idea.

And maybe that's why I've only briefly mentioned fairy tales thusfar on this blog. Just like how I only briefly touched on the interpretation of The Last Unicorn. It's deep the way that the Parable of the Soils [some people call it the Parable of the Sower; but in InterVarsity, we call it the Parable of the Soils] is deep -- because it's self-referential. Fairy tales are sublime. They're hard to catch.

Like a Unicorn. You might see them [briefly], and you might recognize them [if your heart is pure], and you might even get to touch them [if they let you]. But you will never ever catch them.