Free acts and the cosmic shape

When we are praying about the result, say, of a battle or a medical consultation the thought will often cross our minds that (if only we knew it) the event is already decided one way or the other. I believe this to be no good reason for ceasing our prayers. The event certainly has been decided - in a sense it was decided 'before all worlds'. But one of the things taken into account in deciding it, and therefore one of the things that really cause it to happen, may be this very prayer that we are now offering. Thus, shocking as it may sound, I conclude that we can at noon become part causes of an event occurring at ten a.m. (Some scientists would find this easier than popular thought does.)

The imagination will, no doubt, try to play all sort of tricks on us at this point. It will ask, 'Then if I stop praying can God go back and alter what has already happened?' No. The event has already happened and one of its causes has been the fact that you are asking such questions instead of praying. It will ask, 'Then if I begin to pray can God go back and alter what has already happened?' No. The event has already happened and one of its causes is your present prayer. Thus something does really depend on my choice. My free act contributes to the cosmic shape. That contribution is made in eternity 'before all worlds'; but my consciousness of contributing reaches me at a particular point in the time series.

.

C.S. Lewis, Miracles, Appendix B (1947)

Of Beren and Lúthien

[Image: Beren and Lúthien - Peter Xavier Price]

Lúthien, called 'Lúthien Tinuviel' by Beren (Nightingale, daughter of twilight in Sindarin), was the fairest of the elven maids of Beleriand, and lived in the First Age of the Sun before the War of Wrath.  Her story and fate is tied inevitably to Beren son of Barahir, with whom she fell in love when he wandered into Doriath.  Lúthien Tinuviel was daughter of the great King Thingol of Doriath, greatest of the Teleri elves, who would not give his daughter freely, especially to a mortal man.  So, Upon Thingol's discovery of Beren's presence in his land, he sent for him and, having sworn not to harm the man, set before him a quest to recover a Silmaril from Morgoth's iron crown.  Upon the successful completion of this quest, Beren would be allowed to marry Lúthien, as they desired.

So, Beren set out upon his quest while Lúthien, imprisoned by Melian the Queen of Doriath to stop her from following Beren into hell, devised a means of escape from her prison in order to follow her love.  Beren travelled to Nargothrond and there gained the help of King Felagund while gaining strong enemies in the Sons of Feanor.  Beren and the party left Nargothrond and travelled north disguised as orcs until they came to Wizard's Isle and were imprisoned by Thu (Sauron), Lord of Wolves.  Lúthien flees Doriath to help Beren and, with the help of Haun, great hound of the Valar, they destroy Wizard's Isle and free Beren (Felagund and his companions had died in captivity at the hands of Thu's wolves).

Beren and Lúthien wander until they approach Doriath and Beren steals away from Lúthien while she sleeps and goes to Angband to fulfill his quest.  Before approaching Thangorodrim Lúthien and Huan once again find him and, with the help of Lúthien's elvish magic, they approach Angband in the guise of a werewolf and bat.  They enter Angband and steal a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown while he is enchanted by Lúthien. Beren loses the stone, however, when the great wolf Carcharas bites off the hand of Beren that holds the Silmaril.  It is regained, however, in Doriath, when Carcharas is killed by Huan and Beren in the end fulfills his quest to Thingol.

Williams on 'Exchange'

Charles talked and wrote a great deal about the practice of "exchange". It was one of the root rules of the Company. One made a pact and picked up the other person's fear or grief or pain and carried it oneself. This was the theory at any rate. The trouble was that, while the theory was irrefutable, the practice was apt to be dubious.... but how, I asked myself, was I to "present myself shyly to Almighty God in exchange for..."?

Lois Lang-Sims
Letters to Lelange (Kent State UP), Page 54

Wheaton College memories...

I was a student at Wheaton College from 1961 to 1965 and 'Mere Christianity' was required reading. I remember not liking the book at first, thinking CSL argued too much to defend the obvious. Later when great intellectual doubt overwhelmed me, Lewis and his books became my best friends. But when I got to the chapter on The Great Sin (pride) I was suddenly smitten by this writer. He cut right to the heart of the matter. How straight an arrow he can shoot. Since that day I have been reading everything of Lewis I can find. 

Lewis was so popular on campus that one professor (not too kindly) called him "the patron saint of Wheaton College"! The bookstore was filled with everything of Lewis. I bought my first copy of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' there. It was a Puffin paperback that said plainly on the cover, "not for sale in the U.S.A."!  I still have the book with its beautiful cover picture of Susan and Lucy and Aslan dancing round the Stone Table. That scene with the green mountains of Narnia in the background created such a longing in me to go there. And one of the most magical moments of my life was when I read the part where Lucy could not find the back of the wardrobe: 

"Then she saw that there was a light ahead of her..... Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air." 

(Nancy Young) 

Letter to Phyllida

[Image: The Kilns]

Dear Phyllida,

Thanks for your most interesting cards. How do you get the gold so good? Whenever I tried to use it, however golden it looked on the shell, it always looked only like rough brown on the paper. Is it that you have some trick with the brush that I never learned, or that gold paint is better now than when I was a boy! [...]

I'm not quite sure what you meant about "silly adventure stories without my point". If they are silly, then having a point won't save them. But if they are good in themselves, and if by a "point" you mean some truth about the real world which which one can take out of the story, I'm not sure that I agree. At least, I think that looking for a "point" in that sense may prevent one sometimes from getting the real effect of the story in itself - like listening too hard for the words in singing which isn't meant to be listened to that way (like an anthem in a chorus). I'm not at all sure about all this, mind you: only thinking as I go along.

We have two American boys in the house at present, aged 8 and 6 1/2. Very nice. They seem to use much longer words than English boys of that age would: not showing off, but just because they don't seem to know the short words. But they haven't as good table manners as English boys of the same sort would. [...]

yours, 

C.S. Lewis

Letters to Children (letter of Dec 18 1953)

Born of Hope

Born of Hope: The Ring of Barahir… is a 72-minute fantasy-adventure fan film directed by Kate Madison and written by Paula DiSante (as Alex K. Aldridge) that is based on the appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The film centres on the communities affected by Sauron's war; the story of Arathorn II and his relationship with Gilraen, and the importance of the Dúnedain bloodline.

The bulk of the film was shot at the West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village in Suffolk. Forest scenes were shot in Epping Forest, and flyover shots include views of Snowdonia National Park in Wales and Derwentwater in the Lake District of England.

The Story…

In the late Third Age, Sauron's power is increasing, and he has sent his Orcs to seek out the remnants of the bloodline of Elendil, kept alive in the Dúnedain. Dirhael, his wife Ivorwen and their daughter Gilraen are fleeing from an attack on their village when they are ambushed by Orcs on a forest road, and saved by a group of rangers led by Arathorn. Not having any place safer to go, the refugees go with Arathorn to Taurdal, the village led by his father and Chieftain of the Dúnedain, Arador. While there, Arathorn and Arador ponder the Orcs' motives after finding various pieces of jewelry on their bodies. During her stay in Taurdal, Gilraen falls in love with Arathorn.

In light of the attacks on surrounding settlements, Arador leads his forces on a campaign against the Orcs in the area in an attempt to restore peace to the region. Meanwhile, he sends Arathorn separately in an attempt to determine the meaning behind the attacks. Both are successful, and Arathorn discovers the orcs are serving Sauron, who seeks the Ring of Barahir. Arathorn and Gilraen receive Arador's blessing to be wed, but Arathorn cannot summon the courage to ask Dirhael for his daughter's hand. Arador is summoned to Rivendell to seek Elrond's council, and the wedding is postponed until his return. Arathorn eventually confronts Dirhael, and receives permission to marry his daughter.

A year later, Arador is killed by a hill troll in the Coldfells, making Arathorn the chieftain of the Dúnedain. Gilraen becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son, Aragorn. Taurdal knows peace for a while, until Elladan and Elrohir come with news from Rivendell. Elrond has sensed that danger is once again threatening the region, and they request that Gilraen and Aragorn be brought back to Rivendell for safekeeping, as is the tradition with all Dúnedain heirs to the chiefdom. Before Arathorn and Gilraen can come to a decision, orcs attack the village. They are beaten off, however, many Rangers fall, and Arathorn's closest friend, Elgarain, is mortally wounded while defending Gilraen. Arathorn then leads the remaining Rangers in pursuit of the stragglers. They are successful, but Arathorn is mortally wounded in the process. Without a chieftain capable of leading them, the Dúnedain abandon Taurdal and go into hiding in small secret settlements in the forests of Rhudaur, while the Elven twins, Elladan and Elrohir, bring Aragorn with his mother Gilraen to Rivendell, and safety.

The Movie…

The idea for the film was born in 2003 when director/producer/actor Kate Madison wanted to submit a film for the Tolkien Fan Film Exhibition. Originally a modest plan, it grew until April 2006 when the first test shoot occurred. Principal photography started in June 2008, and continued through 2009. The goal was to debut at Ring*Con 2009, which it did. It was later streamed for free on various video websites including DailyMotion and YouTube.

Madison spent her life savings of £8,000 on the film. An extra £17,000 was generated by posting a trailer online, raising the budget to £25,000. Born of Hope was made over a period of six years, using a cast of 400, who would camp in tents so as to be able to shoot in the early mornings.

Christopher Dane (Arathorn) ended up getting very involved in the process of making the film, contributing to the script as well as handling the editing of the final product. Kate Madison, who directed and produced the film, was additionally cast as Elgarain.

Chris Bouchard of The Hunt for Gollum (see previous post) contributed to the production of the film as a camera operator and effects artist.

If you've not seen it, here is your opportunity to see the movie… you can find it, and much additional material, here: http://www.bornofhope.com/

The Hunt for Gollum

The Hunt for Gollum is a 38-minute 2009 British fantasy fan film directed by Chris Bouchard and based on the appendices of The Lord of the Rings.  The plot of the film is set in Middle-earth, when Gandalf the Grey fears that Gollum may reveal information about the One Ring to Sauron.  Gandalf sends ranger Aragorn on a quest to find Gollum.

Filming took place in North Wales, Epping Forest, and Hampstead Heath. The film was shot in high definition video, with a budget - amazing as it might seem - of GBP£3,000 (USD$5,000). The production is completely unofficial and unauthorized, though Bouchard said he had "reached an understanding" with Tolkien Enterprises in 2009. 

The Hunt for Gollum debuted at the Sci-Fi-London film festival and on the Internet, free to view, on 3 May 2009.  By October 20 in the same year, it had been viewed by 5 million people, and has since been viewed over 10 million times.

If you have not yet seen it, the writer of this blog would say in amazement, "Why not?  It's a  short movie that all lovers of Tolkien's sub-creation should see"  Click here --->   http://www.thehuntforgollum.com/ 

Magdalen College on a sunshiny Monday Morning

Below is an interesting introduction, explaining how a literary manuscript, marginalia based on a lost letter, a series of lectures, and oral history culminated in the publication of a book:

INTRODUCTORY

[by C. S. Lewis]

When Charles Williams died in 1945 he left two works unfinished. One was a long lyric cycle on the Arthurian legend of which two installments had already appeared under the titles of Taliessin through Logres (1938) and The Region of the Summer Stars (1944). The other was a prose work on the history of the legend which was to have been entitled The Figure of Arthur. The lyrical cycle is a difficult work which, if left without a commentary, might soon become another such battlefield for competing interpretations as Blake's Prophetic Book. Since I had heard nearly all of it read aloud and expounded by the author and had questioned him closely on his meaning I felt that I might be able to comment on it, though imperfectly, yet usefully. His most systematic exposition had been given to me in a long letter which (with that usual folly which forbids us to remember that our friends can die) I did not preserve;but fortunately I had copied large extracts from it into the margin of my copy of Taliessin at the relevant passages. On these, and on memory and comparison with Williams's other works, I based a course of lectures on the cycle which I gave at Oxford in the autumn of 1945. Since a reasonable number of people appeared to be interested I then decided to make these lectures into a book.

It soon became clear that I could hardly explain the narrative assumptions of the cycle without giving some account of the earlier forms of the story — a heavy task which I shrank from undertaking. On the other hand, those to whom Williams had committed the manuscript of the unfinished Figure of Arthur were at the same time considering how that fragment could be most suitably published. The plan on which the present book has been arranged seemed to be the best solution of both problems.In it Williams the critic and literary historian provides an introduction to my study of Williams the Arthurian poet; or, if you prefer, I add to Williams’s history of the legend an account of the last poet who has contributed to it — namely, Williams himself. Chapters IV and V of his work I saw for the first time when Mrs. A. M. Hadfield sent me a typed copy of them. The two first chapters had been read aloud by the author to Professor Tolkien and myself. It may help the reader to imagine the scene; or at least it is to me both great pleasure and great pain to recall. Picture to yourself, then, an upstairs sitting-room with windows looking north into the ‘grove’ of Magdalen College on a sunshiny Monday Morning in vacation at about ten o’clock. The Professor and I, both on the chesterfield, lit our pipes and stretched out our legs. Williams in the arm-chair opposite to us threw his cigarette into the grate, took up a pile of the extremely small, loose sheets on which he habitually wrote — they came, I think, from a twopenny pad for memoranda, and began as follows:—

From Charles William and C. S. Lewis, Arthurian Torso: Containing the Posthumous Fragment of the Figure of Arthur and a Commentary on the Arthurian Poems of Charles Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), 1-2.

Betjeman, MacNeice and Lewis in 1927

Monday 24^th January 1927

Bussed back into town and to Betjeman's rooms in St Aldates — a v. beautiful panelled room looking across to the side of the House.   found myself pitchforked into a galaxy of super-undergraduates, including Sparrow of the Nonesuch Press.  The only others I remember are Harwood of the House (no relation) and an absolutely silent and astonishingly ugly person called McNeice, of whom Betjeman said afterwards "He doesn't say much but he is a great poet".  It reminded me of the man in Boswell "who was always thinking of Locke and Newton".  his silent bard comes from Belfast or rather Carrickfergus.  The conversation was chiefly about lace curtains, arts-and-crafts (wh. they all dislike}, china ornaments, silver versus earthen teapots, architecture, and the strange habits of "Hearties".  The best thing was Betjeman's v. curious collection of books.

Came away with him and back to College to pull him along thro' Wulfstan till dinner time.  In spite of all his rattle he is really just as ignorant and stupid as Valentin.

C.S. Lewis

All My Road Before Me (1991)

[Image : Louis Macneice at Oxford]

On the Wild

"When pools are black and trees are bare, ‘tis evil in the wild to fare"

BILBO

Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien

Et in Sempiternum Pereant

[Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, just behind St. Cross Church - the large white stone in the centre marks the grave of Charles Williams]

But as Arglay bent, he was aware once more of that effluvia of heat risen round him, and breaking out with the more violence when suddenly the man, if it were man, cast his arm away, and with a jerk of movement rose once more to his feet.  His eyes, as the head went back, burned close into Arglay's, who, what with the heat, the eyes, and his sickness at the horror, shut his own against them, and was at the same moment thrown from his balance by the rising form, and sent staggering a step or two away, with upon his face the sensation of a light hot breath, so light that only in the utter stillness of time could it be felt, so hot that it might have been the inner fire from which the pillar of smoke poured outward to the world.

He recovered his balance; he opened his eyes; both motions brought him into a new corner of that world.   The odd black coat the thing had worn had disappeared, as if it had been a covering imagined by a habit of mind.  The thing itself, a wasted flicker of pallid movement, danced and gyrated in white flame before him.  Arglay saw it still, but only now as a dreamer may hear, half-asleep and half-awake, the sound of dogs barking or the crackling of fire in his very room.  For he opened his eyes not to such things, but to the thing that on the threshold of this place, some seconds earlier or some years, he had felt and been pleased to feel, to the reality of his hate.  It came in a rush within him, a fountain of fire, and without and about him images of the man he hated swept in a thick cloud of burning smoke.

The smoke burned his eyes and choked his mouth; he clutched it, at images within it - at his greedy loves and greedy hates - at the cloud of the sin of his life, yearning to catch but one image and renew again the concentration for which he yearned.  He could not. The smoke blinded and stifled him, yet more than stifling or blinding was the hunger for one true thing to lust or hate.  He was starving in the smoke, and all the hut was full of smoke, for the hut and the world were smoke, pouring up round him, from him and all like him - a thing once wholly, and still a little, made visible to his corporeal eyes in forms which they recognized, but in itself of another nature.  He swung and twisted and crouched.  His limbs ached from long wrestling with the smoke, for as the journey to this place had prolonged itself infinitely, so now, though he had no thought of measurement, the clutch of his hands and the growing sickness that invaded him struck through him the sensation of the passage of years and the knowledge of the passage of moments.  The fire sank within him, and the sickness grew, but the change could not bring him nearer to any end.  The end here was not at the end, but in the beginning.  There was no end to this smoke, to this fever and this chill, to crouching and rising and searching, unless the end was now. 

Charles Williams

Et in Sempiternum Pereant

From: "The London Mercury", 1935

Celegorm and Huan

[Image: "Celegorm - portrait" by Helena Štìpánová]

Up rode Celegorm with his spear,
and bitter death was Beren near.
With elvish steel he nigh was slain
whom Lúthien won from hopeless chain,
but baying Huan sudden sprang
before his master’s face with fang
white-gleaming, and with bristling hair,
as if he on boar or wolf did stare.

The horse in terror leaped aside,
and Celegorm in anger cried:
’Curse thee, thou baseborn dog, to dare
against thy master teeth to bare!’
But dog nor horse nor rider bold
would venture near the anger cold
of mighty Huan fierce at bay.
Red were his jaws. They shrank away,
and fearful eyed him from afar:
nor sword nor knife, nor scimitar,
no dart of bow, nor cast of spear,
master nor man did Huan fear.

There Curufin had left his life,
had Lúthien not stayed that strife.
Waking she rose and softly cried
standing distressed at Beren’s side:
’Forbear thy anger now, my lord!
nor do the work of Orcs abhorred;
for foes there be of Elfinesse
unnumbered, and they grow not less,
while here we war by ancient curse
distraught, and all the world to worse
decays and crumbles. Make thy peace!'

Then Beren did Curufin release;
but took his horse and coat of mail,
and took his knife there gleaming pale,
hanging sheathless, wrought of steel.
No flesh could leeches ever heal
that point had pierced; for long ago
the dwarves had made it, singing slow
enchantments, where their hammers fell
in Nogrod ringing like a bell.
Iron as tender wood it cleft,
and sundered mail like woollen weft.
But other hands its haft now held;
its master lay by mortal felled.

J.R.R. Tolkien

The Geste of Beren and Lúthien

(lines 3,020 - 3,063)

Childhood's End

Dear Joy,

As far as I can remember you were non-committal about Childhood's End*: I suppose you were afraid that you might raise my expectations too high and lead to disappointment. If that was your aim, it has succeeded, for I came to it expecting nothing in particular and have been thoroughly bowled over.  It is quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers; away up near Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus and Well's First Men in the Moon.

[...]There has been nothing like it for years: partly for the actual writing - 'She has left her toys behind but ours go hence with us', or 'The island rose to meet the dawn', but partly (still more, in fact) because here we meet a modern author who understands that there may be things that have a higher claim than the survival or happiness of humanity[...]

It is a strange comment on our age that such a book lies hid in a hideous paper-backed edition, wholly unnoticed by the cognoscenti, while any 'realistic' drivel about some neurotic in a London flat - something that needs no real invention at all, something that any educated man could write if he chose, may get seriously reviewed and mentioned in serious books - as if it really mattered.  I wonder how long this tyranny will last?  Twenty years ago I felt no doubt that I should live to see it all break up and great literature return: but here I am, losing teeth and hair, and still no break in the clouds.

And now, what do you think?  Do you agree that it is AN ABSOLUTE CORKER?

C.S. Lewis
Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Volume III, Letter to Joy Gresham

Dec 22, 1953

*Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End (New York: Ballantine, 1953)

The Baby and the Bird

Old Rome had many taverns,

Devoted to the vine, 

Where Ovid pledged each new love 

In red Falernian wine; 

Catullus, shamed by Lesbia, 

Poured out his grief in verse; 

Apuleus noted follies, 

And pondered which was worse. 

Refrain:

But the place that draws me ever 

When my fancy's running wild, 

Is a little pub in Oxford 

Called The Eagle and the Child, 

The Eagle and the Child, oh, 

Or else, as I have heard 

Its regulars all called it-- 

The Baby and the Bird!

The company was lively 

In Soutwark's Tabard Inn,

When Chaucer and the Pilgrims 

Were telling tales within,

And on the Canterbury road 

They took that April day, 

And at the other hostels 

Where they stayed upon their way.

(REFRAIN)

When Villon, gutter-poet, 

Reeled through the Paris night,

Drunk on verse and hypocras 

And looking for a fight, 

The Pomme de Pin, the Cheval Blanc 

All welcomed him, and more, 

With wine at every table 

And doxies at each door. 

(REFRAIN)

Of all the City's taverns,

When Bess was England's Queen, 

The Mermaid, undisputed, ruled 

The literary scene. 

Each Global play was played again 

And christened in brown ale, 

Whde Shakespeare, or Ben Jonson, 

Stood up to tell the tale. 

(REFRAIN)

Augustan wits made merry 

At London's Cheshire Cheese-- 

The topic was no matter, 

So that the manner please-- 

Be it Love or Politicks,

'Twas scandalous, I've heard,

And Johnson had his Boswell

To write down every word.

(REFRAIN) Asking, 

They sing of famous taverns, 

But considering them all, 

The one where I had rather 

Been a fly upon the wall,

Would be the Inn where Tolkien,

Lewis, Williams too,

Met with the other Inklings 

Asking, "Who has something new?"

[By Diana L. Paxson]

Diana L. Paxson, long-time active in ‘The Mythopoeic Society’, and in ‘The Society for Creative Anachronism’, is the author of many novels, including The White Raven, The "Fionn MacCumhal trilogy, and a trilogy on the Siegfried legend, the most recent volume of which, The Lord of Horses, has been published recently.

The Rabbit Room

Prologue

Memorabilia adorns me now.  Quiet photographs of the legends I once accommodated.  A plaque commemorating their presence.  Hordes of tourists come to visit, take snaps, film it with their phones – gasping in delight at how tiny the snug is, how quaint.  They pretend to enjoy a pint of tepid English beer, the stodgy food.  Enthusiasts linger.  Writers stay even longer.  Sitting in the corner – the hallowed corner – trying to imbibe the atmosphere, to capture the ambience.  They ponder on literary immortality while trying to ensure a place for their own ink-stained soul in the bardic firmament.  Here is as good a spot as any cathedral or mosque.  This last homely house, this Prancing Pony, is a wardrobe, a wood between the worlds, a portal to magical lands – to Middle Earth, Perelandra, Narnia, Logres.  Once it was the rabbit hole to Wonderland and now it’s a knife-cut gateway to Jordan College, to quantum worlds beyond reckoning.  The new chap has been in, of course, raised a glass to his antecedents, two fingers to Jack.  Perhaps one day they’ll be visiting his old haunts?  The God-botherers and the pagans, the atheist scholars and fanatic movie devotees in costume.  All those who come to pay homage here.  To breathe in the same air – well, almost – it no longer swirls with pipesmoke and cigarettes, but the fire still crackles in the grate, the pumps provide the same local ales, the kitchen offers its homity pie, the barflies their homilies, and when its quiet, when the customers don’t drown out the silence with their chatter, the voices come back, the ghosts in the wall stir, those lost lunchtimes are replayed – a decade of Tuesdays – recorded like voices from long ago on wax cylinder and reel-to-reel, by the wooden Akashic record of my walls.  Listen…

A Radio Drama by Kevan Manwaring

www.kevanmanwaring.co.uk

(Used with permission)

9/11

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has a passage which may remind us all of the way recent events have affected the lives of everyone in the world: 

“What awaited them on this island was going to concern Eustace more than anyone else, but it cannot be told in his words because after September 11 he forgot about keeping his diary for a long time.” 

C.S. Lewis
Voyage of the Dawn Treader - Chapter 5 

Perhaps an opportune time to hear a passage from a talk which CS Lewis gave in Oxford during WW2.  Still applicable to the changed world in which we live: 

“The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it.  Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.  Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself.  If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would have never begun... we are mistaken when we compare war to 'normal life.'  Life has never been normal.  Even those periods we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out on closer inspection, to be full of crises, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. 

C.S. Lewis
Learning in War-Time

Food Parcels and Stationery

Following the Second World War, the peoples of Europe had been left hungry and miserable, with the economies of most European countries in ruin. Lewis' many American fans took it upon themselves to send him numerous care packages to supplement the meager food rations available.

I just don't know what to say in answer to your letter of 23rd January. One, two, perhaps even three parcels can be inadequately but not entirely unsuitably acknowledged, but what is one to say when bombarded with a non-stop stream of kindnesses? Nothing has in my time made such a profound impression in this country as the amazing outburst of individual American generosity which has followed on the disclosure of our economic situation. (I say nothing of government action, because naturally this strikes the 'man in the street' much less obviously). The length of time which a parcel takes to cross the Atlantic is a significant indication of the volume of food which must be pouring into England.

As regards the 'Tuxedo -- 'dinner jacket' here, 'le smoking' in Paris -- if it doesn't fit me, it will certainly fit one of my friends, and will save some grateful man a year's clothing coupons: and at least £25 cash.

As regards things to send - don't send any of that 66 million tons of snow, thanks very much! We still shudder when we think of last winter*. A packet or two of envelopes are almost always welcome**; a small thing, but the constant shortage of them becomes very irritating to a busy man after a time. With heartiest thanks for all your great kindness, and best good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C.S. Lewis

The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis Volume II

Letter to Edward A. Allen, 29 January 1948

*The British winter of 1947 was one of the coldest since records began in 1740. Between 22 January and 17 March snow fell every day somewhere in Britain, and the temperature rarely rose more than a degree or two above freezing.

**subsequent letters indicate Mr. Allen did send Lewis a substantial stock of stationery.

Tolkien and languages

I am a West-midlander by blood (and took to early west-midland Middle English as a known tongue as soon as I set eyes on it), but perhaps a fact of my personal history may partly explain why the 'North-western air' appeals to me both as 'home' and as something discovered. I was actually born in Bloemfontein, and so those deeply implanted impressions, underlying memories that are still pictorially available for inspection, of first childhood are for me those of a hot parched country. My first Christmas memory is of blazing sun, drawn curtains and a drooping eucalyptus.

I am afraid this is becoming a dreadful bore, and going on too long, at any rate longer than 'this contemptible person before you' merits. But it is difficult to stop once roused on such an absorbing topic to oneself as oneself. As for the conditioning: I am chiefly aware of the linguistic conditioning. I went to King Edward's School and spent most of my time learning Latin and Greek; but I also learned English. Not English Literature! Except Shakespeare (which I disliked cordially), the chief contacts with poetry were when one was made to try and translate it into Latin. Not a bad mode of introduction, if a bit casual. I mean something of the English language and its history. I learned Anglo-Saxon at school (also Gothic, but that was an accident quite unconnected with the curriculum though decisive — I discovered in it not only modern historical philology, which appealed to the historical and scientific side, but for the first time the study of a language out of mere love: I mean for the acute aesthetic pleasure derived from a language for its own sake, not only free from being useful but free even from being the 'vehicle of a literature').

There are two strands, or three. A fascination that Welsh names had for me, even if only seen on coal-trucks, from childhood is another; though people only gave me books that were incomprehensible to a child when I asked for information. I did not learn any Welsh till I was an undergraduate, and found in it an abiding linguistic-aesthetic satisfaction. Spanish was another: my guardian was half Spanish, and in my early teens I used to pinch his books and try to learn it : the only Romance language that gives me the particular pleasure of which I am speaking-it is not quite the same as the mere perception of beauty: I feel the beauty of say Italian or for that matter of modern English (which is very remote from my personal taste): it is more like the appetite for a needed food. Most important, perhaps, after Gothic was the discovery in Exeter College library, when I was supposed to be reading for Honour Mods, of a Finnish Grammar. It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me; and I gave up the attempt to invent an 'unrecorded' Germanic language, and my 'own language' – or series of invented languages – became heavily Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure.

That is of course long past now. Linguistic taste changes like everything else, as time goes on; or oscillates between poles. Latin and the British type of Celtic have it now, with the beautifully co-ordinated and patterned (if simply patterned) Anglo-Saxon near at hand and further off the Old Norse with the neighbouring but alien Finnish. Roman-British might not one say? With a strong but more recent infusion from Scandinavia and the Baltic. Well, I daresay such linguistic tastes, with due allowance for school-overlay, are as good or better a test of ancestry as blood-groups.

All this only as background to the stories, though languages and names are for me inextricable from the stories. They are and were so to speak an attempt to give a background or a world in which my expressions of linguistic taste could have a function. The stories were comparatively late in coming.

I first tried to write a story when I was about seven. It was about a dragon. I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say 'a green great dragon', but had to say 'a great green dragon'. I wondered why, and still do. The fact that I remember this is possibly significant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a story again for many years, and was taken up with language.

I mentioned Finnish, because that set the rocket off in story. I was immensely attracted by something in the air of the Kalevala, even in Kirby's poor translation. I never learned Finnish well enough to do more than plod through a bit of the original, like a schoolboy with Ovid; being mostly taken up with its effect on 'my language'. But the beginning of the legendarium, of which the Trilogy is pan (the conclusion), was in an attempt to reorganize some of the Kalevala, especially the tale of Kullervo the hapless, into a form of my own. That began, as I say, in the Honour Mods period; nearly disastrously as I came very near having my exhibition taken off me if not being sent down. Say 1912 to 1913. As the thing went on I actually wrote in verse. Though the first real story of this imaginary world almost fully formed as it now appears was written in prose during sick-leave at the end of 1916: The Fall of Gondolin, which I had the cheek to read to the Exeter College Essay Club in 1918. I wrote a lot else in hospitals before the end of the First Great War.

Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

#163 [To W.H. Auden – excerpt]

7 June 1955