Jack
Hello, recently I read a book called "Of Other Worlds," a collection of essays and stories by our old friend, Professor Lewis. There was a particular part that I thought post-worthy - forgive me if you've heard this one. It is the last bit of an informal conversation transcribed from an audio recording of C.S. Lewis, Kingsly Amis, and Brian Aldiss. It was committed to tape in Lewis' rooms at Magdalene College shortly before he retired:Amis: More Scotch?
Lewis: Not for me, thank you, help yourself. (Liquid noises.)
Amis: I think all this ought to stay in, you know - all these remarks about drink.
Lewis: There's no reason why we shouldn't have a drink. Look,
you want to borrow Abbott's "Flatland" don't you? I must go to dinner I am afraid. (Hands over Flatland.) The original manuscript of the "Illiad" could not be more precious. It's only the ungodly who borroweth and payeth not again.
Amis (reading): By A. Square.
Lewis: But of course the word square hadn't the same sense then.
Aldiss: It's like the poem by Francis Thompson that ends "She gave me tokens three, a look, a word of her winsome mouth, and a sweet wild raspberry"; there again the meaning has changed. It really was a wild raspberry in Thompson's day. (Laughter.)
Lewis: Or the lovely one about the Bishop of Exeter, who was giving the prizes at a girls' school. They did a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and the poor man stood up afterwards and made a speech and said (piping voice): "I was very interested in your delightful performance, and among other things I was very interested in seeing for the first time in my life a female Bottom." (Guffaws.)
((the end.))
Hopefully you've at least laughed half as hard as Erica and I do each time we read that out loud to each other.
I also have a topic for discussion: I've noticed after reading Lewis' book "The Discarded Image," a strong current of medieval cosmology throughout his "Space Trilogy." Does anyone have anything to say about that?
posted by Paul Johnson | 9:51 PM
2 Comments:
I think the point that Lewis was trying to make in the Discarded Image, having read the book some time ago, is the image being discarded is not the actual medieval cosmology itself, but the worldview that enveloped and flowed out of the geocentric model of the universe.
This worldview, which is a synthesis of Greek religion and science with Christianity, is beautifully pictured for us in the Space Trilogy.
It is interesting to me that the Moderns call Lewis' work "science fiction" or "fantasy"--I don't think the Ancients, and particularly Medieval people, would have used those terms for it (interestingly, we call their "fiction"--mythology).
Although they would agree that, in a sense, it is fiction, they would have peferred, and perhaps agreed with, its worldview because in it there is a clear distiction between the natural and the supernatural. As well, there exists in it a clear distinction between right and wrong.
This is something that is lacking among Moderns with its Brave New World. I think that this, and much more, is what Lewis was attempting to say in the Discarded Image.
Peter Kreeft writes about this in "C. S. Lewis for the Third Milennium" (see ch. 6--"The Joyful Cosmology: Perelandra's 'Great Dance' as an Alternative World View to Modern Reductionism").
I like how Kreeft puts it,
"The vacuum is the typically modern view, which we could call the joyless cosmology. Lewis' is the joyful cosmology. We have all breathed that modern air, even those who disbelieve it or even despise it. Our lungs are full of reductionism, which is dead air. Then, suddenly, a gust of wet, salty air blows in from the sea, and our spirits spring up like children, full of mysterious joy. A smell from another country, a gleam from a celestial beauty falling on our jungle of filth and imbecility (to use a formula from Perelandra itself). An angel, a hevaenly messenger, a star...something like the 'Great Dance' appears only once in a thousand books. That is why we appreciate it, like a Bedouin appreciates an oasis."
i guess what i was getting at was that after reading the discarded image i better understood the fouundation on which lewis had built his space mythos. i like what kreeft said also, that there is a certain reductionism in modern sci-fi that lewis denies in his use of the medieval cosmology in the space trilogy. rather than eternal emptiness the heavens are full of an eternal life.
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