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De Descriptione Temporum (1954) He was stepping into a new chair at the college, and was glad that it included Renaissance and Medieval together rather than split apart with Medieval as subserviant. He gives some light-hearted examples, and his encouragement that, "the barrier between those two ages has been greatly exaggerated" (10). It is difficult to put eras into boxes, they are always changing based upon each set of scholar's ideas on the subject. He points out that there are not really any Great Divides between any eras that people are so fond of putting up. He describes looking at past literature, "less like a botanist in a forest than a woman arranging a few cut flowers for the drawing-room" (12). There is a small division with the fall of Rome and the Christianizing of Europe. There was not a total death in the "Dark Ages" and certainly not a full revival in the "Renaissance". He also comments that if there was a pre-Christian and Christian age, it is currently a post-Christian age. The change in literature between the "Dark Ages" and "Renaissance" is no where near as marked as that in more modern literature. Lewis also pulls down the barrier around the twelfth century. Of course this is speaking in literary terms only. The real large chasm is between us and Jane Austen. The main change was that in the attitude of government, "our rulers have become like schoolmasters" (18). Looking at the change between 12th century art to 16th century art is no where near as different as 19th century art to 20th century art. We also have the machine age with computers which is a much larger leap than the petty differences between the Middle Ages and Renaissance. "It is not the remembered but the forgotten past that enslaves us...the unhistorical are usually, without knowing it, enslaved to a fairly recent past" (23). He closes with speaking on how much he has imersed himself in those documents to the point where he is a native of that time, and able to speak with confidence on it.
The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version (1950) First of all, any translation is automatically bad. But poetry can be either preserved or ruined depending on the translation. When it comes to the Bible, most of the imagry comes from the original, although there can be truly bad passages of translation. There can be no lumping the Bible together as a work because it is comprised of a series of books from different times, authors and of varied subject matter. Mostly, it is considered as one work because it is unified as the inspired Word of God and because the Holy Spirit moved through the authors there is technically one author. The Bible is written on many levels, there is the obvious one and there are also symbolic and deeper layers. But don't be too quick to toss aside the initial reading. Indeed metaphor is inherently a part of poetry. The Protestants had a different approach to early attempts to make the Bible sound better. Translators did not differ from each other over style, but rather over arguments about the original Greek or Hebrew. A book can be a source of information, it "gives us things to write about" (35). If a book is quoted a good deal it could be an influence, and the Bible is certainly quoted quite often. Most quotations are placed there at variance with the style of the author whose work surrounds it as an accent. The main influence has been on vocabulary. Often what we think of as words from the Authorized are, in fact, from Tyndale. The rhythms are a bit random, but the symbolism has affected speech in general. The Bible is a sort of resource, rather than overall stylistic influence. "Without the Bible he would not have written the Pilgrim's Progress at all, for his mind would have been utterly different; but its style might have been much the same without the Authorized Version" (43-4). The Bible has not been an influence on style, but on content. You cannot read the Bible simply as "literature". Those who say otherwise are, "influenced by amiable but unliterary motives" (49).
Hamlet: The Prince or The Poem? (1942) Lewis admits to not really being a Shakespearean scholar, and instead decides to critic the criticism of the play. There are three main thoughts on the play: Hamlet is not properly motivated and the play is bad, the second that Hamlet was stalled by circumstance before acting, and the third that he is simply a noble character with a flaw. Begin by imagining you have never read or heard of Hamlet and that it was a painting. Some critics think it horrible, others a masterpiece and none of them can really agree as to what it represents anyway. No two people agree on the piece of art. Clearly something is very odd-- so there are two explanations: Either it is very bad piece of art, or there is a majority of bad critics. With so many people praising it, the work itself couldn't be truly bad. Therefore there must be something wrong with a lot of the critics. There is an intensity of experience when viewing or reading Hamlet that only the coolness of criticism will set aside. The play simply cannot be pronounced as bad. But the critics who praise it do it for almost contradictory elements. He gives several examples of why this might be so-- basically they all enjoyed it for a different reason entirely. Critics should not be telling people why they should like Hamlet, that will ruin a person's experience of the play. A play that is easily ruined in this fashion is Merchant of Venice. It is easy to analyze the characters to the point where they each become cruel and unfeeling, "the hero thus becomes a scamp...the villain a hero" (59). He goes into some detail to explain how that play is a play of metals, which is quite interesting. But Hamlet is the opposite of that. When critics start pointing to elements in the play as a means to an end they are losing the point, especially where the ghost is concerned. They forget the sense of atmosphere, of the thrill of it simply on its own merits. There are a great many graves and ghostlike appearances in the play and they are no accident. Death is the main theme of the play-- not the act of dying but of the state of being dead in a way. Hamlet really is man, he is not an intriguing person like Beatrice or Falstaff. But to take his delays and try to make up a complicated psychological reason for them is madness. It is a mysterious play, but not for the typical reasons the critics claim. It is not the mystery of Hamlet's motives or reasons for delay, but rather that it is, "a play about mystery" (69). To be able to go back and enjoy the play without the baggage of criticism, "I am trying to recall attention from the things an intellectual adult notices to the things a child or a peasant notices," (70).
Kipling's World Those who read Kipling either love or hate him, they do not simply like or dislike him. What is odd is that after reading him for a while, one tends to recoil suddenly. This arises from the formal and material nature of his work. The main problem is that his works are too perfect, too much a work of art. It is almost too compressed in a way. He has edited it to the point where everything is consistantly brilliant and thus, "a little fatiguing" (74). Kipling didn't write to have his stories sat down and read, however, but rather to be scattered about in periodicals from time to time. Kipling was interested in the poetry of common things, but was also highly disciplined. He talked about work, of the actual working-life rather than people's "off hours", though this is most characteristic of his later works. He covers the relation of man to his work and visa versa. He also does not believe man to be inherently good, but rather, "a doctrine of original sin" (79). He does not care about personal justice, or "rights". "if all men stood talking of their rights before they went up a mast or down a sewer or stoked a furnace or joined an army, we should all perish" (81). There is a point where people need to be "licked into shape" and get some honest work done. But he is also aware that the system tends to go rotten and that people begin enjoying slapping other people around which is a side-effect of fallen nature. But that doesn't make the need for such discipline unnecessary. Often who the heros are and who those to be looked down on are pure accidents of the way he constructed the story. It could easily have been the other way around if he started at a different place from a different perspective. Confederacy and professional brotherhood is in a way what Kipling was interested in. "He is the slave of the Inner Ring" (91). But he was instrumental in bringing the workplace back into literature from whence it had been banished.
Sir Walter Scott (1956) He opens with discussing the famous incident of the dog in the night and uses it to point out the clarity that is in Scott's works. No matter what the circumstances he tried to give at least the appearance of good humour and this translates into his books. His novels were not written as commentaries on life but rather as entertainment. He took his own work lightly and that is how it is meant to be. Scott tends to be, "enjoying rather than exerting his genius" (100). His style is sometimes rigidly Scottish in origin, and he let the style of his time set the way he wrote. While his historical works have a great deal of mistakes technically, he does succeed in creating an alien world. Most historical writers tend to make everyone in the period exactly like their own period only in fancy dress. Scott creates characters of another time, though the dress is perhaps incorrect. He closes by saying Scott has few admirers now, and is often incorrectly viewed by critics.
Lilies that Fester (1955) He starts by defining what makes someone refined, and concludes that it is a name put on by outsiders observing. Those who talk about refinement or try to act refined are those to whom it is impossible to actually be so, "where it is most named it is most absent" (105). Like religion, it is a word used by those looking in not by those actually practicing it. A true religious person would never admit to it, only irreligous people call them religious. Culture is another of those sorts of words. But if one really enjoys art or literature, one would never consider it 'culture', one is too busy enjoying it, "culture, like religion, is a name given from outside to activities which are not themselves interested in culture at all, and would be ruined the moment they were" (107). If you try to do something or read something to "improve" yourself, it will never happen. Only when you have given yourself up to the work does it accidentally occur. The minute you try to be cultured, it slips out of grasp. Most of the people that elevate it tend to be petty and squabbling. "after a certain kind of sherry party, where there have been cataracts of 'culture' but never one word or one glance that suggested a real enjoyment of any art, any person, or any natural object, my heart warms to the schoolboy on the bus who is reading 'Fantasy and Science Fiction', rapt and oblivious of all the world beside...genuine literary experience, spontaneous and compulsive, disinterested" (111). A result of this has been a merging of the 'cultured' with the manager class, though neither would know a real aesthetic experience. They mouth off the current 'correct' set of painters and authors with no real opinions of their own and call all who disagree with them 'vulgar'. He then attacks the school system, with its attempts to force appreciation that actually squelch it. The student is forced to have answers that agree with what the teacher thinks, and even worse, what the acceptable position of society is at the time. Anyone who dares speak out against the statis quo in culture is thrown off the ladder at a young age, never to have any influence. This has stagnated the art world and ended many a potential young Donne and Wordsworth. As for the 'cultured', "lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds" (118). It is time for a rebellion.
Psycho-analysis and Literary Criticism (1941) There is an increasing tendency to psycho-analyze the poet/author in order to learn more about his work, rather than actually looking at the work itself. Firstly they tend to assume all fiction is a sort of wish-fulfillment. This could be true of both artists and readers to some degree, but that is not usually the case. There are different sorts of imagination. Yes, one is the wishful sort, but there is another that is pure creativity with no reference to self-indulgence at all. The wish-fulfillment sort tends to want to be as realistic as possible, as near to the actual thing. It has to be, "killed as fantasy before it is raised as art" (125). This free imagination, mythical and often improbable is not to have things "read into it" and definitely cannot be psycho-analized because they don't really come as a result of the author's wishes at all. He goes in some length into Freud's claims and refutes them, particularly the idea that all gardens simply remind one of the feminine body. He points out that Romance of the Rose which seems to justify this, in reality denies it. We start with the woman, then dive into symbolism which is of the higher, truer level. It is not a concealment of any sort. "Burns tells us that his love is like a red, red rose. These phenomena which might, in a confused glance, be taken to support the Freudian view, are really its refutation" (132). The images themselves are potent enough. They need not conceal anything.
The Inner Ring (1941) This was right after the war, and it seems people expected him to cover that in a way. Instead he decided that, "I am going to give advice. I am going to issue warnings" (140). He opens with the scene from War & Peace where Boris discovers the "unwritten" code in the military. Often there are similar situations-- they aren't actual secret societies but rather they tend to spring up of their own accord. It tends to be more maluable and changing. Those that are on the inside refer to it as "we" and those on the outside as "they". Right from school there is the series of rings present. Whenever a large or even small group of people congregate this tends to happen. Whether we admit it or not, there is always at some point that inexplicable desire to be on the "inside". For some it is the invitation of a Duchess, for others two or three artists, "and the delicious knowledge that we-- we four or five all huddled beside this stove-- are the people who 'know'" (143). The first smoke or drink or other form is often due more to the pressure of being one of "them" than anything else. But the rings themselves are not wrong, and they always tend to spring up. A true friendship is inherently an inner ring, for example. But most of the time, it leads to ruin. Remember the tale of the Danaids and take heed. "If in your spare time you consort simply with people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside" (149).
Is Theology Poetry? (1944) He begins by defining terms, although Poetry is a bit difficult to pin down. He was given the topic and considers different ways it could have been meant. He considers perhaps the topic was slurred to mean that it was just poetic, but he points out, "if Theology is Poetry, it is not very good poetry" (151). The Trinity, for example, doesn't really make much sense. It isn't particularly heroic or tragic, it is too near reality for that, "Christianity just mises the tidiness of the one and the delicious variety of the other" (151) it isn't formal and orderly and it isn't romantic either. If it is just another mythology it isn't an interesting one. It seems that usually a true belief spoils imaginative enjoyment, but that is not entirely the case. It merely sparks a different sort-- like the difference between the Trojan War in myth and the story of the War with Bonapart. In a way, Theology becomes poetic by nature of those who believe in it. It does have similarities to ancient myth which is now considered poetry, but how could Christianity be true and yet have no relation to any other story ever told? The very idea is ridiculous. It has to have parallels throughout the world, the idea of a dead god being raised. Theology also does contain some symbolism in it, which is usually confined to poetry. First: what did the Early Christians believe regarding this. The problem is that it is only in modern thought that we relegate symbolism on one side and logic on the other. Secondly, it isn't really possible to state Theology without the symbolism. By the inherent content, it isn't something you just come across. No matter how it is put it becomes poetic. "long before I believed Theology to be true I had already decided the popular scientific picture at any rate was false" (162). The very idea of Reason is Theological in a sense, if it is an accidental byproduct why should we trust it. Lewis then covers Evolution briefly, as well as the idea of the evolution of thought. "I left that ship [scientific evolution] not at the call of poetry but because I thought it could not keep afloat" (164). Science is far closer to the popular idea of 'myth' than true myth. He describes going from the purely scientific point of view to that of Theology as waking from a dream, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else" (165).
Transposition This has to do with Pentecost Sunday Red Mass and sets out upon glossolalia (speaking in tongues). He points out that the modern day gibberish that passes for it is far from edifying, "it is usually an affair of the nerves" (167) rather than a moving of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost was not gibberish but known languages-- a translation as it were for those present who spoke in a different language. Mystics have a similar experience to modern gibberish, though more erotic. He then goes on to talk about the difference between love and lust. Sometimes the responses of love can be similar to that of a rough channel crossing. Joy and anguish feel very similarly. Emotions tend to be more complicated than sensations, so when they are transposed down it comes out rather differently and can be confusing. For example, if you heard a piano piece after hearing the full orchestral version you would hear the piano piece differently than someone who had only heard the piano version. But to someone looking at the two people experiencing it they would seem the same. It is like the way the word sunlight is not related to the actual sunlight or to a painting of sunlight. "The real relation between mind and body is one of Transposition" (173-4) and things tend to be lost or misinterpreted. The spiritual world is that of the orchestra, the three-dimensional. But when it is transposed down it is easily misread and can appear similar to other things to which it is not. He comments on various views of heaven for a short while as well. He gives an example of someone raised in a dungeon knowing nothing else but having his mother draw him pictures of the outside world. But it is difficult to translate the two-dimensional into the three with no reference until the outside world is seen. Our perception will change as well when we finally are able to transpose the spiritual. In a way, symbolism is like the drawings. You cannot expect to be able to transpose going only from the bottom upwards.
An Obstinacy in Belief (1955) The Scientist and the Christian are not at odds with one another. First of all, scientists aren't there to believe in facts, but to discover them, "no one says that he believes the multiplication table" (184). In fact, the very word belief has come to mean that one isn't entirely sure, "'Where is Tom?' 'Gone to London, I believe'" (184) meaning maybe. But oddly enough, when it is reversed it becomes certain. "I don't believe you" has a force to it. Whenever any proof is involved it is no longer belief or disbelief but knowing or not knowing. If one is convinced of a fact, one knows it. One does not believe it. "In fact, the man who accepts Christianity always thinks he has good evidence" (186). Too many intelligent scientists have turned to Christianity for it to be total bunk. Some claim that it was some desire that lead men to religion, then they made up excuses later. But who could actually want religion. Most of the time, people strive to go from believing something to knowing it. The odd part is that once the knowledge is formed, one barracades against all doubt. In science, any hint the theory is incorrect and it is back to the laboratory. But take an example of a wife that the husband somewhat suspects of being unfaithful. Should he trust her that the rumour is a slander or should he ruthlessly dig out the truth. The latter could lead to disaster if she were innocent. Christian's obstinacy in belief is actually a rather normal practice in other fields. It all comes down to trust-- like when taking a splinter out of a child's finger. It will hurt but they have to trust. "No one blames us for demanding such faith. No one blames them for giving it" (191). Just like that child trusted the adult, Christians choose to trust God when it comes to such matters. There is nothing odd about it. If presented with a well-trusted friend suggesting one thing and a total stranger another, of course we take the friend's advice. No-one could blame us. "There is, you see, no real parallel between Christian obstinacy in faith and the obstinacy of a bad scientist trying to preserve a hypothesis although all evidence has turned against it" (193).
The Weight of Glory Most people consider the highest virtue to be unselfishness, but the Christian view is that it is love. Oddly enough, it is selfishness which has a negative. There is that fundamental assumption that doing good things is the opposite of enjoying yourself. It is all a question of proper rewards. Someone who marries for money is considered bad, a soldier who fights to get a peerage is bad, but a soldier who fights for victory is not, "the proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation" (198). Heaven isn't simply a bribe for being good, it is the natural result. That sweet longing for the final destination can sadly lead us astray in an attempt to get it "now". Earth is not your home, those who say it is begin with trying to prove heaven is on Earth, or within you or some other such rot. He comes to the question of the symbolism of Heaven in the scriptures, and the fact that, "can anything be added to the conception of being with Christ?" (203) true we can populate heaven with what, from an Earthly perspective, we think is beautiful and all that, but the main point is that we will be with Christ. Glory has several meanings, there is that idea of the pure response of joy when a loved parent approves, like bringing a picture drawn and they liked it. Often this is quickly turned to pride and ambition, but in its original state it is joy and beauty. He goes on to describe once again the sensation one feels every now and then for that other place we feel we belong, however it happens to be stirred. "Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being "noticed" by God. But this is almost the language of the New Testament" (207). The other sense is that of light and splendour. Instead of merely viewing the beauty of the light, to actually experience it and be part of it. "We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so" (208-9). Remember however boring the person sitting next to you is, they are in future a being of glory and breathtaking beauty, "you have never talked to a mere mortal" (210). |
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