Episode 350: “Lilith” by George MacDonald, Ch. 33-End

On The Literary Life podcast today, Angelina and Addison will wrap up the final installment of our series covering George MacDonald’s Lilith. Throughout this conversation they make more connections to other books and stories that they have brought up throughout this series. They also talk about how this story highlights the realities of the journey of the soul, the problem of reading a story like this theologically instead of poetically, the pictures of repentance and judgment, and so much more!

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Previous Episodes Mentioned:

Phantastes Series

Til We Have Faces Series

Commonplace Quotes:

When the thought of the blessedness I experienced, after my death in Fairy Land, is too high for me to lay hold upon it and hope in it, I often think of the wise woman in the cottage, and of her solemn assurance that she knew something too good to be told. When I am oppressed by any sorry or real perplexity, I often feel as if I had only left her cottage for a time, and would soon return out of the vision, into it again. Sometimes, on such occasions, I find myself, unconsciously almost, looking about for the mystic mark of red, with the vague hope of entering her door, and being comforted by her wise tenderness. I then console myself by saying: “I have come through the door of Dismay; and the way back from the world into which that has led me, is through my tomb. Upon that the red sign lies, and I shall find it one day, and be glad.”

Anados in “Phantastes” by George MacDonald

So we remember the old world as it had been for a thousand years, so beautiful and diverse, and which, in only thirty years, has crumbled away. When we were young every country still had its own architecture and customs and food. Can you ever forget the first sight of Italy? Those ochre houses, all different, each with such character, with their trompe-l’œil paintings on the stucco? Queer and fascinating and strange even to a Provençal like me. Now, the dreariness! The suburbs of every town uniform all over the world, while perhaps in the very centre a few old monuments sadly survive as though in a glass case.

Nancy Mitford, in “Don’t Tell Alfred“

Death, Be Not Proud

by John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Book List:

Amazon affiliate links below

Lilith by George MacDonald

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis

Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis

The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis

The Faerie Queen, Book 1 by Edmund Spenser

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Perelandra by C. S. Lewis

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald

At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

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