Skip to main content

Lud in the Mist: The Platypus Reads Part CCCXXX

This post is edited from a letter on Hope Mirrlees' Lud in the Mist



First, thanks for passing on "Lud in the Mist". It's the kind of book I'm constantly hunting for and have increased trouble finding lately (Phantasties, Idylls of the King, The Last Unicorn, Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, The Queen of Elfland's Daughter, anything by William Morris, and the short stories of Clark Ashton Smith having already been encountered). There are very few books that I read at a positively leisurely pace for pure pleasure anymore and this was one of them.

Second, I'm a historian and connector by nature and training, so I often access a book by linking it in with everything I've already read and letting my thoughts whirl like the music of the spheres. It seems like to immediately jump in to discussing Lud like that does violence to the Art. I feel the same way about Phantastes. I don't even know if Phantastes can be discussed in that way. Hope Mirrlees understood the hauntedness of Nature in a way that few do. I understand why she was a friend of T.S. Eliot's ("I think the River is a strong, brown god..." Change that to three Algonquin maidens and that is The Housatonic). She captures in scenes like the sunrise on Nov. 1st the same feeling I've gotten watching the leaves dancing in the light of a New England summer. There's a valley between Shelton and Monroe that fills with light like a bowl with water at about 4 or 5pm -that's my "Note". That's a haunted world, like George MacDonald's books.

Third, there are few allegories I can stand. I like the kind that Tolkien wrote: Leaf by Niggle and Smith of Wooten Major, or Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Lud in the Mist convinces me that there is a Victorian and Edwardian sort of Allegorical-Metaphorical writing that all three authors are partaking in -like Virgil at his best. All these stories can, and probably should, be read without any reference to their allegorical elements (Purgatory for writers, Passing on a Sacramental understanding of Nature in a corrupt and decadent Church, re-uniting Head, Heart, and Hands in a Modern world with no coherent world-picture, Understanding the need to for the secular and the sacred to be kept in balance by the Church in post-Reformation/post-Industrial-Revolution England). The allegory is not the point. It is a power of allusion that blends seamlessly with the story itself to create a very special enchantment that seeps deep into the soul. I loath Williams as a man, but he did have a point when he said "Flesh knows what Mind knows, but Mind knows it Knows. Mind knows what Spirit knows, but Spirit knows it knows". Lud in the Mist is a story that is best known by the spirit.

Fourth, I think the ending of the story is brave, scary, and sad, but True, and therefore I love it. The other books that come to mind are of course, Leaf, Smith, Phantastes, and Idylls, but also The Last Unicorn. As Tennyson said "the goal of this great world lies beyond sight" or Lewis: "if I find myself with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, then perhaps I was made for another world". Chanticleer's "Note" anticipates Lewis' "Joy". It is that spark that leads us ever upward, but also that pain that continues with us in some form until the day we die. Whatever we believe, we walk by Faith, not by sight.

I think I'll leave it at that for now. I want to geek about all the Bacchae references and dissect the careful English Catholic Revival allegory, but that seems like doing violence to Mirrlees book in a "first thoughts" email. Maybe another time.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more

The Platypus and Theological Localism

My wife and I were listening the other day to Dr. Fred Sanders give a paper of California Theological Localism.  It was one of the more technical pieces we've heard from him, and it was fun to stretch our brains a little.  If I understand it right, the main idea of Theological Localism is that place matters and will shape the theology of its inhabitants in certain ways.  This could be seen as determinative, or merely as fodder for apologetic engagement, both of which Sanders rejects as insufficient or problematic.  What exactly is wanted seems to be a theological engagement with place, specifically California, in a way that Sanders and company feel has been neglected.  If that's not clear, the fault is mine as a listener or a writer. Of course, the idea of a theology of place caught my attention and my immediate response was "someone should do this for New England."  New England, after all, is its own peculiar place with, by American standards, a long, va...
6 comments
Read more