Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Volume 9, 2015

Bruce R. Johnson, Johnson

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781498281478
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498281485
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal, established by the Arizona C. S. Lewis Society in 2007, is the only peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of C. S. Lewis and his writings published anywhere in the world. It exists to promote literary, theological, historical, biographical, philosophical, bibliographical and cultural interest (broadly defined) in Lewis and his writings. The journal includes articles, review essays, book reviews, film reviews and play reviews, bibliographical material, poetry, interviews, editorials, and announcements of Lewis-related conferences, events and publications. Its readership is aimed at academic scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, as well as learned non-scholars and Lewis enthusiasts. At this time, Sehnsucht is published once a year.

Articles

How Much Does That Hideous Strength Owe to Charles Williams?

Charles A. Huttar

The reappearance of Elwin Ransom in That Hideous Strength in 1945, seven years after he first walked into C. S. Lewis’ fictional world in Out of the Silent Planet, alerted readers to the development in the author’s mind, over that period, of his myth of cosmic warfare. That myth, together with the presence of Ransom as protagonist, made it reasonable to speak of the three novels (with Perelandra in between in 1943) as a trilogy, although it appears that Lewis did not at the outset foresee that the first book would have two sequels.1 Several elements in the last of the three show Lewis’ care to tie the series together,2 but there were striking differences. That Hideous Strength is set in provincial England rather than out on the planets; it has a more complex plot, with two threads running concurrently in interspersed scenes and intertwined to a degree, finally coming together only at the end. In addition, there have been some remarkable developments in the protagonist’s personality.

Considering these differences, it seems natural to ask whether Lewis’ friendship with Charles Williams, eight years or so in duration, contributed, either consciously or not, to the making of the novel. Lewis famously deplored critics’ speculating about such matters. He reported observing, with respect to his own books, that critics’ guesses, however plausible they might seem, were often wide of the mark. As a literary historian with a considerable range of reading, he knew that resemblances a reader might casually take to indicate direct influence, even (to use a stronger term) derivation, could instead reflect a common debt to a larger tradition that was no longer well known, or to ideas and expressions that were in the air at a particular time, things that once went without saying and therefore left little documentation. There can be, he knew, instances of demonstrable influence. There are others in which a good case may be made, though lacking complete proof; critical arguments then must rely on factual support, sound judgment, precise definition as opposed to generalization, and, often, a reasonable degree of modesty in the claims made.

What do we mean by “influence”? Diana Glyer in The Company They Keep—“they” being the Inklings—has distinguished several kinds of influence and thus provides a useful overview of the question.3 We are not now concerned with the flow of ideas from one mind to another through reading, or reciprocally in conversation, either of which may contribute to shaping a person’s worldview. Lewis himself freely acknowledged having learned many important truths from both predecessors and contemporaries.4 To “tell the truth as you see it”5 was more important to him than being considered original. His friendship with Williams undoubtedly informed, or at least reinforced, some themes that are prominent in That Hideous Strength,6 and that is part of what was meant by calling it, hyperbolically, “a Charles Williams novel written by C. S. Lewis.”7 But for present purposes, “influence” is defined more narrowly.

I do not intend here anything so ambitious as a comprehensive study of the question posed by my title. My purpose in this essay is threefold: in the first section, to augment the case that has been made for one debt to Williams; in the second, to narrow down the demonstrable range of Williams’ influence in another area, that of the Arthurian material in That Hideous Strength; and finally, to point out a commonality in their theory of history that can probably not, however, be considered an instance of one-way influence, but rather an agreement that reflects their shared Christian worldview. That third study will lead to observations on the genre of fantasy in which they both worked.

There are other ways readers have (or believed they had) detected the presence of Williams in or behind the novel. Further investigation of these possibilities will not concern us here, but they deserve to be mentioned: Lewis’ choice of genre, the portrayal of Ransom, the name of Bracton College and its focus on legal studies, the explanations about different kinds of magic, and explicit verbal allusions. As Charles Moorman has pointed out, Lewis’ use of Arthurian myth in a work critical of modern culture links him not only with Charles Williams but also with T. S. Eliot.8 To this list may be added the idea—embodied in Andrew MacPhee as an integral part of the St. Anne’s community—that healthy doubt has a positive role in Christian practice. No doubt MacPhee represents Lewis’ homage to his tutor, the freethinker William Kirkpatrick, who made a formidable logician of him, but MacPhee’s role in “Logres” may also reflect Charles Williams’ outspoken regard for the value of honest and bold doubt.9

Damaris and Jane

The audience that St. Paul addressed in the public square of Athens consisted largely of dilettante intellectuals who “had an obsession for any novelty and would spend their whole time talking about or listening to anything new” (Acts 17:21).10 This quality of noncommittal curiosity-seeking characterized “all the Athenians,” according to St. Luke’s account, even the “Epicurean and Stoic philosophers” who had heard Paul preaching of “Jesus” and “Anastasis” (the resurrection) and, taking these to be names of “outlandish” new gods, “strange to our ears,” invited Paul to come to their gathering and tell them more (verses 18-20). Paul, ready to seize the opportunity, proceeded in quite sophisticated rhetorical fashion to use familiar elements of Hellenic culture, their shrine “to god the unknown” and the sayings of their own poets (verses 23, 28), as a springboard for proclaiming the gospel. The response was mixed. Some laughed, others invited him to return and tell them more, and there were a few converts: among them a member of the council, the Areopagus, named Dionysius and a woman named Damaris. We are told no more of those two, but it is evident that in making this commitment they ceased to be typically disengaged leisure-class Athenians.

Five centuries later, a Christian mystic who was versed in neo-Platonism began publishing in Greek, under the pseudonym “Dionysius the Areopagite,” theological treatises that came to be highly regarded parts of the patristic heritage in both East and West. Fast forward another fourteen centuries to Charles Williams’ novel The Place of the Lion (1933). In the second chapter, a woman named Damaris who is writing a doctoral thesis in medieval philosophy is invited to give a talk to a local “study circle” that meets monthly to receive “instruction . . . about thought-forms or something similar.” The vagueness of this expression leaves Damaris wondering what she might possibly have to offer “these absurd creatures” with “their fantastic religion.”11 The group in fact consists of two or three adepts in a sort of latter-day Gnosticism based on a heretical variation on the Dionysian teachings, one genuine seeker who will conclude that this philosophy is not what he is looking for, and some society ladies given to fashionable pursuits with an intellectual veneer who “liked their religion taken mild—a pious hope, a devout ejaculation, a general sympathetic sense of a kindly universe.”12 In short, there are marked affinities between this study group and St. Paul’s Athenian audience. Damaris Tighe, despite her supercilious attitude toward them13—she considers herself to be engaged rather in serious academic work—has much in common with them. Her doctoral work is serious only in the sense that she hopes it will advance her career. Finding textual parallels between Pythagoras and Abelard, or between Neoplatonic philosophers and the Christian commentators on Dionysius, is largely a “game” with words that she is “playing” (and even there, she does not insist on being accurate);14 it does not occur to her that the things they write about might be real. She can lecture her father on Plato’s doctrine of beauty, but that he should be “thrilled” by the beauty of butterflies she cannot comprehend.15 She has “read a good deal about salvation . . . in all those tiresome texts” but can’t see that the idea applies to her: “salvation . . . from what, I should like to know?” Only when one of the Ideas she studies takes physical form in a terrifying way and attacks her does she acknowledge her own need and cry out to be “save[d].”16 Her “conversion” means a turning from the c...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• General Editor’s Note
• In Memory: Christopher W. Mitchell
• Articles
• Review Essays
• Poetry
• Book Reviews
• Miscellaneous