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Phantastes: A Faerie Romance

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"Phantastes from their fount all shapes deriving,
In new habiliments can quickly dight." - Fletcher (quoted in the Prologue)

This is the book that CS Lewis said "baptized his imagination."

Phantastes is an intense, enlightening, beautiful, and highly-pleasing journey through a series of 'phantastes' or dream-like fairy-tales. We follow Anodos, who is a person of noble thought but not of noble action, as he grows up, battles, grieves, falls in love, and comes to accept reality as it is.

Each chapter is a 'new habiliment' or clothing for some 'shape' or phantastic image: A planet where the seasons last 360 years instead of four months; a land subject to three evil giants, in need of a savior; a mirror that casts its view into another world where a beautiful woman is sorrowfully captive... Each playful episode highlights a new and beautiful part of the single 'fount' from which 'all shapes derive,' and delights the reader with its insight, clarity, and emotional power.

"In good sooth, my masters, this is no door. Yet is it a little window, that looketh upon a great world." (From the Prologue)

As with most MacDonald, reviews and descriptions do not amount to much. Here is a short taste of what you will discover in the Phantastes:

"I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of
mind which accompanies the return of consciousness.
As I lay and looked through the eastern window
of my room, a faint streak of peach-colour, dividing
a, cloud that just rose above the low swell of the
horizon, announced the approach of the sun. As
my thoughts, which a deep and apparently dreamless
sleep had dissolved, began again to assume crystalline
forms, the strange events of the foregoing night
presented themselves anew to my wondering conciousness..." p. 1

"As he stood gazing into the mirror, when,
striking him as with a flash of amazement that fixed
him in his posture, noiseless and unannounced, glided
suddenly through the door into the reflected room,
with stately motion, yet reluctant and faltering step,
the graceful form of a woman, clothed all in white.
Her back only was visible as she walked slowly up
to the couch in the further end of the room, on which
she laid herself wearily, turning towards him a face
of unutterable loveliness, in which suffering, and
dislike, and a sense of compulsion, strangely mingled
with the beauty..." P. 156

"MY spirits rose as I went deeper into the forest; but
I could not regain my former elasticity of mind.
I found cheerfulness to be like life itself'not to
be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned,
that the best way to manage some kinds of painful
thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let
them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired ;
and you find you still have a residue of life they
cannot kill." p. 90

"...He gazed vacantly for
a few moments into the depth of the reflected room.
But ere long he said, half aloud: " 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 realm of art; and the very representing of
it to me has clothed with interest that which was otherwise
hard and bare; just as one sees with delight
upon the stage the representation of a character from
which one would escape in life as from something un-
endurably wearisome. But is it not rather that art
rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of
our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious
every-day life, and, appealing to the imagination,
which dwells apart, reveals nature in some degree
as she really is, and as she represents herself to the
eye of the child, whose every-day life, fearless and
unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-
teeming world around him, and rejoices therein
without questioning?" p. 154

This is an enchanting work of high fantasy, lyrical in its composition, spiritual in its nature, and enlightening in its effect on the careful reader. As the subtitle says, Phantastes is a Faerie Romance For Men and Women. The Fairy Land in which Anodos, the narrator, ventures is not the fairy land of youth's innocent dreams; rather, it is an otherworldly plane full of great beauty and terrible ugliness, impish little fairies and horrible, teasing goblins, nurturing spirits and malevolent entities. Anodos' discovery of a fairy inside his deceased father's old desk leads to his unplanned journey into this world of wonder. Interestingly, upon entering Fairy Land, Anodos leaves the beaten path and makes his way through the woods all on his own. He meets a diverse cast of characters along the way, reckoning with dark beings who threaten his spiritual well-being while also finding great and needed comfort at crucial times from nurturing maternal forces. His own shadow takes on perhaps the most malevolent influence of all the beings he deals with. He often finds himself compelled to sing, and his songs are powerful enough to free a beautiful White Lady from inside a statue; he remains infatuated with this lady for a long time, trying desperately to find her; his love for her, he comes to realize, comes in large part from his feelings of having been the one to free her, and an important point the author seems to be suggesting is that the love of a giver is much more pure than the love of a benefactor.

Much of this story is allegorical; Anodos basically comes to know himself and to see the world more objectively as a result of his journeys. He often resorts to tears, yet he also raises his voice in song to uplift others. He discovers the power of brotherly love and the beauty that is all around, yet he cringes at the sight of the shadowy creatures that would do him ill. His journey is challenging because he naturally falls prey to feelings of pride and egotism, but his losses and sorrows eventually coalesce themselves into something of beauty, for it is these experiences that help him grow more spiritual. Much has been made of MacDonald's religious beliefs, but Phantastes to me calls forth no religion other than spiritualism and personal growth and maturity. Good and evil do not exist in Fairy Land, except in the sense that there is both good and evil in each individual spirit.

Doubtless, some will not like MacDonald's 19th-century, florid style. There is action in this novel, but it definitely takes a back seat to exposition and philosophical musings. Some will surely find Phantastes exceptionally boring, but those readers willing to follow Anodos deeply into Fairy Land will embark on an enlightening, touching read that will almost surely make them better persons for having taken the literary journey.