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=                             Phantastes                             =
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                            Introduction
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'Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women' is a fantasy novel
by Scottish writer George MacDonald published in London in 1858.

The story centres on the character Anodos ("pathless" in Greek) and
takes its inspiration from German Romanticism, particularly Novalis.
The story concerns a young man who is pulled into a dreamlike world
and there hunts for his ideal of female beauty, embodied by the
"Marble Lady". Anodos lives through many adventures and temptations
while in the other world, until he is finally ready to give up his
ideals.

The book influenced the fantasy authors C. S. Lewis and J. R. R.
Tolkien.


                                Plot
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The tale starts the day after Anodos' twenty-first birthday. He
discovers an ancient fairy lady in the desk that he inherited as a
birthright from his late father. After the fairy shows him Fairy Land
in a vision, Anodos awakes the next day to find that his room is
transforming into a forest, which he soon finds to be Fairy Land
itself.

Anodos then encounters a woman and her daughter in a cottage who warn
him about the evil Ash Tree and the Alder Tree. He is told that the
spirits of trees can leave their tree-hosts and wander throughout
Fairy Land. He then explores the world of the fairies, which live in
flowers. He then has a nightmarish encounter with the spirit of the
Ash Tree, escapes, and finds rest in the warmth and love of the Beech
Tree's spirit.

He finds a marble statue by Pygmalion. When he sings to it, the statue
flees from him. He pursues the Marble Lady, but finds instead the Maid
of the Alder Tree in disguise. The Maid deceives Anodos into letting
his guard down so the Ash can attack. He narrowly escapes doom, being
saved by the knight Sir Percivale.  Anodos then meets a woman and her
daughter who believe in fairy tales and the magic of Fairy Land,
despite the disbelief of the woman's husband. Anodos also finds his
shadow, an evil presence that follows and torments Anodos throughout
the rest of the story.

Anodos finds a large palace with many rooms, including a bedroom
labelled as his own. In the palace library, he reads the story of
Cosmo of Prague. Cosmo is a believer in fantasy who sacrifices his
life to free the soul of his lover from an enchanted mirror.

Anodos spends much time in the palace. He comes upon corridors filled
with still statues. Anodos explores the halls and realises that the
statues dance in the halls, and return quickly to their pedestals when
he enters. He dreams of the marble lady, that she alone has an empty
pedestal among the statues. He later finds this pedestal and sings to
it. The marble lady materialises on the pedestal, but flees him.
Anodos follows, going into a strange subterranean world with
gnome-like Kobolds that mock him.

Anodos escapes this place and finds himself on the beach of a stormy
sea. A boat takes him to an "island" with a cottage with four doors
which is inhabited by an ancient lady. Anodos enters each door in
turn, each containing a different world. In the first he becomes a
child again, remembering the death of his brother. In the next door he
finds the marble lady and Sir Percivale in love. Here Anodos makes a
last outburst of his love for the marble lady. The next door recounts
the death of a loved one of Anodos, and he finds his family mausoleum.
Finally, Anodos travels through the last door ("the door of the
timeless") but is saved by the ancient lady without remembering
anything. The ancient lady says that because she saved him, he must
leave via an isthmus before the island sinks underwater.

Next Anodos finds himself with two brothers who are forging armour and
swords in order to fight three marauding giants living in a fortified
stronghold. Anodos joins them in their fight, but they are ambushed by
the giants unprepared. The brothers die in the fight, but Anodos
lives, killing the giants and becoming a hero of the kingdom. He
journeys to tell a woman whom one of the brothers loved of the
brothers' death, but along the way is captured by a manifestation of
his shadow and imprisoned.  Anodos escapes by the song of a woman whom
he had met before in Fairy Land, and he is not troubled by his shadow
again.

Anodos again encounters Sir Percivale, becoming his squire. They come
upon a cult of worshipers doing an unknown evil to a select few.
Anodos decides to try to stop the ritual. He destroys the worshippers'
idol, exposing a dark opening out of which a monster rushes to attack
him. He kills the monster but is killed in the struggle as well. He
floats as a spirit for a time before awakening alive on Earth,
retaining the memory of his experiences in Fairy Land. His sisters
informs him that he had only been gone 21 days, despite his seemingly
long journey.


                               Style
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The novel is presented in a fragmentary, stream-of-consciousness
style, designed to evoke the experience of dreaming. Significantly,
only the hero Anodos is given a name, and the descriptions of his
experience are kept deliberately vague. In this way, MacDonald is able
to explore the adult unconscious mind that eludes logical patterns and
separations.


                        Publication history
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'Phantastes' was first published by Smith Elder & Co. in London in
1858.

A two volume edition was published 1874 & 1878 by Daldy Isbister
& co.

The 1905 edition was illustrated by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Arthur
Hughes.

The book was reprinted in paperback by Ballantine Books as the
fourteenth volume of the 'Ballantine Adult Fantasy series' in 1970.


                             Reception
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C. S. Lewis wrote of his first reading of 'Phantastes' at age sixteen,
"That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest
of me[,] not unnaturally, took longer. I had not the faintest notion
what I had let myself in for by buying 'Phantastes'."

J. R. R. Tolkien mentioned MacDonald in his essay "On Fairy-Stories".

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series editor Lin Carter wrote that
"MacDonald, frankly, had no ear for writing verses at all, and the
intrusion of his saccharine rhymes injured, rather than enhanced, the
strength and clearness of the book." He omitted almost all MacDonald's
songs and poems from the 1970 reprint.

In 2020, UK singer/songwriter and guitarist Nick Harper released the
album 'Phantastes', which was partly inspired by MacDonald's book.
Harper said its story mirrored his teenage years and his first kiss
with his now-wife in 1982. Harper also narrated a 2021 Phantastes
audiobook which includes songs written by Harper using MacDonald's
lyrics from the book.


                           External links
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*
* [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MacPhan.html
Phantastes Online]
* [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/325 Phantastes] on Project
Gutenberg
* [https://ccel.org/ccel/macdonald/phantastes_faerie Phantastes] at
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
*
* [http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/gm/phantov.html Phantastes at
Victorian Web]
*


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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantastes