3. Enunciado del Problema
1.2. Significado Etimológico de Interculturalidad
i) Pervasive Correlations ii) A Concluding Correlation
But no amount of knowledge of the words of the Bible would be sufficient to justify the use of the word
profound.
What is remarkable in the employment of these passages, is not merely that they are so present to his mind that they come up for use in the most exciting moments of composition,
but that he embodies the spirit of them in such a new form
as reveals to minds saturated and deadened with the sound of the words, the very visual image and spiritual meaning involved in them.
(“St. George’s Day” 50)
i) Pervasive Correlations
Any reader of MacDonald familiar with Isaiah will quickly recognize the parallels to primary
MacDonald themes. These include the call to obedience; responsibility to social justice; the primacy of Light over darkness; servanthood; the interconnectedness of the people and the
land; the dangers of noble thought without noble deed. In Curdie it is easy to see how
MacDonald’s love of theology, literary criticism, and the stereoscopic nature of mythology
fuse.Perhaps the most obvious image correlation between Isaiah and Curdie is Curdie’s
preparation for a mission he has offered to go on even though he does not know what it will entail. Just like Isaiah with his renowned “Here am I, send me,” Curdie is commissioned before a royal throne, prepared with coals. Both Isaiah and Curdie confess to deeds ill done. Both are given the means to assess people’s hearts, and the weight of a message the people will not want to hear. And both accept the mission. But this is far from all: the fine details of correlations abound throughout the story – even down to the specific actions of the
caterpillar-creature (Is. 33:4; Curdie 181) and the maggoty scullery. (Is. 14:11; Curdie 181) The character Lina matches all too well the description of “a little child shall lead them,” the creature with the hand of a child leading her group of Uglies, together numbering fifty, and
making Curdie not unlike the Isaianic description of the prophet being a “captain of fifty.” (Is.
11:6, 3:3) In both Isaiah and Curdie, wild beasts cleanse the palace of corrupt courtiers who
poison the wine.257 (Curdie 173-183; Is. 28:7,8; 57:9) In Curdie’s battle, the five face “thousands
257 As the once imprisoned now “take them captives, whose captives they were,” the worst is reserved for the treacherous
to one against them,” and victory is enabled by their ensign on a hill – with a cloud formed by
doves also coming to the rescue. (210) Isaiah 30:17 tells the same story.258 Literally well over a
hundred direct textual correlations exist between the two texts, including exact quotations. To tally these seems an endless task, and reveals an author astoundingly familiar with his primary text.259
Wider strokes include such parallels as when Peter and Curdie walk in the mines and “see a
great light”: the great-great-grandmother. (Curdie ch.6; Is. 9:2)260 There in the mine Curdie and
Peter are told, rather startlingly:
And now I am going to tell you what no one knows but myself: you, Peter, and your wife both have the blood of the royal family in your veins. I have been trying to cultivate your family tree, every branch of which is known to me, and I expect Curdie to turn out a blossom on it. Therefore I have been training him for a work that must soon be done. (53)
Similar words are repeatedly uttered by the prophet: “The Lord formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob to him again” (49:5); “Thou shalt inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hand” (60:21); “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might […] and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears” (11:1-3); Israel shall: “take root…blossom and bud.” (27:6) Thus is Curdie of royal seed as Isaiah is of royal seed, and soon he is, as bold and wise counsellor, to judge men with his hands rather than eyes or ears. The chapter in which this declaration occurs is called “What is in a Name?” and Curdie’s proper name, Conrad, is Old German for “bold counsellor” or
“wise counsellor” – another phrase from Isaiah made even more familiar through Handel’s
Messiah. (Is. 9:6)Curdie’s parents are called Peter – “the rock” – and Joan (feminine form of John) – “God is gracious”: Curdie has a rich lineage indeed. The Celtic church (through Lindisfarne and Iona) deferred to the authority of St. John ‘the contemplative’; the Roman
to the hungry king. (Is. 58:7; Curdie 140) The passages from Isaiah in this chapter, unless otherwise stated, will be from the contemporaneous King James Version.
258Is. 30:17 reads: “One Thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee: till ye be left as a beacon
upon the top of the mountain, and as an ensign on a hill.” Is. 60:8 adds: “Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as doves to their window?” – the flying cloud in Curdie is the “white winged army of heaven,” the Great-great-grandmother’s doves. (Curdie
211) Down they swoop on the invaders, like “a storm in which the wind was birds, and the sea men” (Curdie 210): “But the wicked [were] like the troubled sea.” (Is. 57:20-21) Up the hill return the birds to that ensign of the Queen’s arm, raised for renewal, and with “trebled velocity” rush out to wreak more justice. (210) Isaiah repeatedly refers to the intervening arm of the Lord, which he raises before the nations, bringing salvation where there is no justice. “So shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion, and for the hill thereof. As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend.” (31:4, 5)
259 A list of some of the additional textual correlations will be found in the Appendix.
260Isaiah passage in full: “The people who walked in darkness saw a great light” – a passage traditionally understood to mean
church traced its lineage from the authority of St. Peter, the man of faithful action, the rock on whom Christ had promised to build his Church. In 644 this diversity was addressed in a significant and divisive synod. The Great-great-grandmother has intentionally reunified Curdie’s lineage; faithful to Scott’s concept of unity, his parentage defies schism. These ‘converging patterns’ give shape to the story.
With that in mind, a consideration of Isaiah within the writings of MacDonald’s mentor
Maurice clearly confirms that MacDonald has more than just the biblical text of Isaiah in mind.
Maurice’s Prophets and Kings proves to be a surprisingly useful tool with which to explore the
interplay between Curdie and Isaiah, as a close read reveals that Curdie’s adventure seems
especially influenced by Isaiah as seen through Maurice’s study. It is fascinating to read through
Maurice's sermons – to see how deeply they enter the story of Isaiah, how intentional they are at
trying to draw his listeners into the story that they might understand the book’s complexities – and then to realize how closely the sermons also guide the unfolding of Curdie’s tale. Maurice is clearly practicing the methodology he and Scott taught. Thus it is important to pay specific attention to how definitely MacDonald – by the 1880s himself a well-seasoned writer, critic,
teacher, and preacher – is being guided by Maurice’s theological commentary.261 In “Sermon
XIII ‘The Vision of the King,’” a sermon beginning with the text of Isaiah 6:1, Maurice’s
description of Isaiah’s vision parallels closely Curdie’s ‘commissioning’ visits to the Great- great-grandmother, Queen-Princess Irene. Just as the novel does, the sermons detail ermine- covered mountains (evoking Ruskin’s alps) and a degenerate hero who requires purgation before he is able to rescue a further degenerate people; they sketch the royal lineage of a protagonist who continuously needs to see the truth beneath the surface of appearances. And
it is not just the generalities of Maurice that correlate with Curdie, but again a multiplicity of
unique specifics: the repeated patterns and common symbols proliferate. For example, Maurice writes that in Isaiah’s vision, “Each object was the counterpart of one that was then or had been at some time before his bodily eyes yet it did not borrow its shape or colour from those visible things.” (222) This is Curdie’s experience in his visits to the room of the Great-great- grandmother: a “bare garret, a heap of musty straw, a sunbeam, and a withered apple” (or later, a rickety spinning wheel, a moonbeam, and an old withered woman) become completely
261 Although introduced by Scott, MacDonald and Maurice had an independent relationship. MacDonald dedicated Miracles of
Our Lord to Maurice, and he was godfather to one of MacDonald’s sons. From 1860-69 Maurice was the family’s priest. (AJS
51) MacDonald also gives not only a description, but a defense of Maurice (as the character Robert Falconer) in Elginbrod – that book which focuses so closely on Isaiah 40. In 1869 Maurice wrote that he would “deem it a great honour” if MacDonald could collaborate with him on a book combining his prayers and meditations with MacDonald’s hymns, with the intent of promoting and encouraging “the Unity of the Church” (cf. Maurice’s letter in King’s London archives). Maurice’s ill health impeded the project, and he died in 1872. (Greville 399ff)
transformed into glorious counterparts. Maurice writes that, “For it is true of earthly symbols, still more of heavenly visions, that they are meant to carry us out of words and above words; not so that we despise them or think lightly of them, but that we seeing the reality of the invisible may not be greatly disturbed by the processes and conceits of our minds.” (222) This invocation of centuries of discussion about the limitation of words to convey meaning is paralleled in the Great-great-grandmother’s request of Curdie: “Listen to the wheel.” Curdie receives communication of something beyond even what the Great-great-grandmother can capture within words – yet he is somehow able, again in a mysterious manner beyond words, to convey some of his apprehension of this revelation to her. She then ‘words’ what she can of
his reception, and the reader is able to read “something like the words of its song.”262 (64, 65)
Maurice explains that in Isaiah it is the holiness of God that is being expressed ineffably in the
seraphims’ hymn, that which is beyond word and even beyond image. He writes of how the prophet says, “Woe is me! For I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” (223) Curdie too first stands before the Great-great-grandmother “as a culprit, and worst of all, as one who had his confession yet to make.” As he makes his confession he comes to realize that it is not his most recent deed that he is in most need to confess, but rather that his whole way of living has become ‘unclean’, or, as Curdie himself phrases it, “the wrong had soaked all through me”: although he had “done right for sometime,” he had “forgotten how” and was now “doing the wrong of never wanting or trying to be better [and he] didn’t want to hear the truth.” (30) He is like the prophet of whom Maurice says: “All his uncleanness had come from this. He and his people were impure because they had lost that common life and love which
belonged to them while they were living as the people of God.” (Prophets 226) Maurice
expounds:
In such a revelation the discovery of personal evil comes first. The man does not look about him to compare his offences with those of other men and try which are the heavier. It is not this or that particular offence, no, nor a multitude of particular offences, that overwhelms him; it is the feeling of a root of bitterness; not ‘I have done this or that wrong,’ but ‘I am wrong.’ Not however that this thought could long be separated from the one of which it must take precedence. “I dwell among a people of unclean lips.”
262 “The music of the wheel was like the music of an Aeolian harp blown upon by the wind that bloweth where it listeth.”
(Curdie 65) Recalling dialogue with Ruskin, the words that Curdie hears from the Athena-like wheel, laden with familiar biblical
imagery, has a strong semblance to the poem “Prayer,” by Herbert. It also serves as homage to Coleridge’s poem “The Aeolian Harp.” The song was published separately from Curdie, in both A Threefold Cord and Poetical Works. Ruskin describes Athena as “The Spirit of Wisdom in Conduct, bearing, in sign of conquest over troublous [sic] and disturbing evil, the skin of the wild goat [recall the goat skin given to Curdie], [and in] her hand, a weaver’s shuttle, or a spear.’ (Birch 78)
There is the same pollution in them which there is in me. Each of us is living to himself. Each is living apart from that God who has called us to be holy as He is. He is attended by obedient Spirits, Spirits united in obedience, working together as His servants, for the fulfilment of His purposes. We are separate and broken; every man following a way of his own; not a people, because we do not believe that a King is with us. (224-5)
The further relevance of this passage becomes clear when it is explained that that which Curdie has need to repent is the same affliction that the people of his country suffer. Curdie must first deal with his own faults before he his able to serve the Great-great-grandmother in his mission – a mission to the city in which the people have ceased to believe that their King is one with them (let alone that the likes of the Great-great-grandmother may exist and thus is
‘with them’); a city in which each has very explicitly begun “living to himself” (Prophets 225),
their “first fundamental principle [being] that every One should take of that One,” their
proclaimed responsibility the “well-being of the original self.” (Curdie 189) As Maurice had
explained in his passage dedicated to Scott, revelation is “the making known that which is, to the persons who are the most interested in knowing it.” (xxvii)
ii) A Concluding Correlation: A ‘new’ reading of the contentious ending of Curdie
Our object has been to bring forward a few passages which seem to us to breathe the very spirit of individual passages in sacred writ,
without direct use of the words themselves; and, of course,
in such a case we can only appeal to the (no doubt) very various degrees of conviction which they may rouse in the minds of our readers.
(“St. George’s Day”)
A thorough exploration of Maurice's sermons and the book of Isaiah answers many of the
perplexities that critics have with Curdie – including that of the book’s conclusion. For Maurice
reiterates throughout his sermon series that the central message of Isaiah is this: that though the
whole land be shaken and seem to die, the Prince of Peace shall never pass – his word endures forever. (Prophets 231; Is. 40:8263) Maurice tells us that he has belaboured this segment of Isaiah
so carefully,
because I believe that it leads us into the very heart of Isaiah’s teaching, and that all the portions of it which we shall have to consider hereafter, are but expansions of the hints in this opening vision…. And if there should come a convulsion in that land, such as neither thou nor thy
263 The central message of Is. 40: 6-8, which in discussing the temporality of man concludes with “His [God’s] Word endures