George MacDonald. An Antology (edited by C.S.Lewis) -
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times fumbling. Bad pulpit traditions cling to it; there is sometimes a
nonconformist verbosity, sometimes an old Scotch weakness for florid
ornament (it runs right through them from Dunbar to the Waverly Novels),
sometimes an oversweetness picked up from Novalis. But this does not quite
dispose of him even for the literary critic. What he does best is
fantasy-fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And
this, in my opinion, he does better than any man. The critical problem with
which we are confronted is whether this art-the art of myth-making-is a
species of the literary art. The objection to so classifying it is that the
Myth does not essentially exist in words at all. We all agree that the
story
of Balder is a great myth, a thing of inexhaustible value. But of whose
version-whose words-are we thinking when we say this?
For my own part, the answer is that I am not thinking of anyone's
-words. No poet, as far as I know or can remember, has told this story
supremely well. I am not thinking of any particular version of it. If the
story is anywhere embodied in words, that is almost an accident.
What really delights and nourishes me is a particular pattern of
events, which would equally delight and nourish if it had reached me by some
medium which involved no words at all-say by a mime, or a film. And I find
this to be true of all such stories. When I think of the story of the
Argonauts and praise it, I am not praising Apollonius Rhodius (whom I never
finished) nor Kingsley (whom I have forgotten) nor even Morris, though I
consider his version a very pleasant poem. In this respect stories of the
mythical type are at the opposite pole from lyrical poetry. If you try to