The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor

(Image: 'Ungoliant and the Two Trees' by Ted Nasmith)

A! the Trees of Light,     tall and shapely,

gold and silver,     more glorious than the sun,

than the moon more magical,     o'er the meads of the Gods

their fragrant frith     and flowerladen

gardens gleaming,     once gladly shone.

In death they are darkened,     they drop their leaves

from blackened branches     bled by Morgoth

and Ungoliant the grim     the Gloomweaver.

In spider's form     despair and shadow

a shuddering fear     and shapeless night

she weaves in a web     of winding venom

that is black and breathless.     Their branches fail,

the light and laughter     of their leaves are quenched.

Mirk goes marching,     mists of blackness,

through the halls of the Mighty     hushed and empty,

the gates of the Gods     are in gloom mantled.

J.R.R. Tolkien

“The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor”

(lines 1 to 16)

The Lays of Beleriand (1985)

The Discarded Image

Mars makes iron.  He gives men the martial temperament, ' sturdy hardiness', as the Wife of Bath calls it.  But he is a bad planet, Infortuna Minor.  He causes wars.  His sphere, in Dante, is the Heaven of martyrs; partly for the obvious reason but partly, I suspect, because of a mistaken philological connection between martyr and Martem.

Sol is the point at which the concordat between the mythical and the astrological nearly breaks down.  Mythi­cally, Jupiter is the King, but Sol produces the noblest metal, gold, and is the eye and mind of the whole universe.  He makes men wise and liberal and his sphere is the Heaven of theologians and philosophers.  Though he is no more metallurgical than any other planet his metallurgical operations are more often mentioned than theirs.  We read in Donne's Allophanes and Idios how soils which the Sun could make into gold may lie too far from the surface for his beams to take effect (61).  Spenser's Mammon brings his hoard out to 'sun’ it.  If it were already gold, he would have no motive for doing this.  It is still hore (grey); he suns it that it may become gold.   Sol produces fortunate events.

In beneficence Venus stands second only to Jupiter; she is Fortuna Minor.  Her metal is copper.  The connection is not clear till we observe that Cyprus was once famed for its copper mines; that copper is cyprium, the Cyprian metal; and that Venus, or Aphrodite, especially worshipped in that island, the Lady of Cyprus.  In mortals she produces beauty and amorousness; in history, fortunate events.  Dante makes her sphere the Heaven not, as we might expect from a more obvious poet, of the charitable, but of those, now penitent, who in this life loved greatly and lawlessly.  Here he meets Cunizza, four times a wife and twice a mistress, and Rahab the harlot (Paradiso, ix).  They are in swift, incessant flight (viii, 19-27) — a likeness in unlikeness to the impenitent and storm-borne lovers of Inferno, v.

Mercury produces quicksilver.  Dante gives his sphere to beneficent men of action.  Isidore, on the other hand, says this planet is called Mercurius because he is the patron of profit (mercibus praeest).    Gower says that the man born under Mercury will be 'studious' and 'in writinge curious'...

C.S.  Lewis

The Discarded Image

Chapter V – The Heavens

Writers in Community

As Tolkien began his teaching career at the University of Leeds, he joined with his colleague E. V. Gordon to establish the Viking Club, a gathering of undergraduates devoted to reading sagas and translating songs and children's tales into Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse.  Later, when Tolkien took a position at Oxford, he founded the Coalbiters, a group that consisted not of undergraduates but college dons; as we have seen, it was through the Coalbiters that Tolkien and Lewis became friends.

Much more could be said.  Carpenter's biography of Tolkien and Garth's book on Tolkien's early years paint a compelling picture.  Tolkien's involvement in groups is impressive; his leadership in founding and developing them is significant; the extent to which his creative imagination was nurtured in them is extraordinary.  In short, participation with the Inklings was not an isolated happenstance in Tolkien's life, but rather the continuation of a long-established pattern of working with others.  Furthermore, he continued to work in a context of creative interaction even after the Inklings ceased to meet.  One particularly compelling example is Tolkien's communication with Clyde S. Kilby as he struggled to complete the work of his heart, The Silmarillion Kilby, a professor of English at Wheaton College, wrote to Tolkien in 1965, expressing his desire to help with The Silmarillion:

I hope you will not feel me impertinent if I make you the following offer:  Being eager to see The Silmarillion published, I should like to come over to Oxford next summer and render you any help I can. I am 1) a good typist 2) a bit of a literary critic, having written for the largest newspapers in this country 3) an enthusiast for your writings, having conducted last semester a seminar on them at my college, and 4) for many years I have been used to handling every sort of correspondence.  I mention these four rather disparate things with the notion of persuading you I could fit in somewhere, (unpublished letter, 19 November 1965).

Kilby wrote to offer practical help, professional expertise, and enthusiastic support.  Tolkien saw the need for it and accepted Kilby’s offer in a letter written on 18 December 1965: "If I had the assistance of a scholar at once sympathetic and yet critical, such as yourself, I feel I might make some of it publishable.  It needs the actual presence of a friend and adviser at one’s side, which is just what you offer" (Letters #366).  Tolkien is clearly grateful for the offer of help but even more so for the physical presence of an interested reader, a friend and adviser, a resonator who comes alongside.

Diana Pavlac Glyer

The Company They Keep

Chapter 8 – Creativity : Appreciating Interaction

The day death died

The first thing he did was to lower himself and be born as one of "them." We almost got him killed when he was a baby. But he eluded us then. He grew up to be a man. He taught those poor humans about himself, all the while not really spreading around who he was. Then one day he gave himself up to be killed by a bunch of jealous religious leaders. We figured it was a big bluff. Just an excuse to perform a public miracle and escape at the last minute. But he actually went through with it. He let them nail him to a cross and he died. We all thought, "Aha, you're beaten now! You've just made your big mistake!"

All of us were feeling, for a few hours, a big relief from that constant fear we had always felt toward the Enemy. Maybe all those prophecies about our last judgement would never happen after all. Death had claimed the Creator of life. Finally our Lord Satan would be undisputed ruler of all.

Then Sunday morning came. The Enemy reappeared. Suddenly, he was alive. Death could not hold him. But it was even worse than that. He had become an innocent sacrifice for the sins of all those humans. He had paid their penalty. He had died in their place. Now death could not hold them either. They could be forgiven and reunited with the Enemy. They can now live forever. For all practical purposes, death has died. There has never been a more disastrous day in the history of the universe.

That, my dear Wormwood, is the whole sad truth.

C.S. Lewis

The Screwtape Letters

My friend of friends...

20 May 1945

I also have become much acquainted with grief now through the death of my great friend Charles Williams, my friend of friends, the comforter of all our little set, the most angelic man. The odd thing is that his death has made my faith stronger than it was a week ago. And I find that all that talk about 'feeling that he is closer to us than before' isn't just talk. It's just what it does feel like — I can't put it into words. One seems at moments to be living in a new world. Lots, lots of pain, but not a particle of depression or resentment...

Letters of C.S. Lewis
(edited by W.H. Lewis) 1966

Via Mortis

He measured out the rope to twice the length of his outstretched arms, and when the ruined city was once more silent he peered over, letting that measured section run through his hands. The end dangled much more than his height from the ground, and at that he twisted and knotted the next yard or two around the pole, straining against it, tugging it, making certain it could not ease loose. The moon emerged as he finished, and in a panic he dragged up the loose end, and shrank back from the edge, well back, so that no watcher should see him from the road. There, lying flat on his empty belly, he began his penultimate activity. He knotted, as best he could, the end of the rope about his neck, with a great and clumsy, but effective, slip knot. He tried it again and again, more fearful than ever lest its failure, because of his own, should betray him back into a life which his frenzy felt as already ghostly. He felt that he could not bear that last betrayal, for he would never have courage to repeat this mighty act of decision. The dreadful universe perhaps would spare him that, if he were careful now. He was very careful.

As, exhausted by the necessary labour, he lay flat on that stage of the spectral ascent, amid the poles and unroofed walls, he did not consider any future but unfortunate accident or fortunate death. He was almost shut up in his moment, and his hope was only that the next moment might completely close him in. No dichotomy of flesh and spirit distressed or delighted him nor did he know anything of the denial of that dichotomy by the creed of Christendom. The unity of that creed has proclaimed, against experience, against intelligence, that for the achievement of man's unity the body of his knowledge is to be raised; no other fairer stuff, no alien matter, but this to be impregnated with holiness and transmuted by lovely passion perhaps, but still this. Scars and prints may disseminate splendour, but the body is to be the same, the very body of the very soul that are both names of the single man. This man was not even terrified by that future, for he did not think of it. He desired only the end of the gutter and of the voice; to go no farther, to hear no more, to be done. Presently he remembered that time was passing; he must be quick or they would catch him, on his platform or as he fell, and if he fell into the safety of their hands he would fall into his old utter insecurity. All he knew of the comfort of the world meant only more pain. He got awkwardly to his feet; he must be quick.

He was not very quick. Something that was he dragged at him, and as he crawled to the edge dragged more frantically at something still in him. He had supposed he had wanted to die, and only at the last even he discovered that he wanted also not to die. Unreasonably and implacably, he wanted not to die. But also he wanted not to live, and the two rejections blurred his brain and shook his body. He half struggled to his feet in his agony; he twisted round and hung half over, his back to the abyss; he clutched at the rope, meaning to hold it and release it as he fell, to such an extreme of indecision pretending decision did his distress drive him, and then as the circling movement of his body ended, twining the rope once more round his neck, he swayed and yelped and knew that he was lost, and fell.

Charles Williams

Descent into Hell

Chapter 2 - Via Mortis

The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis

To be published this Spring...

Marking the 50th anniversary of Lewis’ death, The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis sees leading Christian thinker Alister McGrath offering a fresh approach to understanding the key themes at the centre of Lewis’ theological work and intellectual development. Brings together a collection of original essays exploring important themes within Lewis’ work, offering new connections and insights into his theology. Throws new light on subjects including Lewis’ intellectual development, the uses of images in literature and theology, the place of myth in modern thought, the role of the imagination in making sense of the world, the celebrated ′argument from desire′, and Lewis’ place as an Anglican thinker and a Christian theologian.

Written by Alister McGrath, one of the world’s leading Christian thinkers and authors; this exceptional pairing of McGrath and Lewis brings together the work of two outstanding theologians in one volume.

Angband

Into the vast and echoing gloom 

more dread than many-tunnelled tomb
in Labyrinthine pyramid
where everlasting death is hid,
down awful corridors that wind
down to a menace dark enshrined;
down to the mountain's roots profound,
devoured, tormented, bored and ground
by seething vermin spawned of stone;
down to the depths they went alone.
The arch behind of twilit shade
they saw recede and dwindling fade;
the thunderous forges' rumour grew,
a burning wind there roaring blew
foul vapours up from gaping holes.
Huge shapes there stood like carven trolls
enormous hewn of blasted rock
to forms that mortal likeness mock;
monstrous and menacing, entombed,
at every turn they silent loomed
in fitful glares that leaped and died
There hammers clanged, and tongues there cried
with sound like smitten stone; there wailed
faint from far under, called and failed
amid the iron clink of chain
voices of captives put to pain.

J.R.R. Tolkien

The Geste of Beren and Lúthien

Book XIII.

(lines 3,850 – 3865)

My free act contributes to 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)

[Image : The Kilns in July]

Voyage to Venus

I don't know much about what people call the religious view of life,' said Ransom, wrinkling his brow. 'You see, I'm a Christian. And what we mean by the Holy Ghost is not a blind, inarticulate purposiveness.'

'My dear Ransom,' said Weston, 'I understand you perfectly. I have no doubt that my phraseology will seem strange to you, and perhaps even shocking. [...] But [...] believe me, we are talking about exactly the same thing.'

'I'm not at all sure that we are.'

'That, if you will permit me to say so, is one of the real weaknesses of organised religion -- that adherence to formulae, that failure to recognize one's own friends.'

But quickly enough, it becomes obvious that it is only Weston's body that is present; Weston is clearly no longer human, being totally possessed by the Evil One himself.

'But this is very foolish,' said the Un-man. 'Do you not know who I am?'

'I know what you are,' said Ransom. 'Which of them doesn't matter.'

'And you think, little one,' it answered, that you can fight with me? You think He will help you, perhaps? Many thought that. I've known Him longer than you, little one. They all think He's going to help them -- till they come to their senses screaming recantations too late in the middle of the fire, mouldering in concentration camps, writhing under saws, jibbering in mad-houses, or nailed on to crosses. Could He help Himself?' -- and the creature suddenly threw back its head and cried in a voice so loud that it seemed the golden sky-roof must break, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.'

And the moment it had done so, Ransom felt certain that the sounds it had made were perfect Aramic of the first century. The Un-man was not quoting; it was remembering. These were the very words spoken from the Cross, treasured through all those years in the burning memory of the outcast creature which had heard them, and now brought forward inhideous parody; the horror made him momentarily sick.

C.S. Lewis

Voyage to Venus (Perelandra)

The Giant Slayer

When they came out into the air John blinked a little, but not much, for they were still only in a half-light under the shadow of the giant, who was very angry, with smoke coming from his mouth, so that he looked more like a volcano than an ordinary mountain.  And now John gave himself up for lost, but just as the jailor had dragged him up to the giant's feet, and had cleared his throat, and begun 'The case against this prisoner—' there was a commotion and a sound of horse's hoofs. The jailor looked round, and even (the giant took his terrible eyes off John and looked round: and last of all, John himself looked round too. They saw some of the guard coming towards them leading a great black stallion, and in it was seated a figure wound in a cloak of blue which was hooded over the head and came down concealing the face.

'Another prisoner, Lord,' said the leader of the guards.

Then very slowly the giant raised his great, heavy finger and pointed to the mouth of the dungeon.

'Not yet,' said the hooded figure. Then suddenly it stretched out its hands with the fetters on them-and made a quick movement of the wrists. There was a tinkling sound as the fragments of the broken chain fell on the rock at the horse's feet: and the guardsmen let go the bridle and fell back, watching. Then the rider threw back the cloak and a flash of steel smote light into John's eyes and on the giant's face.  John saw that it was a woman in the flower of her age: she was so tall that she seemed to him a Titaness, a sun-bright virgin clad in complete steel, with a sword naked in her hand.  The giant bent forward in his chair and looked at her.

'Who are you', he said.

'My name is Reason,' said the virgin.

C.S. Lewis
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)
Chapter Nine ~ The Giant Slayer

Lessons from the death of J.R.R.T.

In September 1973, Father John Tolkien celebrated a Requiem Mass for his father at the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, in Oxford.  JRR Tolkien was buried next to his wife Edith in a Catholic cemetery just outside Oxford at Wolvercote.  He may have penned his own epitaph in 1956, shortly after The Lord of the Rings was published, when he wrote: “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a long defeat — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.”

This sense of exile was present in The Lord of the Rings.  At the end of the story many of the heroes travel, quietly and alone, to the Grey Havens, a harbour containing ships to take passengers on a one-way voyage away from Middle-Earth.  Against all odds good has triumphed, but at a terrible cost.  Some of the travellers are scarred by evil, others by sorrow. The boat slips anchor and fades into the darkness, leaving in its wake a glimmer of light, which in turn disappears.  A sense of melancholy prevails.

“Pullulating as if with unspermed life...”

Otherworldliness, longing and sensuality in All Hallows Eve...

They were all now in a world of simple act. The time for thought, dispute, preparation was done. They were in the City. They were potent to act or impotent to act, but that was the only difference between any of them. The eyes of the woman who lay, incapable of act, against the abandoned chair, were also on Betty and greedy with the same murderous desire. The diseased creatures, also incapable, who lay around the circle, trembled and moaned a little with their helpless longing for the act of healing. She and they alike yearned towards act, and could not reach it. The dwarf-form was still in motion, and its motions as it forced its way on were both its own and Evelyn's-it magically drawn to its origin, she spiritually driving to her refuge. Betty felt that invisible soft mass press against her everywhere-against head and breasts, hands and thighs and legs. She gasped out to Jonathan: "Let go- you must. I may; not you. Only one of us, and I knew her." She wrenched her own hand free from his and struck it backward against him, as Lester had struck at Richard, one gesture whether accurst or blest. In the fierceness of her knowledgeable love, she struck so hard -- all heaven in the blow -- that he loosed his arm from her and fell back a pace. Richard caught and steadied him. At that moment, as Betty entered the circle, the rain broke in.

It came with a furious rush, as if it had beaten the roof down under it. But in fact the roof had not fallen. The rain drove through it, and down over all of them, torrential, but torrential most over the centre of the circle as if the centre of a storm was settled there. Under the deluge the doll on the chair at once melted; it ran over the woman's hand and wholly disappeared, except for a thin film of liquid putrescence which covered them, pullulating as if with unspermed life. She saw it, and under it her hands still bloody; she shook them wildly and tried to tear at them, but the thin pulsing jelly was everywhere over them, and her fingers could not get through it. For the first time in her life she began to sob, with a hideous harsh sound; and as her obstinacy melted like the doll under the rain she scrambled to her feet and made for Simon, the tears on her aged cheeks, clutching at him, with those useless and helpless hands. He did not notice her; it was his misfortune.

Charles Williams “All Hallows Eve”
Ch 10 : The Acts of the City

Dor-na-Fauglith, Land of Thirst

Once wide and smooth a plain was spread,
where King Fingolfin proudly led
his silver armies on the green,
his horses white, his lances keen;
his helmets tall of steel were hewn,
his shields were shining as the moon.
There trumpets sang both long and loud,
and challenge rang unto the cloud
that lay on Morgoth's northern tower,
while Morgoth waited for his hour.

Rivers of fire at dead of night
in winter lying cold and white
upon the plain burst forth, and high
the red was mirrored in the sky.
From Hithlum's walls they saw the fire,
the steam and smoke in spire on spire
leap up, till in confusion vast
the stars were choked. And so it passed,
the mighty field, and turned to dust,
to drifting sand and yellow rust,
to thirsty dunes where many bones
lay broken among barren stones. 

Dor-na-Fauglith, Land of Thirst,
they after named it, waste accurst,
the raven-haunted roofless grave
of many fair and many brave.
Thereon the stony slopes look forth
from Deadly Nightshade falling north,
from sombre pines with pinions vast,
black-plumed and drear, as many a mast
of sable-shrouded ships of death
slow wafted on a ghostly breath.

J.R.R. Tolkien

The Geste of Beren and Lúthien

(lines 3,246 to 3,277)

Image: Silmarillion: To Angband

by LadyElleth

C.S. Lewis at the BBC

For each talk in his first series, the BBC paid C.S. Lewis a fee of ten guineas plus an allowance to cover the cost of the railway journey from Oxford to London and back. Lewis had no intention of keeping the money for himself, and told his producer, Eric Fenn, that he'd prefer to give the fee to someone else. Fenn promised Lewis to let him know if this was possible, and before too long the BBC Contracts Department wrote to Lewis accordingly: 'We understand from Mr Fenn that you would like us to make the fees for your talks   payable to some person other than yourself. Please let us know to whom you wish these fees be made payable, we will act in accordance with your instructions,'

Lewis's instructions are heeded: 'As you request, we have asked our accounts department to make the cheque for fifty guineas payable to Miss Whitty of 7 Chertsey Road, Bristol 6 and I enclose a copy of the letter sent to her today. The [train] fare will be sent direct to you.'  In the accompanying letter to Miss Whitty, the BBC's Contracts Department wrongly assumes that C.S. Lewis must be a clergyman to give a religious talk and simply states that 'the Rev. C.S. Lewis has recently broadcast five talks in our programmes and asked us to make the cheque for his fees payable to you'.

Lewis never kept the fees for himself but always gave them away.

Justin Phillips

C.S. Lewis at the BBC (Harper Collins)

Ch.9 What Christians Believe

Positive Depravity...

So much for Nature's imperfection; her positive depravity calls for a very different explanation. According to the Christians this is all due to sin: the sin both of men and of powerful, non-human beings, supernatural but created... To be sure, the morbid inquisitiveness about such beings which led our ancestors to a pseudo-science of Demonology, is to be sternly discouraged: our attitude should be that of the sensible citizen in wartime who believes that there are enemy spies in our midst but disbelieves nearly every particular spy story. We must limit ourselves to the general statement that beings in a different, and higher 'Nature' which is partially interlocked with ours have, like men, fallen and have tampered with things inside our frontier. The doctrine, besides proving itself fruitful of good in each man's spiritual life, helps to protect us from shallowly optimistic or pessimistic views of Nature. To call her either 'good' or 'evil' is boys' philosophy. We find ourselves in a world of transporting pleaures, ravishing beauties, and tantalising possibilities, but all constantly being destroyed, all coming to nothing. Nature has all the air of a good thing spoiled.

The sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will: thus surrendering a portion of His omnipotence (it is again a deathlike or descending movement) because He saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, He could work out (and this is the reascent) a deeper happiness and a fuller splendour than any world of automata would admit.

C.S. Lewis, Miracles (1947)

Beren and the Red Maw

Beren, in the form of a werewolf (Draugluin) at the gates of Angband,
meets Carcharoth, the Red Maw...

Before those gates alone they stood,
while Carcharoth in doubtful mood, 
glowered upon them, and snarling spoke, 
and echoes in the arches woke:
"Hail! Draugluin, my kindred's lord! 
'Tis very long since hitherward
thou camest. Yea, tis passing strange 
to see thee now: a grievous change 
is on thee, lord, who once so dire, 
so dauntless, and as fleet as fire, 
ran over wild and waste, but now
with weariness must bend and bow! 
'Tis hard to find the struggling breath 
when Huan's teeth as sharp as death 
have rent the throat? What fortune rare 
brings thee back living here to fare--
if Draugluin thou are? Come near! 
I would know more, and see thee clear".

J.R.R. Tolkien

(lines 3750 - 3767)

The Geste of Beren and Luthien

[Image : Clive Lauzon]

Forbidden Pleasure

Quick! The black, sulphurous, never quenched,

Old festering fire begins to play

Once more within. Look! By brute force I have wrenched

Unmercifully my hands the other way.

Quick, Lord! On the rack thus, stretched tight,

Nerves clamouring as at nature's wrong.

Scorched to the quick, whipp'd raw—Lord, in this plight

You see, you see no man can suffer long.

Quick, Lord! Before new scorpions bring

New venom—ere fiends blow the fire

A second time—quick, show me that sweet thing

Which, 'spite of all, more deeply I desire.

C.S. Lewis

Poems (Bles) 1964

Neville Cogill and Vladek (Kronsteen) Sheybal

In 1959, the Polish actor Vladek Sheybal arrived in England not knowing anyone and unable to speak English. He supported himself by working in menial jobs in a Polish delicatessen and then in an artifical jewellery shop in Brick Lane, London. When he finished his job at the jewellery shop, he took a train from Paddington station to Oxford with all his worldy goods in a small suitcase, and the only money he had in the world -- ten English pounds.

Soon after Vladek arrived in Oxford, the typical English weather turned sour and it began to rain. Taking refuge in a coffee shop, he was recognised and later befriended, by students who had seen the Polish film "Kanal" (1956) in which Vladek was featured, the night before at their local cinema -- a film as poignant and thought provoking now as it was then, I know I own a copy!

Eventually, Vladek became a recognised student of English Literature at Merton College, Oxford after being taken under the wing of Professor Neville Coghill.

In 1963, Vladek was offered a small part in the second James Bond film "From Russia with Love" but was reluctant to take the part and turned it down. Eventually he was persuaded by Sean Connery (who was by now a close friend) to take the role of the villanous chess master 'Kronsteen'. Vladek played the part as usual, to perfection; creating a character so elegantly arrogant that 'Kronsteen' is perhaps the most believable and memorable Bond villains of the entire series.

Wonder if Vladek met the rest of the Inklings whilst at Merton? After all J.R.R. Tolkien, Neville Coghill and Hugo Dyson were all fellows at Merton in the 1950s.

Very, very interesting man Coghill...

A 'Tolkien' Christmas

Every December an envelope bearing a stamp from the North Pole would arrive for J.R.R. Tolkien’s children.  Inside would be a letter in strange spidery handwriting and a beautiful coloured drawing or some sketches.  The letters were from Father Christmas.

They told wonderful tales of life at the North Pole: how all the reindeer got loose and scattered presents all over the place; how the accident-prone Polar Bear climbed the North Pole and fell through the roof of Father Christmas’s house into the dining-room; how he broke the Moon into four pieces and made the Man in it fall into the back garden; how there were wars with the troublesome horde of goblins who lived in the caves beneath the house!

Sometimes the Polar Bear would scrawl a note, and sometimes Ilbereth the Elf would write in his elegant flowing script, adding yet more life and humour to the stories.  No reader, young or old, can fail to be charmed by the inventiveness and ‘authenticity’ of Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas.  Seek out a copy!

  

George Allen & Unwin (London) 1976

A 'Williams' Christmas

A "spiritual thriller" about supernatural powers breaking in on everyday life when they are summoned for selfish purposes.

In the 1920s or '30s, in England, a young woman, Nancy Coningsby, the daughter of a minor civil servant, is engaged to a young man from the Roma (Gypsy) people. Nancy's father, owns a very rare, old set of Tarot cards bequeathed to him by a deceased friend, and it is his intention to turn the cards over to a museum upon his own death. Nancy's fiancée, Henry, realises that this particular Tarot pack is the only ‘true’ pack in existence. A pack that is so accurately rendered that it can truly summon and command occult powers, as opposed to other sets that lack any real power.

Henry's grandfather, Aaron, occupies a 17th century house where there is a table in a secret room, and on the table, there is a collection of miniature figures in a perpetual dance that represents the ‘Great Dance,’ which is said to be the foundation of the universe. If the pack of cards can come into the possession of the owner of the table and the miniature figures, then the owner will achieve absolute power and be able to command the four elements of earth, wind, water, and fire.

Henry contrives to lure Nancy, her father, Mr. Coningsby, and Nancy's Aunt Sybil, who lives with them, to Aaron's house for Christmas, in the hope of getting the cards away from Coningsby. Since Henry cannot use direct violence, he uses the occult power of the cards to create a blinding snowstorm when Coningsby goes out for a walk on Christmas afternoon, with the desire that he will die in the storm.

Sybil is so aware of the love of God in her life, that she lives in a continuous atmosphere of deep, loving calm, given over entirely to the will of her creator.

Here is Sybil stepping out into the teeth of the supernatural snowstorm, a storm specifically conjured to kill:

“... she surrendered herself to the only certain thing that her life had discovered: she adored in this movement also the extreme benevolence of Love... she enjoyed; literally enjoyed, for both knowledge and thankfulness grew one, and joy was their union, but that union darted out towards a new subject and centre.”

Something goes awry with the snow storm, which spirals out of control, and we are informed by Henry and Aaron that the elements will now destroy the world...

Charles Williams – The Greater Trumps

A 'Lewis' Christmas

Three things go by the name of Christmas.  One is a religious festival.  This is important and obligatory for Christians; but as it can be of no interest to anyone else, I shall naturally say no more about it here.

The second (it has complex historical connections with the first, but we needn't go into them) is a popular holiday, an occasion for merry-making and hospitality.  If it were my business too have a 'view' on this, I should say that I much approve of merry-making.  But what I approve of much more is everybody minding his own business.  I see no reason why I should volunteer views as to how other people should spend their own money in their own leisure among their own friends.  It is highly probable that they want my advice on such matters as little as I want theirs.

But the third thing called Christmas is unfortunately everyone's business.  I mean of course the commercial racket.  The interchange of presents was a very small ingredient in the older English festivity.  Mr. Pickwick took a cod with him to Dingley Dell; the reformed Scrooge ordered a turkey for his clerk; lovers sent love gifts; toys and fruit were given to children.  But the idea that not only all friends but even all acquaintances should give one another presents, or at least send one another cards, is quite modern and has been forced upon us by the shopkeepers.

C. S. Lewis

God in the Dock

(Essays on Theology and Ethics)

He would have much preferred to operate necromantically...

He believed therefore that as, by proper magical means, a soul could within certain limits of time, be recalled to its body, so this false body might for a time ensnare and hold that other soul which was his enemy.  He would have much preferred to operate necromantically on Lester's own proper body, and if Richard had remained under his influence he would have obtained through him some possession of hers which would have served for the first faint magical link with that body, and so set up a relation between them which might have brought her now corrupting flesh — or perhaps the scattered ashes of her cremated body — into this very hall.  But Richard had failed him, and he had no time to take more subtle ways; the danger to his domination of Betty now arising from Jonathan and from Lester was too great.  He knew that the government of this world would be driven by popular pressure to make some approach to him, and that in no very long period the fatal meeting with his Types would be forced on him-fatal because though at a distance they might be energized and driven by his will, yet when the three met they must dwindle and fade beside him.  And first he must have sent his daughter into the spiritual world.  He must be for ever before he could be now.  So that altogether time was against him; the first condition of the universe was against him.  He was hurried; he had to make haste.  Therefore the magical trap; therefore its tossing, as he now proposed, into the ordinariness of earth.

He whispered into the ear of the dwarf-woman, still pressing his hands on it. He and it were now alone in the hall.  It could not be said to hear him, but it received his breath.  He was now separated from those two other children of earth, and they from him, unless he deliberately called them.  He knew that their awareness must be now of and through the body they in some sense inhabited; not that they lived in it as in a place, but that they only knew through it.  There was no limit to the number of spiritual beings who could know in that way through one body, for there was not between any of them and it any organic relation.  The singleness of true incarnation must always be a mystery to the masters of magic; of that it may be said that the more advanced the magic, the deeper the mystery, for the very nature of magic is opposed to it.  Powerful as the lie may be, it is still a lie.  Birth and death are alike unknown to it; there is only conjunction and division.  But the lie has its own laws.  Once even Lester had assented to that manner of knowledge, she must enter the City so.  It remained to discover what she could do there.

Charles Williams

All Hallows’ Eve

Chapter 8 - The Magical Creation

Thû, or Sauron - from the Geste

Thû, or as he was known in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Sauron, was a servant of Morgoth, dwelling in his tower on the Wizard’s Isle on the borders of the North where Morgoth dwelt in Angband.

Men called him Thû, and as a god
in after days beneath his rod
bewildered bowed to him, and made
his ghastly temples in the shade.
Not yet by Men enthralled adored,
now was he Morgoth's mightiest lord,
Master of Wolves, whose shivering howl
for ever echoed in the hills, and foul
enchantments and dark sigaldry
did weave and wield.  In glamoury*
that necromancer held his hosts
of phantoms and of wandering ghosts,
of misbegotten or spell-wronged
monsters that about him thronged,
working his bidding dark and vile:
the werewolves of the Wizard's Isle.

From Thû their coming was not hid;
and though beneath the eaves they slid
of the forest's gloomy-hanging boughs,
he saw them afar, and wolves did rouse:
'Go! fetch me those sneaking Orcs,' he said,
'that fare thus strangely, as if in dread,
and do not come, as all Orcs use
and are commanded, to bring me news
of all their deeds, to me, to Thû.'

From his tower he gazed, and in him grew
suspicion and a brooding thought,
waiting, leering, till they were brought.
Now ringed about with wolves they stand,
and fear their doom. Alas! the land,
the land of Narog left behind!
Foreboding evil weights their mind,
as downcast, halting, they must go
and cross the stony bridge of woe
to Wizard's Isle, and to the throne
there fashioned of blood-darkened stone.

(lines 2,064 – 2,099)

The Geste of Beren and Lúthien

J.R.R. Tolkien