Fairy Tales and the Cosmos - quote by G.K. Chesterton

My last post was about how fairy tales prepared G.K. Chesterton's heart to recieve the gospel. Here is one of the choice quotes: 

Cinderella had a glass slipper, and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal, I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.

(from page 86 of Orthodoxy)

Blessings,

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton is one of the great thinkers of the 20^th century, but sometimes his brilliance can be blinding, and I struggle to grasp his meanings. That certainly hasn’t kept me from trying (as my book log of 17 of his titles shows!)

Chesterton is best remembered for responding to the famous skeptics of his day (George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and Frederick Nietzsche, to name a few) with his hard-hitting yet witty counter-arguments against their staunch atheism. Orthodoxy, his best-known rebuttal, outlines his reasons for embracing Christian truths. His principal reason was that Christianity is the only religion that gives a sane explanation for this world. But he is quick to say that it is more than a conglomeration of right opinions: I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.

One quote from the book has stayed with me for many weeks. What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty had moved from the organ of ambition and has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part that he ought not to assert – himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason. This seems to define so much of the thinking I see in our culture (i.e. the triumph of self-delusion over clear biblical precepts).

Chesterton’s sense of wonder and “joie de vivre” keep his writings from being too didactic. I especially loved Chapter 4 on how fairy tales shaped his heart to believe in God. I had always believed that the world involved magic; now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. Later he remarks, I left the fairy tales on the nursery floor and have not found any books so sensible since. (!)

His closing chapter was on the healthful confines of Christianity. Within its supposedly constricting limits, there is unrestricted joy. He writes, Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls, but they are the walls of a playground. He writes beautifully of the freedom and exhilaration of knowing one’s Creator and of knowing one’s purpose as His creatures (as opposed to the despair of nihilism.)

I’ll leave you with one final quote by G.K. on the Trinity: It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology. Suffice it to say that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and as open as an English fireside; this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart.

This was my bedtime book for many months. I read two to three pages per night because that was all my brain could handle. But I think Chesterton is better read in small, well-chewed bites. It doesn’t do to read him in a hurry. 

Blessings,

Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge

Green DolphinStreet is the story of two sisters who live in the Channel Islands in the mid-1800s. Marguerite and Marianne couldn’t be more different. Marguerite (like her name "daisy") is cheerful and carefree, ready to drink in whatever joys life has to offer. Marianne is less beautiful and much less easily pleased. But she has a thirst for knowledge and for experiences that make her sturdier and more dependable in times of trouble.

Her parents were much exercised over this brain of Marianne’s and were doing their best to repress it within ladylike proportions. But Marrianne wouldn’t be interested in sensible things like crewel work and water-color painting and duet playing on the pianoforte with her little sister Marguerite, even though she did all these things superlatively well. That was the trouble with Marianne, she did them too well, and her restless intellect reached out beyond them to things like mathematics and the politics of the Island parliament, farming, fishing, and sailing, knowledge that was neither attractive nor necessary in a woman and would add nothing whatever to her chances of attracting a suitable husband…

Marianne and Marguerite fall in love with the same young man, William Ozanne. I can’t tell you which one he chooses, but I can say that this novel is no fluffy romance. Instead it’s about the high cost of loving. The original title was “Green Dolphin Country,” which was more appropriate because each character in the book is yearning to find their own “country”, the place where they feel most at home. Some look for this in the love of another person. Others seek it in adventurous places. But all of them learn that this longed-for fulfillment comes at a very high price – death to self. Elizabeth Goudge is a master at this type of story. She writes of flawed people who through their disappointments learn to love in richer ways. Self-giving love is the key to finding their “country,” their native soil.

Goudge is not only a master of writing deeply, she also writes beautifully. Here is a description of the Mother Abess’ room in a convent: In spite of its austerity the room was not cold. It was very beautiful in its simplicity, and Marguerite within the flushed white walls felt as though she were inside a mother-of-pearl shell.

And this description of a loving kiss: It neither promised nor gave security, it was rather a dedication of themselves in comradeship to the danger and pain of living.

I started this book carefully noting passages that I wanted to highlight here on my blog, but ditched that as soon as I became engrossed in the story. When I came down to earth near the end of the book, I finally stopped to underline many beautiful paragraphs. By that time, I didn’t care if I ever blogged about this book or not. I was just glad to have experienced it. My copy is almost 500 pages long so it’s not an easy read, but if you like a well-told story, you’ll be glad to make the effort.

 Blessings,

"Adventures Among Books" by Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a journalist, novelist and literary critic, who is most remembered for the twelve volumes of fairy tales that he did in collaboration with his wife. (Ten of them are free for Kindle as well as dozens of other books he wrote.) Knowing his literary bent, I was intrigued to see this collection of essays on bookish subjects. I will be highlighting only the first essay, which was by far my favorite in the book.

Lang calls this essay his literary biography saying that he has a much easier time remembering books than he does people. He writes, Some are soldiers from the cradle, some merchants, some orators; nothing but the love of books was the gift given to me by the fairies.

From an early age he was surrounded by books and those who loved to read them. He remembers “reading” Midsummer Night’s Dream as a small boy in a candlelit room where someone was playing the piano; he was sitting by the fire looking at an edition with pictures of fairies in it. The fairies seemed to come out of Shakespeare’s dream into the music and the firelight… It seemed an enchanted glimpse of Paradise.

At age four he began to teach himself to read by picking out the words and letters of a poem he had heard so often that he had it memorized: Elegy on the Death andBurial of Cock Robin. At age nine, he read his first novel, which was Jane Eyre. This was a creepy tale for a boy of nine, and Rochester was a mystery, St. John a bore. But the lonely girl in her despair, when something came into her room, and her days of starvation at school, and the terrible first Mrs. Rochester, were never to be forgotten.

He tells how he hated Greek until he discovered Homer. The very sound of the hexameter, that long, inimitable roll of the most various music, was enough to win the heart, even if the words were not understood. But the words proved unexpectedly easy to understand, full as they are of all nobility, all tenderness, all courage, courtesy, and romance…. After once being initiated into the mysteries of Greece by Homer, the work of Greek was no longer tedious.

He summarizes his love of all things Greek by writing, We cannot find any wisdom more wise than that which bids us do what men may and bear what men must. Such are the lessons of the Greeks, of the people who tried all things, in the morning of the world, and who still speak to us of what they tried in words which are the sum of human gaiety and gloom, of grief and triumph, hope and despair. The world, since their day, has but followed in the same round, which only seems new: has only made the same experiments and failed with the same failure, but less gallantly and less gloriously.

“AdventuresAmong Books” was written in 1872 when Lang was still a young man. Near the end of the essay, he writes about how he became interested in folklore and anthropology. Little did he know that his most memorable life’s work would grow out of that interest. The first “Fairy Book” was published in 1889.

Blessings,

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

What if you were accused of a crime that you did not commit when the accuser had all the evidence against you, and you had nothing to prove your innocence? That is the premise of The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey. Though it is the third novel in the Inspector Grant series, he plays only a small part.

The “star” of this book is Robert Blair, a small-town lawyer who has spent his life in moderate tranquility, living with a maiden aunt, playing golf on his off hours, and working mostly with people who want their wills written. As the novel opens, he is sitting down to his habitual afternoon tea: At 3:50 on every working day Miss Tuff bore into his office a lacquer tray covered with a fair white cloth and bearing a cup of tea in blue-patterned china, and, on a plate to match, two biscuits.

Suddenly the monotony rankles him. “Isn’t there more to life?” he wonders. Within moments he receives a desperate phone call from a woman he has never met pleading with him to help prove her innocence. His life changes abruptly as he is drawn into the troubles of Marion Sharpe and her elderly mother who have been accused of kidnapping a 15-year-old girl.

The rest of the novel shows Robert acting as amateur sleuth, following up every possible lead to discover the truth. With all the evidence against them, the reader sometimes wonders if the Sharpe women are lying to him, which adds to the tension of the story. Though most of the townspeople turn against Marion and her mother, there is a rich cast of characters who risk their standing in the community to support them and they do their best to help Robert solve the case.

The characters are well drawn and the writing is lovely. There is a hint of romance, but it takes a back seat to the mystery. I liked this book when I read it a few years ago, but I loved it this time around because of the excellent audiobook narrated by Karen Cass.  

This was an especially timely read because it shows how trusting people can be of the media, never questioning if something in print might be true or not. Tey is not heavy-handed about this, but it is interwoven into the story in a way that kept me chuckling throughout.

A very unusual mystery!

Blessings

The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip and Carol Zaleski

My greatest challenge in reviewing this 500-page book (600 if you count the endnotes) is knowing what quotations to leave out since the whole thing was so wonderfully written.

Philip and Carol Zaleski have given us a great gift with their painstaking research on each of the major inklings (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield) and how their lives and writings intertwined. The name “Inklings”, according to Tolkien, was little more than a “pleasantly ingenious pun suggesting people with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas, plus those who dabble in ink.” But History would record that, however modest their pretensions, their inkblots were no mere dabblings.

The group came together at a strategic time. WWI had left many in despair, but in others it had instilled a longing to reclaim the goodness, beauty, and cultural continuity that had been so violently disrupted. The Inklings came together because they shared that longing; they believed, as did their literary and spiritual ancestors, that ours is a fallen world yet not a forsaken one, which was a belief that set them at odds with many of their contemporaries. Lewis described the Inklings to Williams as “a group of Christians who like to write.” The Zaleskis add that they shared more common characteristics than that including intellectual vivacity, love of myth, conservative politics, memories of war, and a passion for beef, beer, and verbal battle.

The book highlights the idiosyncrasies of each member of the group beginning with Tolkien’s rapid, slurring, unintelligible lectures, which students endured because, as one student remarked, “Tolkien could turn a lecture into a mead hall in which he was the bard and we were the feasting, listening guest. Speaking in Anglo-Saxon turned Tolkien’s leaden tongue to gold.” I was particularly interested in the details of Charles Williams' life because of C.S. Lewis' glowing accounts of him in his letters. The Zaleski's paint quite a different picture of him as a very strange man!

They also describe the periodic friction between the members, particularly Tolkien’s impatience with Williams because he disliked William’s fiction, but also because he distrusted Williams’ fascination with the occult. Lewis and Barfield disagreed often (and strongly) on the principles of anthroposophy. At times Tolkien and Lewis clashed in their literary views, but their friendship endured through the decades. When Lewis died, Tolkien wrote, “So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age – like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one, but this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.”

Of course, in 500 pages, you are bound to find lots more information (trivia?) than in other books. It was fun to read that some of the early reviews of The Lord of the Rings called it “juvenile trash” and “an overgrown fairy story” (!)

According to the Zaleskis, By the time the last inkling passed away on the eve of the 21^st century, the group had altered, in large or small measure, the course of imaginative literature, Christian theology and philosophy, comparative mythology, and the scholarly study of the Beowulf author, of Dante, Spenser, Milton, courtly love, fairy tale, and epic; and drawing as much from their scholarship as from their experiences of a catastrophic century, they had fashioned a new narrative of hope amid the ruins of war, industrialization, cultural disintegration, skepticism, and anomie.

For three months this was my bed-time book, and it brought me many hours of pleasure.

Blessings, 

Worthwhile Movie #23 - The Quiet Man (1952)

BBC period dramas and classic black-and-white films are my entertainment of choice, but it has taken me a few years to learn to appreciate John Wayne. I thought he was good in The Searchers and okay in 3 Godfathers. The first hint that I had of his charisma and charm was in Stagecoach, but the other Wayne movies I’ve watched seemed like run-of-the-mill westerns.

When Anthony Esolen featured The Quiet Man as his film-of-the-week (Substack newsletter), I decided to give Wayne another try. I had seen the movie many years ago and thought it a pleasant bit of romantic fluff, but Esolen gave me eyes to look at it in a new way. He said that the movie is actually about quietness. 

He writes, Prizefighter Sean Thornton, an Irish-American living in Pittsburgh, has killed his opponent in the ring. It’s an accident, but Sean can’t accept that. So Sean will never fight again, but instead moves back to the old family homestead in a village in Ireland, to farm and pick up the rest of his life, as a peaceful man. He’s made a vow never to throw a punch again. That’s what he intends, but sometimes a man has to fight, regardless of what he’d like, especially if he is fighting for something — or someone — he loves.

In addition to the excellent acting by both Wayne (playing Sean Thornton), Maureen O’Hara (playing Mary Kate Danaher) and the rest of the cast, the scenery is gorgeous and John Ford’s filming is stunning. Mary Kate and Sean fall in love, but his refusal to fight for something that she believes to be her right, gets their relationship off to a rocky start.

Esolen concludes his essay, In many ways, The Quiet Man is a film for those who believe in marriage and who know that what men and women do is that staggering and monumental thing, so closely related to tending the soil with love and care: they make children. The dialogue is priceless, yet it all seems perfectly natural, not stylized. We like everybody in The Quiet Man, even granite-jawed old Will Danaher, and there are gestures in the film that are unforgettable for a kind of down-to-earth nobility that I can’t find so well expressed in any other film except for John Ford’s own How Green Was My Valley. Ford was a poet of scene and dialogue and music, and of silences that are more filled with meaning than any words can be. But above all, when you watch this film, have fun! And thank God for the two great sexes that animate the world, because if it weren’t for them, where would we be? 

The only free version of the film is a video tape transfer at Internet Archive. If you watch the movie, you will greatly appreciate reading this article about the film AFTER you view it. I loved it, but I'm glad I didn't read it first because of all the spoilers.

Blessings,