George MacDonald: Divine Carelessness and Fairytale Levity

Conclusion: The Haunting Force of Levity

203 s The Haunting Force of Levity Conclusion There is a strange irony in the way physical gravity operates through waves and particles that are massless and “pass unchanged through any material in their path and so [. . .] carry signals with absolute clarity across the vast reaches of space.”1 With an infinite host of heavenly angels (angelos, as we know, is Greek for “messenger”) backing up gravity, levity would seem to be the true force in the universe. Despite being the most universal force in physics, gravity remains unseen— scientific instruments have never recorded gravity waves or particles. Even if scientists do find a way to observe these gravitons and gravitational waves, gravity will be the last and most elusive of the four physical forces in the cosmos to yield to human investigation.2 The metaphorical levity that we have been tracing in this book is similarly evasive and difficult to observe. I have tried on the one hand to show how lightness functions theologically to engender a mode of being that takes itself lightly and that delights in created existence, and on the other how George MacDonald subtly crafted his fairytales with this levity in the hope that it might transform others. But perhaps it is fitting to conclude this somewhat theoretical discussion with something a little more practical and visible. MacDonald’s concept of fairytales subtly changing people into childlike individuals is intriguing, the reader might think, but does it work? What is the force of levity? At least in the case of two monumental writers and thinkers—G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, with whom we began this inquiry—the 204 George MacDonald s answer seems to be that levity is a haunting force that can indeed have a life-altering influence. In Chesterton’s introduction to Greveille MacDonald’s biography of his father, he claims that MacDonald’s fairytales (in particular The Princess and the Goblin) “made a difference to [his] whole existence” in that they “helped [him] to see things in a certain way from the start.”3 Here is his account of how particular images took root in his mind: Another recurrent image in his romances was a great white horse; the father of the princess had one, and there was another in The Back of the North Wind. To this day I can never see a big white horse in the street without a sudden sense of indescribable things. But for the moment I am speaking of what may emphatically be called the presence of household gods—and household goblins. [. . .] There is something not only imaginative but intimately true about the idea of the goblins being below the house and capable of besieging it from the cellars. [. . .] Anyhow, that simple image of a house that is our home, that is rightly loved as our home, but of which we hardly know the best or the worst, and must always wait for the one and watch against the other, has always remained in my mind as something singularly solid and unanswerable.4 The important thing to observe is not Chesterton’s particular interpretation of The Princess and the Goblin but how the story lightly planted images like seeds in his mind that then blossomed into multiple meanings, which were perpetually able to blossom anew. On account of MacDonald’s fictional white horses, Chesterton claims that real white horses give him “a sudden sense of indescribable things”—his expanded imagination dilating his sense of reality—a feeling that yielded literary fruit in his own The Ballad of the White Horse.5 MacDonald’s fairytales enlarge and unfold the meanings and associations of commonplace objects and experiences, and they open the unsettling possibility that our present existence might be small and cramped, whereas the expansiveness of the fairytale might more accurately reflect the eternal world.6 Meanwhile, Chesterton’s interpretation of the princess’ household geography—though fitting and insightful—is not definitive, finalizing, or even, possibly, what MacDonald intended. Though in a sense it is paradoxically exactly what MacDonald intended in that he created s Conclusion 205 a spacious imaginative playground filled with beautiful things and invited the reader to participate in the meaning-making game. The thoughts that are lightly generated from this play are thus not wholly MacDonald’s or Chesterton’s but, being partially vitalized by both (and maybe others as well), quicken into a life of their own. For...