The Discarded Image - Astrology (Part 2)

(Continuing...) C. S. Lewis does not refer to astrology in the contemporary sense in which we find it peddled by some quack in the funny pages or check-out line tabloids.

Nor can I say that Lewis subscribed to the veracity with which ancient & medieval/renaissance people subscribed themselves.

Lewis is merely conveying a general cosmology in which these people thought in terms of The Heavens and not Space or The Abyss. In fact, Lewis sees modern cosmology as engendering a stronger anthropomorphism (e.g. matter obeys the laws of nature) than the medieval view (e.g. the kindly enclyining).

In the older cosmology, the planets impart influence upon earth and I'm taking the time to piece together Lewis' references to an older view of regal character, lordship and joviality; especially as Lewis describes the influence of Jupiter, the Jovian sphere, in the chapter The Heavens taken from his book, The Discarded Image:

Jupiter, the King, produces in the earth, rather disappointingly, tin; this shining metal said different things to the imagination before the canning industry came in. The character he produces in men would now be very imperfectly expressed by the word, 'jovial', and is not very easy to grasp; it is no longer, like the saturnine character, one of our archetypes. We may say it is Kingly; but we must think of a King at peace, enthroned, taking his leisure, serene. The Jovial character is cheerful, festive yet temperate, tranquil, magnanimous. When this planet dominates we may expect halcyon days and prosperity. In Dante wise and just princes go to his sphere when they die. He is the best planet, and is called The Greater Fortune, Fortuna Major

One more excerpt here (before turning to the quotes from A Preface to Paradise Lost) comes from the first book of Lewis' Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet.

Of all the memories Dr. Ransom retained from his time spent on Malacandra, Ransom recalls one most vividly: the rising of Jupiter on a clear Malacandrian night:

Imagine the Milky Way magnified...And then imagine this, not painted across the zenith, but rising like a constellation behind the mountain tops-a dazzling necklace of lights brilliant as planets, slowly heaving itself up till it fills a fifth of the sky and now leaves a belt of blackness between itself and the horizon. It is too bright to look at for long, but it is only a preparation. Something else is coming. There is a glow like moonrise on the (Malacandrian table-lands). Ahihra! cries (a Malacandrian creature), and other baying voices answer him from the darkness all about us. And now the true king of the night is set up, and now he is threading his way through that strange western galaxy, and making its light dim by comparison with his own. I turn my eyes away, for the little disk is far brighter than the Moon in her greatest splendour...And now I guess what it is that I have seen-Jupiter rising beyond the Asteroids and forty million miles nearer than he has even been to earthly eyes...Glundandra (Jupiter) is the greatest of (the Worlds) and has some importance in Malacandrian thought which I cannot fathom. He is 'the centre', 'great Meldilorn', 'throne', and 'feast'. They are, of course, well aware that he is uninhabitable, at least by animals of the planetary type...But somebody or something of great importance is connected with Jupiter...

Ransom promises to tell Lewis "more of this when you come":

I am trying to read every old book on the subject that I can hear of...the way to the planets lies through the past; if there is to be any more space-travelling, it will have to be time-travelling as well...!

And Lewis worked as both a scholar & a poet to absolve the past from the censure of Enlightened "chronological snobbery".

Next...Lewis' colleague, J.R.R. Tolkien, revived interest in Beowulf and Lewis explored the jovial archetype from Beowulf in A Preface to Paradise Lost...to be continued...

The Discarded Image - Astrology (Part 1)

With the festivities of the U.S. Presidential Inauguration just days away, I thought it might be helpful to reflect upon a lesson on joviality I learned from C. S. Lewis. I'm weaving together threads from both The Discarded Image and A Preface to Paradise Lost so I must start with the former book...

In his chapter on "The Heavens" from The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval & Renaissance Literature (this chapter alone is worth the price of the book), Lewis raises a topic by name considered taboo by most modern evangelicals: astrology.

In doing so, Lewis carefully explains "The statement that the Medieval Church frowned upon this discipline is often taken in a sense that makes it untrue" citing three offshoots against which she did fight: (1) lucrative astrological predictions, (2) astrological determinism and (3) anything even suggesting the worship of the planets; "planetolatry" (pp 103-104).

Having said that, Lewis further explains that "the old language (of the medieval age) continually suggests a sort of continuity between merely physical events and our most spiritual aspirations. If (in whatever sense) the soul comes from heaven, our appetite for beatitude is itself an instance of "kindly enclyning" for the "kindly stede"" (p 94).

So that when I stumbled upon Shakespeare's Benedick (frustrated that he cannot write a sonnet to his beloved Beatrice) declaring

...I was not born under a rhyming planet...

-Much Ado About Nothing, 5.2.40-41

And also Beatrice explains her own personality

No sure my lord my mother cried, but then a star danced, and under that was I born

Ibid, 2.1.327-329

I see a speck of evidence that this astrological influence of which Lewis speaks wasn't lost during the Renaissance, or at least not lost by Shakespeare in 1600.

Lewis summarizes why a renaissance/medieval man might connect his poetic handicap or disposition to a planet from the Heavens:

All power, movement and efficacy descend from God to the Primum Mobile and cause it to rotate...The rotation of the Primum Mobile causes that of the Stellatum, which causes that of the sphere of Saturn, and so on, down to the the last moving sphere, that of the Moon...from east to west...Besides movement, the spheres transmit (to the Earth) what are called Influences - the subject matter of Astrology.

But to what extent are the Influences transmitted?:

On the physical side the influence of the spheres is unquestioned. Celestial bodies affect terrestrial bodies, including those of men. And by affecting our bodies they can, but need not, affect our reason and will. They can because our higher faculties certainly receive something (accipiunt) from our lower. They need not because any alteration of our imaginative power produced in this way generates, not a necessity, but only a propensity, to act thus and thus. The propensity can be resisted; hence the wise man will over-rule the stars. But more often it will not be resisted, for most men are not wise; hence, like actuarial predictions, astrological predictions about the behavior of large masses of men will often be verified.

To be continued...

A Preface to Paradise Lost: Poetry & Dentists

From the chapter "Is Criticism Possible?"

"Yet it is true that continued disobedience to conscience makes conscience blind. But disobedience to conscience is voluntary; bad poetry, on the other hand, is usually not made on purpose. The writer was trying to make good poetry. He was endeavoring to follow such lights as he had-a procedure which in the moral sphere is a pledge of progress, but not in poetry. Again, a man may fall outside the class of 'good poets' not by being a bad poet, but by writing no poetry at all, whereas at every moment of his waking life he is either obeying or breaking the moral law."

"We may therefore allow poets to tell us (at least if they are experienced in the same kind of composition) whether it is easy or difficult to write like Milton, but not whether the reading of Milton is a valuable experience. For who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?"

A Preface to Paradise Lost: Poetry

I'm reluctant to say I have written poetry.

At best I could say I've attempted free verse...but I'm not sure I'm qualified. That is, I'm not against using strict meter or rhyme the way Wikipedia cites one of the earliest references to the term in 1915:

"We do not insist upon 'free-verse' as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for a principle of liberty."

"Liberty"?

Apparently T.S. Eliot said of free verse:"No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job." However, Robert Frost remarked that writing free verse was like "playing tennis without a net".

That's it! That's me!

I'm not rebellious. I'm just lazy.

Still when I want to communicate an idea (typically an extended caption to a photo I want to post on my blog), I don't want readers to have to spend a lot of time & effort to "decipher the ambiguities". I want the reader to be able to quickly get the idea without straining.

Anyway, Lewis is instructive on this topic, too, in A Preface to Paradise Lost (pp 2-3; Epic Poetry):

Every poem can be considered in two ways: as what the poet has to say and as a thing which he makes.

From the one point of view it is the expression of opinions & emotions; from the other it is an organization of words which exist to produce a particular kind of patterned experience in the reader.

Another way of stating this duality would be to say that every poem has two parents-its mother being the mass of experience, thought and the like, inside the poet, and its father the pre-existing Form (epic, tragedy, the novel, or what not) which he meets in the public world...It is easy to forget that the man who writes a good love sonnet needs not only to be enamored of a woman, but also to be enamored of the Sonnet

A Preface to Paradise Lost: Miss Bates

Lewis opens his chapter on Satan:

Before considering the character of Milton's Satan it may be desirable to remove an ambiguity by noticing that Jane Austen's Miss Bates could be described as either a very entertaining or a very tedious person.

Lewis isn't comparing Miss Bates to Satan. Rather he is preparing the reader to understand why some literary criticism could make "the proposition that Milton's Satan is a magnificent character" in one of two senses.

(1)"It may mean that Milton's presentation of him is a magnificent poetical achievement which engages the attention and excites the admiration of the reader"

(2)"On the other hand, it may mean that the real being (if any) whom Milton is depicting...is or ought to be an object of admiration and sympathy, conscious or unconscious, on the part of the poet or his readers or both" (p 94)

So either the author's portrait entertains us while we reador if we met a person like Miss Bates in real life we (like the other characters in Jane Austen's Emma) would find Miss Bates tedious.

So that's the extent of the similarities between Miss Bates & Satan: purely a comparison of effect upon the readers of their respective portraits by Austen & Milton.

Lewis' Perelandra, Milton's Satan, Melville's Claggart & Austen's Miss Bates

So what do Lewis' Perelandra, Milton's Satan, Melville's Claggart and Jane Austen's Miss Bates have in common?

I have no idea.

But I'm going to find out.

This is why it's difficult for me to finish books.

The common thread is Milton's Paradise Lost. Here are my reasons for closer study...

(1)Perelandra has been ringing in my mind for the past week; especially Ransom's imploring Tinidril, Queen of the Planet, to resist the temptation by the possessed corpse of Weston to disobey Maleldil's one command: to not sleep or live on the Fixed Land (a scene reminiscent of the serpent & Eve in Eden):

Ransom: "I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that? You do them, indeed, because they are His will, but only because they are His will. Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless He bids you do something for which His bidding is the only reason?..."

As I'm reading Perelandra I know Lewis has written A Preface to Paradise Lost and I wonder, "Should I read Lewis' Preface... and possibly Milton's epic poem before proceeding to That Hideous Strength?

(2) Simultaneously, my one-year study of Scriptures starts out with the fall of Man in Genesis (as always) on the first days of January. I just mention this because I believe in finding good tutors in my studies (especially of Scripture) & I've often wondered why God didn't want humans to eat (and thus possess) the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good & evil. My question sounds like Milton's Satan (see below) & the answer given by Lewis' Ransom (see above) rings true so I'm compelled to read Lewis' A Preface to Paradise Lost since he is an excellent tutor.

(3) A few days ago I also stumbled upon my copy of Melville's Billy Budd & the Critics (William T. Stafford, ed.; Wadsworth Publishing, San Francisco, 1961) & since I remain intrigued with Lawrance Thompson's criticism, Melville's Quarrel with God I re-read both Melville's description of Claggart (from chapter 13 entitled Pale ire, envy and despair)...

With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, tho' readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart's surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it.

...and then read Thompson's comparison of Claggart with Satan: "Melville's handling of it recalls the remarks of Milton's Satan as he enviously soliloquizes, while watching Adam & Eve" followed by a quote from Paradise Lost (IV, 512-522) (I've included a bit more here than Thompson):

Sight hateful, sight tormenting! thus these two
Imparadis't in one anothers arms
The happier EDEN, shall enjoy thir fill
Of bliss on bliss, while I to Hell am thrust,
Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire,
Among our other torments not the least,
Still unfulfill'd with pain of longing pines;
Yet let me not forget what I have gain'd
From thir own mouths; all is not theirs it seems:
One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge call'd,
Forbidden them to taste: Knowledge forbidd'n?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should thir Lord
Envie them that? can it be sin to know,
Can it be death? and do they onely stand
By Ignorance, is that thir happie state,
The proof of thir obedience and thir faith?
O fair foundation laid whereon to build
Thir ruine! Hence I will excite thir minds
With more desire to know, and to reject
Envious commands, invented with designe
To keep them low whom knowledge might exalt
Equal with Gods; aspiring to be such,
They taste and die: what likelier can ensue?

And so I muse that Lewis has written Perelandra with Milton's Satan in mind & perhaps with a clearer eye than Melville & Thompson.

(4) So I put down That Hideous Strength and pick up A Preface to Paradise Lost, chapter 13, Satan. And there Lewis opens with a reference to Jane Austen's Miss Bates and I'm captivated.

Here I go...

C.S. Lewis & H.G. Wells: Utopian Visions

C.S. Lewis (L); H.G. Wells (R)

(380 words) I had to capture the quote below by science-fiction writer Robert A. W. Lowndes from his introduction to H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon (Airmont Publishers, 1965).

I bought this used-book based upon C.S. Lewis' recommendation to one of his students & Inkling (R. L. Green, Dec 28, 1938, who attended Lewis' 'Prolegomena' lectures) as well as his acknowledgment to Wells in the beginning of Out of the Silent Planet; the 1st in his "Space Trilogy".

I found this particular copy for $1.50 at a used book store (original price: 60 cents...I remember those days) but there appears to be either (1) some black mold in the binding or (2) some cigarette ash from who knows when.

Nevertheless, my wife & I agreed to dispose of it.

Before I do...I'm concerned I'll never find another copy with Lowndes' 5-page biography of Wells which includes the following comparison with Lewis:

Like [Jules] Verne and so many others who started with the dream of science reforming not only the material world, but man himself, H. G. Wells grew increasingly bitter toward the end of his life. Strangely enough, Verne, too depicts dictatorship of the dedicated as the only hope for humanity--but this is little more than hinted at in his final novel, The Matter of the World, which was a story , first of all (Airmont, 1965).

His limitations are those common to people who seek utopias and, in their early enthusiasms at least, oversimplify the problem of human perversity, ignorance, laziness, and outright malice. Such people have little patience with the necessity for slow developments and they hold their own convictions with such tenacity and vigor that they cannot be patient with others who hold differing convictions. In the end, the course of history shows how cruelly they deceived themselves with their over-simplified solutions.

It is interesting to compare the career of H. G. Wells and C. S. Lewis, a contemporary author on religious subjects, who examined and wrote about the same human problems as Wells, in his Perelandra trilogy of science-fiction novels. Lewis lived to see far greater evils than Wells, who died in 1946; but Lewis knew there was no utopia, no simple solutions to human ills, and showed far deeper understanding of the human condition. Wells died in despair; Lewis never despaired.

Robert A. W. Lowndes

Introduction

I remember one of the younger nuns at St Joseph's School (Fullerton, MD) got my brother & his classmates to read The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe when I was a boy.

Then I read Mere Christianity & The Screwtape Letters shortly after college.

In 1987, my wife had taken a Christian mythic writers class at Taylor University & introduced me to Till We Have Faces.

Now I find myself reading as much of C.S. Lewis as I can & I want to keep an on-line journal to share with family & friends as well as to be able to capture quotes or have a readily available place for my notes.

I'd also enjoy hearing from other readers of Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, Sayers or anything about the Inklings, mythology, science...I'm merely a beginner. So please feel free to comment!