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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 5, Winter 1944-1945
Page 91
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 91 As I See It... by A. Merritt You ask me to define fantasy. That is quite a job, I fear. Nor have I yet found any all-encompassing formula to satisfy me of what it is---although I am quite sure of what it is not. Some say that it is the art of making the unreal seem real, but I think this is a highly vulnerable definition. If I succeed in making the unreal real to the reader, does not then the unreal cease to be unreal; become reality? And what is---unreal? I think that true fantasy must have two basic elements. One is the spirit that makes poetry. And the second is the rhythm of true mathematics. By true mathematics I do not mean the spirit of the abacus, or of the counting-house, but the linked sequences, the clarity, the inevitableness of those higher mathematics which can crystallize the idea, for example, of relativity. No one can tell why to one a primrose by the river's brim a yellow primrose is to him (I probably misquote) or why, as to Wordsworth, the same flower is a home of enchantment. Which is the real? Whichever is, the poet does open a new world to us---the other observer certainly does not. Fantasy is one key to this new world. But many people are not travelers an do not want to roam in new worlds---they prefer to see the primrose as just a yellow flower. And this is why, I think, many people are so violently opposed to any thing that seems to them fantasy. It makes them feel insecure, irritatingly bewildered; unsafe. I know that in my case readers either like the books so well that they get ragged with use--- Or dislike me so intensely that they hurl me into a furnance or even some less sanitary limbo. This is always a very comforting thought to me. The Cosmos is real---or seems to be. Yet, to return to relativity, the whole measurement of time as a part of the four-dimensional continuum is by means of a wholly imaginary unit: a second multiplied by the square root of minus one. "If," says Sir James Jeans, one of the greatest of physicists, "we are asked why we adopt these weird methods of measurement, the answer is that they appear to be nature's own system of measurement." So what is real and what is unreal? "Nothing is real but the power to open the windows of the mind." Thinking along these lines, I was much interested the other day when a friend told me he had met a certain professor of mathematics in one of our leading colleges, who had read and greatly liked my books. He said that fantasy interested him as much as calculus. He was distressed because he had found that fantasy and clarity of style seldom went together. Then he said that to his mind all fantasy is poetry, no matter what the construction might be, prose or otherwise. There, he made the point that in his mind true fantasy is poetry plus mathematical clarity. "Higher mathematics and higher physics are both in the 'realm of the true fantastic," said he. It was disconcerting, but the professor continued that what had impressed him in my stories had been the style rather than the content. In fact, he read them only for style, he said. This style he felt was outstanding in that there was a "clearness," with the "not normal," the "not familiar," made familiar to the reader. He held, and this is really the kernel of the whole thing, that writing in the fantastic field "has to be either good or worthless; it cannot be fair." (concluded on page 97)
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 91 As I See It... by A. Merritt You ask me to define fantasy. That is quite a job, I fear. Nor have I yet found any all-encompassing formula to satisfy me of what it is---although I am quite sure of what it is not. Some say that it is the art of making the unreal seem real, but I think this is a highly vulnerable definition. If I succeed in making the unreal real to the reader, does not then the unreal cease to be unreal; become reality? And what is---unreal? I think that true fantasy must have two basic elements. One is the spirit that makes poetry. And the second is the rhythm of true mathematics. By true mathematics I do not mean the spirit of the abacus, or of the counting-house, but the linked sequences, the clarity, the inevitableness of those higher mathematics which can crystallize the idea, for example, of relativity. No one can tell why to one a primrose by the river's brim a yellow primrose is to him (I probably misquote) or why, as to Wordsworth, the same flower is a home of enchantment. Which is the real? Whichever is, the poet does open a new world to us---the other observer certainly does not. Fantasy is one key to this new world. But many people are not travelers an do not want to roam in new worlds---they prefer to see the primrose as just a yellow flower. And this is why, I think, many people are so violently opposed to any thing that seems to them fantasy. It makes them feel insecure, irritatingly bewildered; unsafe. I know that in my case readers either like the books so well that they get ragged with use--- Or dislike me so intensely that they hurl me into a furnance or even some less sanitary limbo. This is always a very comforting thought to me. The Cosmos is real---or seems to be. Yet, to return to relativity, the whole measurement of time as a part of the four-dimensional continuum is by means of a wholly imaginary unit: a second multiplied by the square root of minus one. "If," says Sir James Jeans, one of the greatest of physicists, "we are asked why we adopt these weird methods of measurement, the answer is that they appear to be nature's own system of measurement." So what is real and what is unreal? "Nothing is real but the power to open the windows of the mind." Thinking along these lines, I was much interested the other day when a friend told me he had met a certain professor of mathematics in one of our leading colleges, who had read and greatly liked my books. He said that fantasy interested him as much as calculus. He was distressed because he had found that fantasy and clarity of style seldom went together. Then he said that to his mind all fantasy is poetry, no matter what the construction might be, prose or otherwise. There, he made the point that in his mind true fantasy is poetry plus mathematical clarity. "Higher mathematics and higher physics are both in the 'realm of the true fantastic," said he. It was disconcerting, but the professor continued that what had impressed him in my stories had been the style rather than the content. In fact, he read them only for style, he said. This style he felt was outstanding in that there was a "clearness," with the "not normal," the "not familiar," made familiar to the reader. He held, and this is really the kernel of the whole thing, that writing in the fantastic field "has to be either good or worthless; it cannot be fair." (concluded on page 97)
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