Episode 347: “Lilith” by George MacDonald, Intro and Ch. 1-5

On The Literary Life Podcast this week, Angelina and Thomas are joined by Addison Hornstra as they open a new book discussion series covering George MacDonald’s Lilith: A Romance. This introductory conversation on the book opens with some thoughts on both the book’s title and the epigraph. Addison shares some background on the story from MacDonald’s own son and how this book was written and sent out into the world. They discuss the form of Lilith as a literary romance, as well as the ways in which MacDonald points the reader to admit his limits of understanding. Another major topic is the way in which this story relates to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

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Previous Episodes Mentioned:

Phantastes Series

Commonplace Quotes:

He treated his opponents as if they had been corrupt readings in an old manuscript.

Lytton Strachey, from Portraits in Miniature

All about us is in earth and air, wherever the eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in a daisy, now in a wind waft, a cloud, a sunset; a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us. The same God who is in us and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about us–inside,The Spirit; outside, the Word. And the two are ever trying to meet in us–when they meet, then the sign without and the longing within, become one in light, and the man no more wallets in darkness but knoweth wither he goeth.

George MacDonald, from Thomas Wingfold, Curate

Indeed, this process of rediscovery and renewal is framed within the novel itself, for Mr. Vane must cross and recross the same landscapes many times from the sexton’s cottage through the evil wood, the bad burrow, over the dry watercourses to the desolate city. At first he travels in all his shallow self-assurance, then with growing humility and insight, each time the terrain yielding a little more of its meaning for him and for the reader until at last, with real repentance, which in that world is metamorphosis, he can see even the worst of human experience transfigured and redeemed. And so it is with the reader. This is not a book to skim and discard, but the companion of a lifetime, and on each re-reading as we cross and recross its strange terrain with Mr. Vane, as we relive its adventures and transformation, we find, as does its hero, deeper and deeper layers of meaning. The book is an always open door.

Malcom Guite, from his introduction to Lilith

Over the Hills and Far Away

by William Ernest Henley

Where  forlorn sunsets flare and fade
          On desolate sea and lonely sand,
      Out of the silence and the shade
          What is the voice of strange command
      Calling you still, as friend calls friend
          With love that cannot brook delay,
      To rise and follow the ways that wend
          Over the hills and far away?

      Hark in the city, street on street
          A roaring reach of death and life,
      Of vortices that clash and fleet
          And ruin in appointed strife,
      Hark to it calling, calling clear,
          Calling until you cannot stay
      From dearer things than your own most dear
          Over the hills and far away.

      Out of the sound of the ebb-and-flow,
          Out of the sight of lamp and star,
      It calls you where the good winds blow,
          And the unchanging meadows are;
      From faded hopes and hopes agleam,
          It calls you, calls you night and day
      Beyond the dark into the dream
          Over the hills and far away.

Book List:

Amazon affiliate links below

Lilith by George MacDonald

The Tower and The Ruin by Michael Drout

The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis

Salted with Fire by George MacDonald

George MacDonald and His Wife by Greville MacDonald

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

The Literary Products of the Lewis Carrol George MacDonald Friendship by John Docherty

The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

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