The Search for a Soul

“Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, read Undine: that is a fairytale.... and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.” --George MacDonald (23)

Naturally, when I read this in George MacDonald's essay "The Fantastic Imagination," I knew that I would have to read this “most beautiful” of fairytales. "The Fantastic Imagination" is MacDonald's attempt to say a little bit about what a fairytale ought to be. Not what a fairytale is, for that task is too difficult; as MacDonald says: “I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face” (23).

Since a fairytale is so hard to describe, MacDonald directs his readers to the lengthy tale of Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouquee. I googled it and read its entire 55 pages at Project Gutenberg. If you plan to read it there you need not read any further here since what follows is just a short summary of some of the important highlights of the tale.

A wandering knight, bewildered by a fierce storm, stumbles upon a fisherman's cottage where he meets the young and beautiful Undine. The fisherman explains that his foster-daughter mysteriously appeared at his cottage years before when she was a toddler. The truth of the matter is that Undine is a water-nymph in human form seeking a soul. She learns that only by loving a mortal can she gain the soul that no water-spirit has. Needless to say, she comes to love the knight and they are soon married. “Through love Undine had won a soul, which is indeed the gift of God to every mortal” (25).

But this is not the end of the story. Undine's powerful uncle Kuhleborn does all he can to destroy her love and make her return to her watery home. In an eerie parallel to the Prince of the Power of the Air, Kuhleborn says of himself: “I am free as the wild birds of the air to go hither and thither as I will” (30). He laughs mockingly when Undine cries out that, “I no longer wish to have aught to do with you!” (30) Rather than going away, he plagues Undine and the knight Huldbrand more fiercely. On top of all their other trials the lady Bertalda begins to drive Undine and the knight apart. Finally, at the instigation of Kuhleborn, the knight breaks his promise to his wife and speaks harshly to Undine. At this, Undine must leave him and return to her ocean home. “There will I live, loving, sorrowing, for into the depths of the blue sea will I carry my new-won soul” (28).

The knight sees too late his error and only at his own death, when Undine's tears fall so heavily on his heart that it breaks, does he realizes that "he had never loved any one in all the wide world as he loved Undine" (53). The wild water-nymph who found a soul when she found love and who always tried to protect her knight in life, melted into a stream at his grave while it was said by the villagers that, “the little crystal stream, was none other than Undine, poor forsaken Undine, who thus surrounds and protects Huldbrand, her beloved” (55).

Friedrich de la Motte Fouquee. Undine. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=240839&pageno=1

George MacDonald. "The Fantastic Imagination." The Gifts of the Child Christ: Fairytales and Stories for the Childlike. ed. Glenn Edward Sadler. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1973.

Logic and Learning

I took my logic final yesterday. It does not follow,however, that I am finally logical. So glad was I to be done with the class that I began to clear my desk of all things relating to logic. (I leave you to interpret the ambiguity and decide if I mean relating to the class or logic itself).

Apart from my main textbook I have a small Mars Hill exercise book that I thumbed through at the beginning of my class and subsequently ignored the rest of the semester. I picked it up again after my final and gave it one parting glance. Skimming the list of fallacies, my eye caught one that was not in my other textbook; however, I recognized it anyway. The term “Bulverism” was coined by C.S.Lewis and that explains why I recognized it and also why it is not an official term for a fallacy in other textbooks. Bulverism does have its corresponding term in my text as the “ad hominem circumstantial.” That is, the second arguer attacks the person of the first arguer by claiming something about the circumstances of the first arguer that makes him or her argue that way. For instance, “he claims the book is exciting and that everybody should read it but he only says that because he is paid by the publisher.”

Since any excuse will serve that allows me to read C.S.Lewis, I no sooner saw the term Bulverism than I pulled down God in the Dock and reread the essay: “'Bulverism:' or, the Foundation of 20th Century Thought.” Just like the ad hominem circumstantial, Bulverism ignores the actual truth or falsehood of an argument and instead tries (and often succeeds) in discrediting the arguer. “In other words,” Lewis explains, “you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly” (273). Lewis records the origin of Bulverism,

a vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it.... Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that the two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third—'Oh you say that because you are a man.' 'At that moment,' E. Bulver assures us, 'there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall' (273).

Why—the day after my final when, at last, there is no need to think about logic—do I write about this subject that, frankly, I didn't like very much while I was taking a class on it? After writing the paragraphs above I asked myself that question and came to the realization that this fallacy became interesting to me because it is connected to something else I am interested in, namely, C.S.Lewis. We learn things best if we are not forced to learn them; when something or someone we love makes us want to find out more. I think George MacDonald had it right when he said: “we must learn things as they come to us and when we want to. Otherwise there will be little remembering. You can never make yourself like a thing” (65). And now, whether you liked it or not, you've read the history of Bulverism and George MacDonald's philosophy of education. The question is, will you remember it or, like me before yesterday, think it is the most boring thing in the world.

Lewis, C. S. God in the Dock: Essays On Theology and Ethics. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1993.
MacDonald, George. The Tutor's First Love. originally David Elginbrod. 1863. Bethany House Publishers, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 1989.

Same Old Story... Or Is It?

It’s a pity that finding George MacDonald in his unabridged entirety is almost impossible (unless, of course, you are willing to read online at a site like Project Gutenberg but I just can’t accept not having the feel of a book in my hands). I have read people who say he was not a very good writer and often rambled, but what exactly is meant by this I am unsure of. The unabridged fantasies and children’s stories I have read are perfectly fine for Victorian literature. I have a suspicion that what is meant is that authors now-a-days don’t write like that. A fairly obvious point; no one writes like Shakespeare now either.

All this to say I read another (abridged, of course) MacDonald Novel: A Quiet Neighborhood. One flaw I do find in MacDonald is that all his realistic stories start to sound the same after a while. A young gentleman (in this case and a few others a clergyman) falls in love with a beautiful (and usually rich) young lady and after a little mystery or family secret is cleared up they wed and live happily ever after. What keeps the invariable routine bearable after 15 novels are the inner dilemmas every MacDonald hero faces (and many of the minor characters as well).

In A Quiet Neighborhood Mr. Walton must struggle to find the purpose of his life and how to help those under his care. Helping others means, among other things, reconciling father to son, daughter to father, and interestingly, separating daughter from grandmother. There is an apparent contradiction here, perhaps intended by MacDonald. A quarter of the book is devoted to restoring the relationships of a family in Mr. Walton’s parish but the climax of the action is an elopement with the heroine, Miss Oldcastle, from her tyrannical, abusive grandmother.

The importance of relationships is definitely a major theme of the story. Apparently there are two sequels to this book that I hope to read some day.