The Witch: David Lindsay’s Quest of the Absolute

This article attempts a close reading of David Lindsay’s last, unfinished, novel, The Witch, in which from a superficially naturalistic opening a progressively more abstract account is developed of the spiritual journey of the protagonist Ragnar Pole towards final union with the ultimate source of the universe. It outlines the key metaphysical concepts which underpin this undertaking, discusses possible influences, philosophical and religious, on Lindsay’s metaphysical vision, and comments on its final place in the author’s development. The nature of the novel’s ‘characters’ is examined, and especially Ragnar’s relations to the figures of Faustine and Urda, the latter the ‘witch’ of the novel’s title. The article shows how Ragnar’s journey is driven forward by three successive ‘musics’ which mark successive stages of spiritual understanding of the nature of being; and how the soul’s onward journey is propelled by dialectics of pleasure and pain and of love and loneliness. The article further discusses the question of Lindsay’s language, and proposes that what have been thought its oddities and awkwardness are rather a consciously conceived attempt to forge a language of ‘the Sublime’. It finally asks how the nature of what is being attempted in this work relates to its unfinished state, and whether or in what sense it ever could have been finished.