C.S. Lewis: The Great Divorce (1945)

Edition: Fontana, 1977
Review number: 1017

One of the fruits of Blake's unorthodox theology was the series of engravings entitled The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which (according to the arguments accompanying the plates) depict Swedenborgian universalist ideas - the salvation of every human being. Lewis, on the other hand, wrote The Great Divorce to illustrate how different heaven and hell are in his more orthodox Protestant theology, and to say something about the ways in which he believed a soul would end up in one or the other.

Although The Great Divorce is not a pure allegory (as is the much less successful The Pilgrim's Regress), it contains allegorical elements. The basic idea is that the inhabitants of hell - depicted as an endless, dreary town - are able to make a day trip to heaven. There, they seem so insubstantial that to walk on the solid grass is extremely painful; and there, those they knew when alive try to persuade them to remain, which they can do if they turn to God rather than concentrating on themselves.

Self-centredness is viewed here as the common factor in turning away from God, and the encounters in The Great Divorce are basically a series of elaborations of the forms that this vice could take. Lewis doesn't take the space to be particularly subtle or to do more than sketch in situation and personality in each case, but many of the discussions are quite memorable. Less interesting is the explanation of what is happening by the soul of George MacDonald, chosen by Lewis to be his guide to the spiritual realm as Dante did Virgil.

Though the ideas here are good, the limited range of examples chosen by Lewis - mainly to point readers away from the common idea that the worst crimes are the public ones like murder - means that The Great Divorce cannot be the best of Lewis' fiction.

C.S Lewis: Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1965)

Edition: Fontana, 1965 (Order from Amazon)
Review number: 999

This collection of generally hard to obtain but previously published pieces by Lewis was the last book he worked on before his death. There is no unifying theme; most of it consists of sermons and talks delivered over a period of around fifteen years.

The title piece is rather different, being - as its name indicates - a follow-up to The Screwtape Letters in which the demon Screwtape is addressing the graduation dinner of the Tempter's College. Screwtape being Lewis' most famous creation, with the possible exception of Aslan, people continually pressured him to write a sequel to the Letters, which he resisted doing for several reasons. The obvious one is that he felt that the idea of diabolical letters was exhausted, but more interestingly he had been alarmed to find how easily he was able to assume the demonic point of view. The idea that he did think of producing as a sequel was to write an equivalent from a guardian angel's point of view, but he felt he couldn't do justice to this (and I suspect that it would have been less interesting in the same way that Paradise Lost is more striking than Paradise Regained).

None of the pieces match up in terms of quality of writing to the rest of Lewis' theological output, but the collection manages to be thought provoking in places, particularly when it challenges the underlying assumptions which came to be commonplace during the twentieth century.

C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Edition: Fount, 1982 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 987

After the Narnia series and possibly his science fiction trilogy, The Screwtape Letters is Lewis' best known work. It isn't intended, like most of his fiction, as an apologetic for Christianity, but as an aid to a Christian - it is designed to help someone overcome temptation. This purpose is carried out in such a way that it is entertaining even to a non-Christian.

The reason for this is partly the method used, the conceit that the contents are letters addressed by a senior devil to a more junior, inexperienced tempter, and partly that the whole book is very well written and clearly thought out. If the theological background is accepted, even for a moment, then the letters are convincing; if not, then they are certainly entertaining and occasionally thought provoking.

C.S. Lewis: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956)

Edition: Fount, 1978 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 975

All of Lewis' fictional writing is an apologetic for Christianity, except for this novel. It still has a related message, but one which is simpler and broader in scope: it is an attack on the ideas of rationalism, on the view that the material world is all there is.

The story of Cupid and Psyche is quite well known, even though its first appearance is quite late for Greek or Roman myth (in Apuleius' Golden Ass). Psyche was a girl so beautiful that she aroused the jealousy of Venus, who sent her son Cupid to destroy her. But he fell in love, and carried Psyche away to a mysterious palace where all her wants were met. He visited her every night, but would not permit her to see his face, because his glory would overwhelm her. After some persuasion from Psyche, Cupid brought her jealous sisters to visit her, only to poison her mind by asking what kind of monstrous lover would be unwilling to show his face to her. Staying awake after they made love, Psyche uncovered a lamp to see Cupid as he was, only for some oil to spill and wake the god. He returned to heaven and she mourned him until, after the gods took pity on her, she was made an immortal and married to her lover.

The story is adapted by Lewis principally through being told from the point of view of one of the sisters, Orual or Maia, who is made far from spiteful, not even realising the emotion that prompts her to act for what she rationalises as Psyche's own good. The three sisters are made the daughters of a Middle Eastern barbarian king in the period of ancient Greek civilisation, who on the one hand grow up in a country which belongs to the anti-rational, frightening goddess Ungit (whose idol is a grotesque black stone) but who on the other have a Greek tutor, who acts as the voice of rationalism.

The crucial moment in the novel is when Orual visits Psyche in the palace built for her by her lover. The magnificent buildings and gardens Psyche sees are invisible to her sister; with the eyes of rationalism, it seems to Orual that Psyche is living in a mountain valley in the open. This is the essence of what Lewis wants to say, that there are experiences which are beyond rational explanation and that it is wrong to reject them. It is not even enough to regard others' descriptions of their mystical experiences as metaphors, as Orual does when Psyche offers her a magnificent wine (invigorating spring water) from a beautiful cup (her hands). Clearly, this kind of parable in no way proves Lewis' point, but it certainly provides an interesting illustration.

Whether or not the reader agrees with Lewis, and even if it is read as a simple story with no deeper meaning, Till We Have Faces is an enjoyable novel.

C.S. Lewis: The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Edition: Fount, 1977
Review number: 963

Lewis' earliest novel gives fullest reign to the allegorical impulse which was to form an important part of all his fictional writing. Intended to be a Pilgrim's Progress for the twentieth century, the story of his central character John mimics Lewis' own spiritual journey from the dry church of his childhood to a personal Christian faith. (Even without confirmation from the later foreword, the autobiographical element should be clear to anyone who has read Surprised by Joy, his memoir of this process, or knows that he was called "Jack" by his friends.)

In Bunyan's work, the major difference is in intent; The Pilgrim's Progress is designed to show the tribulations of the Christian after conversion while Lewis is more interested in the journey to conversion. This difference may partly be connected with a change in emphasis in the Protestant church in Western Europe towards evangelism rather than the development of the individual - and Christian is very much an individual rather than part of a church congregation. Lewis was almost certainly not going to want to update Bunyan's famous story, the most read book in English after the King James Bible.

There is also a difference in method. Bunyan externalises Christian's psychological states and spiritual experiences at least as much in geography as in the people that he meets - the Slough of Despond being the most famous example. Lewis has John meet personifications of major twentieth century mindsets; the landscape is far less important, even though it is the fulfilment of a vision of an island that John is seeking.

Lewis' novel is far less successful than Bunyan's story, as might be expected of a work so thoroughly in its shadow, and indeed is less convincing as fiction than anything else he wrote. The reason for this, as the foreword indicates, is that the journey he describes is not typical. Though it maps Lewis' own philosophical wanderings before he embraced Christianity, most people don't even generally introspect about what they believe and don't change so comprehensively. Most people today also don't come from a church background, though this change has occurred since the thirties. (This return to something like the start is needed for the title to make sense, of course.)

However, it would be possible to enjoy the novel not as an allegory on each person's spiritual life but as a satire on thirties ideas, except that Lewis makes another mistake which is common for a convert. He shows little sympathy for the philosophical ideas he is mocking, but portrays each as something so insubstantial and ludicrous it is impossible to see how anyone can be taken in. This gives The Pilgrim's Regress the feeling of a novel which contains only one dimensional, repetitive characters, and makes it a dull read. Perhaps Lewis needed to get this out of his system, but it is his poorest published writing, fiction or non-fiction.

C.S. Lewis: That Hideous Strength (1945)

Edition: Pan, 1955 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 943

Of the three novels by Lewis featuring Ransome, That Hideous Strength is the least interesting. Lewis himself was clearly not entirely happy with it, as he abridged the novel quite considerably after the first publication.

The story of the novel is about an organisation named N.I.C.E., the kind of acronym which after The Man From U.N.C.L.E. became impossible to use seriously. Its public agenda is criminal rehabilitation, but it is in fact out to dominate the U.K. in the name of progress. Being Lewis, there is of course a spiritual side to the whole thing, with the powerful forces of darkness (whose final aim is demonstrated by the novel's title, which comes from a description of the building of the tower of Babel) ranged against Ransome's small group of seemingly ineffectual fighters for good. The human element is provided by Mark and Jane Studdock, who end up on opposing sides without ever having wanted to get involved at all.

The reason that the story has dated is that the idea of progress Lewis is attacking is no longer believed by many, in this age of environmental crisis where the downside of the effects of modern technology have become apparent. When this is accompanied by a diffuse story, and when the marvellous descriptions of alien worlds which are so important a part of Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra are missing, it is easy to see that That Hideous Strength is the least successful of the trilogy.

C.S. Lewis: Perelandra (1943)

Original title: Voyage to Venus (Buy from Amazon)
Edition: Pan, 1960
Review number: 930

Medieval theologians argued about the question of the multiplicity of worlds, whether there could exist other environments which were home to living creatures. A major issue in these arguments was the way in which the fall and redemption of mankind would have affected such communities - were the sin of Adam and Eve, the incarnation and crucifixion events that happened only on earth but affecting the rest of the Universe, or were there parallels to them elsewhere, or were there even communities where the fall hadn't taken place at all?

Since science fiction writers began approaching the issue of extraterrestrial life from another point of view, this has become of interest once again. There are at least two novels of note which take these theological questions as their starting point - this one, the second of Lewis' Ransome novels, and James Blish's A Case of Conscience. Perelandra - the original title was insisted on by the publishers and never pleased Lewis - is a truly magical tale, completely unique in the science fiction genre.

Ransome is commissioned to go to Perelandra (Venus) by the eldila (the angelic supernatural agents encountered in Out of the Silent Planet); he is propelled there in a coffin-like box. Perelandra turns out to be a newly living planet, the description of which owes much to that of Tormance in David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, a novel which the publisher's title for this one seems designed to evoke.

After some time just enjoying the way that everything on Perelandra is full of life, Ransome meets a human native, a glamorous and beautiful woman who is the equivalent of Eve, and the purpose for which he was brought to the planet becomes clear when Weston, the physicist of Out of the Silent Planet, turns up. Weston has now been completely posessed by the spiritually evil power who rules the earth, and he aims to bring about the Fall again on Perelandra. Ransome is there to argue against him.

These arguments take up quite a lot of space in the novel, and make it among the most theologically explicit pieces of Christian apologetics in Lewis' fictional output. This may put off many readers. However, the dramatic interest of the idea of the argument and the descriptions of the pre-Fall planet make Perelandra still one of my favourite science fiction novels.

C.S. Lewis: Out of the Silent Planet (1938)

Edition: Pan, 1952 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 915

Out of the science fiction he admired - clearly discernible influences on this novel include H.G. Wells and David Lindsay - and ideas from Christian theology, Lewis created a truly original classic of science fiction in his adult trilogy.

The central character is Cambridge don Ransome, who is kidnapped while on a walking holiday during the long vacation, and forced to travel in a spaceship to an unknown destination, by brilliant but utterly heartless scientist Weston and sinister businessman Devine. Before they land on Malacandra (Mars), Ransom discovers that on their previous, first, visit to the planet, the two of them were ordered to bring back another human for, they assume, sacrifice.

At the first opportunity, then, Ransome runs away, and ends up befriending a group of Malacandrian natives, using his skills as a philologist to help learn their language. The theological theme comes in when Ransome is taken to speak to the Oyarsa, not so much ruler of the world as its guardian angel.

The strengths of Out of the Silent Planet are the depiction of the aliens and the way that Ransome's perception of them changes, and the contrast between Ransome, Devine and Weston. Weston is a perhaps now rather old fashioned portrayal of the amoral dedicated scientist, convinced that crimes committed in the name of progress are no crimes at all. At one point, he says of a young man who would nowadays be described as having learning difficulties that a sensible government would earmark him as a subject for research, the same chilling point of view which led to some of the most unpleasant actions of the doctors of the Third Reich.

C.S. Lewis: The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964)

Edition: Cambridge University Press, 1967
Review number: 470

C.S. Lewis introduces us to medieval and Renaissance literature by describing the medieval world view, which he calls the Model. Some parts of this will be familiar to most of those who know something of medieval history, theology or philosophy, or who have read some of the typical literature of the period. However, some of what Lewis has to say was new and illuminating even to someone like myself, fascinated with the medieval period.

The Model can perhaps be seen in its most complete form in Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica and Dante's Divine Comedy, but it informs and influences just about every work of literature from the period and continues to resonate until the seventeenth century (Lewis citing many examples of its use by Milton, for example). An explanation is given for the existence of the Model, for the overall shape it took, and for the ways it can be seen in literature (concentrating on the more obscure, more easily misunderstood or more easily overlooked references as far as modern readers are concerned).

Lewis attributes the origins of the Model are attributed to two factors: the medieval passion for orderly classification (he goes so far as to say that the modern invention most likely to be admired by a medieval thinker would be the card index), combined with the reverence for authoritative writing which means that truth was seen in even the most fantastic works of classical poetry. The first trait is in some manner present in all ages; it was one of the founding principles of modern science, for example. But symmetry was sought where it would not be expected by a modern thinker - paralleling the four elements which make up the universe with the four humours inside the body, for example. The second trait is more unusual, and can explain much about medieval culture: the liking for allegorical interpretation, for example, is useful in that it makes it possible to see underlying meanings which agree in works which disagree on the surface but which must both be true as both are authorities.

The elements which make up the Model are very varied in origin, including the Bible, the church fathers, and Greek and Roman philosophers and poets (the Greek ones mainly through Latin translations and digests). To synthesise these contradictory elements was quite an achievement in itself, and that so much supremely great literature could be inspired by it and derived from it a greater one still.