This cultural turn from metaphysics to metafictions’: On Phllip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage

Once upon a time science seemed destined to replace religion as the source of all explanations. Today, however, “story” has become the master metaphor that we use to interpret experience, including the mysteries of God and Nature. This recourse to story-talk is everywhere, uniting the two cultures, the arts and sciences. It is thus not surprising to find the astrophysicist Sean Carroll endorsing Muriel Rukeyser’s line of poetry, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms”. Carroll used it to support his own brief for the “poetic naturalism” of science: “That is absolutely correct. There is more to the world than what happens; there are the ways we make sense of it by telling its story”.

This cultural turn from metaphysics to metafictions helps to explain why so many readers, young and older, have greeted Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage as if it were the Second Coming. A forthright atheist, Pullman has made the secular balm of stories one of his principal themes, finding in them the “capacity to enchant, to excite, to move, to inspire”. This holds true for “science stories” as well, assuaging our fear that science repudiates wonder for analysis, prescriptive morals for descriptive accuracy. Pullman insists that scientific narratives can be as marvellous as fairy tales, and as ethical as a chivalric quest. The key is that “we have to behave honestly towards them and to the process of doing science in the first place”.

These are among the salutary messages conveyed in Pullman’s own tales, which combine the moral earnestness of the nineteenth century with the self-reflexivity of the twentieth. He is also conversant with postmodernism’s delight in the endless play of signifiers, but doesn’t find that approach helpful when it comes to crafting dynamic, vividly realized tales capable of appealing to all ages. Pullman modestly declares that he writes vulgar stories, not highfalutin’ literature; his faith in the elemental power of inventive plots, plausible characters and limpid prose produces page-turners pleasing to the child in us all. Yet his broad allusions to literature and science, and the larger philosophic themes that oxygenate his narratives without choking their momentum, are notably grown-up. (The “alethiometer”, an instrument that captures truth through symbols, is brilliant as it is – but it is even better for operating through a Keatsian “negative capability”.) He is unapologetically Victorian in his belief that stories should be morally engaging and socially responsible.

Pullman is also surprisingly Victorian in his residual suspicion of fantasy, even as he conjures into life talking bears and flying witches. In Daemon Voices, a collection of luminously written (if occasionally contradictory) essays on the nature, techniques and joys of fiction, he maintains that he is a realist rather than a fantasy writer. He infinitely prefers the company of George Eliot to that of J. R. R. Tolkien, let alone “his thousand imitators”: “There isn’t a character in the whole of The Lord of the Rings who has a tenth of the complexity . . . of even a fairly minor character from Middlemarch”. He concludes that fantasy is “a great vehicle when it serves the purposes of realism, and a lot of old cobblers when it doesn’t”.

Comparing Tolkien to Eliot, though, is a mug’s game, and it becomes only sillier when Pullman invokes Jane Austen’s Emma to further reprove the delinquent don. Tolkien was obviously not writing a novel of psychological realism concerning middle-class mores. He was doing the opposite, reviving the heroic epic in the face of realism’s cultural predominance. One might object to Tolkien for many reasons, but failing to be a realist isn’t one of them. Pullman’s disquiet is even more surprising in the light of his own essay on the epic, a form he commends for being “about large and public matters” like “the return of a king”, and featuring protagonists who “are larger than human beings, and perhaps simpler too: they are heroes”.

Such conflicting views suggests the question of where Pullman’s ambivalence about fantasy is rooted. Throughout Daemon Voices he displays wide knowledge and affection for the fantastic in all its forms, including folk tales, fairy stories and comics. But regardless of the reason, the author’s hesitations about fantasy have a peculiar relevance at this moment. In an age of alternative facts and virtual realities, many are searching for ways to enjoy an unfettered imaginativeness without undermining reason or neglecting the natural world. These are also Pullman’s concerns, his fiction and essays proffering insightful strategies on maintaining a viable balance.

La Belle Sauvage is indeed a second coming. It is the initial instalment of The Book of Dust, the second trilogy concerning the fate of Lyra Belacqua, a young girl adept at affecting change through stories. The novel bears the heavy burden of its precursor, His Dark Materials (1995–2000), which for sheer narrative panache would be hard to beat. This previous sequence of novels encompassed Heaven and Earth, the underworld and parallel worlds. Its God is eventually exposed as a doddering, tyrannical impostor, and summarily dispatched. After killing God, what can Pullman do for an encore?

We are once again in Lyra’s world, an alternative version of our own that is reassuringly familiar and strikingly different. Humans have daemons, externalizations of their psyches that restlessly assume different animal forms in childhood, eventually settling into a final form upon maturity. The Church, or “Magisterium”, predominates, wielding the doctrine of original sin to restrict freedom of thought and expression. The Magisterium is opposed by freethinkers such as Lyra’s father, Lord Asriel. Any precarious balance this society had has been destabilized by the discovery of Dust, invisible particles that are conscious, and may be the ultimate cause of all awareness in the universe. The two contending parties rush to capitalize on this discovery for their own purposes. Lyra appears to be the key they both need: centuries before, the witches of her world learned that Lyra’s destiny would be to bring about the end of destiny.

thats enough fag talk

The events of La Belle Sauvage occur a decade before those of His Dark Materials. At the outset, we are introduced to the eleven-year-old Malcom Polstead and his daemon Asta. The only son of an Oxford innkeeper, Malcolm is kind, gentle and curious (and a little bland), a natural craftsman who enjoys trawling the local rivers in his canoe, La Belle Sauvage. He helps the nuns at the nearby Priory, whom Pullman depicts sympathetically, atoning for his uniformly negative portrayal of the religious in His Dark Materials. Here Malcolm encounters the six-month-old Lyra, who has been entrusted to the Priory for safe keeping. She manifests the feisty, outgoing nature that will serve her well in the years to come. Malcolm is charmed, and comes to love her: “He was her servant for life”.

And a good thing too, for Lyra’s life is in peril. The Magisterium, aware of the witches’ prophecy, is searching for her, perhaps with the intention of killing her. Her mother, who has allied herself with the Magisterium to gain power, seeks her as well – and not necessarily for maternal reasons. Lyra is also stalked by a genuinely frightening figure who claims to be her real father: Gerard Bonneville, a physicist who boasts of having discovered the secrets of Dust. He is also a convicted paedophile. Bonneville seems kindly but his daemon, a bloodthirsty hyena with a manic laugh, gives the game away. He pursues his young quarry relentlessly, in scenes reminiscent of the film The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Pullman plays with different narrative genres in La Belle Sauvage, with the first half a homage to spy fiction. Malcolm’s presence at his father’s inn and the Priory allows him to observe suspicious characters who may threaten Lyra, and this brings him to the attention of a clandestine intelligence agency opposed to the Magisterium. In the spirit of John le Carré, Pullman touches on the moral dilemma of spying, where questionable acts are sometimes justified in the name of a higher good. Malcolm is recruited reluctantly by Hannah Relf, an Oxford scholar specializing in the History of Ideas, and a recent initiate to “tradecraft”. She grows fond of Malcolm, recognizing the boy’s potential to become a scholar if he only had access to better education. (Pullman, a former teacher, frequently fulminates against the current state of British education in Daemon Voices.) In between bouts of skulduggery, she tutors him in the “big ideas” underlined in the series, such as the intertwined nature of the universe and human consciousness. Malcolm derives comfort from this scientific story, a secular analogue to the Great Chain of Being: “he was still part of the great order of things, and that . . . could never change”.

While Pullman is adept at conveying abstract ideas, he also excels at capturing nuances of character, scene and emotion. Lord Asriel, for example, appears to be a remote figure who willingly abandons Lyra to the care of others. But he has a more paternal side, as seen when he surreptitiously visits his child at the Priory in the dead of night:

Hold on I'm almost done.

[He held her high] so he could whisper to her, rocking her gently, strolling along in the brilliant moonlight. At one point he seemed to be showing the moon to Lyra, pointing up at it and holding her so she could see, or perhaps he was showing Lyra to the moon; at any rate he looked like a lord in his own domain, with nothing to fear and all the silvery night to enjoy.

The narrative takes a dramatically different course, literally and figuratively, when an enormous storm floods much of the country. The sturdy La Belle Sauvage becomes a life-saver, enabling Malcolm and Alice Parslow, a slightly older co-worker at the inn, to rescue Lyra from raging torrents and infuriated foes. At this point the story abruptly enters the liminal world of the “secret commonwealth”, where old gods, allegorical figures, and faeries demand their due. Malcolm and Alice use their knowledge of fairy tales to manipulate some of these sprites, but the demonic Bonneville and his laughing hyena cannot be so appeased. Through their joint tribulations, the pair are forced to leave childhood behind them. Yet Malcolm and Alice are recompensed with their emerging romantic relationship and the acquisition of wisdom to cope with an uncertain future. “Nothing”, Malcolm realizes, “would be normal and safe, ever again.”

His Dark Materials was an inversion of John Milton’s account of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost. Pullman identifies this biblical tale as “the central story of our lives, the story that more than any other tells us what it means to be human”, and in his secular retelling the original sin of acquiring moral knowledge became a tremendous achievement, melding callow innocence into tempered experience. La Belle Sauvage is a thrilling and thought-provoking excursion deeper into this territory – but with a difference. The mysterious, liminal world evoked by the flood suggests that The Book of Dust may provide subtler satisfactions than its gloriously baroque predecessor, further justifying the ways of Pullman to man.

This was beautiful OP.

Oh. My. God.

Bump

Loved it.

>brainlet
What the fuck did i just read

Can i eat it? Is OP pranking us?

That chick looks like a farm ass pig.

Oh, this is a book review.

And enjoy your ban. Dropped, reported and saged.

Fuck you brazil

>what the fuck did I just read?

Magic

Fuck off faggot

Good read.

If you don't like it go back to your BLACKED and Sup Forums BTFO'd threads

When I was a kid I really like the Dark Materials trilogy. Would be interesting to read it again, and nice to hear he's writing more.

Bump

How come shit like OP's fanfiction does not get banned and my posts reporting crime and degeneracy in Brazil don't last 3 minutes?

You're all faggots addicted to nothing burguers. Enjoy your BS book review in a political board.

Also:
>53% white country calling me a cuck

Because nobody cares about Brazil.

Incredible thread OP, but nobody is going to care because you didn't post a picture of a butt.

I am currently thinking

Bump

Interesting OP.. Loved the first series. I didnt know Pullman was an atheist or that they kill God in the story. I don't like when God is characterized negatively. Awesome writing still. I wanna read this but I don't pay for books.

Do not read subversive literature.

What are you afraid of?