"I never knew that grief felt so much like fear."

In A Grief Observed Lewis shares his thoughts and emotions with regard to the death of his wife, Joy Davidson, and it is perhaps one of the most powerful books on suffering that I've ever read.  As a reader, you are drawn into his grief and, contrary to what the title suggests, you can feel and experience Lewis' anguish right alongside him, at times almost against your will.  Lewis is pain personified, and it's raw and it's shocking.

In his book, The Problem of Pain, Lewis deals with suffering from an aspect of reason and pragmatism, but in A Grief Observed, he is a broken man, on one hand calling out for sense and understanding to apply to a situation that is beyond comprehension, and on the other, resisting examining his situation. Lewis' faith was shaken but not broken.  He does not deny God, yet he does ask what kind of God is He?  What type of God would allow something like this to happen?  He asks hard questions, makes brutally honest statements, and you wonder if this man is on his way to losing his faith.

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.”

Yet why can't we ask hard questions of our Maker?  Why can't we storm and rage against the injustices of life?  Lewis kicked and stormed against the door of Heaven and instead he found an opening into his own soul.

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”

After long endeavouring to remember his wife's countenance, it is only when he stops struggling to see Joy, that her face suddenly returns to his mind. Lewis finally realizes that we need to seek God for Himself --- for who He is ---- and not for what we can get from Him.

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”

Madeleine L'Engle writes in her introduction to the book:  "I am grateful to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence. This is part of a healthy grief which is not often encouraged.  It is helpful indeed that C.S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed.  It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own anger and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul's growth."

courtesy of Dawn Huczek source Flickr Creative Commons

C.S. Lewis Project

© Cleo and Classical Carousel, Years 2014 - 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Cleo and Classical Carousel with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

"The last drops of the thundershower had hardly ceased falling when the Pedestrian stuffed his map into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut tree into the middle of the road."

During a hike in the English hills, Elwin Ransom stumbles across a boyhood acquaintance, Devine, and his friend Weston, a scientist.  Secretly these two men drug Ransom and take him in a spaceship to the planet, Malacandra, known in earth language as Mars.  When he revives, Ransom overhears that he is to be offered as a human sacrifice for an alien race called the Sorns, and he plans his escape.  Finding himself alone on this strange planet, he eventually encounters creatures called the Hrossa.  Initially very simple and traditional in their ways, Ransom begins to realize that they have an intelligence that may surpass earthly intelligence.  Quickly he learns their language and begins to value their ways, yet all too soon he is sent on a mission to the Oyarsa, the ruling being of Malacandra.  His adventures not only throw him once again into conflict with Devine and Weston, where blind scientific ardour and unconscionable greed clash with humanity's better nature, but Ransom is finally able to discover why Earth is considered the "silent planet".

Malacandra is presented as a rather simple society, with the Hross being like shepherds and poets, and the Sorns the intellectuals, imparting wisdom to the community.  Yet, in spite of the obvious higher intellect of the inhabitants, Devine and Weston perceive them as being primitive and unintelligent because they do not have the scientific advances of Earth.  Weston, in particular, grasps onto his pre-conceptions like a drowning man, refusing to believe that such primitive appearance could ever understand or grapple with his vision of a new type of man.  His ingrained perceptions, that have been formed by science, make him blind to the beauty and intricacies of Malacandrian culture, and even worse, his grandiose plans for the needs of man, allows him to view the Malacandrians as sub-human and therefore, expendable.

Lewis wrote Out of the Silent Planet as a deliberate critique of Evolutionism, in particular in response to two written works, one by Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men, and an essay by J.B. Haldane, published in a volume titled Possible Worlds.  Both saw men evolving into a divinity that could jump from planet to planet, a being stripped down to pure intelligence.  Lewis felt that each, while on one hand portrayed man as a fascinating and beautiful creature, nevertheless showed man's littleness.  To him these views held a potential danger, opening the door to options of experiments on humans and animals. (Interestingly, Lewis was a firm anti-vivisectionist and he would never set traps for the mice who inhabited his rooms at Oxford.)  He stated that the trilogy was less a tribute to earlier science fiction than a kind of exorcism of some of its ideas.  At its heart, the trilogy is anti-Wellsian and to its conception, Lewis credited a one-of-a-kind novel, David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus.  To his friend, Ruth Pitter, he wrote:  "From Lindsay I learned what other planets in fiction are really good for: for spiritual adventures.  Only they can satisfy the craving which sends our imaginations off the earth.  Or putting it in another way, in him I first saw the terrific results produced by the union of two kinds of fiction hitherto kept apart: the Novalis, G. MacDonald, James Stephens sort and the H.G. Wells, Jules Verne sort.  My debt to him is very great."  Lewis was trying something new!

A wonderful start to The Space Trilogy.  When I first read the trilogy, this book was my favourite, probably because it was the least complex.  Even so, Lewis weaves in views of how medievals saw the universe and angels, as well as sprinkling elements of classicism throughout.  The next book is Perelandra. Hang on to your seats because "you ain't seen nothing yet"!

"The weakest of my people does not fear death.  It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end.  If you were subjects of Maledil you would have peace"

© Cleo and Classical Carousel, Years 2014 - 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Cleo and Classical Carousel with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

"I was born in the winter of 1898 at Belfast, the son of a solicitor and of a clergyman's daughter."

And so begins the autobiography of one of the most prolific writer's of his time, C.S. Lewis.  While Lewis gives an engaging description of his life as a boy, first in Ireland, and then later in England, his main goal is to give the reader little windows into the experience that he called "Joy", which one can equate with the German word, "Sehensucht" translated into English as an "intense longing".  During his childhood, Lewis experienced brief yet keen feelings of this profound yearning.  If one tried to manufacture this emotion or hold onto it, it would simply remain illusive or slip away; it came of its own volition, which indicated to Lewis that this desire pointed to something beyond himself.

Lewis' first glimpse of "Joy" was when his brother Warnie showed him a garden that he had built of moss and twigs on top of a biscuit tin. Lewis said, "As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden." Other experiences of joy appeared as he grew and Lewis felt that because our own natural world could not supply what our souls longed for, there must be something supernatural that could fulfill this Sehensucht.  Eventually Joy brought him face-to-face with God.

What was especially refreshing about this biography was that Lewis didn't treat his conversion as coming out of the darkness into the light, so much as presenting it as a recovery of the delights of childhood that he felt were pointing him in the direction of Christ.  In many ways, this is an Augustinian-type experience, yet while Augustine was definitely searching for a meaning to life, the "meaning" seemed to be pursuing Lewis, and he describes his conversion in startling terms, "You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.  That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me.  In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."  But he then goes on to say, "I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing: the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms …….  The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation."

Before I wrap up this review and somewhat off topic, Lewis made a curious reference to automobiles in this biography, which I found very insightful and profound.

"I number it among my blessings that my father had no car, while yet most of my friends had, and sometimes took me for a drive. This meant that all these distant objects could be visited just enough to clothe them with memories and not impossible desires, while yet they remained ordinarily as inaccessible as the Moon.  The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given me.  I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine.  I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return I possessed 'infinite riches' in what would have been to motorists 'a little room'.  The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it 'annihilates space.'  It does.  It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given.  It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten.  Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter.  Why not creep into his coffin at once?  There is little enough space there."

A very biting commentary, but for me it rang with truth and made me wonder how much "Joy" has been robbed by modern conveniences.  Hmmm …….

In any case, this was a wonderful, uplifting biography that I fortunately get to read again for my WEM Project at some point in the future!

© Cleo and Classical Carousel, Years 2014 - 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Cleo and Classical Carousel with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

"In the last days of Narnia, far up to the west beyond Lantern Waste and close beside the great waterfall, there lived an Ape."

The Last Battle is the final book in the Narnia Chronicles. With the last three books Lewis seemed to be moving further from the realm of children's novels and into a more intellectual adult world of surprising complexities.

Esoteric in its make-up, The Last Battle begins with an ape named Shift, who, by dressing a donkey named Puzzle in a lion's skin, tries to convince the Narnians that Aslan has returned to Narnia.  Prompted by Calormen treachery, they soon combine Aslan into Tashlan, a mixing of Aslan and the Calmoren god Tash, and force the Narnians to work, cutting down the Talking Trees of the forest for profit. Prince Tirian and his trusty unicorn, Jewel, discover the falsity of their enterprise, but are taken captive by the Calormens, only to be freed by Eustace and Jill  They discover the fraud of the false "Tashlan" while rescuing Jewel from the stables, but learn that Cair Paravel has fallen to the Calormens.  The Battle of the Stable is fought with the Calormens and their forces, whereupon Eustace, Jill and the one faithful dwarf, Poggin, find themselves inside the stable, followed by Tirian in his battle with Rishda Tarakan, the leader of the Calormens.  Instead of a stable, they find that they are in a beautiful and wondrous land, but then, to the surprised horror of all, Tash unexpectedly appears and snatches Rishda under his arm.  The Pevensie children appear (minus Susan) and Peter orders Tash to leave, whereupon Aslan comes and all the dead people and animals either file by on Aslan's right and enter Aslan's country or file by on his left and disappear. The old earthly "outside" Narnia begins to be devoured by dragons and giant lizards, and finally the sun is squeezed out by a giant, yet Aslan leads his people "further up and further in" to the real Narnia.  It may appear to be the end of the chronicles but, as Lewis says, "… it was only the beginning of the real story …… they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

Emeth, the Calmoren warrior who is allowed into Aslan's country, is a curious insertion by Lewis.  Emeth has followed another god with a sincere belief all his life, yet when he meets Aslan, the lion tells him, "Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me …… if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he is truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.  And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted."  Lewis is not advocating universal salvation, only that anyone who is truly and openly seeking the truth about God, will surely find him.  In contrast, the Narnian dwarves are true cynics; while they have been raised in Narnia and told about Aslan, they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the truth and, though Aslan gives them a marvellous banquet, in their self-deception they are not able to even properly taste the good food set before them.  In spite of being raised in Narnia, their wilful refusal to entertain any ideas but their own will prevent them from seeing Aslan's Country.

While this novel is written for children, Lewis has included concepts that would be beyond some adults.  Professor Digory's comment near the end of the book, "It's all in Plato, all in Plato …." gives us a clue to one Platonic theme, although there are a few enmeshed in the chronicles.  In Plato's famous Allegory of the Cave, cave-dwellers believe images on the wall in front of them are real, but find they are only flickering shadows cast by more original objects held up against a fire which is behind them.  One of the cave-dwellers turns around to see what is behind his back and why the objects on the wall appear as they do, then he ascends out of the cave into the world above where he sees that the artificial copies on the wall of the cave and the fire itself were only themselves inferior copies of a much more original reality. Plato believed that every evident appearance in the material world is a communion with a higher, perfect spiritual reality.  For example, anything that attempts to capture beauty, will never capture the reality of beauty perfectly. An overworld of self-subsisting ideas exists beyond the world of material things, and these ideas, or forms, themselves participate in the one single highest reality, Plato called "the Good."  Thus, in The Last Battle, the earthly Narnia is only a copy or a shadow of the Heavenly Narnia which is the form of the perfect reality.

And lastly, it would be appropriate to touch on the fate of Susan Pevensie. All the Pevensies appear in the real Narnia because they have recently died in a train crash, all except Susan, who has grown vain and self-absorbed, and has moved away from their adventures and beliefs of Narnia.  I am a little perplexed as to what to make of this revelation.  On one hand, I am bothered that Lewis treated her fate in a rather short, curt manner, after she had been such an important character in the other stories.  On the other hand, I am glad that Lewis did not make a perfectly "happily ever after situation."  Given that Susan had replaced her faith with material desires, it was providential that she did not perish in the crash that killed her family; there is still hope that she can find the real Narnia in the end.  As Lewis wrote in a letter to a child:

"The books don't tell us what happened to Susan.  She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman.  But there's plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end ……. in her own way."

Wow!  What a finale!  And now I can say that I've read all the Chronicles of Narnia and have a much better understanding of them.  I can hardly believe all the themes and ideas that Lewis wrote into them and though I know another reading will bring more enlightening details, there will always be more to discover!

Other Narnia Books

"This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child."

When Digory's father is posted to India and his mother becomes ill, they must leave their country life and settle in London with Uncle Andrew and his sister, Aunt Letty. Fortunately Digory soon meets Polly, a girl who lives in one of the connecting row houses, and the adventure begins!

While trying to find a passage through the attics from Polly's house to Digory's, they inadvertently stumble into the workroom of Uncle Andrew.  To this point, Digory has not had much contact with his scientific uncle, but this experience proves without a doubt his uncle's evil nature.  With a magic ring, he sends Polly into another world with no chance of returning, without Digory entering the world as well, with two magic rings that will bring them back.

Lewis believed that each one of our actions in life either took us one step closer to Heaven, or one step closer to Hell.  Now, this didn't mean that by doing something bad, you would go to Hell; Lewis wanted people to be aware that their actions matter.  Our actions are what form our character and each action works either towards forming a good, trustworthy, amiable character, or a bad, prideful, self-centred character.

Uncle Andrew is a fine example of a character gone rotten.  He is untrustworthy, lacks a conscience and is extraordinarily narcissistic, believing because of his perceived superior intellectual skills and his ability as a magician and scientist, that he is exempt from societal conventions and moral obligations.  His cultivated vanity is uncontainable, and in his selfishly aggrandized mind, the ends always justify the means.

At the beginning of the story, while being different from his uncle, Digory, however, shows some disturbingly similar traits.  He exhibits the same weakness as his uncle when, in The Wood Between Two Worlds, he suggests that instead of going directly back to the study, they explore another pool.  Curiosity overcomes his common sense and a stubborn prideful attitude closes his ears to Polly's initial prudent advice. Fortunately he agrees to Polly's insistent demand to test the rings to see if they are able to return easily; unconstrained curiosity can get one into unexpected perils and it is important that a thirst for knowledge is tempered with a respect for the nature of things.

Similarly in Charn, even though Digory senses that it is a "queer place," he once again ignores Polly's suggestion to leave, using words to deride and mortify her to make her abandon common sense.  Finally, he again allows his curiosity to override his good judgement, when he rings the bell in Charn, waking an evil that is beyond his imagination.  Curiously, just before this act, Polly remarks, "You look exactly like your uncle when you say that."

Yet finally Digory starts to make wise choices.  In spite of being initially captivated by the evil Empress Jadis, his enchantment begins to dissipate after he hears of her ruthless destruction of Charn and of her plans to travel to their world.  He also has the integrity to make a full confession when Aslan asks him about the evil that he brought into Narnia, and his bravery and honesty serve him well, as Aslan trusts him with the quest of bringing back a magic apple to grow a tree to protect Narnia from the evil that lurks there.  Within the garden there is a replay of the temptation of Eve, this time with Jadis as the tempter and Digory the intended victim.  Yet Digory shows surprising resilience, faithfully resisting the witch's manipulations and temptations, returning to fulfil his quest.  Through the characters of Uncle Andrew and Digory, we see the formation of a virtuous character who makes prudent choices (with mistakes along the way), and the result of a deceptive and corrupt character who makes the wrong choices .

Ah, this post is already too long but there are so many other elements enmeshed in this fascinating tale. Lewis' use of "supposition" to represent the creation of Narnia was just lovely. There are obvious parallels to Genesis and the creation of Earth, but also differences, that are as creative as they are compelling.  Aslan singing the entire world of Narnia into existence, evoking edenic and pastoral images, is a beautifully captivating scene.  The Deplorable Word is thought to be a reference to the atomic bomb; when Lewis began writing this book, the world was at war, and its annihilation would certainly have been foremost in his mind.  And there is also an example Plato's theme of self-deception, which we see played out in the character of Uncle Andrew.  Plato believed that self-deception was a state of mind where irrational desires supersede natural reason as a guide for ethical behaviour, and while the person believes that their conduct will bring them happiness, in effect, it only brings them misery.  Socrates also levelled the charge against his countrymen that blindly pursuing knowledge through any means, with the goal being the resulting power attained, can only be realized at the expense of truth and morality.

The last book in the Chronicles of Narnia series is, of course, The Last Battle.  I can't wait!

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Other Narnia Books