[Rimbaud]

Indeed, good Sir, that can hardly fail to provide me with a smile, to hear his genuine pleasure; an almost child-like delight in such Sub-creation.

From On Fairy Stories, the beginning of the sub-chapter Fantasy; I am fond of this passage, highlighting the Professor’s understanding of the word and accompanying concepts.

The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. But in recent times, in technical not normal language, Imagination has often been hold to be something higher than the mere-image-making, ascribed to the operations of Fancy (a reduced and depreciatory form of the older word Fantasy); an attempt is thus made to restrict, I should say misapply, Imagination to the “power of giving to ideal creations the inner consistency of reality.”

Ridiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate. The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. The perception of the image, the grasp of its implications, and the control, which are necessary to a successful expression, may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a difference in the degree of Imagination, not a difference in kind. The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) “the inner consistency of reality,”* is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. For my present purpose I require a word which shall both embrace the Sub-creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression, derived from the Image: a quality essential to fairy-story. I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this purpose: in a sense, that is, which combines with its older and higher use as an equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of “unreality” (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World), of freedom from the domination of observed “fact,” in short of the fantastic. I am thus not only aware but glad of the etymological and semantic connexions of fantasy with fantastic: with images of things that are not only “not actually present,” but which are indeed not to be found in our primary world at all, or are generally believed not to be found there. But while admitting that, I do not assent to the depreciatory tone. That the images are of things not in the primary world (if that is indeed possible) is a virtue, not a vice. Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.

*That is: which commands or induces secondary belief.

This speaks very greatly for itself. Indeed, it is simple enough, yet enoyable to watch such erudite fulminations. Important, in light of the drivel created by some apparent devotees of this creed, to note “when achieved”.