Of Bloemfontein and Sarehole

Tolkien wasn't a hearty child. At the age of 3 he was brought home from Bloemfontein, South Africa, his birthplace, and brought up at Sarehole, near Birmingham. Until he won a scholarship to grammar school his mother taught him. He is particularly attached to the powder horn; it reminds him of being "borrowed" by an African named Isaac, who wanted to show a white baby off in his kraal. "It was typical native psychology but it upset everyone very much, of course. I know he called his son Isaac after himself, Mister Tolkien after my father and Victor -- ha! ha! -- after Queen Victoria.

"I was nearly bitten by a snake and I was stung by a tarantula, I believe. In my garden. All I can remember is a very hot day, long, dead grass and running. I don't even remember screaming. I remember being rather horrified at seeing the Archdeacon eat mealies [Indian corn] in the proper fashion." ...Tolkien stuck his fingers in his mouth.

"Quite by accident, I have a very vivid child's view, which was the result of being taken away from one country and put in another hemisphere-the place where I belonged but which was totally novel and strange. After the barren, arid heat a Christmas tree. But no, it was not an unhappy childhood. It was full of tragedies but it didn't tot up to an unhappy childhood."

Sarehole has long since been eaten by buildings, but it was rather beautiful then. Tolkien was a shy little boy but friendly with the village children and he knew an old lady without teeth, who ran a candy stall. He modelled his hobbits on the Sarehole people, which means they must have been gentle amblers, not really fond of adventures but very fond of their food. Tolkien himself likes plain meals and beer; "none of that cuisine mystique." Beer, cheese, butter and pastry; the occasional glass of Burgundy.

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Interview with J.R.R. Tolkien by Philip Norman
January 15, 1967

Two Vignettes

[View of the ‘dreaming spires’ in February 2007 from South Park]

Mary Rogers gives two vignettes of Lewis in Headington in her article "C.S. Lewis — God’s Fool" in Oxford (the Journal of the Oxford Society) for November 1998:

"Jack never minded looking a fool in a good cause. My sister-in-law tells me that he used to attend an annual party in Headington where guests were expected to arrive, not exactly in fancy dress, but to suggest some topic the hostess had decided upon. After Jack’s marriage to Joy, he brought her along, obviously much to her disgust. She had chosen not to represent some character in Poetry or Opera.... Lewis (of course) represented Wotan, wearing a black eye-shade over one eye — without embarrassment.

"Another Lewis-the-fool story involved an elderly dog. Both brothers were animal lovers, and cared for each dog lovingly to his last breath. One, in its extreme old age (probably Baron or Mr Papworth, also known as "Tykes") became very difficult, as we all do, in time. It was one of the rare sights of Headington to see Jack feeding an animal who was sensitive about being seen eating, and would not eat on home territory. So Jack would walk in front holding the dog dish in one hand, and a spoon in the other, ladling the food backwards over his shoulder to the following shambling dog, the leader being quite unmindful of the passersby and their reactions, as long as the dog got fed."

A Long-Expected Party

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure. And if that was not enough for fame, there was also his prolonged vigour to marvel at. Time wore on, but it seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At ninety he was much the same as at fifty. At ninety-nine they began to call him well-preserved; but unchanged would have been nearer the mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth.

‘It will have to be paid for,’ they said. ‘It isn’t natural, and trouble will come of it!’

Chapter 1

‘The Fellowship of the Ring’

J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hero is a Hobbit

New York Times Book Review
October 31, 1954

Seventeen years ago there appeared, without any fanfare, a book called "The Hobbit" which, in my opinion, is one of the best children's stories of this century. In "The Fellowship of the Ring," which is the first volume of a trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien continues the imaginative history of the imaginary world to which he introduced us in his earlier book but in a manner suited to adults, to those, that is, between the ages of 12 and 70. For anyone who likes the genre to which it belongs, the Heroic Quest, I cannot imagine a more wonderful Christmas present. All Quests are concerned with some numinous Object, the Waters of Life, the Grail, buried treasure etc.; normally this is a good Object which it is the Hero's task to find or to rescue from the Enemy, but the Ring of Mr. Tolkien's story was made by the Enemy and is so dangerous that even the good cannot use it without being corrupted.

The Enemy believed that it had been lost forever, but he has just discovered that it has come providentially into the hands of the Hero and is devoting all his demonic powers to its recovery, which would give him the lordship of the world. The only way to make sure of his defeat is to destroy the Ring, but this can only be done in one way and in one place which lies in the heart of the country; the task of the Hero, therefore, is to get the Ring to the place of its unmaking without getting caught.

The hero, Frodo Baggins, belongs to a race of beings called hobbits, who may be only three feet high; have hairy feet and prefer to live in underground houses, but in their thinking and sensibility resemble very closely those arcadian rustics who inhabit so many British detective stories. I think some readers may find the opening chapter a little shy-making, but they must not let themselves be put off, for, once the story gets moving, this initial archness disappears.

For over a thousand years the hobbits have been living a peaceful existence in a fertile district called the Shire, incurious about the world outside. Actually, the latter is rather sinister; towns have fallen to ruins, roads into disrepair, fertile fields have returned to wilderness, wild beasts and evil beings on the prowl, and travel is difficult and dangerous. In addition to the Hobbits, there are Elves who are wise and good, Dwarves who are skilful and good on the whole, and Men, some warriors, some wizards, who are good or bad. The present incarnation of the Enemy is Sauron, Lord of Barad-Dur, the Dark Tower in the Land of Mordor. Assisting him are the Orcs, wolves and other horrid creatures and, of course, such men as his power attracts or overawes. Landscape, climate and atmosphere are northern, reminiscent of the Icelandic sagas.

The first thing that one asks is that the adventure should be various and exciting; in this respect Mr. Tolkien's invention is unflagging... especially on the primitive level of wanting to know what happens next. Of any imaginary world the reader demands that it seem real, and the standard of realism demanded today is much stricter than in the time, say, of Malory. Mr. Tolkien is fortunate in possessing an amazing gift for naming and a wonderfully exact eye for description; by the time one has finished his book one knows the histories of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and the landscape they inhabit as well as one knows one's own childhood.

Lastly, if one is to take a tale of this kind seriously, one must feel that, however superficially unlike the world we live in its characters and events may be, it nevertheless holds up the mirror to the only nature we know, our own; in this, too, Mr. Tolkien has succeeded superbly, and what happened in the year of the Shire 1418 in the Third Age of Middle Earth is not only fascinating in A.D. 1954 but also a warning and an inspiration. No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me more joy than "The Fellowship of the Ring."

W. H. Auden

Imagined? or Real.

Remember what Puddleglum the Marshwiggle says to the Witch in The Silver Chair when she tries to enchant them into believing there is no land of Narnia above?

“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if their isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

The world to come, thought Lewis, would be like this world, only somehow more real. "Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself" (The Great Divorce, page 68), and everything else in existence is only an imitation of Heaven.

Good... not safe.

Susan asks about Aslan:

“Is he quite safe? I shall feel quite nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will deary, and make no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver. “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then, he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“He’s not safe, but he’s good.”

CS Lewis – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Lonely... I'm Mr. Lonely

Half jokingly (no, more than half) I've uttered the phrase "You're going to hell," to which a friend has responded "Well, I'll be among friends."

The difference between eternity in heaven and eternity in hell is drastically different depending on who you ask. Some see heaven as a bunch of people floating around on clouds, reuniting with other godly people, playing harps, wearing white robes and glowing in the heaven light. In contrast to this, hell is a dark party where people indulge their sinful desires, smoking, drinking and partaking of sexual pleasure by flaming red light. Though the flaws in both perceptions are numerous, I think the greatest fault in this perspective is the similar community that heaven and hell share.

Williams and Lewis, I believe, would argue that hell is by no means a place where one is "among friends." Rather it is a place we choose for ourselves that we might be by ourselves, and only on realizing this desire do we discover how much we detest it. Consider Lawrence Wentworth, a man whose desire to possess and be loved by Adela drives him deeper and deeper into self-deception. He pities himself and begins to loathe the woman he loved. His descent into hell is essentially a descent into himself, a withdrawing from society and reality that he might be with and love himself in his own mind and imagination. Yet even this is not love. "A man cannot love himself; he can only idolize it, and over the idol delightfully tyrannize--without purpose."

Wentworth denies all chances of coming back into community with others. He is driven by a desire to avoid others, to withdraw, to attempt to find pleasure in his imagined beloved. In the end even this vision leaves him. When the reader leaves Wentworth he is in the depths of hell, by himself without rope or moon to save him.

Is this not a more accurate depiction of the kind of hell we fear most? One in which we are cut off from community, separated from the love of God (even if we have only experienced it in the imperfect human version)? I would argue that anyone who really chooses hell is unaware of all they are losing. Hell is the utter absence of God. If we experience pain, loneliness and despair on this earth where God is present, how much more would we suffer in a hell where he is not? Perhaps threatening unbelievers with the flames of a hell filled with the sinful and unclean is not only ineffective, but dreadfully inaccurate.

Amanda Kuehn - Narnia Business Blog:
http://nwc-csl.blogspot.com/2008/11/lonelyim-mr-lonely.html

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In Charles Williams's novel Descent into Hell, Hell turns out to be nothing other than a refusal to see things as they really are. Arguably his finest novel, the "descent" in the title happens to an ordinary (if extraordinarily selfish) historian named Wentworth, whose daily choices to cheat on the truth slowly but surely lead him into a terrifying state of isolation and egotism. Heaven, by contrast, is increasingly inhabited by the novel's heroine, Pauline Anstruther, who as the book proceeds learns to face her fears (and her ancestors!) and to love the truth exactly as it is. The plot turns around the latest production of fictional playwright Peter Stanhope, but for Williams Pauline's realization of the divine glory incarnate in all of life is the deeper truth that sustains this and every other drama.

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Doug Thorpe -- Amazon.com review

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The key to William's mystically oriented theological thought, Descent into Hell (arguably William's greatest novel) is a multidimensional story about human beings who shut themselves up in their own narcissicstic projections, so that they are no longer able to love, to "co-inhere". The result is a veritable hell.

Secret theme behind Narnia Chronicles is based upon the stars, says new research

The hidden theme behind CS Lewis' Narnia books has finally been uncovered, according to a BBC documentary...

[But read my postings on this Weblog from July/August 2006]

---oOo---

Each of the seven children's chronicles is based on one of the seven planets that comprised the heavens in medieval astrology, says a scholar whose theory is examined in the programme.

The explanation comes after more than five decades of literary and theological debate over whether Lewis devised the fantasies with a pattern in mind or created characters and events at random.

It is put forward by Reverend Dr Michael Ward, in his book Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of CS Lewis.

Norman Stone, director and producer of The Narnia Code, to be screened on BBC2 at Easter, says the theory is the "best explanation yet" for the chimerical nature of the books.

The Chronicles of Narnia have sold over 120m copies in 41 languages since their first publication in the early 1950s first of the books, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, was turned into a film starring Tilda Swinton and James McAvoy in 2005.

The books are already known to work on two levels: the fantasy narrative enjoyed by generations of children, and the Christian allegory in which the lion Aslan represents Christ. However, Lewis never revealed the hidden key behind the series.

Dr Ward made his discovery in 2003 after reading The Planets, a poem by Lewis which refers to the influence of Jupiter in "winter passed / And guilt forgiv'n" – a theme echoed in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

He claims Lewis' knowledge of medieval history, of which he was one of the leading scholars, made him familiar with the characteristics attributed to the seven planets during the period. Each of these planets gives one of the books its theme. Prince Caspian, for example, is a story ruled by Mars, who is manifested by soldiery and battle, while The Voyage of the Dawn Treader focuses on the Sun, with its light and gold themes. In The Horse and His Boy, based on Mercury, the planet that rules the star sign Gemini and is associated with the power of communication, the characters include twins and a talking horse.

Mr Stone said: "This isn't the first theory on Narnia and I don't suppose it will be the last but this is the best explanation yet.

"Critics of Lewis said his writing was sloppy - Tolkein, for example, said the characters were a mish-mash - but this third level of meaning shows the books were not simplistic. In fact, writing such a complex set of notions into a novel must have been like three-dimensional chess.

"Lewis was a great medievalist - a real expert on the period. He was also interested in astrology. He loved the medieval view of the world. His view of faith was also that if it is to be anything it must be cosmic."

He added: "This will help change the view of Lewis. It will help elevate Lewis to a different level and make him the equal of Tolkien - both as a writer and thinker. He felt that we have been blinded by facts, but he loved hiding things. He loved the idea that people learnt more by discovering things themselves, especially hidden things. A lot of the meaning of God is after all hidden."

Mr Stone, who is married to television presenter Sally Magnusson, won both a BAFTA and an Emmy for his 1984 epic Shadowlands, which traced the unusual relationship between Lewis and his wife Joy Gresham.

Sunday Telegraph (London) – 30 November 2008

All Hallows Eve

Lester looked round her. She saw the stars; she saw the lights; she saw dim shapes of houses and trees in a landscape which was less familiar through being so familiar. She could not even yet manage to enunciate to her companion the word death. The landscape of death lay round them; the future of death awaited them. Let them go to it; let them do something. She thought of her own flat and of Richard-no. She did not wish to take this other Evelyn there; besides, she herself would be, if anything at all, only a dim shadow to Richard, a hallucination or a troubling apparition. She could not bear that, if it could be avoided; she could not bear to be only a terrifying dream. No; they must go elsewhere. She wondered if Evelyn felt in the same way about her own home. She knew that Evelyn had continuously snubbed and suppressed her mother, with whom she lived; once or twice she had herself meant to say something, if only out of an indifferent superiority. But the indifference had beaten the superiority. It was now for Evelyn to choose.

She said: "Shall we go to your place?"

Evelyn said shrilly: "No; no. I won't see Mother. I hate Mother."

Lester shrugged. One way and another, they did seem to be rather vagrants, unfortunate and helpless creatures, with no purpose and no use.

She said: "Well . . . let's go."

Evelyn looked up at her. Lester, with an effort at companionship, tried to smile at her. She did not very well succeed, but at least Evelyn, slowly and reluctantly, got to her feet. The lights in the houses had gone out, but a faint clarity was in the air -perhaps (though it had come quickly) the first suggestion of the day. Lester knew exactly what she had better do, and with an effort she did it. She took Evelyn's arm. The two dead girls went together slowly out of the Park.

Charles Williams : All Hallows Eve (Last paragraphs of Chapter 1 - The New Life)

Williams and the Arthuraid

Two spiritual maxims were constantly present to the mind of Charles Williams: "This also is Thou" and "Neither is this Thou." Holding the first we see that every created thing is, in its degree, an image of God, and the ordinate and faithful appreciation of that thing a clue which, truly followed, will lead back to Him. Holding the second we see that every created thing, the highest devotion to moral duty, the purest conjugal love, the saint and the seraph, is no more than an image, that every one of them, followed for its own sake and isolated from its source, becomes an idol whose service is damnation. The first maxim is the formula of the Romantic Way, the "affirmation of images": the second is that of the Ascetic Way, the "rejection of images." Every soul must in some sense follow both. The Ascetic must honour marriage and poetry and wine and the face of nature even while he rejects them; the Romantic must remember even in his Beatrician moment "Neither is this Thou."

C. S. Lewis, Arthurian Torso, "Williams and the Arthuriad" (1948)

The C.S. Lewis Collection at Taylor University

(reprinted from Will Vaus’ weblog (link on the left)

Taylor University boasts one of the best collections of C. S. Lewis first editions, original manuscripts and letters in all of the United States, second only to that of the Wade Center at Wheaton College. This is thanks to Dr. Edwin Brown, former Associate Professor of Medicine at Indiana University, who amassed one of the finest private collections of C. S. Lewis first editions in the world. A number of years ago this collection was sold to Taylor University so that it might be more accessible to C. S. Lewis scholars. The collection is complemented by the presence of pub furniture also collected by Ed Brown and resembling the Eagle & Child pub in Oxford where C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and others of the Inklings group met.

Another great asset of the Edwin Brown Collection is this first edition of Mere Christianity given by C. S. Lewis to Joy Davidman Gresham at their first meeting:

On page 78, in the midst of Lewis's chapter on Sexual Morality, Joy wrote at the bottom of the page:

What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

This is a quotation from Shelley's poem, Love's Philosophy.
Then on page 86 Joy wrote:

What if the quieter love does not come?
It cannot be achieved alone.

Is there any question that Joy's first annotation reveals that she was in love with C. S. Lewis beginning with their first meeting in 1952? And certainly her second annotation refers to the failure of love in her marriage to Bill Gresham. Thankfully the story didn't end there. The kisses and the quieter love were experienced in the eventual marriage of C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman, though accompanied with much pain and grief.

(WV)

The Paradisiacal Bike

"Talking about bicycles," said my friend, "I have been through the four ages. I can remember a time in early childhood when a bicycle meant nothing to me: it was just part of the huge meaningless background of grown-up gadgets against which life went on. Then came a time when to have a bicycle, and to have learned to ride it, and to be at last spinning along on one's own, early in the morning, under trees, in and out of the shadows, was like entering Paradise. That apparently effortless and frictionless gliding -- more like swimming than any other motion, but really most like the discovery of a fifth element -- that seemed to have solved the secret of life. Now one would begin to be happy. But, of course, I soon reached the third period. Pedalling to and fro from school (it was one of those journeys that feel up-hill both ways) in all weathers, soon revealed the prose of cycling. The bicycle, itself, became to me what his oar is to a galley slave."

"But what was the fourth age?" I asked.

"I am in it now, or rather I am frequently in it. I have had to go back to cycling lately now that there's no car. And the jobs I use it for are often dull enough. But again and again the mere fact of riding brings back a delicious whiff of memory. I recover the feelings of the second age. What's more, I see how true they were -- how philosophical, even. For it really is a remarkably pleasant motion. To be sure, it is not a recipe for happiness as I then thought. In that sense the second age was a mirage. But a mirage of something."

"How do you mean?", said I.

"I mean this. Whether there is, or whether there is not, in this world or in any other, the kind of happiness which one's first experiences of cycling seemed to promise, still, on any view, it is something to have had the idea of it. The value of the thing promised remains even if that particular promise was false -- even if all possible promises of it are false."

C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns, "Talking About Bicycles"
(1st published in Resistance, October 1946)

A floating paradise

Over his head there hung from a hairy tube-like branch a great spherical object, almost transparent, and shining. It held an area of reflected light in it and at one place a suggestion of rainbow coloring. So this was the explanation of the glass-like appearance in the wood. And looking round he perceived innumerable shimmering globes of the same kind in every direction. He began to examine the nearest one attentively. At first he thought it was moving, then he thought it was not. Moved by a natural impulse he put out his hand to touch it. Immediately his head, face, and shoulders were drenched with what seemed (in that warm world) an ice-cold shower bath, and his nostrils filled with a sharp, shrill, exquisite scent that somehow brought to his mind the verse in Pope, "die of a rose in aromatic pain." Such was the refreshment that he seemed to himself to have been, till now, but half awake. When he opened his eyes -- which had closed involuntarily at the shock of moisture -- all the colours about him seemed richer and the dimness of that world seemed clarified. A re-enchantment fell upon him. The golden beast at his side seemed no longer either a danger or a nuisance. If a naked man and a wise dragon were indeed the sole inhabitants of this floating paradise, then this also was fitting, for at that moment he had a sensation not of following an adventure but of enacting a myth. To be the figure that he was in this unearthly pattern appeared sufficient.

C.S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 4 (1944)

In Paradise...

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True

J.R.R. Tolkien

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An interesting piece entitled: "Deep lies the sea-longing" inklings of home (1).
by Charles Huttar (2007) may be found on

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-33496439_ITM

2007 Mythopoeic Society

The Bent One in "Out of the Silent Planet"

Out of the Silent Planet saves its allegorical work for the end when Ransom meets the Archangel of Mars (Malacandra). Even there, one has to have been brought up on the Bible in a living and abiding way (esp. the books of Daniel and Isaiah) to connect Oyarsas to (planetary) archangels, and Malacandra's tale of The Bent One and his fall (wounded in the very light of his light = and I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning) to Lucifer. Likewise, "Thulcandra" = The Silent Planet, that is earth, a world from which no news comes, because our Oyarsa has become "Bent" and our world is quarantined. And the nice addition of Malacandra telling Ransom that the Maleldil (meaning "Friend of the Eldila" or angels, God the Father) has "taken strange councils" and dared terrible things, and how these are things that the out-of-the-loop Oyarsas "desire to look into". One raised on the Bible will immediately pick up on this. But it's not likely anyone else will.

The Bent One

After Tolkien on ‘critics as Jabberwocks’, Lewis on the critics, and the opportunities that their myopia bring to the discerning author -- see my posting ‘Stealing Past the Watchful Dragons’ on the 20th October too -- bringing my little series on ‘Dragons’ to a close is this letter from C.S. Lewis. (Roger R)

---oOo---

You will be both grieved and amused to hear that out of about 60 reviews only 2 showed any knowledge that my idea of the fall of the Bent One was anything but an invention of my own. But if there only was someone with a richer talent and more leisure I think that this great ignorance might be a help to the evangelisation of England; any amount of theology can now be smuggles into people’s minds under cover of romance without their knowing it.

C.S. Lewis ~ Letter to a Lady, 9 July 1939

Stealing Past the Watchful Dragons

Though in many ways the genius behind the Inklings was Tolkien’s — and the Inklings was a surrogate for an earlier “writer’s club” that Tolkien had helped found but which was decimated by World War I — Lewis was its center of gravity, its draw, and its ongoing source of energy. His ebullient personality was in great contrast to Tolkien’s more shy and retiring demeanor. Lewis’s group criticism could be pointed and personal, but always rendered for the sake of making a work more “seaworthy”; Tolkien’s was more muted, and focused on encouragement. What brought them together week after week, besides the pleasure of their company (which was enormous), was a shared conviction that the twentieth century had started abysmally and that one of the best ways to maintain or restore the glories of the “true West” was to create and promote grand works of mythopoeia — myth, fantasy, and speculative fiction that would “steal past the watchful dragons” of conventional wisdom and decadent culture and instill what Lewis called “a taste of the other” — a vision of a transcendent realm.

Dr. Bruce L. Edwards (Bowling Green State University)
Who Were The Inklings? (excerpt)

The Seed of Dragons

In 1939, Tolkien gave a talk at Oxford on 'Fairy-Stories', later published in Essays presented to Charles Williams. In this he quoted a poem he had written for Lewis (cf. Carpenter, Inklings, 63):

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light

through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build

Gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sowed the seed of dragons -- 'twas our right

(used or misused), that right has not decayed:

we make still by the law in which we're made.

Thus Tolkien saw our (inklings) creativity as something like craft: a pleasant matter of professional obligation as a human being.

Coins, his dragon's loins

The king has set up his mint by Thames.
He has struck coins; his dragon's loins
germinate a crowded creaturely brood
to scuttle and scurry between towns and towns,
to furnish dishes and flagons with change of food;
small crowns, small dragons, hurry to the markets
under the king's smile, or flat in houses squat.
The long file of their snout crosses the empire,
and the other themes acknowledge our king's head.
They carry on their backs little packs of value,
caravans; but I dreamed the head of a dead king
was carried on all, that they teemed on house-roofs
where men stared and studied them as I your thumbs' epigrams,
hearing the City say Feed my lambs
to you and the king; the king can tame dragons to carriers,
but I came through the night, and saw the dragonlets' eyes
leer and peer, and the house-roofs under their weight
creak and break; shadows of great forms
halloed them on, and followed over falling towns.
I saw that this was the true end of our making;
mother of children, redeem the new law.

Taliessin's look darkened; his hand shook
while he touched the dragons; he said 'We had a good thought.
Sir, if you made verse you would doubt symbols.
I am afraid of the little loosed dragons.
When the means are autonomous, they are deadly; when words
escape from verse they hurry to rape souls;
when sensation slips from intellect, expect the tyrant;
the brood of carriers levels the good they carry.
We have taught our images to be free; are we glad?
are we glad to have brought convenient heresy to Logres?

Charles Williams ~ ‘Bors to Elayne: on the King’s Coins’
Arthurian Poets (The Boydell Press) 1991 (extract)

---oOo---

Lewis on Taliessin
Dec. 15th 1945
“... I am (these last 6 months) immersed in a v. different poet who I think great – Charles Williams: the two volumes of his Arthurian poems Taliessin and The Region of the Summer Stars. Inexcusably difficult, as I always told him, but here there really is something behind the difficulty – that something wh. we all need most in literature at present & wh. I wd. call opaque splendour – thick, rich, solid, heavy – porphyry, gold diamond.”
CS Lewis ~ Collected Letters

On Dragon Island

Laying anchor off the shore of the island, most of the ship's company went to the island to restore provisions, repair the broken water casks, and find a tree to fell and replace the Dawn Treader's broken mast.

Not wanting to work, Eustace ran off to find a shady spot. Wandering off into the mist, Eustace became lost and found his way into a valley where dwelled a dragon. The dragon had only just come out of its cave when it lay down and died. Eustace went into the cave and found its treasure horde -- donning a rather lovely golden bracelet he found -- and lay down to sleep. When he woke up, he found himself in the form of the dragon. In a panic, he tore his way out of the valley and came down to the beach. The crew was about to slay him when he was challenged by Caspian and Reepicheep, who quickly deduced who he really was.

Working with the crew for a while, Eustace became disheartened in that he might have to remain on the island since he won't fit on the Dawn Treader. However, Aslan appeared to heal him and restore him to human form so that he could remove the bracelet, which Caspian recognized as belonging to the Lord Octesian. At the end, when the ship was ready to set sail, they decided that the dragon had either killed Octesian, or was itself the lord transformed.

"A powerful dragon crying its eyes out under the moon in a deserted valley is a sight and a sound hardly to be imagined."

C. S. Lewis ~ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

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This is what another writer made of the Story...

Eustace has little respect for others and lacks a sense of fairness: he tries to take more than his rightful share of water rations and lies about it, and later he slips away from his companions to avoid doing his part of the work. is behavior is beastly, and he turns literally into a monster, cut off from other human beings: he becomes a dragon – a creature straight out of the imaginative stories he had resisted. Only then can he begin to get outside himself, imagine how others see him, and “wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed”. After being un-dragoned by Aslan, he is able to escape the limited, materialistic, rationalistic world in which he had grown up, aided perhaps by Reepicheep’s stories about “emperors, kings, dukes, knights, poets, [and] lovers” who had fallen into distressing circumstances and recovered. Moral imagination comes to play an important role in Eustace’s life, and as readers respond to Eustace first with antipathy and then sympathy, they too can experience moral imagination at work in their own lives.

(Source unknown)