This thread runs through Victorian literature and finds its culmination in JRR Tolkien’s “Smith of Wootton Major”, with its unsatisfied yearning for Faëry. They have as mysterious a quality as “Phantastes” or MacDonald’s other masterpiece “The Golden Key”. Macdonald’s “Phantastes” contains several quotes from the German Romantic poet Novalis, Friedrich, Freiherr von Hardenburg. These things still haunt me and even now, I cannot tell you what they mean, though I am always trying to recapture the feeling.Īs a teenager, I read avidly the Victorian fairy stories of Jean Ingelow, Mary de Morgan, and especially George Macdonald. This feeling was triggered by many things: red peony shoots coming up through black soil in spring, certain cloud formations, the quality of light on a clear winter morning.
When I was a child, I would frequently be overcome by a feeling of something wonderful just around the corner. It could not be grasped or defined, only experienced.
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