Thresholds and Liminal Places
The expression "Beyond the Fields We Know" was coined at the turn of the last century by the Irish peer, Lord Dunsany, a gifted playwright and master storyteller, who used it in many of his tales to describe the realms which lie beyond the world we live in, Elfland or Faerie being just one such world beyond.
The Irish poet William Butler Yeats, a friend of Dunsany's, once said wistfully that he (Dunsany) wrote from "a careful abundance", and more recently, Lin Carter called Lord Dunsany a magnificent storyteller, and one of the last great masters of English prose, superior even to J.R.R. Tolkien in subtle artistry. Dunsany 's work has been a major influence on most, if not all of the fantasy writers who followed him, and "The King of Elfland's Daughter" rivals anything else ever written in the field of fantasy literature.
What separates us from Elfland and the other realms which lie beyond the one we inhabit? At the edge of the fields we know lies a hedgerow, a very ordinary sort of hedgerow containing a rustic gate. Hedgerow and gate delineate the presence of a place which is neither here nor there, neither up nor down, neither in nor out, neither real nor imagined. The hedgerow and its rude gate are a threshold of sorts, a doorway or liminal space, and like all liminal spaces, they are a place of strong magic, not simply a barrier between here and there, as they appear to be at first glance. Like all liminal spaces, hedgerow and gate are also a corridor or passageway into the unknown (but occasionally glimpsed and heard) mysterious worlds which lie beyond the fields we know. Within the liminal space of the gate/hedgerow and beyond lies something rich and strange, a dimension which is by times, extraordinary, enlightening, creative, ecstatic, exhilarating and absolutely terrifying.
(to be continued)
This rambling scrap of essay is part of a work in progress which attempts to knit up a lifelong fascination with that which lies beyond, with trees, groves, stones and waterways, with hedgerows, old gates and various domestic portals, all seen as thresholds and doorways to other places - if we approach them in the right sort of mind, that is.
The expression "Beyond the Fields We Know" was coined at the turn of the last century by the Irish peer, Lord Dunsany, a gifted playwright and master storyteller, who used it in many of his tales to describe the realms which lie beyond the world we live in, Elfland or Faerie being just one such world beyond.
The Irish poet William Butler Yeats, a friend of Dunsany's, once said wistfully that he (Dunsany) wrote from "a careful abundance", and more recently, Lin Carter called Lord Dunsany a magnificent storyteller, and one of the last great masters of English prose, superior even to J.R.R. Tolkien in subtle artistry. Dunsany 's work has been a major influence on most, if not all of the fantasy writers who followed him, and "The King of Elfland's Daughter" rivals anything else ever written in the field of fantasy literature.
What separates us from Elfland and the other realms which lie beyond the one we inhabit? At the edge of the fields we know lies a hedgerow, a very ordinary sort of hedgerow containing a rustic gate. Hedgerow and gate delineate the presence of a place which is neither here nor there, neither up nor down, neither in nor out, neither real nor imagined. The hedgerow and its rude gate are a threshold of sorts, a doorway or liminal space, and like all liminal spaces, they are a place of strong magic, not simply a barrier between here and there, as they appear to be at first glance. Like all liminal spaces, hedgerow and gate are also a corridor or passageway into the unknown (but occasionally glimpsed and heard) mysterious worlds which lie beyond the fields we know. Within the liminal space of the gate/hedgerow and beyond lies something rich and strange, a dimension which is by times, extraordinary, enlightening, creative, ecstatic, exhilarating and absolutely terrifying.
(to be continued)
This rambling scrap of essay is part of a work in progress which attempts to knit up a lifelong fascination with that which lies beyond, with trees, groves, stones and waterways, with hedgerows, old gates and various domestic portals, all seen as thresholds and doorways to other places - if we approach them in the right sort of mind, that is.
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