A Sort Of Progress

The Pilgrim's Progress is the sort of book everyone thinks they've read but usually haven't. They've probably encountered the core story somehow, somewhere - through dramatisation, abridgement or the like - but the original has so often escaped them. So it was with me up to a week or so ago when I decided to get to grips with the original, and I'm glad I did.

The theology is a bit laboured, Bunyan being the sort of chap one admires from a distance but wouldn't necessarily welcome as a house-guest. But there's some highly insightful and entertaining psychology at work in the allegory, and even if you don't buy the argument you can wallow in his language - the poetry of the Authorised Version mixed with the gossip of the street market. And then, above all, there's the endearing clumsiness of the whole enterprise.

The big surprise for me was Part 2 featuring Christian's missus Christiana and her pilgrimage in her husband's footsteps with his children. By the end of the book she's gathered quite a crowd around her, including such as Mister Feeble-mind - the names are always wonderful - and they're all knocking on the door of the Celestial City, as it were. It's fascinating to see Bunyan varying the allegory in this reprise whilst, obviously, maintaining the same broad outline. He struck me as somehow more mellow and strangely certain of things in the later book, almost more at ease with himself, though the distinct, almost sad, yearning of the first part is still there.

I suppose the most curious thing of all is that Bunyan's work became a story shared by a whole culture transcending the individual yet remains peculiarly, obsessionally the vision of one man.