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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 5, Winter 1944-1945
Page 92
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92 FANTASY COMMENTATOR Space-Time in Literary Form by Margaret Curtis Walters Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the June 1942 issue of Tomorrow; it is reprinted here by permission of the copyright owner, The Creative Age Press of New York City. It has occurred to me that forty years from now the early development of the fourth-dimensional novel may well be considered promising material for a M. A. thesis. There may be material for more than one such study: the return to the Celtic in the English romance novel; the use of reincarnation as a literary device; the fourth-dimension in English novels of 1940-41-42. It will not be necessary to remind the scholar forty years hence that in 1940 the future of England was at stake. An increase in novels which are frankly labelled "escape literature" is therefore to be expected for that year. Nor is it surprising that most of these novels were written by women and presumably for women. In a period when eighteenth century mansions and fourteenth century cathedrals were daily reduced to rubble, it was natural that there should have been a poignant emphasis on the peaceful past. In a world where the sensitive mind shrank from the horrors wrought by materialistic science, it is natural that there should have been a groping for consolation of the spirit and for new creeds which might answer the universal question "Why?" All of these characteristics of the romantic temper have long since been catalogued for other periods. However, a study of some twenty English novels published in 1940, or in the years immediately preceding, shows certain trends which may be mere coincidence, but which may in the future be considered more significant in the progress of the twentieth century thought than they are now. Some of these novels ae fairy tales pure and simple; the majority of them argue implicitly or openly for reincarnation; many of them are attempts to translate into literary forms concepts of space-time as these have filtered down from Einstein and his interpreters, and more especially from Ouspensky and J. W. Dunne. For this reason I call them novels of the fourth dimension. As a matter of contrast, American novels of the same years (with but a few exceptions) show none of these characteristics, and for the most part are concerned with straightforward reconstructions of the historical past. Robert Nathan's Portrait of Jennie belongs in both categories. Christopher Morley's Thunder on the Left is a forerunner of the type, but does not fit into the 1940 pattern. (Ryland Kent's After This is not true novel form, but, somewhat similarly to Outward Bound, treats of life on another plane, after death.) To the matter-of-fact reader, all these books will appear at first to be equally fantastic, for in them are found ghosts, magic spells, a brownie or two, a goblin, and a strange green creature from the sea, a great many characters who are slightly fey or out-and-out clairvoyant, girls who walk through twentieth century doors into an earlier period, men and women who move backward and forward in Time. Heroes and heroines are of the true blood of Thomas Rymer and Kilmeny, for Kilmeny had been, she could not say where, And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare. Granted that English literature has always cherished many otherworldly creatures who do not seem to have booked passage on the "Mayflower"---there is in these stories a mood which, whether deliberate or unconscious, may be called a revival of the Celtic elements in English tradition.
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92 FANTASY COMMENTATOR Space-Time in Literary Form by Margaret Curtis Walters Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the June 1942 issue of Tomorrow; it is reprinted here by permission of the copyright owner, The Creative Age Press of New York City. It has occurred to me that forty years from now the early development of the fourth-dimensional novel may well be considered promising material for a M. A. thesis. There may be material for more than one such study: the return to the Celtic in the English romance novel; the use of reincarnation as a literary device; the fourth-dimension in English novels of 1940-41-42. It will not be necessary to remind the scholar forty years hence that in 1940 the future of England was at stake. An increase in novels which are frankly labelled "escape literature" is therefore to be expected for that year. Nor is it surprising that most of these novels were written by women and presumably for women. In a period when eighteenth century mansions and fourteenth century cathedrals were daily reduced to rubble, it was natural that there should have been a poignant emphasis on the peaceful past. In a world where the sensitive mind shrank from the horrors wrought by materialistic science, it is natural that there should have been a groping for consolation of the spirit and for new creeds which might answer the universal question "Why?" All of these characteristics of the romantic temper have long since been catalogued for other periods. However, a study of some twenty English novels published in 1940, or in the years immediately preceding, shows certain trends which may be mere coincidence, but which may in the future be considered more significant in the progress of the twentieth century thought than they are now. Some of these novels ae fairy tales pure and simple; the majority of them argue implicitly or openly for reincarnation; many of them are attempts to translate into literary forms concepts of space-time as these have filtered down from Einstein and his interpreters, and more especially from Ouspensky and J. W. Dunne. For this reason I call them novels of the fourth dimension. As a matter of contrast, American novels of the same years (with but a few exceptions) show none of these characteristics, and for the most part are concerned with straightforward reconstructions of the historical past. Robert Nathan's Portrait of Jennie belongs in both categories. Christopher Morley's Thunder on the Left is a forerunner of the type, but does not fit into the 1940 pattern. (Ryland Kent's After This is not true novel form, but, somewhat similarly to Outward Bound, treats of life on another plane, after death.) To the matter-of-fact reader, all these books will appear at first to be equally fantastic, for in them are found ghosts, magic spells, a brownie or two, a goblin, and a strange green creature from the sea, a great many characters who are slightly fey or out-and-out clairvoyant, girls who walk through twentieth century doors into an earlier period, men and women who move backward and forward in Time. Heroes and heroines are of the true blood of Thomas Rymer and Kilmeny, for Kilmeny had been, she could not say where, And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare. Granted that English literature has always cherished many otherworldly creatures who do not seem to have booked passage on the "Mayflower"---there is in these stories a mood which, whether deliberate or unconscious, may be called a revival of the Celtic elements in English tradition.
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