George MacDonald. An Antology (edited by C.S.Lewis) -
12 >
take the "theme" of Keats's Nightingale apart from the very words in
which
he has embodied it, you find that you are talking about almost nothing. Form
and content can there be separated only by a fake abstraction. But in a
myth-in a story where the mere pattern of events is all that matters-this is
not so. Any means of communication whatever which succeeds in lodging those
events in our imagination has, as we say, "done the trick." After that you
can throw the means of communication away. To be sure, if the means of
communication are words, it is desirable that a letter which brings you
important news should be fairly written. But this is only a minor
convenience; for the letter will, in any case, go into the wastepaper basket
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