George MacDonald

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George MacDonald

George MacDonald (born December 10, 1824 in Huntly , Scotland , † September 18, 1905 in Ashtead , Surrey ) was a Scottish writer , poet and pastor .

Life

George MacDonald was a son of George MacDonald and Helen MacKay. His father, a farmer who belonged to the MacDonalds - communities of Glencoe and was a direct descendant of one of those families living in the Massacre of Glencoe ( 1692 had suffered). MacDonald was shaped by Scottish Calvinism . But from an early age he was in conflict with its main tenets. When the doctrine of predestination was first explained to him, he is said to have burst into tears (although it was made clear to him that he was one of the "elect"). MacDonald studied at the University of Aberdeen and then moved to London to be trained as a Presbyterian clergyman at Highbury College.

In 1850 he was appointed pastor in Arundel . He preached God's universal love and the possibility that ultimately no one would be damned. These sermons met with little goodwill and their wages were halved. He later did the ministry in Manchester . There, however, he had no permanent pastoral position, but had to support himself through sermons, teaching and writing. This time was very much shaped by the contact with the principal of Owen College (today's University of Manchester) AJ Scott . During this time he published his first important poetic work Within and Without , which brought him contacts to Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley, among others .

For health reasons he had to leave Manchester and - after a short stay in Algeria (made possible by Lady Byron, Lord Byron's widow ) - first moved to Hastings, where he met Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known under the name Lewis Carroll , got to know. Dodgson gave the MacDonalds the unpublished manuscript of Alice in Wonderland . In particular, the enthusiasm of MacDonald's son Greville was so great that Dodgson was convinced to publish it.

MacDonald then moved to London. There he taught at Bedford College for Women, then at King's College . Under the influence of Frederick Denison Maurice , he became a member of the Church of England . He made his literary breakthrough with the novel David Elginbrod . From now on he was able to live mainly from his books.

MacDonald was a temporary editor of Good Words for the Young and gave a long lecture tour in the United States and Canada from 1872 to 1873. A few years later he spent more and more at least the winters in Italy. A house was even built in Bordighera , which gradually became a spiritual center of the English colony there.

position

In novels such as Robert Falconer and also in his written sermons, MacDonald repeatedly dealt with the doctrine of predestination . He succeeded in developing his own theology, which also positively accepts elements of Calvinism , even if it is clearly differentiated from the double predestination. A central role is played by the understanding of the human being as a child of God, who has always been accepted by God, but must also grow itself. In this way MacDonald succeeds in challenging people without discouraging them. Human sonship with God also provides a basis for God's universal love for all human beings. MacDonald's theology pervades all of his work, including novels and children's books. Today his theology is increasingly being rediscovered and reintroduced into theological discourse.

MacDonald's best-known works are the fantasy novels Phantastes (German: Phantastus or Phantastes (edition with pictures by Friedrich Hechelmann )), The Princess and the Goblin (German: The Princess and the Kobolde ), The Princess and Curdie (German: The Princess and Curdie ), At the Back of the North Wind (German: Hinter dem Nordwind ) and Lilith. MacDonald also wrote numerous shorter fairy tales - e.g. B. The Golden Key (German: The golden key ) - and published some volumes of sermons. In his day, however, he was primarily known for his numerous novels. These are slowly being rediscovered in recent years. Among them are about even Alec Forbes of Howglen , David Elginbrod , Sir Gibbie , Donald Grant and Robert Falconer .

reception

MacDonald's works, especially the fairy tales and fantasy novels , inspired such well-known authors as WH Auden , JRR Tolkien G. K. Chesterton and Madeleine L'Engle . CS Lewis wrote that he considered MacDonald to be his tutor and referred to The Great Divorce: A Dream as a tribute to George MacDonald. There is hardly a work by Lewis in which he does not quote MacDonald. Even Mark Twain , who initially despised MacDonald, became friends after meeting in America, and there is evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald. Twain proudly sent a copy of his The Prince and the Pauper (1881) to MacDonald. A previous reviewer saw parallels in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with MacDonald's Alec Forbes of Howglen .

Works

George MacDonald while writing, 1863

prose

  • Fantastes; a faerie romance , 1858
    • German edition: Phantastus. A fairy tale. Robinson, Frankfurt am Main 1984.
  • David Elginbrod , 1863 (novel)
    • German edition: David Elginbrod. Heyder & Zimmer 1873.
    • His first love. Francke, Marburg 1991
  • The Portent: a story of the inner vision of the Highlanders, commonly called the Second Sight , 1864 (narration)
  • Adela Cathcart , 1864 (novel with intertwined fairy tales, namely: The Light Princess ; The Bell ; Birth, Dreaming, and Death ; The Curate and His wife ; The Shadows ; The Broken Swords ; My Uncle Peter ; The Giant's Heart ; A Child's Holiday ; The Cruel Painter ; The Castle )
  • Alec Forbes of Howglen , 1865 (novel)
    • German edition: The orphan of Glamerton. Francke, Marburg 1988.
  • Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood , 1867 (novel)
    • German edition: Shadows over Oldcastle Hall. Francke, Marburg 1986.
  • Dealings with the Fairies , 1867 (fairy tales); contains: The Light Princess , The Giant's Heart , The Shadows , Cross purposes , The Golden Key
    • German edition: The Laughing Princess. Translated from English by Hildegard Krahé. Diogenes, Zurich 1976.
    • German edition: The golden key. Translated from English by Hildegard Krahé. Diogenes, Zurich 1976.
  • Guild Court , 1868 (novel)
  • Robert Falconer , 1868 (novel)
  • The Seaboard Parish , 1868 (novel)
    • German edition: Storms over Kilkhaven. Francke, Marburg 1987.
  • At the Back of the North Wind , 1871 (Fantastic Story for Children)
    • German edition: Behind the north wind. Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1993.
  • Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood , 1871 (novel)
    • German edition: A childhood in Scotland. Francke, Marburg 1990.
  • Works of Fancy and Imagination , 1871 (work edition in 10 volumes)
  • Wilfrid Cumbermede , 1872 (novel)
  • The Vicar's Daughter , 1872 (novel)
    • German edition: The pastor's daughter. Francke, Marburg 1989.
  • The Princess and the Goblin , 1872 (fairy tale)
    • German edition: The princess and the goblin. Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1996.
  • Gutta-Percha Willie, the working genius , 1873 (novel)
  • Cross purposes and Other Stories , 1874 (fairy tales); contains: Cross purposes , The Golden Key , The Carasoyn , Little Daylight .
  • Malcolm , 1875 (novel)
    • German edition: Lady Florimel and the fisherman. Francke, Marburg 1986.
  • The Wise Woman [later: The Lost Princess; also: A Double Story ], 1875 (fairy tale)
  • St. George and St. Michael , 1876 (novel)
  • Thomas Wingfold, Curate , 1876 (novel)
    • German edition: About love and mercy. Francke, Marburg 1992.
  • The Marquis of Lossie , 1877 (novel)
    • German edition: The secret of the Marquis. Francke, Marburg 1986.
  • Paul Faber, Surgeon ; 1879 (novel)
    • German edition: Lady Juliet. Francke, Marburg 1995.
  • Sir Gibbie , 1879 (novel)
    • German edition: The song of the baronet. Francke, Marburg 1987.
  • Mary Marston , 1881 (novel)
  • Castle Warlock: A Homely Romance [also: Warlock O 'Glenwarlock: A Homely Romance ], 1882 (novel)
  • Weighed and Wanting , 1882 (novel)
  • The Gifts of the Child Christ, and other tales ; 1882 (fairy tale)
  • Orts [later: A Dish of Orts; Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare ] 1882 (literary critical essays)
  • The Day Boy and the Night Girl ( also: The Romance of Photogen and Nycteris) , 1882 (Märchen)
  • The Princess and Curdie , 1883 (fairy tale)
    • German edition: The Princess and Curdie. Free Spiritual Life, Stuttgart 1997.
  • Donal Grant , 1883 (novel)
    • German edition: The mysterious room. Francke, Marburg 1989.
  • Stephen Archer, and other tales ; 1883 (reprint of The Gifts of the Child Christ, and other tales ); includes: Stephen Archer ; The Gifts of the Child Christ ; The History of Photogen and Nycteris ; The Butcher's Bills ; A Port in a Storm and If I had a Father
  • The Portent and Other Stories , 1884 (short stories); contains: The Portent ; The Cruel Painter ; The Castle ; Wow o 'Rivven ; The Broken Swords ; The Gray Wolf and Uncle Cornelius, His Story
  • The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke: A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 , 1885
  • What's Mine's Mine , 1886 (novel)
  • Home Again , 1887 (novel)
  • The Elect Lady , 1888 (novel)
  • A Rough Shaking , 1890 (novel)
  • There and Back , 1891 (novel)
  • The Flight of the Shadow , 1891 (novel)
  • Heather and Snow , 1893 (novel)
  • The Light Princess and Other Fairy Tales , 1893 (fairy tales); contains: The Light Princess ; The Giant's Heart ; The Shadows ; Cross purposes ; The golden key ; The Carosyn and Little Daylight
    • German edition: The Princess of Light and The Giant's Heart. Robinson, Frankfurt am Main 1984.
  • A Dish of Orts , 1893 (revision of Orts , 1882 - literary critical essays)
  • The Fantastic Imagination , 1893 (essay)
  • Lilith , 1895 (fantastic novel)
    • German edition: Lilith. Translated from English by Uwe Herms . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1977.
  • Salted with Fire , 1897 (novel)
  • Rampolli , 1897 ( published as Exotics in 1876 )
  • Far Above Rubies , 1898 (novel)

Poetry

  • Within and Without: a dramatic poem , 1855
  • Poems , 1857
  • A Hidden Life and Other Poems , 1864 (poems)
  • England's Antiphon , 1868 (History of English Religious Poetry)
  • The Disciple and Other Poems , 1867
  • Violin songs and Other Poems , 1874 (poems and songs)
  • A Book of Strife, in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul , 1880 (poems)
  • A Threefold Cord: poems by three friends , 1883
  • Poems , 1887 (poems)
  • A Cabinet of Gems , 1891 (selected collection of English Renaissance poets)
  • Poetical Works (2 volumes - contains previously unpublished poems), 1893
  • Scotch Songs and Ballads , 1893

Sermons

  • Unspoken sermons. First Series , 1867
  • The Miracles of Our Lord , 1870
  • Unspoken sermons. Second Series , 1885
  • Unspoken sermons. Third Series , 1889
  • The Hope of the Gospel , 1892

Translations

  • Exotics , 1876 (translations of German poems by Novalis, Matthias Claudius, Goethe, Heine, Luther, Salis-Seewis, Uhland and Schiller, Italian poems by Petrarch and Milton)

Posthumously

  • An Expression of Character: The Letters of GM , 1994 (compiled letters)

Quotes

“But how vain all words sound,
    Nobody names the great pains;
And the source from which they spring
    Is the silent longing deep in the heart. - Fantastic "

“If a soul is really alive, then it is also able to produce living things. There is a soul whose thoughts are all strong, happy creatures and whose dreams are alive. […] All living things were thoughts from the beginning. They are therefore fit to serve those who think. - Lilith "

“About in the middle of the plain they sat down to rest in a pile of shadows. After sitting like this for a while, they looked up to find that they were both crying. They both longed for the land from which the shadows fell.
    'We have to find the land where the shadows come from,' said Moosi.
    'We have to, dear Moosi,' replied Zotti. 'What if your golden key was the key to him ?'
    ,Oh! That would be great, 'replied Moosi. - The golden key "

“The parents' eyes know how to interpret the expression of their children, and when Curdie entered the house, his parents saw straight away that something unusual had happened. When he said to his mother, 'I'm sorry I'm so late' there was something in the tone that went beyond politeness to her heart, for it seemed to come from where all beautiful things are born before they begin to grow in this world. - The Princess and Curdie "

"'Did you talk to her, Diamant?'
    ,No. Nobody speaks there. They just look at each other and understand everything. ' - Behind the north wind "

Quotes about George MacDonald

“The magical story, the fairy tale, can serve as a mirour de l'Omme , and it can also (but this is not so easy) be made the bearer of a mystery. At least that's what George MacDonald tried, and the results were compellingly beautiful stories, where he succeeded, as in the Golden Key (which he called a fairy tale), and even where he sometimes failed, as in Lilith (which he had a romance named). - JRR Tolkien , On Fairy Tales "

“Most of the myths were created in prehistoric times, and presumably they were never made conscious by individuals. But every now and then a genius emerges in the modern world, a Kafka or a Novalis , who can create such a story. MacDonald is the greatest genius of its kind that I know. - CS Lewis "

“For MacDonald's admirers, of whom I am one, his work has something of the effect of a hallucinatory drug. Having read one of his stories to the end is tantamount to awakening from a dream - from a dream of your own, and the best of them evoke long-forgotten ideas and feelings; they touch something 'deeply hidden' that is deceptively similar to memory, without ever completely coinciding with it. - Maurice Sendak "

literature

The Inklings Society's yearbooks , especially the 2005 yearbook, are largely dedicated to MacDonald. Also the magazine of the George MacDonald Society: North Wind. A Journal of Georg MacDonald Studies .

Web links

Commons : George MacDonald  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Victorian Web: Biography
  2. ↑ Thomas Gerold: The children of God in humans. Theological anthropology in George MacDonald . Lit, Münster 2006, p. 37.
  3. ^ J. Philip Newell: Listening for the heartbeat of God: a Celtic spirituality . Paulist Press, New York 1997, pp. 60f.
  4. ↑ Kerry Dearborn: Baptized imagination: the theology of George MacDonald . Ashgate, Aldershot / Burlington 2006, p. 56f.
  5. ↑ On the religious background of these fairy tales: Andrew Lang: The Antipositivist Critique . In: Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay: The science of religion in Britain, 1860-1915 . University of Virginia Press 2010, p. 107.
  6. ↑ Harold Bloom: John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets . Bloom's Literary Criticism, New York 2008, p. 86.
  7. ^ Ian C. Bradley: Believing in Britain: the spiritual identity of 'Britishness' . IB Tauris, London 2007, p. 148.
  8. ↑ Helga König, Cordula Schütz, Christina Hofmann-Randall (ed.): The library of the Inklings Society . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, p. XXII.
  9. ^ Marie A. Conn: CS Lewis and human suffering: light among the shadows . HiddenSpring, Mahwah 2009, p. 37.
  10. ↑ Lin Salamo, Harriet Elinor Smith (Eds.): Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 5: 1872-1873, Volume 5; Volume 9 . University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1997, p. 414.
  11. ^ Doris E. Curtis, Bryan C. Curtis: Inspirational Thoughts to Warm the Soul: Quotations, Stories, and More . iUniverse 2011, p. 319.
  12. Jump up ↑ Horst Kruse: Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl and Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger: German Literature and the Composition of Mysterious Stranger . In: Joseph Csicsila, Chad Rohman (Eds.): Centenary reflections on Mark Twain's No. 44, the mysterious stranger . University of Missouri Press, Columbia 2009, p. 71ff, here p. 86.
  13. ↑ Everett H. Emerson: Mark Twain. A literary life . University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1999, p. 122.
  14. ^ Richard F. Littledale, Academy 9, June 24, 1876, pp. 204-205, quoted in: Harold Bloom: Mark Twain . Infobase Publishing, Bloom's Literary Criticism, New York 2009, p. 353.
  15. ↑ All books published by Francke-Verlag are not based on the original editions. Two Americans - independently of one another - revised many of MacDonald's novels and cut them by about half in the 1980s. In most cases, these novels were also published under a completely different title. The German titles from Francke-Verlag are based on these templates.
  16. ↑ This issue also contains the following fairy tale: The Day Boy and the Night Girl .
  17. ↑ George MacDonald: Phantastus . Robinson, Frankfurt a. M. 1984; ISBN 3-88592-039-5 ; P. 60.
  18. ↑ George MacDonald: Lilith . Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt a. M. 1984; ISBN 3-7632-2921-3 ; P. 37.
  19. ↑ George MacDonald: The Princess of Light and The Giant's Heart . Robinson, Frankfurt a. M. 1984; ISBN 3-88592-024-7 ; P. 275 f.
  20. ↑ George MacDonald: The Princess and Curdie . Free Spiritual Life Publishing House, Stuttgart 1997; ISBN 3-7725-1569-X ; P. 32.
  21. ↑ George MacDonald: Behind the North Wind . Free Spiritual Life Publishing House, Stuttgart 1993; ISBN 3-7725-1170-8 ; P. 110.
  22. ↑ JRR Tolkien : Tree and Leaf . Klett-Cotta in the Ullstein-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt a. M. 1982; ISBN 3-548-39039-0 ; P. 32.
personal data
SURNAME MacDonald, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish writer, poet and pastor
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Huntly , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 1905
Place of death Ashtead , Surrey