Far-travelled Gleams

On Beauty

Max — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:02:20 +0000

To me it seems that a great many different emotions are united in the perception of beauty: it may turn out to be not a simple thing but a result of unions. For one thing nearly all beautiful sights are to me chiefly important as reminders of other beautiful sights: without memory twould be a poor affair. The process presumably has a beginning but once going it grows like a snowball. Could it be that joy remembered (‘Which now is sad because it has been sweet’) is a necessary element in Beauty? There is too, I think, a purely sensuous element: that such and such notes or tints (in themselves — not in their combinations) just happen to satisfy our nerves of hearing & sight — as certain foods satisfy those of tastes. This wd. be rather a condition of beauty, perhaps, than an element in it. One thing is plain, that the statements continually made about Beauty’s being pure contemplation, stirring no impulse, being the antithesis of the practical or energizing side of us, are wrong. On the contrary beauty seems to me to be always an invitation of some sort & usually an invitation to we don’t know what. A wood seen as ‘picturesque’ by a fool (who’d like a frame round it) may be purely contemplated: seen as ‘beautiful’ it seems rather to say ‘come to me’.

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“Letter to Leo Baker, July 1921,” in Collected Letters, V. I, 568.

Natural Love Must Die…before it can be resurrected

Max — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:38:39 +0000

I take it that in every marriage natural love sooner or later, in a high or low degree, comes up against difficulties (if only the difficulty that the original state of ‘being in love’ dies a natural death) which force it either to turn into dislike or else to turn into Christian charity. For all our natural feelings are, not resting places, but points d’appui, springboards. One has to go on from there, or fall back from there. The merely human pleasure in being loved must either go bad or become the divine joy of loving.

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“Letter to Mary Van Deusen, 23 July 1953,” Collected Letters, V. III, 351.

The Eternality of Sexuality

Max — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 18:16:24 +0000

Now the second reason [for marriage given in the Common Book of Prayer] involves the whole Christian view of sex. It is all contained in Christ’s saying that two shall be ‘one flesh’. He says nothing about two ‘who married for love’: the mere fact of marriage at all – however it came about — sets up the ‘one flesh’. There is a terrible comment on this in I Cor VI 16 ‘he that is joined to a harlot is one flesh’. You see? Apparently, if Christianity is true, the mere fact of sexual intercourse sets up between human beings a relation wh. has, so to speak, transcendental repercussions — some eternal relation is established whether they like it or not.

This sounds very odd. But is it? After all, if there is an eternal world and if our world is its manifestation, then you would expect bits of it to ’stick through’ into ours. We are like children pulling the levers of a vast machine of which most is concealed. We see a few little wheels that buzz round on this side when we start it up — but what glorious or frightful processes we are initiating in there, we don’t know. That’s why it is so important to do what we’re told (cf. — what does the Holy Communion imply about the real significance of eating?)

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“Letter to Mary Newlan, 18 April 1940,” Collected Letters, V. II, 394.

On ‘Being in Love’ 2

Max — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 18:06:06 +0000

The modern tradition is that the proper reason for marrying is the state described as ‘being in love’. Now I have nothing to say against ‘being in love’: but the idea that this is or ought to be the exclusive reason or that it can ever be by itself an adequate basis seems to me simply moonshine.

In the first place, many ages, many cultures, and many individuals don’t experience it — and Christianity is for all men, not simply for modern Western Europeans. Secondly, if often unites most unsuitable people. Thirdly, is it not usually transitory? Doesn’t the modern emphasis on ‘love’ lead people either into divorce or into misery, because when that emotion dies down they conclude that their marriage is a ‘failure’, tho’ in fact they have just reached the point at wh. real marriage begins. Fourthly, it wd. be undesirable, even if it were possible, for the people to be ‘in love’ all their lives. What a world in wd. be if most of the people we met were perpetually in this trance!

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“Letter to Mary Newlan, 18 April 1940,” Collected Letters, V. II, 392-3.

Forgetting One’s Place

Max — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:05:50 +0000

‘How like a god’ is a man until he makes the fatal false step of claiming divinity and goes plumb down to devilhood.

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“Letter to Daphne Harwood, 06 March 1942,” The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. II, 512.

On ‘Being in Love’

Max — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:00:11 +0000

My view of Being-in-love is that (like everything except God and the Devil) it is better than some things and worse than others. Thus it comes in my scale of values higher than lust, selfishness, or frigidity, but lower than charity or constancy — in fact about on a level with friendship. Like everything (except God and the Devil) it therefore is sometimes opposed to things lower than itself and — in that situation — good: sometimes to things higher than itself and in that situation — bad. Thus Being-in-love is a better motive for marriage than, say, worldly advancement: but the intention to obey God’s will by entering into an indissoluble partnership in all virtue and mutual charity for the preservation of chastity and the admission of new souls to the chance of eternal life is better even than Being-in-love.

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“Letter to Daphne Harwood, 06 March 1942,” The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. II, 510-11.

Unwitting Channels of Joy

Max — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:12:49 +0000

I am so glad you have really enjoyed a Morris once again I had the same feeling about it as you, in a way, with this proviso — that I don’t think Morris was conscious of the meaning either here or in any of his works, except Love is Enough where the flame actually breaks through the smoke so to speak. I feel more and more that Morris has taught me things he did not understand himself. These hauntingly beautiful lands which somehow never satisfy, — this passion to escape from death plus the certainty that life owes all its charm to mortality — these push you on to the real thing because they fill you with desire and yet prove absolutely clearly that in Morris’s world that desire cannot be satisfied.

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“Letter to Arthur Greeves, 22 Sept. 1931,” Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. I, 970.

Another Course on C. S. Lewis

Max — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:54:24 +0000

Last semester I taught a course on C. S. Lewis through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Oklahoma. In it we approached Lewis’s most popular works by genre. Next semester I will be offering another class on C. S. Lewis, this time approaching his works thematically. This will allow me to spend more time drawing on some of his lesser known writings. Here is the course description:

Inklings of Things Deeper: Exploring Life’s Perennial Questions with C. S. Lewis

Is there a God? Is beauty merely in the eye of the beholder? What is truth? What is love? These are some of the questions that have intrigued humans for millennia. C. S. Lewis, one of the greatest Christian authors in the 20th century, was well versed in the literature of our Western intellectual tradition, and devoted much thought and ink to these questions. He had an exceptional ability to weave together his own insights with those of the great thinkers of the past, and to impart those insights with clarity, simplicity, and wit. This course is a tour through the writings of C. S. Lewis, organized around these questions which seem to persist through the centuries.

We shall begin with a biographical overview of Lewis’s life, learning details about his life and times that help bring him to life in the 21st century. We shall then proceed thematically, studying Lewis’s views on: the nature of God; truth, goodness, and beauty—what they are and how they relate to each other; the power and function of myth; the nature of love, and more.

Click here to go to the course page.

A Proper Patriotism

Max — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:30:17 +0000

Patriotism has, then, many faces. Those who would reject it entirely do not seem to have considered what will certainly step–has already begun to step–into its place. For a long time yet, or perhaps forever, nations will live in danger. Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to prepare for their defence. Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only be presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for “their country” they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, or civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up. . . . Good men needed to to be convinced that their country’s cause was just; but it was still their country’s cause, not the cause of justice as such. . . . . If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.

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The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1988), 29.

Living with Nature, not for it

Max — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:23:05 +0000

Nature “dies” on those who try to live for a love of nature. Coleridge ended by being insensible to her; Wordsworth, by lamenting that the glory had passed away. Say your prayers in a garden early, ignoring steadfastly the dew, the birds and the flowers, and you will come away overwhelmed by its freshness and joy; go there in order to be overshelmed and, after a certain age, nine times out of ten nothing will happen to you.

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The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1988), 22.