Thursday, September 29, 2005

CS Lewis and Tolkien

CS Lewis and Tolkien were close friends from 1928, but their friendship became less close in the mid 1940's and they rarely saw each other in the 1950's...partly due to age, partly due to Lewis' finding other friends who disliked Tolkien and criticized him, and partly due to Lewis' marriage and the fact he changed universities...
(and I wonder if it is partly because Christopher Tolkien, who was also an Inkling, had grown up and was able to discuss as an adult with his father, and to the fact that in the 1940's Tolkiens marriage disputes, mainly about religion, seemed to have settled down..)...
(I have the book "The Inklings" that discusses this...)

One would think 30 years of friendship would make a good story, but it sounds like this film's agenda is the differences, not the similarities...

And I am especially annoyed at this:

"In CS Lewis, Beyond Narnia, Lewis and Tolkien are shown having a violent argument about The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Lewis wrote afterwards: "No harm in him, only needs a smack or so."

Actually, that quote is from Lewis' diary...and was written in 1926, when he met Tolkien for the first time...

Ironically, although Tolkien, a strict Catholic, opposed Lewis' marriage to a divorcee, his wife, who met Lewis' wife in the hospital, seems to have made friends with her...which is more amazing since she disliked Lewis, who unlike others of Tolkiens' friends and students, did not make friends with her and the children...