War in Heaven (II)

They went from the dining-room to a small room next to Gregory's bedroom, which he unlocked with a key he carried on his own chain. There appeared in it only a cabinet in one corner, two or three cushions dropped beside it, and a low pedestal of wood in the centre on which lay an oblong slab of stone. On this slab stood two candlesticks, around the pedestal, at a good distance, had been drawn a white circle, in which at one point was a small gap. Before he entered the room Gregory had fetched the Graal from its corner; he passed through the gap, set it upright on the slab between the candlesticks, and turned to Sir Giles.

"You'd better sit down at once," he said, "and I should recommend you to keep within the circle. There are curious forces released sometimes on these occasions."

"I know all about that," Sir Giles said, as he brought two of the cushions into the circle, also taking care to pass through the gap. "I saw a man once in Ispahan who looked as if he'd been unable to breathe once he got outside. Atmospheric disturbances, but why? Why does your purely subjective industry disturb the air? Well, never mind. I won't say a word more." He settled himself comfortably on his cushions over against one of the shorter sides of the pedestal. Gregory went over to the cabinet, and there first changed from the clothes he was wearing into a white cassock, marked with esoteric signs. He then brought from it an antique vessel, from which he poured what was apparently wine into the Graal till it all but brimmed. He brought also a short rod and laid it on the slab in front of the Graal; he arranged and lit at what appeared to be the back of the altar a chafing-dish containing herbs and powders, scattered other powders upon it, and came back to the front of the altar. Lastly, with great care, he brought to it from the cabinet a parchment inscribed with names and writings, and a small paper from which he let fall on to the wine in the Graal what appeared to Sir Giles to be a few short hairs.

He considered the arrangements, went back and closed the cabinet, re-entered the circle, took the rod from the altar, and, bending down, with a strong concentration of countenance, closed the gap, drawing the rod slowly as if with an effort against the path of the sun. He came to the front of the altar, and immersed himself in a profound silence.

Sir Giles, curled upon the cushions, watched him intently, noting every change in his face and the growing remoteness of his eyes. Almost an hour had passed before those eyes, seeming to stir of their own volition, lowered themselves from the darkness of the room to the Graal standing in the steady light of the two candles. Very slowly he stretched his hands over the chalice and began to speak. Sir Giles, straining his ears, caught only an occasional phrase.

Charles Williams
War In Heaven - Chapter 7 “Adrian”

In Charles Williams’ supernatural thriller War in Heaven, an exquisitely constructed story pits three good characters against three evil ones in the protection and attempted destruction, respectively, of the Holy Graal (old spelling of Grail), discovered in the English village of Fardles, or Castra Parvulorum, the Camp of the Children. Caught in the center of this drama is a generic family: a worried father and husband; a cheerful mother and wife; their innocent four-year-old son.

As a prologue to this battle between Heaven and Hell, set in the inter-war years of Williams’ present day, we are introduced to a murder, a publishing house, and the murderer himself, with a nod to the conventions of the English mystery. The first line of the Prelude reads, with its underlying humor:

“The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.”

Soon, however, the characters gather around the body and we see into their souls, and the war begins.

(Christine Sutherland)

A Requiem Mass

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 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.

Of Beren & Lúthien

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 (q.v.). 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.

(JRRT)

To Charles Williams

Your death blows a strange bugle call, friend, and all is hard
To see plainly or record truly. The new light imposes change,
Re-adjusts all a life-landscape as it thrusts down its probe from the sky,
To create shadows, to reveal waters, to erect hills and deepen glens.
The slant alters. I can't see the old contours. It's a larger world
Than I once thought it. I wince, caught in the bleak air that blows on
the ridge.
Is it the first sting of the great winter, the world-waning? Or the cold of
spring?

A hard question and worth talking a whole night on.
But with whom? Of whom now can I ask guidance? With what friend concerning your death
Is it worth while to exchange thoughts unless—oh unless it were you?

CS Lewis
Poems (Bles 1964)

War on Terror?

[Image: 'The Bomber in the Corn' - Paul Nash]

The the anniversary of the first bombing of London in September 1940, and today being the anniversary of '9/11', perhaps an opportune time to hear a passage from a talk which C.S. Lewis gave in Oxford during the Second World War.

Still applicable to the ‘War on Terror’ in the 21st Century?

"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."

Learning in War-Time – CS Lewis

War in Heaven

The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.

A few moments later there was. Lionel Rackstraw, strolling back from lunch, heard in the corridor the sound of the bell in his room, and, entering at a run, took up the receiver. He remarked, as he did so, the boots and trousered legs sticking out from the large knee-hole table at which he worked, but the telephone had established the first claim on his attention.

"Yes," he said, "yes...No, not before the 17th...No, who cares what he wants?...No, who wants to know?...Oh, Mr. Persimmons. Oh, tell him the 17th...Yes...Yes, I'll send a set down."

He put the receiver down and looked back at the boots.

It occurred to him that someone was probably doing something to the telephone; people did, he knew, at various times drift in on him for such purposes. But they usually looked round or said something; and this fellow must have heard him talking. He bent down towards the boots.

"Shall you be long?" he said into the space between the legs and the central top drawer; and then, as there was no answer, he walked away, dropped hat and gloves and book on to their shelf, strolled back to his desk, picked up some papers and read them, put them back, and, peering again into the dark hole, said more impatiently, "Shall you be long?"

No voice replied; not even when, touching the extended foot with his own, he repeated the question. Rather reluctantly he went round to the other side of the table, which was still darker, and, trying to make out the head of the intruder, said almost loudly: "Hallo! hallo! What's the idea?" Then, as nothing happened, he stood up and went on to himself: "Damn it all, is he dead?" and thought at once that he might be.

That dead bodies did not usually lie round in one of the rooms of a publisher's offices in London about half-past two in the afternoon was a certainty that formed now an enormous and cynical background to the fantastic possibility. He half looked at the door which he had closed behind him, and then attempted the same sort of interior recovery with which he had often thrown off the knowledge that at any moment during his absence his wife might be involved in some street accident, some skidding bus or swerving lorry. These things happened--a small and unpleasant, if invisible, deity who lived in a corner of his top shelves had reminded him--these things happened, and even now perhaps... People had been crushed against their own front doors; there had been a doctor in Gower Street. Of course, it was all untrue. But this time, a she moved to touch the protruding feet, he wondered if it were.

Charles Williams
The Prelude (Chapter One)
War in Heaven (1930)

War in Heaven - A review

Describing a terrifyingly subtle warfare waged among mere humanity. Written by the least known (and perhaps least appreciated) of the triumvirate of Oxford Dons (Tolkien, CS Lewis and Charles Williams), Williams nevertheless deserves credit for his gripping characterisations of terrifying bleak and quiet evil operating in a deceptively normal appearing world.

War in Heaven was the first of a series of books that dealt with the concept of ordinary individuals thrust into extraordinary circumstances, caught in the line of fire between Heaven and Hell. Short enough to make for a good afternoon’s read, this book is especially haunting in its description of how ordinary and mundane the appearance of true evil could be, and yet with none of its destructive impact attenuated by this veneer of civility and normalcy. It also describes how characters with which one might easily identify, ‘ordinary’ folk, can be swept up in the maelstrom of evils intent, attacked in vile and yet also nasty petty little ways, all compelled by a most foul yet cold hatred for humanity, simply because that humanity is also the focus of Divine intent as well.

Finally, Williams wonderfully captures the subtlety of an all compelling and inexorable Divine intent, never flashy, never pyrotechnical yet undeniable, and unstoppable in it's progression, a true presentation of a God so big, He doesn't have to make a really big show of His efforts.

In some respects, Williams was better at describing the subtle monstrousness of evil than either of his two compatriots (although C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters came very close). Avoiding the pitfalls often seen in other's attempts to describe Cosmic Conflict using Angelic or Demonic beings, Williams had no problem using mere humanity as the effective agents of both evil and Divinity. He did not have to interview God or Satan to grasp the essence of their activities in the material universe.

If Stephen King were a protestant theologian, he would write stories like this. I recommend you buy this one first, then get the others in chronological order, and delve deeply into a world where both evil and Divine intent wage total war among us, and through us, and for us...while most of us wander through the blasted battle field mostly (and disturbingly) unaware.

Charles Williams - WAR IN HEAVEN is available in all good bookshops and on Kindle

Williams and transformation

W. H. Auden, worked with Charles Williams on a collection of Poetry he edited for Oxford University Press. Many years after first meeting Williams, he would recall that interview in surprising terms and mark it as one of the events that led him to embrace the Christian faith:

"For the first time in my life, [I] felt myself in the presence of personal sanctity... I had met many good people before who made me feel ashamed of my own shortcomings but in the presence of this man... I did not feel ashamed. I felt transformed into a person who was incapable of doing or thinking anything base or unloving (I later discovered that he had had a similar effect on many other people.)"

How could a conversation about 'literary business' generate such an aura of 'personal sanctity'? Yet Williams simply made an exceptionally powerful impression on almost all who knew him.

What Christians Believe

The third talk in What Christians Believe is entitled 'The Shocking Alternative'. First broadcast on 1 February 1942, it is probably this talk above all others which established Lewis's reputation as a Christian apologist of the first rank. No radio broadcast, before or since, has laid out so clearly the heart of the Christian gospel. Lewis manages to do this with language that js fresh and compelling. It is totally free of Christian jargon. He achieves that rare feat of explaining Christian truth in plain English that does not rely on any.of the imagery or in-house language that almost imperceptibly creeps into so much of Christian apologetics.

The talk begins with the point Lewis had reached in the first two programmes, that Christians believe 'an evil power has made himself Prince of the World'. This happened because 'God created things free to be bad as well as to be good'. It is free will that makes evil possible. The alternative, a world of automata, is unthinkable. God thought that allowing us to use our freedom in the wrong way was worth the risk. Free will means that when things turn out right, they will be all the better — enabling humankind to experience the happiness of being united with God and the ecstasy of love and delight. However, the worse it will be when things go awry. We want to put our 'self’ first - in other words, we want it to be God. This was the sin of Satan, taught by him to the human race. From this attempt to create happiness apart from God have come the hallmarks of human history: money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires and slavery. In this way Lewis describes the outcome of sin without using the word, making its meaning and consequence clear enough.

Justin Phillips
C.S. Lewis at the BBC

(HarperCollins 2002)

The Geste of Beren and Lúthien

But Thingol looked on Lúthien.
'Fairest of Elves! Unhappy Men,
children of little lords and kings
mortal and frail, these fading things,
shall they then look with love on thee?'
his heart within him though. 'I see
thy ring,' he said. 'O mighty man!
But to win the child of Melian
a father's deeds shall not avail,
nor thy proud words at which I quail.
A treasure dear I too desire,
but rocks and steel and Morgoth's fire
from all the powers of Elfinesse
do keep the jewel I would possess.
Yet bonds like these I hear thee say
affright they not. Now go thy way!
Bring me one shining Silmaril
from Morgoth's crown, then if she will,
may Lúthien set her hand in thine;

then shalt thou have this jewel of mine.'

Then Thingol's warriors loud and long
they laughed; for wide renown in song
had Fëanor's gems o'er land and sea,
the peerless Silmarils; and three
alone he made and kindled slow
in the land of the Valar long ago,
and there in Tûn of their own light
they shone like marvellous stars at night,
in the great Elvish hoards of Tûn,
while Glingal flowered and Belthil's bloom
yet lit the land beyond the shore
where the Shadowy Seas' last surges roar,
ere Morgoth stole them and Gnomes
seeking their glory left their homes,
ere sorrows fell on Elves and Men,
ere Beren was or Lúthien,
ere Fëanor's sons in madness swore
their dreadful oath. But now no more
their beauty was seen, save shining clear
in Morgoth's dungeons vast and drear.
His iron crown they must adorn,
and gleam above Orcs and slaves forlorn,
treasured in Hell above all wealth,
more than his eyes; and might nor stealth
could touch them, or even gaze too long
upon their magic. Throng on throng
of Orcs with reddened scimitars
encircled him, and mighty bars
and everlasting gates and walls,
who wore them now amidst his thralls.

(lines 1,112 to 1,159)
J.R.R. Tolkien

The Geste of Beren and Lúthien

'That may not be!' Lo! Beren spake,
and through the king's words coldly brake.
'What are thy mazes but a chain
wherein the captive blind is slain?
Twist not thy oaths, O elvish king,
like faithless Morgoth! By this ring—
the token of a lasting bond
that Felagund of Nargothrond
once swore in love to Barahir,
who sheltered him with shield and spear
and saved him from pursuing foe
on Northern battle fields long ago—
death thou canst give unearned to me,
but names I will not take from thee
of baseborn, spy, or Morgoth's thrall!
Are these the ways of Thingol's hall?'

Proud are the words, and all there turned
to see the jewels green that burned
in Beren's ring. These Elves had set
as eyes of serpents twined that met
beneath a golden crown of flowers,
that one upholds and one devours:
the badge that Finrod made of yore
and Felagund his son now bore.
His anger was chilled, but little less,
and dark thoughts Thingol did possess,

though Melian the pale leant to his side
and whispered: 'O king, forgo thy pride!
such is my counsel. Not by thee
shall Beren be slain, for far and free
from these deep halls his fate doth lead,
yet wound with thine. O king, take heed!'

(lines 1,080 to 1,111)
J.R.R. Tolkien

The Geste of Beren and Lúthien

Silence then fell upon the hall;
like graven stone there stood they all,
save one who cast her eyes aground,
and one who laughed with bitter sound.
Dairon the piper leant there pale
against a pillar. His fingers frail
there touched a flute that whispered not;
his eyes were dark; his heart was hot.
'Death is the guerdon thou hast earned,
O baseborn mortal, who hast learned
in Morgoth's realm to spy and lurk
like Orcs that do his evil work!'
'Death!' echoed Dairon fierce and low,
but Lúthien trembling gasped in woe.
'And death,' said Thingol, 'thou shouldst taste,

had I not sworn an oath in hast
that blade nor chain thy flesh should mar.
Yet captive bound by never a bar,
unchained, unfettered, shalt thou be
in lightless labyrinth endlessly
that coils about my halls profound
by magic bewildered and enwound;
there wandering in hopelessness
though shalt learn the power of Elfinesse!'

(lines 1,056 to 1,079)
J.R.R. Tolkien

The Geste of Beren and Lúthien

Then Beren looked in Lúthien's eyes
and saw a light of starry skies,
and thence was slowly drawn his gaze
to Melian's face. As from a maze
of wonder dumb he woke; his heart
the bonds of awe there burst apart
and filled with the fearless pride of old;
in his glance now gleamed and anger cold.
'My feet hath fate, O king,' he said,
'here over the mountains bleeding led,
and what I sought not I have found,
and love it is hath here me bound.
Thy dearest treasure I desire;
nor rocks nor steel nor Morgoth's fire
nor all the power of Elfinesse
shall keep that gem I would possess.
For fairer than are born to Men
A daughter hast thou, Lúthien.'

(lines 1,038 to 1,055)
J.R.R. Tolkien

Suprised by Joy.

In 1952 Lewis met Mrs Joy Gresham (née Davidman), and their story is famously told in the film Shadowlands. Joy was an American who had been deserted by her husband. Lewis helped her to arrange the rental of 10 Old High Street, Headington for herself and her two boys, and she moved in during August 1953.

The house (opposite the Somerfield supermarket) has a plaque over the downstairs window reading: "The former home of the writer Joy Davidman, wife of C. S. Lewis". Joy’s son Douglas Gresham was about eight years old when he moved into Old High Street in 1953. He said of the house: "It was a nice place partly because of the visitors who came, many of Oxford’s literary luminaries. Lewis himself of course, his brother Warnie, and J.R.R. Tolkien."

Joy divorced her husband in August 1954 and married Lewis in Oxford Register Office on 23 April 1956. This was a marriage of convenience so that she could acquire British citizenship, and she continued to live in Old High Street after the marriage.

In 1957 Joy was admitted to the Wingfield Morris Orthopaedic Hospital (now the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre) with a broken leg, and was found to have cancer. The Revd Peter Bide married Lewis and Joy a second time at this hospital (this time with a real Christian ceremony) on 21 March 1957: the marriage took place in the Mayfair Suite. The next month Joy moved into "The Kilns" with Lewis.

Remember...

In Oxford Crematorium, on the wall facing the walkway just outside the far chapel in the complex, there is a small plaque on the wall. It was placed there by C.S. Lewis following the death of his beloved American wife Joy Gresham (nee Davidman). It reads: "Remember Helen Joy Davidman (loved wife of C. S. Lewis). Here the whole world (stars, water, air and field, and forest, as they were reflected in a single mind) like cast off clothes was left behind in ashes, yet with hope that she, reborn from holy poverty, in Lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day."

23rd December 1947

[Image: Carry Akroyd]

Nothing much has happened to me except that I saw a rabbit yawn. I suppose people who keep tame ones have seen it often but this was a wild rabbit and I thought it a v. curious sight. It was a very bored triangular yawn in the middle of a long hot afternoon...

C.S. Lewis
December 23rd, 1947

Et in Sempiternum Pereant

It was a very deserted part of the country through which he was walking. He had been careful to follow the directions given him, and in fact there were only two places where he could possibly have gone wrong, and at both of them Lord Arglay was certain he had not gone wrong. But he seemed to be taking a long time--a longer time than he had expected. He looked at his watch again, and noted with sharp disapproval of his own judgment that it was only six minutes since he had looked at it last. It had seemed more like sixteen. Lord Arglay frowned. He was usually a good walker, and on that morning he was not conscious of any unusual weariness. His host had offered to send him in a car, but he had declined. For a moment, as he put his watch back, he was almost sorry he had declined. A car would have made short time of this road, and at present his legs seemed to be making rather long time of it. 'Or,' Lord Arglay said aloud, 'making time rather long.' He played a little, as he went on, with the fancy that every road in space had a corresponding measure in time; that it tended, merely of itself, to hasten or delay all those that drove or walked upon it. The nature of some roads, quite apart from their material effectiveness, might urge men to speed, and of others to delay. So that the intentions of all travellers were counterpointed continually by the media they used. The courts, he thought, might reasonably take that into consideration in case of offences against right speed, and a man who accelerated upon one road would be held to have acted under the improper influence of the way, whereas one who did the same on another would be known to have defied and conquered the way.

Lord Arglay just stopped himself looking at his watch again. It was impossible that it should be more than five minutes since he had last done so. He looked back to observe, if possible, how far he had since come. It was not possible; the road narrowed and curved too much. There was a cloud of trees high up behind him; it must have been half an hour ago that he passed through it, yet it was not merely still in sight, but the trees themselves were in sight. He could remark them as trees; he could almost, if he were a little careful, count them. He thought, with some irritation, that he must be getting old more quickly, and more unnoticeably, than he had supposed. He did not much mind about the quickness, but he did mind about the unnoticeableness. It had given him pleasure to watch the various changes which age tended to bring; to be as stealthy and as quick to observe those changes as they were to come upon him--the slower pace, the more meditative voice, the greater reluctance to decide, the inclination to fall back on habit, the desire for the familiar which is the first skirmishing approach of unfamiliar death. He neither welcomed nor grudged such changes; he only observed them with a perpetual interest in the curious nature of the creation. The fantasy of growing old, like the fantasy of growing up, was part of the ineffable sweetness, touched with horror, of existence, itself the lordliest fantasy of all. But now, as he stood looking back over and across the hidden curves of the road, he felt suddenly that time had outmarched and out-twisted him, that it was spreading along the countryside and doubling back on him, so that it troubled and deceived his judgment. In an unexpected and unusual spasm of irritation he put his hand to his watch again. He felt as if it were a quarter of an hour since he had looked at it; very well, making just allowance for his state of impatience, he would expect the actual time to be five minutes. He looked; it was only two.

Charles Williams
[From: "The London Mercury", 1935]

'Et in Sempiternum Pereant’ by Charles Williams (1886-1945)... here is a story in which virtually nothing appears to happen. A retired Lord Chief Justice, out walking in the country, enters a burning empty house and encounters a troubled spirit on its way to Hell. The setting is vague and the material details scanty. Not until it is over does the story have the power to frighten: it gains its effects through implication. The only tale of its kind its author wrote, in its substitution of spiritual for material terror it epitomizes his approach to the writing of supernaturalist fiction.

(Glen Cavaliero)

The Proverbs of Middle Earth

Entering Ithilien, the Hobbits are for the first time in Gondor (albeit in land occupied by the Enemy). The great Kingdom of the Dunedain of the South has been liberally referred to throughout the Quest, yet until now it has had only Boromir to represent it. It would have been reasonable to presume him as an archetype for his people, yet with the entrance of his brother Faramir, a wiser, more thoughtful head on younger shoulders, that thought must be discarded.

Wise man trusts not to chance-meeting on the road in this land.
FARAMIR

We meet no one else, with the obvious exception of Gandalf, for whom proverbs are so natural a part of speech. Very often they are unquoted, utilised but not emphasised, and thereby often unnoticed.

War must be,

while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all;
but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness,
nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory.
I love only that which they defend.
FARAMIR

We are truth-speakers, we men of Gondor.
We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt.

FARAMIR

Moreover, we receive from Faramir one of the few explicit references to the means by which learning and knowledge has been passed down amongst men of one era to another, and to him in particular:

'Much is still preserved of ancient lore among the Rulers of the city that is not spread abroad... We in the house of Denethor know much ancient lore by long tradition, and there are moreover in our treasures many things preserved: 'Books and tablets writ on withered parchments, yea, and on stone, and on leaves of silver and of gold, in divers characters.'

©& ® David Rowe 2010
See http://misterdavid.typepad.com/middle_earth/2010/03/the-wisdom-of-gondor.html

Talking about Bicycles

[Outside the Bodleian Library in Oxford]

"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)

Perelandra

On the other hand, all those doubts which I had felt before I entered the cottage as to whether these creatures were friend of foe, and whether Ransom were a pioneer or a dupe, had for the moment vanished. My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that he creature was what we called ‘good’, but I wasn’t sure whether I liked ‘goodness’ so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can’t eat, and home the very place you can’t live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.

C.S. Lewis ~ Voyage to Venus (Perelandra) (Ch. 1)