Salutations to all, regardless of what alternative worlds and internets this blog may drift into and out of like so many particles of Dust.
I suppose brief introductions are in order. I have been an English major, a writer, a quasi-philosopher, a bookseller, and most recently a librarian. My interests run deep along many currents, and books and reading have always been a guiding star. And on that front, no works of fiction have ever quite gripped me like Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and the still incomplete The Book of Dust. They settled into my psyche and set up permanent real estate there, as reading them the first time was one of the most profound experiences of my literary life.
As the books have won practically every major literary award in Britain, from the Carnegie Medal to the Whitbread Book of the Year, I know I am not alone. As of this writing, His Dark Materials has also just been filed away under TIME's List of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. The adaptations include radio dramas, stage plays, a major motion picture, and a television series currently running on HBO.
A substantial part of it is simply Pullman's extraordinary imagination - or that "Power so called/ through the sad incompetence of human speech" as our beloved poet William Wordsworth so eloquently described it (Yes, Romanticism is going to be a potent vein running through this blog, as it does through Pullman's major works). It all began with the now classic and iconic novel Northern Lights, or The Golden Compass, as it's called in the United States. We were introduced to a parallel world of stunning, almost unparalleled originality, and some of us were never entirely the same again.
Somehow, a British author who rather disdains fantasy created arguably (definitively, in my mind) the greatest fantasy trilogy of all time. In his primary alternate world, all human beings are accompanied by a daemon, an outward manifestation of a person's deepest self. This daemon takes the form of many shape shifting animals until it finally settles on one in particular with the onset of adolescence.
Pullman has stated the daemon was the best idea he ever had, and everyone who has ever fallen under the spell of his novels not only seems to agree, but often develop a deep existential longing for a daemon of their very own, a spirit-animal of sorts to serve as a lifelong companion and confidant.
But that is just the beginning.
The depths of his imagination have left us with startlingly original creations or reinventions of old ones, like ageless witches who can hear the Aurora itself, rebel angels who are enchanted by flesh, talking bears whose armor is their soul, sentient, diamond-shaped creatures who evolved to use wheels, and an endless array of sprites and spirits and everything in-between. These worlds feature a truth-telling device capable of questioning reality itself, a knife so subtle it can carve doors into other dimensions, and a mystical spyglass that can see the life-generating, inspiration-saturated Dust that powerfully holds all the universes in its mysterious embrace.
To put it simply, only an entire multiverse could possibly be big and rich enough to contain Pullman's imagination. But there are also deeper levels to all of this, levels this blog is partly dedicated to exploring.
All his masterful world-building is itself built on some of the most profound poets and artists who have ever lived. Writers and thinkers such as John Milton, William Blake, and Heinrich von Kleist, to name the more famous ones. As such, Pullman has skillfully woven an imaginary tapestry that also somehow manages to resonate both truly and deeply with his readers precisely because it is so truly and deeply real. Despite all its wondrous, magical trappings.
The Pullmanverse rarely fails to capture a slice of what it means to be human, and sings with the stuff of a curious and passionate life well-lived.
Firstly and most simply, I would like to establish this as a solid foundation for what is happening in the worlds of Philip Pullman. That means sharing not only current news, events, and releases that have to do with the His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust trilogies, but also passing along the timeless and insightful quotes and notes generated both in the narratives themselves, as well as outside them.
There is also a plethora of articles and videos and the like that can yield an infinitely deeper and nuanced understanding of all things Pullman, and they simply don't get enough attention in the various fan communities. At least in my opinion. So I will also be providing essays and commentary along the way, particularly as they relate to the poetic and philosophical scaffolding that supports the Pullmanverse.
Lastly and more ambitiously, I sincerely want to give voice to one of the central concepts of the trilogies, that being the Republic of Heaven.
But what is this curious sounding Republic of Heaven, you ask?
As most of you recall, the closing lines of The Amber Spyglass end with our beloved Lyra and her daemon Pantalamion echoing that very phrase that helped culminate her epic journey into the North, and finally into other worlds altogether, even as she had to leave those very worlds behind.
"But then we wouldn't have been able to build it. No one could, if they put themselves first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and brave and patient, and we've got to study and think, and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we'll build ... "
"And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?"
"The republic of heaven," said Lyra.
And the curtain falls on Lyra's story and the book ends, at least until The Secret Commonwealth. And the reader is given a lot to puzzle over and potentially take nourishment from.
But what does it all mean?
It seems relevant to point out that Pullman has been known to remark on the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's tendency to once raid scientific thought and discovery to replenish his supply of metaphors. Not only does he do the same and thus applaud the practice - just look at all the mystery and mysticism built into the elementary particles known as Dust - but he has sculpted and refined some memorable new metaphors himself.
The one framing this little blogging enterprise is the aforementioned Republic.
Even if he wasn't such an exquisite craftsman of stories himself, I suspect Pullman would still be astute enough to realize that, as human beings, we don't live so much in facts as we do in stories. As he himself remarked in his 2000 lecture "The Republic of Heaven," in a time of rampant uncertainty when so many religious and even scientific ideas have exhausted themselves, "we need a myth - we need a story."
If we are to live in this ever-expanding and ever-mysterious cosmos at all, we need a frame through which to view it, and narrative can still provide the best framing.
His corresponding trilogies give us precisely that - if we as readers pay close enough attention. As Pullman explains it, "The Republic of Heaven is a metaphor for a state of affairs that's already partly present whenever human beings are treating each other with kindness and approaching the universe with curiosity and wonder."
Fair enough, though perhaps some would argue or protest such borderline metaphysical-sounding language coming from the mouth of an avowed opponent of organized religion. The debate has fortunately died down, but I personally always found the outrage about His Dark Materials somehow being "atheism for kids" to be shallow, superficial, and relentlessly reductionist. Indeed, entire books have been written on the profundity of religious thought and feeling in his trilogies, which we will certainly be exploring in later posts and essays.
I personally have written a book of scholarly criticism on Star Wars for McFarland Press, and have already hinted to one of their representatives that another one on Pullman and his work will eventually be submitted. One collection of essays has already been published by McFarland titled Critical Perspectives on His Dark Materials, and I found one particular essay, "The Republic of Heaven: East, West, and Eclecticism in Pullman's Religious Vision" by J'annine Jobling to be particularly on point, and corroborating my own reading -
The philosophy of His Dark Materials can, on a broad understanding of the term, be considered a spirituality. It postulates a universe vibrant with love, spirit, meaning, and purpose even at the level of the elementary particle. It is a material spirituality, or a spiritual materialism: the divide between matter and spirit is not merely bridged but collapsed.
Precisely. In short, the old ideas of God may indeed be dying as brought to vivid life and metaphor in The Amber Spyglass, but the need for religious feeling and experience is openly addressed and, ironically, given quite a satisfying rebirth.
While there is no shortage of quotes and ideas outlining the Republic of Heaven metaphor both inside and outside the novels themselves, this one offered by Pullman during a wonderful interview with The New Yorker perhaps begins to sum it up most succinctly -
"I think we should act *as if.* I think we should read books, and tell children's stories, and take them to the theater, and learn poems, and play music, *as if* it would make a difference ... we should act *as if* the universe were listening to us and responding. We should act *as if* life is going to win."
Feel free to go back and read that a second time. It doesn't do to skim in this instance.
For me, this one swift, concise stroke cuts directly to the heart of the matter, and paints the soundest picture of the Republic that words can provide. Here, Pullman articulates - for me anyway - the sanest, most reasonable, most satisfying orientation and attitude to life, reality, and the universe as a whole that anyone has managed to do in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.
Jacob's Ladder by William Blake
As one of his favorite poets and sources of inspiration, it is no surprise Pullman is the current president of the Blake Society in London. He ruminates more on what it means to build the Republic of Heaven during a lecture, and does so again in very simple yet meaningful terms -
"That's what we do when we read. That's what we do when we write. When we learn a poem. When we play some music. When we fall in love. When we think about things. When we have a conversation. We're increasing the amount of consciousness in the universe. And that's a very Republic of Heaven purpose."
While I'm not sure such a line of thinking will resonate as deeply with everyone as it did with me, part of me thinks it's pure genius. I'm actually reminded of a famous letter by John Keats (I warned you we were going to delve into Romanticism a lot) back in the early nineteenth century. In it, he stated in no uncertain terms that if he unequivocally knew the poetry he composed every night would be burned the morning after and no one would ever read it, he would still be writing it.
Now that is also a Republic of Heaven kind of thing to do, if admittedly along the pretty intense side of the spectrum.
Perhaps too much emphasis has been put on results in the world that we've made. Too much has definitely been placed on certainty. For some, it's as though - unless there is a very literal kingdom of heaven we unquestionably go to and live forever when we die - all life is simply pointless and meaningless.
Not so, says the Republic. Some things have an inherent value and maybe, just maybe, add something to the ebb and flow and unfolding of the universe regardless of whether we can know or understand it.
So amidst the news and reviews, the fun and the fantasy, I would like to use this blog to suggest a little something called the "Republic Challenge." The internet is full of "challenges" these days, though happily this one does not involve dumping cold ice water over your head. Rather, this is to adopt that *as if* philosophy, and use it as a lens through which to view the world whenever we can manage it.
The Republic of Heaven Challenge is to try to find the little *as if* opportunities in as many activities and experiences as possible. Whether it be in the poems we read, the music we play, the books we write, the philosophy we explore, the conversations we have, the people we love, and the lives we live. And indeed, in the blogs we create and the creativity we celebrate. Here and now.
Because as the man himself so eloquently put it -
Stay Dusty My Friends
#PhilipPullman #HisDarkMaterials #TheBookOfDust #RepublicOfHeaven
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