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Criticism
(My complete GMD bio/commentary
is here).
Bibliography
George
MacDonald is not generally
regarded for the literary
criticism in his works. For his
most critical analysis of other
authors we would've had to have
listened to his many lectures
firsthand, most of which were
never written down. As is noted
in the "USA Lecture
Tour" section of this
website, he had lectured both
at home and abroad on such
diverse topics as Robert Burns,
Tom Hood, Tennyson, Milton, and
Shakespeare along with
discourses on English
Literature and poetry in
general.
Almost all of his recorded works of
criticism can be found in A Dish of Orts, The
Tragedie of Hamlet (with a study of the text of the Folio
of 1623), and England's Antiphon. The latter
work outlines the thought behind what he considered to be
England's greatest religious poetry from its earliest forms
to his own day. The Hamlet study we have covered in
the Shakespeare section of
this website. A Dish of Orts was a collection of
MacDonald's views on a variety of subject matter. This
would include two essays on Shakespeare, one on Robert
Browning's poem "Christmas Eve", one on
Wordsworth, and one on Shelley. Perhaps, however, his most
interesting piece to us lies in his essay on the
imagination called "The Imagination: Its Functions and
Its Culture". It shows what great differences of
opinion he would have had with many of those who belonged
to the psychology profession from both his day and our own.
They, always trying to prove states of consciousness
initiated by the thinker himself, MacDonald offering a more
common sense approach that questions why anyone should,
would, or how they even could, instigate thoughts
themselves:
If we now consider the
so-called creative faculty in man, we shall
find that in no primary sense is this
faculty creative. Indeed, a man is rather being
thought than thinking, when a new
thought arises in his mind. He knew it not
till he found it there, therefore he could
not even have sent for it. He did not create
it, else how could it be the surprise that it
was when it arose? He may, indeed, in rare
instances foresee that something is coming,
and make ready the place for its birth; but
that is the utmost relation of consciousness
and will he can bear to the dawning idea.
Leaving this aside, however, and turning to
the embodiment or revelation of thought, we
shall find that a man no more creates the
forms by which he would reveal his thoughts,
than he creates those thoughts themselves.
Also in Orts is an essay called, "A
Sketch of Individual Development", which follows the
growth of human self-consciousness in all its facets. It
begins:
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We cannot recall whence we
came, nor tell how we began to be. We know
approximately how far back we can remember,
but have no idea how far back we may not have
forgotten. Certainly we knew once much that
we have forgotten now. My own earliest
definable memory is of a great funeral of one
of the Dukes of Gordon, when I was between
two and three years of age. Surely my first
knowledge was not of death. I must have known
much and many things before, although that
seems my earliest memory. As in what we
foolishly call maturity, so in the dawn of
consciousness, both before and after it has
begun to be buttressed with self-consciousness,
each succeeding consciousness dims--often
obliterates--that which went before, and with
regard to our past as well as our future,
imagination and faith must step into the
place vacated of knowledge. We are aware, and
we know that we are aware, but when or how we
began to be aware, is wrapt in a mist that
deepens on the one side into deepest night,
and on the other brightens into the full
assurance of existence. Looking back we can
but dream, looking forward we lose ourselves
in speculation; but we may both speculate and
dream, for all speculation is not false, and
all dreaming is not of the unreal.
- ...
-
By degrees he has learned
that the world is around, and not within
him--that he is apart, and that is apart;
from consciousness he passes to
self-consciousness. This is a second birth,
for now a higher life begins. When a man not
only lives, but knows that he lives, then
first the possibility of a real life
commences. By real life, I mean life
which has a share in its own existence.
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For now, towards the world
around him--the world that is not his mother,
and, actively at least, neither loves him nor
ministers to him, reveal themselves certain
relations, initiated by fancies, desires,
preferences, that arise within
himself--reasonable or not matters
little:--founded in reason, they can in no
case be devoid of reason. Every object
concerned in these relations presents itself
to the man as lovely, desirable, good, or
ugly, hateful, bad; and through these
relations, obscure and imperfect, and to a
being weighted with a strong faculty for
mistake, begins to be revealed the existence
and force of Being other and higher than his
own, recognized as Will, and first of
all in its opposition to his desires.
Thereupon begins the strife without which
there never was, and, I presume, never can
be, any growth, any progress; and the first
result is what I may call the third birth of
the human being.
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