Soft, strong, and very long
Written: Jun 17 '05 (Updated Jun 18 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A uniquely clever, but for all that rather empty novel.
Cons: A novel of cleverness and learning that leaves you only with its cleverness and learning.
The Bottom Line: The book is unique. It is a flawed but massive work.
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| johngo's Full Review: |
Beneath the surface of the society of the late 18th and early 19th century, ignored largely by social historians, is a mycelium of magic which spread its undetected hyphae. Individual magicians, such as Francis Barrett, took pupils at the beginning of the century, but all failed to establish schools or continuing traditions. By the 1880s and '90s, in London, the conditions, Victorian gloom and spiritual dankness, had become favourable and the hyphae coalesced into a fruiting body, a mushroom that spread its spores abroad, and much of today's magic is derived from that fruit, a society of magicians that called itself the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
The authority of a magical order is enhanced if its history is long and if distinguished magicians have contributed to its development, accordingly chroniclers of the history of the Golden Dawn claimed its origins were in Germany, and that the basis of its system of rituals were transliterations from original enciphered texts derived from the parent order, a brotherhood of great antiquity. Ellic Howe has shown that the original documents providing warrants for the founding of the Golden Dawn were definitely crude forgeries, the grammatical and orthographical errors in the German language proving that the documents were written by someone claiming to be German, but who was not a native speaker of the language. Chroniclers from within the magical tradition do not hesitate retrospectively to enrol people of earlier generations into the brotherhood, so Bulwer Lytton, the popular novelist, who wrote a number of books with magical themes, was enrolled into the Golden Dawn despite being dead before the foundation of the order, and the French magician, Eliphas Levi, was also enrolled in the same way. This may have been deliberate misrepresentation, but it could have been wishful thinking along the lines that Levi was the most important magician of his time, the Golden Dawn, in some secret form must have been the most important magical order of its time, therefore Levi must inevitably have been a member of the order.
The threads of magic are derived from a variety of sources. Astrology provided one thread of magic. Modern chemistry had not quite displaced material alchemy, and it was still possible for a man of science to study alchemy without being regarded as a fool or a crank, and alchemy provided a second thread; but the most important thread seems to have been derived from Freemasonry. Freemasonry is the parent of many of the occult brotherhoods for several reasons. As Freemasons are ready to assert, Freemasonry is not a secret society: it is a society with secrets. It is easy for the curious to discover some of those secrets. Freemasonry claims an ancient origin, but modern scholarship can prove that the ancient origin was faked up in the 18th century. Freemasonry is organised in degrees, the passing from one degree to the next taking place through the performance of a ritual, and many occult brotherhoods follow the same procedure. For the mystically inclined, Freemasonry can lead to a study of the Kabbalah, a collection of writings based in Jewish mysticism. Freemasonry has also associated itself with the Rosicrucian brotherhood, an imaginary brotherhood of mystic-magicians founded by the mythical Christian Rosencreutz in the 17th century. The brew that led to the formation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a heady cocktail. This is a sketch of magical thought as it was in the late 18th and 19th centuries in England.
Suppose, now that in a parallel universe, one that shares its history with ours, that a different kind of magic exists, one derived from the fairies, whose world is co-existent with ours and connected to it. Suppose further that the influence of fairies has declined, and that magic is so much weakened that it no longer can be used to obtain physical influence over material objects. In this England there are groups of people interested in the theory and the history of magic, as there were in our universe, but they are not operative magicians. Suppose that one man, a solitary reclusive bibliomane, collects books on magic for two reasons, the first to enhance his own education in magic, the second, to deprive others of the means to enhance theirs. Suppose too, that this man, Mr Norrell, becomes possessed of the idea of restoring operative magic to its original form and power. He has some success, and in due course takes a pupil, Jonathan Strange.
The novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the history of their relationship and a chronicle of the acts they carry out. The world of Strange and Norrell is similar to ours. History works approximately as it did our world. Set in the period 1807 to 1817 the book chronicles events on the European scale, the Peninsular War, Wellington's campaign against the French in Spain; the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, all figure in the story. Historical figures such as Wellington, and Lord Liverpool, appear in surroundings of persuasive historicity, and the events are helped along by magic. For example, in Spain, Strange creates magical roads to facilitate the movement of the British infantry, and causes the roads to disappear when the British Army has finished with
them. He also moves whole towns to new places so that the French cannot find them, and after the campaign has been completed, the King of Spain is annoyed because Strange has neglected to put things back where they belonged. These actions, though, do not materially alter the outcome of events compared with the historical outcomes that arose in our universe, so in one sense, the magic was superfluous.
The book is a pastiche of a three-volume novel of the early nineteenth century, written using an extremely discursive style, and spellings that are now obsolete. The spellings are consequently obtrusive, catch the reader's eye, slow down the narrative, and at least to me, give an air of pretentiousness to the prose. The author's imagination is extraordinarily fecund, fecund to point that the digressions she cannot restrain herself from including have to be incorporated into elaborate footnotes, that, in some cases, extend to more than one page. The undisciplined fecundity of imagination obstructs narrative drive. The novel has muddy illustrations perpetrated by Portia Rosenberg; these do not enhance the text.
There is a fundamental problem with novels that depend so centrally on the fantastic premise of magic. For most of the novel, Strange is like Superman in a universe without kryptonite; it is impossible to be concerned with what could happen to him in such a universe or to be surprised at his achievements, however unlikely they might be.
The narrative rambles on, and by the end I was impressed with the author's obtrusive cleverness and learning, but she failed to make me care very much about what was happening to her characters, and I did not have any feeling that they were more than lay figures, posed and manipulated (cleverly, it has to be admitted) by the author's hands.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
johngo
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Member: John Ollason
Location: Scotland
Reviews written: 83
Trusted by: 62 members
About Me:
I used to work at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, a lecturer in ecology.
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