Faith, Reason, and the Longing for Joy: Psyche, in Till We Have Faces

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Faith, Reason, and the Longing for Joy: Psyche, in Till We Have Faces

Among the many different themes and layers in Till We Have Faces, is the fascinating look at the rationalistic, analytical person, of the Fox (the Stoic philosopher), as contrasted with the dark and thick religion of the priest of Ungit.  It is a major theme running through this story: a religion that is only “clear” and “rational” but without anything of true mystery and wonder, is a religion that lacks real power and efficacy in our lives. As expressed by the priest of Ungit, in response to the Fox:

‘We are hearing much Greek wisdom this morning, King,’ said the Priest. ‘And I have heard most of it before. …it is very subtle. But it brings no rain and grows no corn; sacrifice does both. It does not even give them boldness to die. … Much less does it give them understanding of holy things. They demand to see such things clearly, as if the gods were no more than letters written in a book. I, King, have dealt with the gods for three generations of men, and I know that they dazzle our eyes and flow in and out of one another like eddies on a river, and nothing that is said clearly can be said truly about them. Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.

Lewis elsewhere expressed this point, in an essay “Christian Apologetics” in God in the Dock

By Thick I mean those which have orgies and ecstasies and mysteries and local attachments: Africa is full of Thick religions. By Clear I mean those which are philosophical, ethical and universalizing: Stoicism, Buddhism and the Ethical Church are Clear religions. Now if there is a true religion it must be both Thick and Clear: for the true God must have made both the child and the man, both the savage and the citizen, both the head and the belly.

Throughout Till We Have Faces, the main characters (both Orual and Psyche) consider the meaning of religion as expressed by the Stoic character and by the pagan priest of Ungit. Orual realizes limitations of The Fox, especially when confronted by the priest in the same room, such as the scene mentioned above. Yet Psyche takes the lessons further, in her search for meaning and transcendence–expressing C.S. Lewis’ own desire and longing for joy, described in his spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy. In Part 1, chapter 7, Psyche is in a prison room, about to be offered up the next morning as a human sacrifice to the god Ungit.  A chapter often described as “Orual’s comfort,” has Psyche (the “daughter”) showing mature understanding and comforting Orual (the “mother”), as Psyche expresses several thoughts that parallel Lewis’ ideas in Surprised by Joy and other writings.

It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine . . . The colour and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, “Psyche come!” But I couldn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home.’

Unlike C.S. Lewis and many of us (Lewis did not become a Christian until his early 30s), Psyche seeks out the good, true and beautiful from an early age, making good use of the “raw materials” (C.S. Lewis’ term in Mere Christianity) given to her: her natural beauty, naturally pleasant temperament, and intellect and curiosity. Now in the prison room, Psyche is seriously thinking about death and what is beyond this world and this life.  In this pre-Christian, classical pagan setting, several centuries before Christ’s Incarnation, and like the classical pagan writers (who could indeed achieve a great deal, though not quite come to Christian understanding), Psyche applies the knowledge she has from multiple sources, integrating and combining faith and reason.  She starts with her lessons from The Fox (the Stoic) from early childhood:

“you make me think I have learned the Fox’s lessons better than you. Have you forgotten what we are to say to ourselves every morning? “Today I shall meet cruel men, cowards and liars, the envious and the drunken. They will be like that because they do not know what is good from what is bad. This is an evil which has fallen upon them not upon me. They are to be pitied, not—”’ She was speaking with a loving mimicry of the Fox’s voice. . . .

We have made little use of the Fox’s teaching if we’re to be scared by death. And you know, sister, he has sometimes let out that there were other Greek masters than those he follows himself; masters who have taught that death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that’s all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines …

Psyche also showcases C.S. Lewis’ thoughts, again expressed in his other writings, regarding death — the perspective of a young princess of a cruel, ruthless king: And how would it be better if I had lived? I suppose I should have been given to some king in the end—perhaps such another as our father. And there you can see again how little difference there is between dying and being married. To leave your home—to lose you, Maia, and the Fox—to lose one’s maidenhead—to bear a child—they are all deaths. Indeed, indeed, Orual, I am not sure that this which I go to is not the best. … What had I to look for if I lived? Is the world—this palace, this father—so much to lose? We have already had what would have been the best of our time.

As Lewis later said in a letter to a woman who was dying of cancer (the source noted in this article): Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Psyche continues her synthesis, combining faith and reason, building on what she has learned:

The Priest has been with me. I never knew him before. He is not what the Fox thinks. Do you know, sister, I have come to feel more and more that the Fox hasn’t the whole truth. Oh, he has much of it. It’d be dark as a dungeon within me but for his teaching. And yet . . . I can’t say it properly. He calls the whole world a city. But what’s a city built on? There’s earth beneath. And outside the wall? Doesn’t all the food come from there as well as all the dangers? . . . things growing and rotting, strengthening and poisoning, things shining wet…

This chapter has so much depth (Part 1, chapter 7), enough for a full chapter in a commentary book on Till We Have Faces — Peter J. Schakel’s Reason and Imagination in C.S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have Faces. Here I have focused on one of the two themes — the true heart’s longing for joy, embodied in Psyche. As Schakel observes, Lewis in this chapter weaves the two converging themes: perverted love (Orual) and longing (Psyche). “The chapter’s themes blend two key influences on Lewis’s thinking, Platonism and Christianity, in a provocative way.” It will take multiple readings through the years to fully (or at least better) comprehend and appreciate everything in Till We Have Faces, and I am only on my second reading through it.

Additional online resources, for further thoughts on C.S. Lewis, myth, and Till We Have Faces:

• Myth in C.S. Lewis’ “Till We Have Faces” 
• Abuse of Love: Till We Have Faces
• The Comfort of Orual
• Mythgard Academy Session 4: the last conversation, between Orual and Psyche in her prison

Till We Have Faces (C.S. Lewis), and Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture

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Till We Have Faces (C.S. Lewis), and Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture

Reading Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture reminds me that there are many words and ways to describe basic concepts regarding the world.  The rational/analytical approach, versus the experiential, is one common way to describe the “head versus heart” or “left brain” / “right brain”  — and the contrast has been described and illustrated in numerous ways.  Other pairings include the classical view of the “active” life versus the passive, contemplative life:  the Martha/Mary characters, back to Martha busy working with the dishes and serving, while Mary sits at Jesus’ feet listening to Him.  C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, described it as “looking at the (sun)beam” (analytical) versus “looking along the beam.”

Josef Pieper, a German philosopher writing in the late 1940s, described this contrast between the “work-a-day world” (the active life, with all its cares and concerns) and true leisure.  As he observed in the increasingly secularized world of his day (and more pronounced now a few generations later), the work-a-day world was increasingly taking over all of life, crowding out leisure.  Even the concept of “taking time-off” from work, is rooted in the idea of work:  the time off is to refresh and recharge, to make the person more productive and useful in their work.  Pieper goes on, in part II of Leisure: The Basis of Culture, to explain how we attain the contemplative, meditative state of leisure: by stepping out of the activity of the work, which can be done in several ways–starting by asking the fundamental philosophical question:

let us also recall, that among the voices which fill the workplace and the markets (“How do you get this or that item of daily existence?”, “Where do you get that?” etc.) – in the midst of all these voices suddenly one calls out above the rest: “Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?”

Other ways in which we reach this, the transcendent experience beyond the “work-a-day world” include reading poetry, appreciating artwork and music, and in the act of worship/prayer and praise.

In such a disturbance (for the philosophical act, genuine poetry, musical experience in general, and prayer as well – all these depend on some kind of disturbance) in such an experience, man senses the non-ultimate nature of this daily, worrisome world: he transcends it; he takes a step outside it.

Pieper’s writing reminds me of C.S. Lewis, and I wondered — since the two were contemporary — if C.S. Lewis knew Pieper.  It turns out that, indeed, C.S. Lewis was familiar with Pieper, and praised Pieper’s writings; and Pieper quoted C.S. Lewis–and also translated C.S. Lewis’ Problem of Pain into German.

Those moments of joy, of contemplation, are known by those who have not been completely consumed by the work-a-day world–the seed that grew among the thorns (Matt. 13:7, 22).  We also can appreciate the depiction of this within good literature.  I think of Sam Gamgee, in the deep of Mordor trudging slowly on to Mount Doom with Frodo, when he looks up and sees a star, and has a moment of this realization:  for like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. The character conversion stories depicted in C.S. Lewis’ fiction, such as of Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as well as Orual in Till We Have Faces, also bring this out: the character that had been convinced of a certain understanding of reality, of his/her relationship to others and the world, yet later becomes aware of things that they were previously blinded to.

Till We Have Faces especially shows such a turn-around, and in detail that correlates with Pieper’s thoughts.  For Orual indeed is one who, after experiencing early hurts and rejection, and hating the gods, becomes obsessed and consumed with work: her work as Queen to the people of Glome.  For her work she indeed becomes known as the best ruler, but her obsession to work devours her–blocking out from her soul the painful things as well as her own faults and sins–as well as all of the energy of those around her, who are also forced to put in long work through the years until they die of literal, physical exhaustion.  It is such an incredible description, the efforts of the will to harden one’s own heart, to lose one’s own soul, burying it in the work-a-day world so as to never enter the realm of leisure, to deny the main philosophical question, to (attempt to) kill the true self:

many years (though they made up the longest part of my life) during which the Queen of Glome had more and more part in me and Orual had less and less. I locked Orual up or laid her asleep as best I could somewhere deep down inside me; she lay curled there. It was like being with child, but reversed; the thing I carried in me grew slowly smaller and less alive.

. . .

For though, by daylight, I knew well enough what made it, at night nothing I could do would cure me of taking it for the weeping of a girl. But the change of my quarters, and later changes (for I tried every side of the house) did no good.I discovered that there was no part of the palace from which the swinging of those chains could not be heard; at night, I mean, when the silence grows deep. It is a thing no one would have found out who was not always afraid of hearing one sound; and at the same time (that was Orual, Orual refusing to die) terribly afraid of not hearing it if for once—if possibly, at last, after ten thousand mockeries—it should be real, if Psyche had come back. But I knew this was foolishness. If Psyche were alive and able to come back, and wanted to come back, she would have done it long ago. She must be dead by now; or caught by someone and sold into slavery. . . . When that thought came, my only resource was to rise, however late and cold it was, and go to my Pillar Room and find some work. I have read and written there till I could hardly see out of my eyes—my head on fire, my feet aching with cold.

Till We Have Faces thus shows us what it looks like for someone to so suppress their soul, their real self, by complete absorption in the work-a-day world described by Pieper.   As Pieper himself emphasized, the work-a-day world is a necessary part of our existence:  Now it is not our purpose here to condemn this world, from the standpoint of some ”holiday–world” of philosophy. No words need be wasted on saying that this work–a–day world is very much with us, that in it the foundations of our physical existence are secured, without which nobody can philosophize at all!  But to persist in the work-a-day world, to deliberately block out the transcendent, is to take away one’s real humanity, and the depiction of “The Queen” who pushes Orual out of her life, to put her to sleep, is a very strong image of what Pieper has described.

A sampling from Pieper, in conclusion:

Leisure is not justified in making the functionary as ”trouble-free” in operation as possible, with minimum “downtime,” but rather in keeping the functionary human (or as Newman said it, so that he can stay a gentleman); and this means that the human being does not disappear into the parceled-out world of his limited work-a-day function, but instead remains capable of taking in the world as a whole, and thereby to realize himself as a being who is oriented toward the whole of existence.  This is why the ability to be ”at leisure” is one of the basic powers of the human soul. Like the gift of contemplative self-immersion in Being, and the ability to uplift one’s spirits in festivity, the power to be at leisure is the power to step beyond the working world and win contact with those superhuman, life-giving forces that can send us, renewed and alive again, into the busy world of work.

 

Lepanto: G.K. Chesterton’s Tribute to the Significant Event that Saved Europe in the 16th Century

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Lepanto: G.K. Chesterton’s Tribute to the Significant Event that Saved Europe in the 16th Century

As a follow-up after listening to all of Joseph Pearce’s The Authority podcast, I have enjoyed reading through some additional literary works mentioned by Pearce. One of these, mentioned in the episode on G.K. Chesterton, is the poem Lepanto, considered his best poem yet generally neglected and forgotten. This poem, originally written in 1911 and published in a collection of poems in 1915, was republished in 2003–along with commentary notes and a few articles / essays (some from Chesterton but also from other writers) about the historic battle as well as its background and aftermath.

The poem expresses the emotions and excitement of the event, in the beauty of poetry, the feelings that go beyond a straight-forward, “dry” narrative account. The commentary explains the many allusions for the many of us who were not aware of this historical event.

For the biggest threat facing Europe, and all Christendom, during the 16th century was the invader from the East — the Moslems, the Ottoman Empire. While much of Europe had taken to quarreling amongst themselves — territorial fighting amongst the countries, then soon followed by the religious civil wars of the Protestant Reformation — the Ottoman Empire was united in purpose and strong, having conquered Constantinople in the mid-15th century, and pressing westward. While several countries of western Europe ignored the outside threat (though they later celebrated the victory, without having lifted a finger to help), the Pope and a few other leaders saw the threat, and in 1571 the West assembled an army, led by Don John of Austria, the “last knight” leading the last true “holy war” in the heroic style of the medieval Crusades.  Though vastly outnumbered, the Christian army — attending in prayer to God in preparation for the fight, with God’s Providential power in turning the wind in the right direction during the battle — was victorious that day at sea, leaving the enemy’s fleet greatly diminished, to turn back the threat of Islam for the next few centuries.

Chesterton captures the enchantment of the event, in great lines such as this section:

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was
young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

The crownless prince was Don John, illegitimate son of the emperor Charles V.  Don John is here considered “the last knight of Europe” in the epic style of the Crusaders.

I also appreciate the three chapters about the event: “the background,” “the battle,” and “the aftermath.” As another tie-in to this, the excellent and detailed biography of Thomas More, by R.W. Chambers (see previous post on his Utopia) that I’m currently reading also references the battle of Lepanto and this crisis in 16th century Europe:

More could see then, as, looking back, we can see now, that peace was the great need of Europe. In the East, Selim the Grim was building up a vast Turkish Empire which was shortly to become a threat to Western civilization, such as had not been since Charles Martel hammered back the Saracen attack from the middle of France, eight centuries before. More’s generation saw the fall of Rhodes, and of Belgrade, the sea and the land bastion of Eastern Europe; it saw the chivalry of Hungary perish on the field of Mohacz. More could not know how the attack would in time be checked; how it would be rolled back from the fortifications of Malta, and shattered by Don John of Austria in the battle of Lepanto. …

More could never forget that Islam had won from Christendom Asia, Africa, nearly half Europe, and was still advancing. From the age of Bede to the Fifteenth Century, Europe had held its own. Now, once more, it seemed to be retiring. The heretics who would rend Christendom asunder at the moment when the Turk was at the gates of Vienna are, in More’s view, traitors to the common cause. Almost equally so are the Christian kings, who are censured in Utopia because they think of nothing but war among themselves.

Historical what-ifs and alternate history timelines, are often a fun activity, as we in our day look back through the centuries to find certain potential turning points, wondering where would the world be now, if things had gone differently at this particular point. G.K. Chesterton apparently liked that kind of mind game as well, and so his essay (the last chapter in this Lepanto volume) considers this possibility: If Don John of Austria Had Married Mary Queen of Scots. I enjoyed this part too, a history fantasy with a moving tribute to the personal character of Mary Queen of Scots and the great past accomplishments of Scotland, such as this excerpt:

There was always in her heart a hunger for civilisation. It is an appetite not easily appreciated now, when people are so over-civilised that they can only have a hunger for barbarism. But she loved culture as the Italian artists of the previous century had loved it; as something not only beautiful but bright and shining and new; like Leonardo’s first sketches of flying-machines or the full revelations of perspective and light. She was the Renaissance chained up like a prisoner; just as Don John was the Renaissance roaming the world like a pirate.

We must suppose, for the sake of argument, that Don John was at least sufficiently strong to assert Mary’s claim to sovereignty in Scotland to begin with; and, despite the unpleasant moralising of the mob in Edinburgh, I think such a restoration would have been generally successful in Scotland. Professor Phillimore used to say that the tragedy of Scotland was that she had the Reformation without the Renaissance. And I certainly think that, while Mary and the southern prince were discussing Plato and Pico della Mirandola, John Knox would have found himself a little out of his depth.

But on the assumption of popular rulers and a strong Spanish backing, which is the essence of this fantasy, I should say that a people like the Scots would have gobbled up the strong meat of the Revival of Learning quicker than anybody else. But in any case, there is another point to be considered. If the Scots did not figure prominently in the Renaissance, they had, in their own way, figured most brilliantly in the Middle Ages. Glasgow was one of the oldest universities; Bruce was counted the fourth knight in Christendom; and Scotland, not England, continued the tradition of Chaucer.

As an online search reveals, many others have been fascinated by this particular idea of Chesterton’s.  Just for fun, here are a few such links:

• Discussion at the Alternate History Forum
• Blog article at Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation
• If It Had Happened Otherwise: Lapses Into Imaginary History
• Discussion on this question at Quora

Additional resources:

• The full poem itself, at The Imaginative Conservative
• St. Pius V and the Battle of Lepanto

Humanity, language, and the Babel Curse: That Hideous Strength, and Narnia

Humanity, language, and the Babel Curse: That Hideous Strength and Narnia

Near the end of That Hideous Strength comes an unusual event, a Babel curse combined with ferocious animals attacking the N.I.C.E. members. Especially noteworthy is Merlin’s pronouncement of judgment: “Qui Verbum Dei contempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis.” They that have despised the word of God, from them shall the word of man also be taken away.

At a banquet where everyone involved with the N.I.C.E. is assembled, the speaker (Jules) at the podium is rendered unintelligible, with nonsense words coming out of his mouth. The Deputy Director steps in to replace Jules, only to realize to his horror, that though he is saying normal English words, everyone else is hearing the same nonsensical gibberish. Then the entire room breaks out into pandemonium, a modern version of what it must have looked like in the confusion at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11).

C.S. Lewis (like any good, versatile author of various works) also works this theme — of language and its removal as a judgment on the wicked — elsewhere in his writings: in the Chronicles of Narnia, in the Narnian apocalyptic work, The Last Battle, with a talking cat who is part of an anti-Aslan group similar to the N.I.C.E. As the group of Narnian talking animals is assembled in front of a stable, and supposedly Aslan is behind the stable door, and characters are being asked to go in and all are too afraid to do so, Ginger the cat, part of the anti-Aslan leadership, agrees to go in, with a very calm attitude. King Tirian, Jill, and friends observing from a discreet location, wonder what is really behind the stable — maybe some Tash-loyal guards with swords behind the door. To everyone’s surprise, the cat comes out unable to speak, and what does come out is unintelligible, cat-squalling:

“Now, Ginger,” said the Captain. “Enough of that noise. Tell them what thou hast seen.”
“Aii – Aii – Aaow – Awah,” screamed the Cat.
“Art thou not called a Talking Beast?” said the Captain. “Then hold thy devilish noise and talk.”

What followed was rather horrible. Tirian felt quite certain (and so did the others) that the Cat was trying to say something: but nothing came out of his mouth except the ordinary, ugly cat-noises you might hear from any angry or frightened old Tom in a backyard in England. And the longer he caterwauled the less like a Talking Beast he looked. Uneasy whimperings and little sharp squeals broke out from among the other Animals.

“Look, look!” said the voice of the Bear. “It can’t talk. It has forgotten how to talk! It has gone back to being a dumb beast. Look at its face.” Everyone saw that it was true. And then the greatest terror of all fell upon those Narnians. For every one of them had been taught – when it was only a chick or a puppy or a cub – how Aslan at the beginning of the world had turned the beasts of Narnia into Talking Beasts and warned them that if they weren’t good they might one day be turned back again and be like the poor witless animals one meets in other countries.

The Magician’s Nephew provides the introduction of this idea, where Aslan had given this warning:

“Creatures, I give you yourselves,” said the strong, happy voice of Aslan. “I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give you myself. The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so. …. Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.”

Returning to That Hideous Strength:  In the next part of the mayhem, where wild animals, starting with a tiger, devour the people, here we have a contrast and opposite of the Christian influence on the world. For the stories that come down to us from the early Church martyrs tell of many saints who were beheaded — and it turns out the reason was that the Christians could not be killed in any other way. In many cases (not all, but in many), when the Christians were thrown to the wild animals, the wild animals turned tame and would not harm them — as noted in this article, under the heading ‘Survivors‘ of Damnatio ad bestias. The early Monastics, the Desert Fathers, tradition gives a similar comment on the wild animals: certain saints in the wilderness had such a strong communion with God, such love coming from them, that they had a special relationship with the animals around them. Note this online post with a list of many such saints that had a special relationship with animals.  In all of these accounts we get a glimpse of what is pictured in Isaiah of a future age in which the wolf will lie down at peace with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6).

Lewis’ point here in contrast, shows what happens when people go to the opposite extreme, not only rejecting the Christian faith but also rejecting humanity — what it means to be human — itself. Frost had reduced all human emotions down to various chemical reactions. Others in the N.I.C.E. saw humanity’s next step in evolution in a disembodied form, people continuing to live in their heads alone, and the upper echelon has “discovered” the “macrobes,” a higher form of life (actually, the occultic, demonic world) for humans to communicate with and aspire to.

At the end of the destruction, in a scene reminiscent of the angels that delivered Lot out of Sodom, Merlin specially delivers Jane’s husband Mark. Similar to the event in Genesis 19, Mark is delivered not for his own worth but for the sake of a loved one, and also Mark still has to be led out by the hand, and like Lot Mark hesitates, and thus is given a supernatural impetus to run away as fast as he can.

For all of its faults — C.S. Lewis’ deficient appreciation of women, and the strangeness, the Charles William influence — That Hideous Strength has extra layers of meaning, truths to be uncovered as we read and re-read this work.  If the point is not clear enough from this reading, though, we can also get the message, in a simpler story form, in the Chronicles of Narnia.

Great Literature: Joseph Pearce’s The Authority Podcast

Great Literature: Joseph Pearce’s The Authority Podcast

Joseph Pearce is known in the world of Tolkien scholarship, as he has written several books about Tolkien’s Middle Earth Legendarium, including Bilbo’s Journey, Frodo’s Journey, and Tolkien: Man and Myth.  He has also authored many other books on great literature and several biographies of authors.  These Tolkien selections and others of his books are on my to-read list, but in the meantime I am enjoying a literary survey podcast series that Joseph Pearce did: The Authority, a 33 part series on great authors and their literature.  Each episode is about 30 minutes, a narrative and informative look at the great writers throughout history, in chronological order — starting with classic Greek mythology (Homer, and Sopholces) then to Virgil, the Bible, and into the Christian era starting with Beowulf, also Dante, then many medieval English poets, early-modern including Shakespeare, through the Enlightenment, the Romantics, the Victorian era, and through the 20th century.  Later podcast episodes feature G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis among others.

The podcast could be considered a selection from his books on literature and poems, particularly from his “Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know,” which has a very similar table of contents, as well as “Poems Every Catholic Should Know” and a few other books pertaining to particular authors.  His selections are not from exclusively Catholic authors, but on the great writers of literature, which includes the early pagan writers, some Anglican English writers, even anti-Catholic John Milton, and ending the series with a Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  His recent essays at The Imaginative Conservative also teach on this theme: Liturgy and Literature in the Middle Ages, Liturgy and Literature in Early Modern England, and Liturgy and Literature in the Modern Age.

Along the way, the podcast series is quite informative, on so many different poets and novelists.  Pearce notes the Christian symbolism in Beowulf, which had an anti-Pelagian message.  I knew of Pelagius as the heretic that Augustine responded to in the early 5th century –  the error that we can choose God and the good completely unaided without anything of God’s grace – but did not know that it was still “a thing” in early medieval Britain of the next few centuries.  The second monster, Grendel’s mother, was slain by a special sword provided to Beowulf, showing that he cannot kill all the monsters in his own strength, without God’s grace.  Also we can note the similarities in the third episode of Beowulf, the dragon slain when Beowulf is an old man many years after the first two events, to Christ and His 12 companions, one of whom is a traitor, and most of whom flee away in danger, with only one staying by his side through the terrible event, the dragon-slaying.

The history related to Shakespeare and his contemporaries was fascinating, fitting in well with my reading earlier this year, Eamon Duffy’s history of late-medieval England through the tumultuous 16th century Tudor years.  Pearce provides compelling evidence for Shakespeare’s secret Catholicism (secret, since the Elizabethan age did not have our religious liberty, and it was illegal with death sentence to be Catholic, a danger for Catholic Priests and any who would try to hide them), and the historical/political messages in Shakespeare’s plays — again, a topic from one of his books.  It was illegal to write plays about contemporary politics or religion, so Shakespeare turned to England’s past — plays such as Henry IV and V; later, it became illegal to write plays about England’s past, so Shakespeare turned to the rulers and courts of other countries such as Denmark for Hamlet.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with his great poem “The Rime of an Ancient Mariner” (which I read earlier this year in a “Book of Centuries” reading challenge, for 18th century literature) evokes the premodern world, as a reaction against the materialist Enlightenment age.  Coleridge, and William Wordsworth (the two wrote a publication together), saw the evils of the French Revolution, which stirred them to become Christian and deepen their faith.

Throughout Pearce’s survey come many observations and lessons.  Many of these authors, and their characters in stories, experienced great suffering.  Through their literary works, we see examples of mankind: the lost, who blame others and do not accept their suffering; Christians are to accept suffering; the true saints who live godly lives, learn to embrace their suffering.  The greatest authors understand humanity, and the dignity of people.  Jane Austen, and the Bronte sisters after her, reacted against the Enlightenment, and through story were able to depict characters with problems and defects: the head-only (Enlightenment type) versus the heart and emotions only (Romantics); the virtuous, noble characters have a balance between the heart and the head.  Charles Dickens truly liked people and showed the dignity of human life.  The great authors show us the joy, wonder and awe, and lift us up above the gutter of the misery experienced in this life.

As Tolkien expressed it in On Fairy Stories:  Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. 

It’s a very informative and enjoyable podcast series, with a lot of variety including several lesser known poets of the early 20th century, and culminating with J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Solzhenitsyn.

A Canticle for Leibowitz: The Collapse and Rebuilding of A Civilization

A Canticle for Leibowitz: The Collapse and Rebuilding of A Civilization

 

My recent reading has included references to the early “Dark Ages,” the time soon after the collapse of the Roman Empire and into the early Middle Ages, and the important work done to preserve the writings of the ancient world for future generations: Boethius in late Roman antiquity (and his work, The Consolation of Philosophy) and Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization—the accomplishments of the copyists at the Irish Monasteries.

Into this setting, enter a 20th century classic, dystopian science-fiction tale: A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller Jr. I read this back in an English independent study class in high school, but did not understand most of it then, lacking the background acquired since, especially of Catholicism and general Western European history. The book has staying power, appearing on recommended reading lists of recent years, such as Peter Kreeft’s Books Nobody Should Be Allowed to Die Without Reading, and the Imaginative Conservative’s Books that Make Us Human.  Brad Birzer, co-founder of The Imaginative Conservative and author of books on J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology and imaginative literature, has taught courses on this classic, and the Imaginative Conservative site also provides several essays about this classic work.

Published in 1959, this story takes place in the Earth’s future, after our world had destroyed itself in a nuclear holocaust in the early 1960s. The story has three parts (from three original stories published in science-fiction magazine format in the 1950s), with time jumps of 600 years between each part, showing the rebuilding of civilization. The three time-periods roughly correspond to the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and finally, the technologically advanced civilization on the verge of destroying itself by nuclear war again (nearly 1800 years from now). One of the main themes throughout A Canticle for Leibowitz is that of a Catholic Monastery, out in the Utah Desert, that collects and preserves the “memorabilia” from the lost ancient civilization of our world.

Just as actually happened in our world after the fall of the Roman Empire, it was these faithful scribes and copyists that preserved learning and what remained from a forgotten age, even when — as during the first stage in the 26th century — no one else wants that knowledge.  Miller’s future world parallels the true history, including several points mentioned in our history books such as in How the Irish Saved Civilization: a monk who likes to decorate the page of the text he is copying, his original artwork to make the page more beautiful; the majority of the outsiders have no interest in the ancient works, the scribes themselves did not fully understand what they were copying and lacked the knowledge and mental ability to understand the more complex thoughts of the ancients, a loss that would only return after many centuries as the society rebuilt itself; the savage groups that actually destroyed the ancient books (like the Vikings in our world); the people of the surrounding world in later centuries finding out about the great library and notable scholars even coming to visit the monastery to view the ancient books,

The final era of the story is the future as imagined by the science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s: computers are large, bulky, often malfunction, and put forth printed card-type answers, and yet it is a world that has developed worldwide radio broadcasting and interstellar space travel with colonies on a planet of Alpha Centauri.

A few constants throughout the story, spanning about 1200 years, are the Monastery out in the Utah Desert, frequent reoccurrences of buzzards, and an immortal Wandering Jew described first as a pilgrim and named Benjamin in a later era — referencing the mythical Wandering Jew of medieval Europe, a Jew who had cursed Christ on the way to the cross and was then cursed to walk on the Earth until Christ’s Return.  Interestingly, for all the Christian references to scripture events and Latin phrases from Catholic liturgy, the doctrines of resurrection and of Christ’s Second Coming are not present, other than indirectly through Benjamin, the Jew still waiting for the Messiah to come.

Also of note: a quote and meme often shared online and erroneously attributed to C.S. Lewis — “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body” — is included in Walter Miller’s story. The saying apparently originated in the writings of George MacDonald (thus the possible confusion with C.S. Lewis), as noted also here.  The full text from Walter Miller’s novel, in the context of a futurist-setting Abbot responding to a remark from a secular, atheist man who wants to promote his euthanasia camps to ease the suffering of those with radiation sickness:

“If I thought I had such a thing as a soul, and that there was an angry God in Heaven, I might agree with you.”
Abbot Zerchi smiled thinly. “You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”

A Canticle for Leibowitz is worth reading — and at least some re-reading, to more fully appreciate it. For it presents to us in this three-part story, the collapse of a civilization and its gradual rebuilding, with many great insights. A few favorite quotes:

Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think–as long as they don’t seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste. — Dom Paulo, the Abbot

The answer was near at hand; there was still the serpent whispering: For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods. The old father of lies was clever at telling half-truths: How shall you “know” good and evil, until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, in the objective logos of Nature and the ineffable Logos of God. Truth could be crucified; but soon, perhaps, a resurrection.

– and –

Why do you take delight in leaping to such a wild conjecture from so fragile a springboard? Why do you wish to discredit the past, even to dehumanizing the last civilization? So that you need not learn from their mistakes? Or can it be that you can’t bear being only a ‘rediscoverer,’ and must feel that you are a ‘creator’ as well?

From one of Brad Birzer’s essays, this concluding thought:

if in many of its details A Canticle for Leibowitz feels dated, its overriding rejection of all forms of hubris and pride remains as relevant, resounding, and powerful as ever. Nuclear war functions in the novel as a means to explore the relationship between knowledge and power, and the way that the ancient sin of pride corrupts both. The prideful ambition that ejected mankind from the Garden of Eden besets us still—we are fools if we think that pride’s destructive power passed away with the Soviet Union.