George MacDonald, "At the Back of the North Wind"

George MacDonald, known for his fairy tales and his fantastic novels, moved into that pre-Raphaelite atmosphere of which William Morris was a part and entered the context of acquaintances that included Mary Shelley, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray , Mark Twain (whom he was friends with) and CS Lewis.

The latter had a great admiration for MacDonald’s production, he considered him his teacher, unlike Tolkien who, as Roberto Arduini points out, had a real dislike for the writing of the Scottish.

“The reason for such growing aversion”, Arduini explains, “was precisely one of the main characteristics of MacDonald, who deeply divided Tolkien from Lewis and The Lord of the Rings from the Chronicles of Narnia.” As he writes in the preface draft to The Key to ‘MacDonald is a preacher, and not just from the church pulpit; he preaches in all his many books. Moral allegory was wrong for Tolkien: “I am not very attracted (indeed, I would say the opposite) to allegories, mystical or moral” (R. A.)

Marco Gionta, of Auralia edizioni, has chosen to republish the text, already released in 2011 with the publisher Raffaelli, by carrying out a “personalized” rereading operation, so to speak. To understand this, we must start with the choice of the title: “At the Back of the North Wind”, translated in the Auralia edition no longer with “Beyond the north wind”, but with “On the wings of the north wind”. This is not a detail to be overlooked. In fact, everything revolves around what is “behind the north wind.”

Diamante is a Victorian child, raised in a modest but dignified family, among honest and upright people. The father, a coachman, is a hard worker, the mother an example of virtue. Diamante himself, which bears the name of the family horse, is a “Child of God”. With this expression we mean the idea of ​​a brilliant child but so candid as to appear almost retarded. Diamante has a clarity, a goodness, an angelic generosity that hits the heart and redeems those who come in contact with him.

“The greatest wisdom seems folly to those who do not possess it.”

“Good people see good things and bad see bad”

It will be precisely for this characteristic that he will be chosen by Noth Wind, who is none other than Death, a sort of gigantic goddess with many personalities, terrible like Kali and loving like Durga. North Wind is capable of benevolent and lethal actions at the same time. She is beautiful and tremendous, tiny and immense, capable of changing dimensions from moment to moment like Lewis Carrol’s Alice.

North Wind is therefore the Black Lady, behind her there is the end of life, there is an Eden, where you feel good but you cannot be completely happy because the earthly experience fails you and you lack the affections.

“He could not say he was happy, in that place, because he had neither his father nor his mother with him, but he felt calm, serene, and this was perhaps better than being happy.” (page 102)

But the Auralia edition does not seem to want to highlight this funereal side of the story. Translating the title with “On the wings of the North Wind”, importance is given to the playful, adventurous moment, in the positivistic perspective that characterizes the entire production of the young publishing house. The accent is placed on the adventures, on the travels, on the flights of Diamante who, hidden in the hair of North Wind, or clinging to her maternal and welcoming breast, visits wonderful places, halfway between the dreamlike and the real, between the dream and the vision.

For those who are good, for those who are pure in heart like little Diamante — the sweet child with starry eyes — even Death is a friend. Even the journey he makes behind her, in Hades, in the land already visited once by Dante — here called Durante — and described by Herodotus, in the icy world of most, does not frighten him and does not make him unhappy. Diamante is unable to be frightened, Diamante loves everything and understands everything, Diamante finds the beauty and the good in everything. Only those who possess his naivety, his wisdom, his generosity and his love for his neighbor, consider everything, even illness, even death, as inevitable, equitable, necessary.

Diamante is an angelic creature, giver of good, capable of connecting with the rest of creation, of empathizing with nature, children, animals. He has a privileged relationship with his little brothers, whom he loves as if they were his children, to whom he sings pre-intellectual songs that spring from the heart. He also knows how to understand the secret language of animals, recognizing their celestial, seraphic nature, akin to his own. Diamante is one of those people who love without expecting anything in return, who disarm with a smile, with kindness, who always think positive.

“Everything about that boy, so full of quiet wisdom and at the same time so ready to accept the judgment of others, even to his detriment, took hold in my heart and I felt wonderfully attracted to him. It seemed to me, somehow, as if little Diamond possessed the secret of life and was himself, as he was ready to think of the smallest living creature, an angel of God, with something special to say and do. “ (page 292)

In addition to little Diamante and his family, the characters that populate the story are the same as in much of Victorian fiction: poor girls with Dickensian traits, drunken coachmen who beat their wives, elderly benefactors who resemble those later portrayed by Frances Hodson Burnett in “Little Lord Fauntleroy” and in “The Little Princess”.

The text also contains fairy tales, poems, riddles, as it will later be in Tolkien and as it is in the tradition of Lewis Carrol and Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes. There are also many topoi of fairy-tale literature that we find here, from the talking horse, to the fairy wardrobe, (see “The Chronicles of Narnia” but also a film like “Monsters & Co”), to the swirling wind that transports you to fantastic worlds (“The wonderful Magician of Oz” by Frank Baum, 1900).