In which I review 102-year-old Pagan children's literature
So I have a pile of books on my desk I've been meaning to review. The oldest of these is The Wind in the Willows, a book many read in childhood but which I only came to as an adult.
I knew it mostly as the book Margaret Atwood mocked. She even wrote a much-anthologized poem about it, called "The Animals in That Country." I didn't even think to read it until I read that Kenneth Grahame was what we now call Neo-Pagan, although the term didn't exist then. He'd written an essay he didn't dare publish, favouring the worship of Mother Nature. His wife was even more fanatical. She didn't want to get married in a church, though Grahame insisted for respectability's sake.
Which brings to The Wind in the Willows. See, there's a deeply Pagan chapter that's almost always removed from modern editions. When I heard that, I started looking for an old edition that still had this chapter, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn." Then one landed in my hands entirely by accident.
Before I get to that one chapter, some thoughts on the rest of the book:
It's just a short chapter in which Mole and Rat go out looking for a lost child, and find him in the arms of Pan. Pan plays Horned God to the Goddess Nature here - Grahame seems to have hit on the Goddess/Horned God thing completely independent of the English occultists who were exploring these concepts at the time. Moreover, the chapter is moving, and poetically written - in places almost as moving as the invocation of the Goddess by her many names in Apuleius, 1700 years earlier.
This chapter usually gets described as "Christian metaphor" by people who don't know anything about Grahame's life. Others say it has nothing to do with the rest of the story, but I disagree. In old novels, there was often a "Christian interlude," usually when a character died, designed to fit the little lives of the characters into the larger universe. It would define the world and gives context to the story.
(Existentialist novels do the same with their worldview. And a close cousin is that moment in fantasy and science fiction and horror novels where the reader - a foreigner in this land - is let in on the rules of how things work in a world of obvious magic or technological miracles.)
Cosmology in a novel gives shape to the world, and offers the reader a chance to judge if the hero's story measures up to the world and its gods. I think "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" could be seen the same way. And it provides the truss and frame and cornerposts of this world which would otherwise be a house of randomly piled stones and wood, and invites us to ask if Mole's and Rat's story is worthy of Pan's world.
I hope they start restoring this vital chapter in future editions. It would be nice to have a piece of classic children's literature where the religious themes were Pagan and not Christian, for Pagan parents to pass on to their children.
Other than that, things are quiet. I'm working on a third novel right now - I'll need space to re-do the second I nearly finished after I submitted my first. Still waiting to hear back on the first, but it's only been two months, and they said it could take up to six.
I knew it mostly as the book Margaret Atwood mocked. She even wrote a much-anthologized poem about it, called "The Animals in That Country." I didn't even think to read it until I read that Kenneth Grahame was what we now call Neo-Pagan, although the term didn't exist then. He'd written an essay he didn't dare publish, favouring the worship of Mother Nature. His wife was even more fanatical. She didn't want to get married in a church, though Grahame insisted for respectability's sake.
Which brings to The Wind in the Willows. See, there's a deeply Pagan chapter that's almost always removed from modern editions. When I heard that, I started looking for an old edition that still had this chapter, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn." Then one landed in my hands entirely by accident.
Before I get to that one chapter, some thoughts on the rest of the book:
- It'd be unfair to criticize it too harshly, because while it's not the first talking-animal story, it really created a genre. Everything from The Secret of NIMH to Bugs Bunny is contained here, and first stories are rarely best stories.
- That said, it's still jarringly inconsistent in places. It can't seem to figure out if humans know about the talking animals, or whether they're a secret. At another point it seems post-apocalyptic, like the humans are long dead - the forest is a human settlement that's long since been grown over. I realize editing was harder in an age of typewriters, but surely he could've made up his mind about these things and then gone back and re-typed a few pages.
- Ye gods, this book moves slowly: long descriptions of fancy meals and joyful meetings with neighbours, and friends spending long hours on boats and helping each other. It only speeds up when Toad's around. It's not so bad for an adult - almost community-porn for an age where people don't even know their neighbours' names - but I suspect it'd bore the ADHD-ridden children of our time to tears.
- Atwood claims that the novel is championing British class structure. That seems a little unfair. Rat is the most likeable of all, and he's the token working-classer in the troupe. The best-off gentleman is Toad, and he's selfish and crazy. Next comes Badger the eccentric and recluse on the class ladder. There is a little bit of that at the end with the weasels, stoats, and ferrets taking over Toad Hall, but it's somewhat undermined throughout the book by the presence of good working-classers and bad gentlemen.
It's just a short chapter in which Mole and Rat go out looking for a lost child, and find him in the arms of Pan. Pan plays Horned God to the Goddess Nature here - Grahame seems to have hit on the Goddess/Horned God thing completely independent of the English occultists who were exploring these concepts at the time. Moreover, the chapter is moving, and poetically written - in places almost as moving as the invocation of the Goddess by her many names in Apuleius, 1700 years earlier.
This chapter usually gets described as "Christian metaphor" by people who don't know anything about Grahame's life. Others say it has nothing to do with the rest of the story, but I disagree. In old novels, there was often a "Christian interlude," usually when a character died, designed to fit the little lives of the characters into the larger universe. It would define the world and gives context to the story.
(Existentialist novels do the same with their worldview. And a close cousin is that moment in fantasy and science fiction and horror novels where the reader - a foreigner in this land - is let in on the rules of how things work in a world of obvious magic or technological miracles.)
Cosmology in a novel gives shape to the world, and offers the reader a chance to judge if the hero's story measures up to the world and its gods. I think "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" could be seen the same way. And it provides the truss and frame and cornerposts of this world which would otherwise be a house of randomly piled stones and wood, and invites us to ask if Mole's and Rat's story is worthy of Pan's world.
I hope they start restoring this vital chapter in future editions. It would be nice to have a piece of classic children's literature where the religious themes were Pagan and not Christian, for Pagan parents to pass on to their children.
Other than that, things are quiet. I'm working on a third novel right now - I'll need space to re-do the second I nearly finished after I submitted my first. Still waiting to hear back on the first, but it's only been two months, and they said it could take up to six.