Entertainers of the Spirit in Children's Literature An Overall View of the Past 100 Years
By Jenny
Koralek
"The
storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer
of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social and
political ideals. Nevertheless, it is also true that the serious writer of our
time must be deeply concerned about the problems of his generation. He cannot
but see that the power of religion...is weaker today than it was in any other
epoch of history. More and more children grow up without faith in God, without
belief in reward and punishment, in the immortality of the soul, and even the
validity of ethics...No technological achievements can mitigate the disappointment
of modern man, his loneliness, his feelings of inferiority, and his fear of war,
revolution and terror."
These words could have been written yesterday, to-day, or at any time since the
watershed which was 11 September 2001. They were in fact spoken by Isaac Bashevis
Singer in 1978 in his Nobel Lecture, yet never have they seemed more appropriate
and never have our children needed more these "entertainers of the spirit".
For there is no place for cynicism or despair - two states of mind and heart from
which children should be free - where spirit reigns - spirit as inspiration,
as real meaning, as essence, as our higher faculties of thought and feeling, spirit
which en-courages, spirit which en-thuses. And these are the criteria I
searched for and found in abundance among the vast body of top quality children's
literature of the past 100 years.
It seems indisputable that during that time the English-speaking world (closely
followed by the Scandinavians) invented, then cornered this field and produced
a long and distinguished line of writers for readers aged somewhere - anywhere
- between 9 and 90.
But why?
Is it because they all drank and continue to drink from the same sources, the
same well-springs? From the Norse myths, the Arthurian legends; from Homer's Odyssey
and Iliad and perhaps Ovid s Metamorphoses; from the fairy tales
collected by the Brothers Grimm (not forgetting The Arabian Nights largely
garnered by intrepid British explorers of far-off lands); from the Bible - a narrative
and linguistic powerhouse (in England thanks particularly to the King James "Authorised"
Version, one of the translators of which, rumour has it, was William Shakespeare);
from the Celtic influence with its mists, its magical, musical myths: Mabinogion
(rendered wonderfully accessible to children in our time by Newbery Medal-winner,
Lloyd Alexander in his superb Chronicles of Prydain), Tara, Taliesin -
the very names are poetry. Nor can we leave out those "shortest stories in
the world" as P L Travers called the nursery rhymes and riddle-me-rees still
chanted in school playgrounds, still recited on a motherly or grandmotherly knee.
Is it because our ancestors in the northern hemisphere all shared the winter season
when perhaps a passing stranger, perhaps a family elder would have told such tales
during the long dark nights as everyone huddled around the fire, and candelight
formed shadows on the walls? It is certainly striking that this wealth of literature
does not exist in hotter, Latin climes where children are out of doors early and
late and take siestas in the afternoon.
Where does it come from - the vitality and waywardness so apparent in Anglo-Saxon
children s literature, with its fondness for ec-centricity and non-sense,
its contrariness, its disinclination to moralise? It certainly sits well alongside
the wandering Jewish input in more recent times This meeting of different cultures
and the ensuing mix of poignant old-soulishness and a robust enjoyment of all
things absurd is particularly and enviably alive in the United States. I am thinking
here of Maurice Sendak - and not only his masterpiece, Where the Wild Things
Are, but also of whoopy once, whoopy twice, whoopy Chicken Soup W ith Rice
; of Mickey in The Night Kitchen, stirring the batter of his Mickey cake
with Laurel and Hardy against a background of Manhattan s skyscrapers made out
of kitchen utensils; Dr Seuss s hopelessly helpful Cat In the Hat and Sam
who "loves green eggs and ham", and Isaac Singer s uplifting Hannukah
Power of Light stories, glowing like good deeds in our dark world.
Between them these influences contain the fundamental experiences shared by all
human beings: birth, death, fear, courage, uncertainty, disappointment, difficulties,
fortitude, friendships, joy, love, achievement, failure, struggle, transformations,
laughter- oh yes, plenty of laughter - challenges, journeys, search -
the myth of living itself. (Myth - which is currently for many people synonymous
with the word "lie," but which the dictionary defines as "a story
with a veiled meaning", and, if we go further and look at the word in Greek
(mythos) we see it shares the same root - mu - with words which
signify the keeping of a certain silence in front of the secret, the unknown).
There is an immense, established canon - a great canon, a classic canon always
in print or reprinting, and always being read. It embraces all the qualities above-mentioned
and a random list of specially loved books might well include: Alice In Wonderland,
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Just-So Stories, The Princess and The Goblin
and many other George Macdonald stories, The Peterkin Papers, Little Women,
What Katy Did, The Railway Children, Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the
Carpet; The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Heidi, Anne of Green
Gables (she whose hair went dreadfully green); John Masefield s The Midnight
Folk and The Box of Delights brilliantly combining magic with the daily
humdrum as P L Travers was to do in her Mary Poppins books; The Wind
In the Willows (if, that is, you are happy with a story which contains no
female protagonists whatsoever); Elizabeth Goudge s The Little White Horse
[Moonacre in America] where a cherished orphan girl resolves the dark night
mysteries in the silver light of Moonacre valley and discovers a unicorn among
the trees; and Goudge s other gem, Henrietta s House, where all the generations
of a child s beloved family come together in the woods on a timeless summer afternoon
where past and present meet and heal: all the work of this clever, truly spiritual
daughter of a Cathedral Dean is imbued with love as caritas but never without
a kind and humorous awareness of human foibles; Edward Lear and his Limericks
make us laugh, as do the American, Munro Leaf s Story ofFerdinand,
the little bull who preferred flowers to the fight, and The Story of Horace,
the bear who ate his way through an entire and entirely indignant family; and
Winnie-the-Pooh, that very English "bear of little brain" and
cold toes and meaningless "hums." There are great horse stories such
as Black Beauty,National Velvet, The Yearling and perhaps even
My Friend Flicka. As for dogs, Dodie Smith gave us 101 Dalmatians
who live on and on in movie form.We have elephants and monkeys in the
timeless Babar books; and rabbits are as numerous in books as they are
in burrows: they come naughty like Brer Rabbit and Peter Rabbit (surely
cousins under the skin?) less naughty - Benjamin Bunny, The Flopsy Bunnies,
and sweet like Alison Uttley s Little Grey Rabbit, keeping the peace between
Hare and Squirrel as they watch the sun rise on Easter Day; and The Velveteen
Rabbit (in print again and again for 80 years) - who became real through loving
and being loved - (with none of the awful morality attached to poor Pinocchio
in his efforts to become "a real boy").
We have gripping stories of tougher lives than ours, such as The Little House
on the Prairie which makes one feel one was there with the pioneering family;
or there on that farm on the plains of Hungary during World War 1 depicted in
Kate Seredy s The Good Master and The Singing Tree
On a lighter note, we cannot possibly leave out Bemelmans contrary Parisian convent
girl, Madeline, or Manhattan s own worldly Heloise up there with
Nanny in her Plawza suite, nor the vivid evocation of boys preparing for
Hallowe en amid the bright fall leaves in the classy "spookiness" of
Ray Bradbury s Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Mice, too, have their place in this canon - Beatrix Potter s Tale of Two Bad...;
Wanda Gag s Snippy and Snappy; quirky E.B. White who gives us Stuart
Little and spiders too - and pigs - in his gem, Charlotte s Web.
Erich Kästner s Emil and the Detectives continues to delight and his Lisa
andLottie, one of the first children s books to tackle divorce, has
taken on a new lease of life in the film, The Parent Trap.
There are friendly ghosts too, such as Penelope Lively s Thomas Kempe or
L. M. Boston s Children of Greene Knowe, who return to the old, old house
and the magical topiary-filled garden by the river to play with Toby, the lonely
boy so loved by his wise grandmother.
And there are the modern epics: T. H. White - that lonely, learned, brilliant
man, who abhorred war and violence, brought Arthur, Merlin and Lancelot to life
again with yet-to-be-matched wit, wisdom, and sorrow in his Once And Future
King, for older generations still the best re-telling since Malory s, and
which would be the inspiration for the famous musical, Camelot.. A mantle
of more modern cut fell over the shoulders of Susan Cooper in The Dark Is Rising
series, and, albeit better known for her excellent historical novels, there is
a special beauty, purity, nobility in Rosemary Sutcliff s sadder Camelot trilogy.
J.R.R. Tolkien s The Lord of The Rings has become an international "cult"
alongside the phenomenon of his friend C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, which,
50 years on, continue to sell and sell, read by children who have not been brought
up religiously, oblivious to the Christian allegory, loving Aslan the lion for
himself.
Between them these books contain love, laughter, courage in adversity, fun, a
sense of awe or wonder, magic, mystery, challenge, nonsense and an over-riding
quality which I call "goodness" - the kind, as Auden once put it, "which
is neither phoney nor moralistic."
To these qualities I would add that of "magnanimity" as defined by C
S Lewis in one of his most remarkable essays, The Abolition of Man. His
cri du coeur for the education of the feelings in children rings out as
powerfully today as it did in 1943: "The heart," he says, "rules
the bellythrough the chest, the seat ..of emotions organised by trained
habit into stable sentiments. The Chest (we might now say solar plexus or
heart) - Magnanimity - Sentiment (and of course he does not mean Sentimentality)
- these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral
man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is
man: for by his intellect he is merespirit and by his appetite mere animal".
If magnanimity is greatness of soul, generosity, absence of meanness, great-heartedness,
then I think it is fair to say that magnanimity is to be found in all great books
for children, or at least a deep wish for its existence in the heart of the author
within the measure of his or her gift, vision, degree of understanding.
During the Sixties, and continuing through the Eighties into the early Nineties,
there was a renaissance of prize-winning writing for children - a new "Golden
Age," which continued for example, New Zealand s Margaret Mahy writing superbly
and with such sympathy on adolescent rites of passage in The Haunting, The
Changeover, A Catalogue of the Universe. In America, Ursula LeGuin, with her
sombre Wizard of Earthsea and its sequels, produced a weighty enquiry into
cosmic equilibrium, a warning against abuse of powers. Madeleine l Engle tackled
mystical science fiction with A Wrinkle In Time. In the UK Philippa Pearce
wrote brilliantly about other aspects of time in Tom s Midnight Garden.
Catherine Storr broke new and therapeutic ground with Marianne Dreams and
Leon Garfield, a very fine writer of historical novels and biblical re-tellings,
co-authored, The Gods Beneath the Sea, the best re-telling of Greek myths
I have ever come across. Joan Aiken was pouring out exquisite short stories of
magic in modern times while her feisty heroine, Dido Twite, was routing foes in
a deliciously non-existent mish-mash of historical backgrounds. Alan Garner overwhelmed
us with The Owl Service, a brilliant, powerful, terrifying story, a masterwork,
where modern teenagers are brought face to face with an ancient Welsh legend come
to life again. Diana Wynne Jones was at work on her particular forms of daring
mix between magic and reality in the Chrestomanci novels and even more so in her
intriguing Fire and Hemlock and Hexwood. Norton Juster introduced
children to allegory (which might in time lead them to The Pilgrim s Progress)
in The Phantom Tollbooth. And pigs join the other animals, courtesy of
Dick King-Smith, pig-lover supreme, out of whose books the delightful film, Babe,
will appear in the 90 s.
From Finland Tove Jansson brought us the wistful comfortless Toffle and the better
known doleful Moomintrolls. In Sweden Astrid Lindgren continued to add regularly
to her output of wacky tales of Pippi Longstocking and Larsson on the
Roof. She also wrotethe magical wintry Tomten tale and many
other more down to earth but enchanting accounts of traditional Swedish life such
as Christmas at Bullerby(every house should have a copy), and the books
about Mardie, (in America T he Noisy Village) probably based on
her own early 20th century memories of a child raised by liberal parents well
ahead of their times.
The American Cynthia Voigt (Dicey s Song in particular) should be singled
out for her capacity to revel in the importance of relationships of all kinds,
and a gift for tackling the fallout from the VietNam war, racism, "dysfunctional"
family life positively, warmly, creatively, yet without ever evading the pain
of all these issues.
The late and greatly missed Robert Westall published among other titles The
Machine-Gunners, The Kingdom By The Sea, Gulf, Falling Into Glory.
His years as a teacher informed all his writing - be it about children in war-times,
or cats, or falling in love, with an empathy that could only have come from years
of sympathetic observations and - perhaps - a painful distillation of things he
too had been through when he was a boy in the tough Tyneside region of north-eastern
England during World War II.
And of course Roald Dahl (who, around the time St Exupéry was writing The Little
Prince[in New York of all places], had begun with a tale of airmen and gremlins
in the middle of World War II ) was at the height of his powers with Charlie
and The Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Danny Champion of the World
(perhaps his best book of all - a heart-warming and very funny account of a poacher-father
and son relationship) before he began to write too much, too often and until the
later genial TheBFG, perhaps more thinly and too darkly...
And where to place America s controversial Robert Cormier who makes many adults
uncomfortable? He wrote for older children with immense courage about many kinds
of darkness. A man who turned everything on its head, loved "happy endings"
but knew in real life they do not often, let alone always happen, his books are
all the more remarkable because they do not leave the reader depressed but perhaps
thoughtfully troubled in a constructive way. An important writer for older children,
he seemed to acknowledge the presence, if not of the numinous, of forces at work
greater than our own over which we perhaps have far less control than we like
to think.
Overall the daring mix of magic and realism continued to prevail, but a new, grimmer
note began make itself heard from several writers with the courage to tackle head-on
the sufferings of the 20th century, producing classics which have rightly joined
the great canon from the more distant past.
Interestingly, where - one could say - Tolkien turned away in his writings from
the horrors of the real world he had witnessed at first hand during World War
I, these writers faced directly the agonising effects World War II and the ensuing
"Cold War" - had on children.
Top of the list is I Am David (Going North in the USA), by the Danish writer,
the late Anne Holm. Its outer form an exciting, inspiring story of a boy's escape
from some kind of political prison camp in Eastern Europe and his tough adventures
as he tries to find his way to his mother in Denmark; its inner form a map of
fortitude and love. His refrain, his mantra, is the 23rd psalm which keeps him
going through all his ordeals and helps him to experience a proper sense of self.
It is a rare gift to get the proper mix of adventure and high courage without
lapsing into false piety and polemic, and Anne Holm succeeds in every sentence.
Due to the vagaries of publishing this book which has sold a million copies in
translation (and been reprinted countless times in the UK over the past 10 years)
it is not currently available in Danish and unfortunately out of print in North
America.
Another book in a similar genre is Ian Seraillier s The Silver Sword, based
on the true story of the heroism of some Polish brothers and sisters who escape
from the Warsaw ghetto during World War II and after immense and fearfilled suffering
and struggle are re-united with their parents in Switzerland.
Michelle Magorian is another fine writer who tackled the disruption of war in
her popular Goodnight Mr Tom, in which a crabby old countryman grudgingly
takes in a poor and severely abused boy evacuated from London under the German
Blitz, and went on to describe in Back Home the often painful adjustments
children had to make when returning to England after the Second World War from
their happy refuge in the USA.
Perhaps the reason that these books are so important is that the conditions of
the children in them are so dire that they have no choice but to draw on the essentials
of courage and effort while also taking the terrible risk of throwing themselves
on the mercy of adults they might or might not be able to trust.
This genre of book challenges one's complacent "I'm all right as I am"
and raise the awesome question, "But what if...how would I be if...there
was a real disaster, a real catastrophe?"
The same questions apply to Russell Hoban s masterpiece The Mouse and His Child
- a book that was first published in 1967 and is still being discovered with delight.
Seemingly in a world far removed from wars, politics and other crimes and
misdemeanours, the mechanical mouse and his dancing child, wound up by a key get
broken and abandoned on the rubbish dump overseen by a terrible gangster of a
rat. "What are we?" the tin toy child mouse asks his father. "I
don t know," the father answered". We must wait and see..." And
so begins their long journey - and all Russell Hoban s books are about journeys
- seeking to become "self-winding" and to find a family and have home
of their very own. It is not until they finally sink, in all senses, to the very
depths - in their case into the depths of a very muddy pond, and with the help
of some very strange friends, that they remember what they had already known but
not understood - that if you look up you can see the stars, and a battered kind
of redemption and happiness is achieved by all.
In one way or another the tellers of the tales which form this great canon make
the risky but vital assumption that absolutely anything is possible. They leap
and we leap with them. They remind me of William Blake s soaring imagination,
so evident in everything he wrote or painted, or of Chagall s fiddlers and beggars
flying over the grounded roof tops. Think of Enid Bagnold s National Velvet.
Whoever head of a little girl riding in the Grand National, the world s most famous
and most dangerous steeplechase? Let alone winning it? Think of the night that
Wendy, Michael and John Darling flew out of their conventional nursery with Peter
Pan. The boy in Roald Dahl s short story for older children, The Swan,
whose only hope was to fly up and away from the fearful bullies.
And Russell Hoban s frog who has the temerity to order a bird to drop the wretched
mouse and his child - "STOP" orders the frog and the bird obeys - and
the story can go on, because certain laws have been briefly stood topsy-turvy.
"What if?" say these writers. "Just supposing...Just imagine...What
are we? Who am I? I am David...I am me...I can have a proper sense of self..."
For here we are talking of stories where verticality meets horizontality - where
the horizontality of linear time crosses a verticality where an action becomes
possible now.
So, we arrive at the present day and a new century with a vast library of excellent
children s literature "aback of us" as Alan Garner might say.
Who are the new entertainers of the spirit? Does their entertainment differ from
that of the past? Do the old certainties hold fast now, or are there new concerns?
There do seem to be two distinct kinds of writing which can be currently identified
- certainly in the United Kingdom: social realism and fantasy.
We have social realism in abundance from the skilled, sympathetic, supportive
pens of such authors as Anne Fine (famous for Madam Doubtfire, The Flour Babies,
Goggle-Eyes, The Tulip Touch and currently "Children s Laureate"
in the UK) and Jacqueline Wilson who manages to evoke the deepest empathy in The
Illustrated Mum with the manic-depressive mother of the title as well as her
long-suffering children. Like Anne Fine, but perhaps lacking the former s wicked
sense of humour, Wilson can write brilliantly about present-day problems before
which most authors quail - from bed-wetting, by way of divorce to the death of
a special school-friend. Berlie Doherty wrote a fine book about teen-age pregnancy
(Dear Nobody), but also has a real gift for looking back at earlier times
and the hard lives of working women (Grannie Was A Buffer Girl) and in
her gentler way holding the interest of her readers, both boys and girls.
And perhaps here, on a far darker note, mention should be made of Britain s controversial
Melvin Burgess, who had the courage to write seriously and terrifyingly about
drug-taking, and heroin in particular, in his Junk, which it is known has
had a positive impact on young, thoughtful teen-agers.
The prolific Michael Morpurgo who won prizes for his War Horse (World War
I seen through the eyes of a horse) has tackled ecological issues with stories
(to name but a few)about whale-saving in Why The Whales Came,, survival
in Kensuke s Kingdom, hoof and mouth disease in Out of the Ashes,
and social issues such as poverty and disintegration alcoholism, and glorious
redemption in old age in his particularly fine book Billy The Kid. He is
one of the rarer breed of authors who really do appeal to boys. The South African
author, Beverley Naidoo won a well-deserved prize recently for her book about
the children of a political Nigerian family sent on their own to seek asylum in
the United Kingdom, The Other Side of Truth is a good story in its own
right, but also one which stirs the conscience of those on the sidelines of this
experience,and may really help eyes to be opened, attitudes to change.
There are still far too few books for black children although there is an increasing
number of re-tellings of Caribbean folk tales such as Anansi the Spider
and a number of very good black poets (including Benjamin Zephaniah) now contributing
their riches to the canon. The United Kingdom does not have a Jack Ezra Keats
but the heroine of Mary Hoffman s Amazing Grace is a black heroine.
The Anglo-Indian Jamila Gavin s canvas contains many of the strands common to
"dysfunctional" society and its microcosm, "dysfunctional"
families, but on a larger scale than most. In her trilogy The W heel of Surya
she tackles the terrible effects of partition in India in 1947 on a humble Sikh
family in the Punjab which lead to the breakdown of their life in India, for some
of them the terrifying experience of ending up in London, encountering the unknown
world of a poor but loving Irish family. Moving between England and India in the
early 50 s (and not afraid to draw on sentences from sacred Hindu texts to make
a point) she builds a poignant and dramatic picture of how huge political and
racial events - like a heavy, jagged stone dropped into a pond - send out ripples
upon ripples to upset the lives of innocent and ignorant people around the globe,
but in the tragic process also opening up their horizons. Her most recent prize-winning
work, Coram Boy is also strong stuff. Here she tackles the 18th century
history of illegitimate babies abandoned into the orphanage set up by Captain
Thomas Coram in Bloomsbury (for whom Handel composed The Messiah as a fundraiser).
By turns truly shocking, exciting, tender, it tells the story of a friendship
between a black boy saved from slavery and a white "Coram Boy". Jamila
Gavin s writing is deep, thoughtful, and her ability to write about friendships
which transcend race, colour, class and continent is unsurpassed among contemporary
British writers for children.
And now for the second identifiable strand - fantasy, and in particular the phenomenon
which is Harry Potter. For it is a phenomenon - what other books
have had such an appeal for adults as well as children? What other books have
turned adults to reading other children s books as they now are?
There has been much agonising about what it is that makes these books such a success,,
because they could be dismissed, rather unkindly, and with the green-eyed -eyed
monster prowling nearby, as "retrospective"..."derivative"...Perhaps
they are, and if so, does it matter if they get boys reading which they do. Or
are they just a fresh take on a very old, tried, true and much loved British tradition
- the boys or girls boarding school story - to be found in countless versions
from comic books to best sellers by such writers as Angela Brazil, Enid Blyton.
Add the glorious gabby nonsense of the famous Molesworth stories (written
by a mildly jaded schoolmaster who had somehow retained his sense of humour and
illustrated to perfection by Ronald Searle, the great cartoonist); a dash of Roald
Dahl s dark side, a pinch or two of Mervyn Peake s, and stir vigorously while
pouring in pints of the wishful thinking of all children during school hours that
something really interesting, magical, unusual, exciting, unexpected, inexplicable,
scary, thrilling, delicious would happen to enhance the daily round of rivalries
and friendships and eradicate boredom...and you have a sketchy recipe for the
success of these books. Perhaps too they provide a welcome escape from and antidote
to too much social realism, rather as adults turn to a good old reliable black
and white movie with a plot you can follow and a satisfactory ending. There is,
however, an uneasy mix between the fun and games and sudden swings into much,
much darker and really frightening territory such as the account of the evil "he
who must not be named" gorging on unicorn s blood like Dracula which is thoroughly
objectionable and shows, at the very least, complete ignorance of the mythological
meaning of the unicorn, and at the very worst complete lack of respect for that
meaning. At the end of the day it is to be hoped that aficionados of Harry Potter
will find fare of more quality and real depth in this domain in due course.
At least it can be said that none of these contemporary authors are guilty of
cynicism or despair - two qualities which should never make themselves felt in
children s literature. They all entertain the spirit valiantly in the teeth of
the encroachment of the cruel world which is much more, and too early known to
children for the many reasons we all know about only too well.
Who would have imagined that a reform school for delinquents in the Texan desert
would provide a very satisfying setting for a story where the inmates are forced
to dig in the sand where deadly killer creatures lurk? Louis Sachar s Holes
proves very popular with children and parents alike as they eagerly turn the pages
to arrive at the hugely satisfying denouement where the beastly warders get the
comeuppance they deserve?
Who does not find totally irresistible the Californian newcomer, Lemony Snicket
s courageous Baudelaire children, Klaus, Violet and Sunny, orphaned on page 1
of Book 1 of A Series of Unfortunate Events? We cannot say we have not
been warned from the outset - if you want a story with a happy ending put the
book down at once. Disaster upon disaster befalls the Baudelaire children (Spleen
and Les Fleurs du Mal push themselves foreword from the back of the mind
each time the name comes up) - every chapter ends with a cliff-hanger. But they
never give up, never! They are brave, innovative, look out for and help
one another, philosophical, live to fight another day in spite of the awful grown
ups who either actively intend to harm them, or at very least fail them time upon
time.
In a league of his own is David Almond. Like Alan Garner he comes from the North
of England with its powerhouse of a past and is, also like Alan Garner - a poet
with a truly original perspective on the ordinary world around us which we so
often ignore because think we know all about it...particularly in his Skellig,
where, in rather grim surroundings, a boy and girl may, like Abraham and Sarah
long ago, be "entertaining an angel unawares"...
There are several writers in the great canon who would need an essay to themselves,
and not least among them is Philip Pullman whose trilogy His Dark Materials
(Northern Lights, or in the USThe Golden Compass,
The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass) is without doubt,
even if leaning towards hubris, a towering achievement.
It is a re-working of the story of the Fall, "with its roots planted firmly
in the English dissenting tradition that harks back to William Blake and others..."
so action-packed and startling it is almost hectic in its page-turning.
The hero, whose name perhaps intentionally is Will and the heroine (destined
to be the new Eve) move between several parallel universes, as they battle with
powers intent on destroying "the dust" which children have about them
(a beautiful idea first hinted at in Pullman s quote from a poem by John Ashbery
"Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living") - which seems
to represent the creative, vital force of soul potential without which life is
not worth living. There is a Lucifer figure and his beautiful, passionate female
counterpart; a bear who makes a formidable enemy and a wonderful friend; powerful
witches of a kind very different from Harry Potter s; proud "gyptians"
or Romanies; "mulefa" a truly original breed of loving "animals"...;
a thoughtful female physicist; terrifying Spectres who leach the very life out
of you; shamanistic explorers; fearless pilots of airballoons;; sublime
landscapes in our world and in others; a subtil and very sharp knife capable of
cutting through what separates us from another world altogether; we travel down
into the underworld and return from that undiscovered country, death, it seems,
having been explained at last; there are angels who no longer are entirely sexless,
but, to counteract this cheapening of their qualities, in another part of the
great tale Pullman describes them deeply and movingly "...and then Serafina
understood something for which the witches had no word: it was the idea of pilgrimage.
She understood why these beings would wait for thousands of years and travel vast
distances in order to be close to something important. That was how these creatures
looked now, these beautiful pilgrims of rarefied light..."
But perhaps the most original and delightful "characters" in these books
are the "daemons" - animal creatures, who represent the essential nature
of their owners and who can talk to them and from whom they must never be too
far separated. This is a lovely use of an ancient idea and understandably appeals
to readers of all ages.
He does not stint in the Dark Materials trilogy on violence both mental
and physical, shock, pain, blood and killings, but there are also wonderful and
awesome pictures on every cliffhanging page - of the beauties and terrors of the
natural universe -the glory of the northern lights which so many of us dream of
seeing once before we die, forests filled with every kind of flora and fauna,
mountains, snow, heat, and desert...
And yet...and yet...there is something which disturbs...something too "knowing",
a hint of polemic....
Pullman confesses to the influence of Blake and indeed the books are permeated
with the same dark, angry side of that great visionary with no sign to the last
page of the other side - the side of light, the side of love...the "lamb"
side...no lamb to lie down with the wolf...
Although it would be hard to argue with Pullman s loathing - which is palpable
throughout the trilogy - of religious fanaticism with its sickening prejudices,
his hatred of the excesses of institutional Churches; although he puts paid in
no uncertain terms to the exceedingly unhelpful, seriously damaging image which
has prevailed for far too long of some angry old man in the skydishing
out hell on earth, it still somehow hurts to have the Ancient of Days carted off
ranting and raving like some demented Lear, by disrespectful angels...
Pullman has thrown up a challenging number of golden balls to juggle with - more
than any other author writing now - and manages most of the time to catch them
all...
And yet...and yet...something on the very last page is missing, unsatisfactory...Has
he thrown out the baby with the bathwater? Has he shown enough and clearly enough
the power of love? The kind of love St Paul wrote about - intentional, conscious,
creative, without which "I am nothing", which "seeketh not her
own, beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth things," and from
which stems that magnanimity C S Lewis spoke of, caritas, which goes beyond
the personal? Has he missed a third dimension, or force which would make sense
of the "kingdom of heaven" he so despises?
His list of what will be required of us to bring about what he calls "the
republic of heaven" cannot be faulted for its humanism...and if the "kingdom
of heaven" against which he fulminates, signifies some outer, exclusive,
elitist, ordinary hierarchy how could one disagree with him? But suppose "the
kingdom of heaven" was meant to indicate some new inner dimension of unity
to be searched for, to be worked for...? Suppose it has to do not only with "doing",
but also with "being"? What is the "vital vapor", "the
dust" for?
His Dark Materials certainly entertains the spirit. It is a substantial,
important work which while telling a rippingly good tale, asks real questions,
challenges received ideas, opens up vast, daunting horizons for head and heart
- beside which the Narnia books might now seem simplistic to a degree.
And yet...and yet...there is a goodness in them which is lacking here...and immense
though the canvas is, there is little sign of magnanimity - of forgiveness, of
compassion, which are components of the other side of Blake, the side of Paradise
not only lost, but regained.
But here Isaac Singer trips up the critical adult when he says that one of the
"five hundred reasons" he writes for children is that "they
don t expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young asthey are,
they know that it is not in his power. Only adults have such childish illusions"
and insists in the final part of his Nobel Lecture that "the pessimism
of the creative person is not decadence but amighty passion for the
redemption ofman" and at once I find myself readier
to give Philip Pullman the benefit of the doubt.
What will be the effect, if any, on children s literature of the watershed that
was 11 September 2001? Will we begin to hear more from cultures about which we
at present know so little? Of what it is like to be hungry? Homeless? Of displaced
persons fleeing for their lives in leaky boats? Or will we find an increase in
"escapism" into fantasies, science fictions, worlds far far from our
own battered planet? Or is Merlin awakening in the crystal cave, is the spirit
of the "once and future king" stirring to inspire us on? Can "world
religions" begin to be seen afresh as great myths trying to tell us of the
need for another kind of renaissance in each one of us?
One thing is certain: quality children s literature is thriving, flourishing and
always finding ways into uncharted waters. The spirit is being entertained in
myriad ways - whether it be by social realism, humour, nonsense, or flights of
fantasy - and one can hold faith with Singer when he says: " strange as
these words may sound, I often play with the idea that when all the social theories
collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet...mayrise up to save us all..."