I met Jyrki Wahlstedt online when he ordered Uncle Dave Hiatt’s vintage editions of MacDonald’s Poetical Works. It was our first order from Helsinki—well, our first order from Finland, actually! He’d been hoping to attend the Phillips’ annual MacDonald get-together, set this year to take place in Cullen, and which, like the Olympics, has been postponed. This is excerpted from a write-up Jyrki prepared for that event.
—Jess Lederman
I’ve been reading George MacDonald for thirty-five years, and discovered him through C.S. Lewis. I read quite a lot of Lewis, and in The Great Divorce a character introduces himself with the words, ”My name is George, George MacDonald”. When the Michael Phillips’ 1980s editions of Malcolm and The Marquis of Lossie (The Fisherman’s Lady and The Marquis’ Secret) were published in Finnish, I realized something grand was on its way. After those two books were published, the publisher didn’t do them anymore. So I bought several novels edited by Michael Phillips, and eleven of them are on my shelf today. My favorite MacDonald novels are Sir Gibbie, Malcolm, The Marquis of Lossie, Warlock o’ Glenwarlock, and Phantastes.
I was asked for a favorite MacDonald quote, which is a task as impossible as trying to name my favorite aria in a cantata by Bach. But I borrow from a greater mind, as Lewis has this on the title page of The Great Divorce:
“No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it—no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.”
And one more!
“…could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that never changes — or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?’ ’No, Curdie; that would be keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of me — not to know me myself. …”