born at the wrong end of Time

“Born at the wrong end of Time” describes a life lived backwards: Merlyn experiences what lies ahead as his past, and so can predict the future. Helen Macdonald reads the phrase not only as a device in The Sword in the Stone but also as a key to T. H. White’s imaginative reconstruction of himself after the loss of Gos.

Wording and Meaning

The phrase appears in The Sword in the Stone as an explanation of Merlyn’s unusual relation to time. He must “live backwards from in front,” surrounded by people moving forwards from behind; because he has already lived what others experience as the future, prophecy is, from his perspective, recollection. The wording turns an abstract gift into a dislocation: Merlyn’s knowledge comes from inhabiting time in the opposite direction.

White’s Reversal of Time

Macdonald links this fictional reversal to White’s own language and experience after the failed training of Gos. White had read Alfred Adler’s account of homosexuality as an attitude desirous of interfering with the flight of time. Macdonald then makes the phrase’s temporal idea personal: White, she writes, was turning time backwards. After emerging from the grave-like experience of his vigil, White described life as beginning again, and saw himself as reborn with wisdom. The expression thus gathers a reversal of defeat into an imagined new beginning.

Merlyn as an Imagined Future Self

For Macdonald, Merlyn is more than a striking literary creation: he is White’s imagined future self. The idea of living backwards makes The Sword in the Stone seem, in her interpretation, like a prophecy as well as a work of fiction. Merlyn can wait for the Wart to arrive because the boy belongs to his past, just as the wizard’s apparent foreknowledge is shaped by his reversed experience of time. The phrase therefore joins White’s personal fantasy of restoration to the story’s account of a teacher whose future is already behind him.