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A review by bookscoffeandacat
The Portent: A Story of the Inner Vision of the Highlanders, Commonly Called the Second Sight by George MacDonald
5.0
This story was originally serialized in three parts in the Cornhill Magazine for May, June, and July 1860. In 1864, George MacDonald expanded the story and published it in book form. He added a happy ending.
One of my favorite passages is the paragraph that ended the original version.
"They say that Time and Space exist not, save in our thoughts. If so, then that which has been is, and the Past can never cease. She is mine, and I shall find her-what matters it where, or when, or how? Till then, my soul is but a moon-lighted chamber of ghosts: and I sit within, the dreariest of them all. When she enters, it will be a home of love. And I wait-I wait."
This is one of my favorites of Macdonald's stories. It's a little strange, and the reincarnation aspect of it comes as a surprise from someone who's full length novels usually deliver a fair amount of sermonizing about Christian principles.
excerpt from the dedication:
"And permit me to say a few words about the story. It is a Romance. I am well aware that, with many readers, this epithet will be enough to ensure condemnation...
I am well aware that such tales are not of much account, at present: and greatly would I regret that they should ever become the fashion: of which, however, there is no danger. But, seeing so much of our life must be spent in dreaming, may there not be a still nook, shadowy, but not miasmatic, in some lowly region of literature, where, in the pauses of labour, a man may sit down and dream such a day-dream as I now offer to your acceptance, and that of those who will judge the work, in part at least, by its purely literary claims? If I confined my pen to such results, you, at least, would have a right to blame me. But you, for one, will, I am sure, justify an author in dreaming, sometimes."
One of my favorite passages is the paragraph that ended the original version.
"They say that Time and Space exist not, save in our thoughts. If so, then that which has been is, and the Past can never cease. She is mine, and I shall find her-what matters it where, or when, or how? Till then, my soul is but a moon-lighted chamber of ghosts: and I sit within, the dreariest of them all. When she enters, it will be a home of love. And I wait-I wait."
This is one of my favorites of Macdonald's stories. It's a little strange, and the reincarnation aspect of it comes as a surprise from someone who's full length novels usually deliver a fair amount of sermonizing about Christian principles.
excerpt from the dedication:
"And permit me to say a few words about the story. It is a Romance. I am well aware that, with many readers, this epithet will be enough to ensure condemnation...
I am well aware that such tales are not of much account, at present: and greatly would I regret that they should ever become the fashion: of which, however, there is no danger. But, seeing so much of our life must be spent in dreaming, may there not be a still nook, shadowy, but not miasmatic, in some lowly region of literature, where, in the pauses of labour, a man may sit down and dream such a day-dream as I now offer to your acceptance, and that of those who will judge the work, in part at least, by its purely literary claims? If I confined my pen to such results, you, at least, would have a right to blame me. But you, for one, will, I am sure, justify an author in dreaming, sometimes."