A Mind for Magick

Why we look to classics of midwinter literature in the dark months

One genre of children’s literature is master of ceremonies at this time of year: those books we turn to in the hope they will throw wintry sunlight and lazy candle-flame on the mind. Christmas is traditionally a time for ghost stories, but these are not tales to chill or disturb, although a varying amount of potential peril is key.

There are two titles which have had plenty of oxygen in the past few years: Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising (1973) and John Masefield’s The Box of Delights (1935). Indeed, the latter has carved itself further into folklore through memories of the beloved TV adaptation from 1984, with a book devoted to its history and cult, a gatefold vinyl album of the series’ soundtrack, a text for the theatre, merchandise on Etsy. This is only fitting for a work whose influence has fed into the imagination of every writer attempting similar territory since – Masefield in turn owing a little debt to Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill (1905) .

There are other titles for midwinter however, less concerned with archetypes of folklore and battles of light and dark than our place in time and relationship to memory and sense of belonging.

Winter’s passing ghosts

Legions of us return to these favourites around the winter solstice because they allow free, uninhibited access to the comforts of inherited wisdom, exploration of memory, spirits of the past and the present made magickal.

It’s probably born of actual need, when the idea of coming together with loved ones and belonging is especially poignant. As we get older, the bedrock figures of our lives pass, and formative memories are ghosts. It’s also relevant when the pandemic has revealed new things to us about the nature of the bonds we have, and where we belong.

The qualifying feature of these classics of the 20^th century is an interaction with the past, at first through the contemporary setting of the events, which are of course today decades away, and a further ‘deep past’ of time travel in one direction or the other, which begs the question of what role nostalgia has to play in adults turning to them year after year.

‘The poisoned itch…’

Part of the coming thoughts rose from thinking about Memoirs of a Survivor in the previous post, and how we approach times that have gone in contrast to our present. Doris Lessing writes:

“At any rate, the past, looked back on in this frame of mind, seems steeped in a substance that had seemed foreign to it, was extraneous to the experiencing of it. Is it possible that this is the stuff of real memory? Nostalgia, no; I’m not talking of that, the craving, the regret – not that poisoned itch.”

Nostalgia is an over-used, lazy word, particularly today when the internet means little is covered in Miss Havisham’s cobwebs of chilly melancholy. I think it was Douglas Coupland who said something like ‘How can I be nostalgic for a past I never lived?’ Three of the books I’m going to talk about later I didn’t even read until adulthood, so my enjoyment hasn’t arisen from a reconnection, triggered by recalling the atmosphere of my life when I first encountered them, like hearing a song from years ago might do.

(Also, things that are part of your life on a regular basis, even songs, have multi-layered connections from different points in time: something really has to be dug up afresh to connect with a formative memory. Perhaps people who tend to use and dispose are more prone to nostalgia, as opposed to those who take things with them like talismans as they journey through the years.)

‘The ache to be back inside the pages…’

There is, of course, the fact that books read and films seen in childhood recall a total immersion in the fictional world which is less likely as adults. For one thing, we’ve experienced repetitive tropes, and so they have to be in really talented hands to renew. As another, we have varied opacity in seeing, the inability to suspend disbelief that years of adult cares bring about. The artist Jackie Morris talked in a Backlisted podcast of the reader’s ‘ache to be back inside the pages’ of The Dark is Rising, leading other guests to extrapolate the idea of ‘exile from childhood’.

There is also the author’s perspective however. The idea of the author living in/escaping into childhood perception clouds their examination of the cares of adulthood, which is more clearly delineated in the books I want to consider. The experience of childish perception (as in ‘without cynicism’) is a facet of the appeal, but is too limited to explain why these books have such a hold long past youth.

I’m also going to bring in TV adaptations as integral to experiencing these titles. If The Box of Delights is now so intrinsically linked with the 1984 series that it has become a cult, does that not suggest a good adaptation will amplify our experience? With its symbiotic relation to the text in our minds, it’s a necromancy which yields the yule drug we return to year after year. There is no 1970s BBC series of The Dark is Rising, but Backlisted pointed out that a soundtrack has been written as if it did.

What we are in search of is atmosphere, that nebulous, evasive substance of the mind which casts a magical light on everyday experience. We are less concerned with sophisticated plot structures and character development, but a collusion of light and dark, time and ancient truths in the spirits of place.

When in Memoirs of a Survivor the protagonist first ‘sees’ through the wall in her apartment to the rooms of her imagination, she describes it thus:

“I felt the most vivid expectancy, a longing; this place held what I needed, knew was there, had been waiting for…”

I’m not equating my point with Doris Lessing’s use, but those words do appear to shed some light on what I’m talking about.

In the next post I hope to explore some overlooked ‘midwinter titles’ of twentieth century children’s literature, because there has to be a deeper resonance in the appeal of turning to these books. It’s when you look closer that you realise just how complex and multi-layered they are, using their creator’s adult wisdom that stretches far beyond the marketed audience.