Hogwarts Professor » George MacDonald

MacDonald’s Lilith and The Mirror of Erised

John — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:56:17 +0000

For those of you celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, here is something I “discovered” the other day that, if you are like me you will find interesting. I put the scare-quotes around “discovered” both because I wasn’t looking for it and because I suspect this is old news to many of you. If, like me, you are just waking up to the myriad and important symbolic uses of “glass” or “mirror” in scripture, hermetic epistemology, and imaginative literature, finding a tall mirror that is a passage to another world within our own in an attic is eerily reminiscent of The Mirror of Erised, which Harry finds on his first trek under the Invisibility Cloak on Christmas his first year.

Check out this very short chapter from George MacDonald’s Lilith (1895):

Chapter ii — THE MIRROR

NOTHING more happened for some days. I think it was about a week after, when what I have now to tell took place.

I had often thought of the manuscript fragment, and repeatedly tried to discover some way of releasing it, but in vain: I could not find out what held it fast.

But I had for some time intended a thorough overhauling of the books in the closet, its atmosphere causing me uneasiness as to their condition. One day the intention suddenly became a resolve, and I was in the act of rising from my chair to make a beginning, when I saw the old librarian moving from the door of the closet toward the farther end of the room. I ought rather to say only that I caught sight of something shadowy from which I received the impression of a slight, stooping man, in a shabby dress-coat reaching almost to his heels, the tails of which, disparting a little as he walked, revealed thin legs in black stockings, and large feet in wide, slipper-like shoes.

At once I followed him: I might be following a shadow, but I never doubted I was following something. He went out of the library into the hall, and across to the foot of the great staircase, then up the stairs to the first floor, where lay the chief rooms. Past these rooms, I following close, he continued his way, through a wide corridor, to the foot of a narrower stair leading to the second floor. Up that he went also, and when I reached the top, strange as it may seem, I found myself in a region almost unknown to me. I never had brother or sister to incite to such romps as make children familiar with nook and cranny; I was a mere child when my guardian took me away; and I had never seen the house again until, about a month before, I returned to take possession.

Through passage after passage we came to a door at the bottom of a winding wooden stair, which we ascended. Every step creaked under my foot, but I heard no sound from that of my guide. Somewhere in the middle of the stair I lost sight of him, and from the top of it the shadowy shape was nowhere visible. I could not even imagine I saw him. The place was full of shadows, but he was not one of them.

I was in the main garret, with huge beams and rafters over my head, great spaces around me, a door here and there in sight, and long vistas whose gloom was thinned by a few lurking cobwebbed windows and small dusky skylights. I gazed with a strange mingling of awe and pleasure: the wide expanse of garret was my own, and unexplored!

In the middle of it stood an unpainted inclosure of rough planks, the door of which was ajar. Thinking Mr. Raven might be there, I pushed the door, and entered.

The small chamber was full of light, but such as dwells in places deserted: it had a dull, disconsolate look, as if it found itself of no use, and regretted having come. A few rather dim sunrays, marking their track through the cloud of motes that had just been stirred up, fell upon a tall mirror with a dusty face, old-fashioned and rather narrow–in appearance an ordinary glass. It had an ebony frame, on the top of which stood a black eagle, with outstretched wings, in his beak a golden chain, from whose end hung a black ball.

I had been looking at rather than into the mirror, when suddenly I became aware that it reflected neither the chamber nor my own person. I have an impression of having seen the wall melt away, but what followed is enough to account for any uncertainty:–could I have mistaken for a mirror the glass that protected a wonderful picture?

I saw before me a wild country, broken and heathy. Desolate hills of no great height, but somehow of strange appearance, occupied the middle distance; along the horizon stretched the tops of a far-off mountain range; nearest me lay a tract of moorland, flat and melancholy.

Being short-sighted, I stepped closer to examine the texture of a stone in the immediate foreground, and in the act espied, hopping toward me with solemnity, a large and ancient raven, whose purply black was here and there softened with gray. He seemed looking for worms as he came. Nowise astonished at the appearance of a live creature in a picture, I took another step forward to see him better, stumbled over something–doubtless the frame of the mirror–and stood nose to beak with the bird: I was in the open air, on a houseless heath!

End of brief chapter….

Yesterday we met Harriet Vane, the woman who won Lord Peter Wimsey’s heart. Today, it is Mr. Vane, the protagonist of Lilith. To understand this ‘Vane’ as more than just an assonance with “vain,” I urge you to read Robert Trexler’s ‘Mr. Vane’s Piligrimage into the Land of Promise: MacDonald’s “Historical Imagination” in Lilith,’ chapter 3 in George MacDonald: Literary Heritage and Heirs (Zossima Press, 2008). (You’ll also want that book if you’re a Harry Potter serious reader for that essay and to understand Colin Manlove’s distinction between “subversive” and “conservative” symbolist writers (chapter 13), Rowling being the former and the Inklings for the most part, the latter.) Mr. Vane, it turns out, is the link between symbolist writers like MacDonald, American transcendentalists and writers like Hawthorne and Thoreau, and thinkers no less important than Milton, Coleridge, and F. D. Maurice.

But back to the mirrors… Two stray thoughts before asking for your comments and correction:

(1) Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and MacDonald were good friends. If you’re thinking that MacDonald takes this through the Looking Glass idea from his friend and wildly successful book about Alice’s adventures behind or within the mirror (1871), the influence was probably the other way around. MacDonald published Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women, the book C. S. Lewis said “baptized his imagination,” in 1858 and it includes this passage:

What a strange thing a mirror is! And what a wondrous affinity exists between it and a man’s imagination! For this room of mine, as I behold it in the glass, is the same and yet not the same. It is not the mere representation of the room I live in, but it looks just as if I were reading about it in a story I like. All its commonness has disappeared. The mirror has lifted it out of the region of fact into the realms of art…. I should like to live in that room if I could only get into it. (cited in The Annotated Alice, p. 144, n.5)

Both Dodgson and MacDonald are Christians, of course, and, I’m almost certain, Coleridgean in their sacramental understanding of worlds within worlds and the magic, not to mention theology of ‘reflection.’

(2) I discuss the importance of Ms. Rowling’s use of mirror and eye symbolism in The Deathly Hallows Lectures, which includes a chapter length explanation of the Mirror of Erised and the godfather mirror fragment in which Harry sees Dumbledore’s eye. If this sort of thing stretches your thinking enough to intrigue you, I recommend you purchase and read what I say in there.

While you wait for that book to arrive, of course, I hope you will do a quick compare and contrast exercise with the Lilith mirror and The Mirror of Erised. Is the only similarity the size and the unused room in which Vane and Potter discover them? What is the significance of the black frame of one and the gold edge of the other? Given what we know of Harry’s Invisibility Cloak post Deathly Hallows and Harry’s role as the “spirit” or “seeing eye” in the Harry-Hermione-Ron triptych, what are we to think of Harry’s discovery of this mirror during his first use of the Cloak? Is there a relationship between the Mirror and Harry’s palace-not-a-place King’s Cross at story’s end? If that seems far-fetched, read the next chapter of Lilith!

I look forward to reading your thoughts.

George MacDonald Poetry Book: Author Interviewed Live on Radio Today!

John — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:08:18 +0000

Check this out.

More MacDonald

John — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:03:23 +0000

Yesterday I promised some poems from The White Page Poems which was “inspired” by MacDonald’s daily poems The Diary of an Old Soul. Zossima Press also sells the most complete CD version of MacDonald’s unabridged works: Ever Yours, George MacDonald $10 (pictured below – click on the picture to enlarge).

This CD contains 48 out of 49 unabridged books in both MS Word and PDF format.

Now, for some sample poems – - – the first will be the poem by George MacDonald for a particular day of the year, followed by Betty’s poem for the same day:

(George)
October 11.

‘Tis that I am not good – that is enough;
I pry no farther – that is not the way.
Here, O my potter, is thy making stuff!
Set thy wheel going; let it whir and play.
The chips in me, the stones, the straws, the sand,
Cast them out with fine separating hand,
And make a vessel of thy yielding clay.

(Betty)
10/ 11

Make of me a chalice, a loving cup,
When I fall, center me and draw me up;
When I am wobbly, do thou pull me in,
Far from the tempting glazes of my sin;
Help me to see you in my neighbor’s face.
Of common clay, I rise and (conscious) spin
Toward Potter’s Field, my final resting place.

(George)
October 16.

Now I grow old, and the soft-gathered years
Have calmed, yea dulled the heart’s swift fluttering beat;
But a quiet hope that keeps its household seat
Is better than recurrent glories fleet.
To know thee, Lord, is worth a many tears;
And when this mildew, age, has dried away,
My heart will beat again as young and strong and gay.

(Betty)
10/16

Now I grow old, never quite having bloomed;
Like this maple branch, broken off in wind –
Half attached, as cold air chills the sap. Still
I love those I gave my heart to; consumed,
As soon this branch will be, by flame. Who sinned
Will be invited to thy banquet; fill
Me with gratitude, here, over the hill.

(George)
November 13.

Son of the Father, elder brother mine,
See thy poor brother’s plight; See how he stands
Defiled and feeble, hanging down his hands!
Make me clean, brother, with thy burning shine;
From thy rich treasures, householder divine,
Bring forth fair garments, old and new, I pray,
And like thy brother dress me, in the old home-bred way.

(Betty)
11/13

Elder brother, son of Our Father-God,
Encourage me, that inside-out I bear
The hope that I too, possibly, will wear
Homespun fresh garments like your mother’s own,
When some day I will be more holy grown.
I, work-in-progess, wash my motley odd,
And dance my grateful praises in bright air.

Shane, the computer wizard

John — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:00:36 +0000

I was fumbling around trying to figure out how to work this WordPress blog and sent out an SOS for help to upload a picture. I mean, let’s be honest, folks. This Blog is a bit too plain. Lots of words – but no pictures?

Shane from Rochester was amazing – without even telling him who the server is for this website, he figured it out and how to solve the picture problem. Kudos, kudos, kudos!

And now, ladies and germs, I will make a picture appear before your very eyes after saying the magic words: “Abracadabra, alacazam, please and thank-you”:

This is the latest Zossima Press book (click on picture to enlarge) – and if you want to know more about it, read on . . .

This is two books in one – by two different authors. The first book The Diary of an Old Soul is by George MacDonald and was first published in 1880. It contains a seven-line rhyming poem for each day of the year. The poems are very honest and personal – reflecting MacDonald’s struggles with faith (Hmmm, sounds like JK Rowling. Imagine, having to struggle to have faith. How unique.) Anyway, George and his wife, Louisa, had 11 children, two of them died just prior to his writing these poems. MacDonald didn’t have an easy life, but he struggled hard to remain faithful to God and remain hopeful in the midst of trials. If this sounds like your faith life sometimes, then you might like these poems.

When MacDonald published the book, every other page was left blank – a “White Page” so to speak. And he wrote a Dedication Poem for his readers indicating that they should respond by writing their own meditations after reading his poems. Here’s what he wrote:

Sweet friends, receive my offering. You will find
Against each worded page a white page set:-
This is the mirror of each friendly mind
Reflecting that. In this book we are met.
Make it, dear hearts, of worth to you indeed: -
Let your white page be ground, my print be seed,
Growing to golden ears, that faith and hope shall feed.

Betty Aberlin read the Dedication poem from 1880 (it was removed from all subsequent editions in 1885, 1897, 1905, 1909, 1914, 1927, 1975, etc.) and decided to accept MacDonald’s invitation. She wrote her own poems following MacDonald’s style of a seven line rhyming poem. Here’s something about Betty from our initial marketing material:

“Betty Aberlin, a Russian-American actor and writer, raised in post-Holocaust Orthodox Jewish atheism and nurtured in the arts and theater, first read MacDonald’s Dedication poem in 2002. Beginning on January 1st, 2003, she began to respond each day with poems of her own. Having begun an earnest journey of faith nearly 10 year earlier, her interaction with MacDonald’s poems provided inspiration to express the struggles and joys of her own experience. The resulting poems show the influences of Judaism, Christianity and lessons learned through nature and art.

It should be mentioned that although The White Page Poems retain the 7-line rhyming pattern, the substance of the poems do not try to imitate MacDonald’s message. Rather than forcing MacDonald’s spirit into her own poetry, Betty Aberlin has created a unique blend of themes and images, pouring them into this poetic form to create a second cycle of daily readings. Her vision is fresh and honest, not sugary-sweet, showing a keen observation of nature and human nature – from the exhilaration of faith, hope and love to the despairs of war, rejection and failure.

In a time when so few books of poetry are available to stretch the imaginations of readers to “see” things that are best expressed by a poetic imagination, Zossima Press is pleased to have discovered a poet who fulfills the desire of MacDonald’s original invitation. Here is a contemporary poetic voice who opens additional paths for spiritual reflection – touching the heart of what it means to struggle and hope in faith.”

Betty was a featured author on Sunday September 23rd at the “BIG E” fair in Massachusettes. It was our “coming out” party for this poet’s first published book. I’ve been working with Betty for several years on this project, and I’m very proud of her amazing accomplishment.

Here’s an endorsement of her book from Dr. Don King, professor of English at Montreat College in North Carolina and author of C.S. Lewis, Poet (Kent University Press):

In a fascinating new book George Macdonald’s The Diary of an Old Soul is paired with Betty K Aberlin’s The White Page Poems. Each of Macdonald’s seven line poems, one for each day of the year, is set opposite to one by Aberlin. While she sometimes uses a thought from Macdonald’s poem as a springboard for her own, more often than not she moves off in a new direction, the result being a fresh, incisive, personal reflection. Never glib or facile, Aberlin’s poems offer glimpses of her spiritual journey—one that many will find winsome and appealing.

Come back on Wednesday night, and I’ll post some of Betty’s poems for you to read. I wonder, how many of you who read HogPro are familiar with MacDonald’s books?