CS Lewis link

 just a link to an article about CS Lewis and his relationship with various children. 

LINK

more HERE.

links posted so I can read them later on my tablet

Movie of the week

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 Shadowlands: a story of CS Lewis and how he got married to an American divorcee. A two handkerchief movie.

I had a friend who scoffed and dismissed the film saying CSL was a Christian. I think he thought that it was a religious film: It is actually a well written drama about a person who had closed his emotional life after the childhood loss of his mother, and in middle age unexpectedly finds love, and learns about pain and how to face death.

and yes, in this play the actor playing him is Anthony Hopkins, best known for playing Hannibal Lector. When people forget and think actors are the same as the roles they play, I often point to Hopkins.

the film is best seen in high def but hey it's youtube and free.

If you are not familiar with CSL: this is a one man show about his early life and conversion to Christianity.

CS Lewis is best known as the author of the Narnia series (which I believe is now being remade by Netflix.) One shudders at that announcement: Presumably it will be made politically correct.

 However, the older film version is worth finding on a streaming service:

trailer here:

or you can watch the BBC TV miniseries version:

CSLewis has written quite a few books to explain Christianity, which if you google his name you can find the audio versions on youtube.

I don't especially like his religious writings: too brittle for me. But Mere Christianity is as good a book to explain the basics to the ignorant as you can find, although it is a bit out of date.

Ironically, I predate the Narnia books so didn't read them as a child: which is good because they tend to be a bit preachy.

 My introduction to CS Lewis was because as a kid I hated kid books aimed at girly girls, and read my brothers sci fi books (Heinlein, Clarke, etc) and one of these books was CSL's SciFi book Out of the Silent Planet, where a clueless professor of language (who some say was based on Tolkien) is kidnapped and taken to Mars by two PC scientists whose attitude toward Martians is a satire on the British Empire's mindset (i.e. they view Martians as inferior beings who need to be exploited so humans can live there and steal their gold etc.). They assume the locals want to meet another human to dissect him.(actually the Martians just want to learn about humans but think the scientists are crazy so want to meet a sane member of humanity)... Again outdated but still part of the classic sci fi universe.

The Ghosts of CS Lewis

 With all the books and films about CS Lewis, there are two people who were prominent in his life that get little attention.

One is the oldest son of Joy Gresham. 

After Lewis married her, he took in her sons, and after her death he beame the step father to the hoys.

Douglas Gresham has written about his life with Lewis, but until now was not willing to come out and discuss the psychiatric problems of his older brother. He does mention this in a recent interview that was discussed on the blog of First Things.

While Douglas has weighed in with two books—Lenten Lands and a short biography of Lewis—David has virtually vanished from the historical record..... David died several years ago in a secure Swiss mental hospital, and Douglas has finally broken his silence about a hitherto unknown aspect of life at The Kilns. His earliest memories, he told me, were of his brother, who was later diagnosed as schizophrenic.

So Lewis had to cope with David, a trouble teenager, until his American uncle, a psychiatrist, agreed to take him in.  

According to this interview, that uncle told Douglas that David was a schizophrenic: But I actually wonder if severe anger issues with acting out, complicated by being bipolar, might be  the diagnosis.

Being bipolar is hereditary, and his birth father was alcoholic and abusive and probably had PTSS. This abuse is why Joy left him . But young children often don''t see such problems and often react with rage and acting out. 

Douglas recounted some surreal stories. “I learned how to fight very fast; I learned how to run very fast,” he recalled. ...“It was a difficult childhood for me,” he said. “Jack tried his very hardest for David all the time. He tried to help in every way he could—he was kind and gentle and wonderful with him.”

The oldest son is often the one most harmed by the loss of a parent, or because of an alcoholic/ drug abusing parent, and those of us who have had to cope with children who we adopted at an older age know about such rage, which is often directed at the non alcoholic parent (who didn't protect him) or to the new parent who is trying to rescue the damaged child and heal him.  And this rage also is sometimes direced toward a sibling they see as more favored by the parent.

Other ways of coping is to essentially become the parent of the parents and siblings.  Or, as seems to be the case of Douglas, to find a protecter to help them cope.

Sigh. Been there, done that.

One does hope that Douglas will write this missing chapter: Not only for CS Lewis followers, but to help those who have had to cope with similar experiences.

Headsup from TeaAtTrianon.

The other person often left out of CS Lewis' biogtaphies is the mysterious Mrs. Moore. When she is portrayed, it is usually from when she was older and slipping into the behavior problems  (paranoia, rigidity) of Alzheimer's disease, and too often quote a the same descriptions of her from Lewis' brother Warnie, who moved in with them in the late 1930s, or earlier observations from upper class snobs from the university who met her but didn't get to know her, in these earlier years, and of course in a class conscious England saw her as a lower class twit.

Caring for a person with Alzheimers' is not easy, but few of Lewis' friends seem to realize how he accepted this burden. But I did read one essay of how Lewis coped with her senility, with the aid of some young helpers, during the war years. (After the war, she needed to be placed in a nursing home for proper care).

But these problems were in the l940s...

in those early years, we only see the same critical quote by the few upper class friends who criticized her because she asked Lewis to help with some of the household chores: something that was needed because he wasn't yet working.

There is a lot of speculation about if there was a sexual relationship here when he was younger and before he became a Christian. Ah, but if a lonely boy was comforted by a generous older woman, it would not prove they were evil sinners, but would point to the power of a loving woman to heal a boy damaged by a sad childhood and unfeeling father, and who was suffering from PTSS and the physical wounds of WWI.

 but as one person pointed out: this was denied by Mrs. Moore's daughter, at that time a young girl, who lived with them various small rented houses (often with guests that Mrs Moore took in off the street) before Lewis' income improved and he was able to buy the Kilns.

Observations by Maureen is also essentially missing from the biographies I have read and one does wish someone would do an in depth interview with her to get insight into their relationship in the 1920s and 1930s.

But I did run across one observation of Mrs Moore in a book we remember CS Lewis: essays by his friends and students.

One of the essays was by his gardener, Fred Paxford, who is often though to be the inspiration for the character Puddleglum in the Narnia books.

Much of his essay is about the woods, fields, and lake that he cared for, and Lewis' love of nature, but he does include this about Mrs. Moore and he liked her.

She was very fond of animals and kept a few poultry which she loved to fuss with. But she always said the best place for a chicken was on the table. At best we always had a plenty of fresh eggs. She also had two dogs and two cats, always well fed. She was a great lady and very fond of Ireland and the Irish and of mothering people...She was a mother to Mr Jack (i.e. CSLewis), and he always called her Mintoes. She was always very good to me...

After describing that she bottled a lot of fruit and often gave away bottles of fruit and eggs, he mentions:

She had a kind nature. Anyone who came to the Kilns for help always went away with money, and if it was a man, with a handful of cigarettes.

presumaly this was during the depression, where some neighbors would welcome such gifts, and when wandering hobos would pass word to each other about which homes would feed them or give them a little change.

Lewis often includes his friends in his fiction: For example, Ransom in the first two books of the space trilogy is thought to be based on Tolkien (and I suspect the professor and his wife in the third book was inspired by stories of how his pupils often considered the Tolkien house as their home). And was angry Eustace of the Narnia series based on the angry stepson David? We don't know but one does wonder.

However, there are two portraits in Lewis' writings that could be inspired by Mrs. Moore.

The first was the picky lady in the Screwtape letter, who just wants toast, but is disappointed when she gets it and lets you know it.

Is this based on the Mrs Moore with early Alzheimer's disease?

But in an early book, there another fictional lady who might resemble the Mrs. Moore who invited strangers in need to stay in her home and who was always there to help the hobos and others who came to her door.

Making one wonder if her real portrait is that of the Great Lady in the Great Divorce: 

True, Mrs. Moore was an atheist, not a Christian, but the warmth of her personaliy and her generosity in taking him in, and why he seemed happy to care for her for 30 years.

And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face. “Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide. “Not at all,” said he. “It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.” “She seems to be...well, a person of particular importance?” “Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”...

“And who are all these young men and women on each side?” “They are her sons and daughters.” “She must have had a very large family, Sir.”

“Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter...“Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves..”

from the play Swallow the Sun:

CS Lewis remembered

CS Lewis passed away on Nov 22 1963, the same day as JFK and Huxley. 

He was ridiculed by his more PC peers for his old fashioned approach to Christianity, but you know, those PC attitudes are now considered quaint: I mean, the Fabians had the headlines then and maybe now with the Great Reset, but seeing the deaths from socialist utopias in the past makes one wonder if Lewis will outlive them all as a prophet: in That Hideous Strength fortells what is happening today: the elite who despise ordinary folk making a technocratic utopia.  Hmm... I thought the Great Reset was a myth made up by idiots, but hey, it's happening in front of us and if you go against them, hey, you will be deplatformed and banished.

Personally, I find Lewis a bit brittle in his writing, but I first read him as a sci fi fan with the book Out of the Silent Planet. 

some of the themes are the evils of colonialism by positing earth men who aim to settle humans to displace the peoples of Mars...  in other words, OOTSP was a novel about racism:

On Malacandra, three races live in perfect harmony under the rule of the benevolent spirit Oyarsa. Lewis contrasts the happiness on Malacandra with the turmoil on Thulcandra, or Earth, where racism has led to widespread discord.

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 A PilgrimInNarnia blog publishes a transcript of CS Lewis' Obiturary.

again, it sees Lewis as old fashioned and out of date, opposing the trends of modernism that ruled Oxford in those days.

Dr. McGrath wrote a biography of CS Lewis and has a lecture about his influence here.

Kilns walks

A Pilgrim in Narnia has a post with lovely photos of the area around the Kilns.

And, walking beside the Kilns, I found my way once again into the woods behind the old Lewis residence. This was a wildness that the Lewis brothers and their household slowly tamed and replanted beginning in the early 1930s. The 6 or 7 acres behind the Kilns makes up the C.S. Lewis Nature Reserve, a fitting living memory of Lewis’ love of living things.

in an earlier post, he has photos of the graves of the various Inklings. 

Out of the silent planet podcast

APilgrimInNarnia has a guest post about Out of the Silent Planet.

the book with the original benevolent E.T.'s and the first CSLewis book that I ever read. It puts Christianity and life on other planets in context, making a benevolent universe where only earth is "silent" because it's guardians rebelled. (a similar context is found in L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, where the children rescue their father from a planet where the rebellion was complete, in contrast to earth, where some still remained true...).

the most amusing part of the book, however, is when Ransom tries to translate the bad scientist's greedy imperialist ideology etc. to the innocent Martians.

I haven't listened to the podcast, but it is part of a series that includes discussions of starwars and Japanese fantasy films too.

LINKCulturezoo podcast.

Apple Link for itunes

Screwtape takes a stand

Apparantly CSLewis didn't just give talks about Christianity on the BBC: He also taped some talks for the British spy/propaganda service for them to use to persuade Iceland not to give into the Nazi propaganda about Ein Volk... his talk discussed how he loved Norse/Icelandic literature and how their literature inspired many British writers.

Presumably, in these days when patriotism is considered evil by the PC, it is easy to forget that Hitler made ISIS look like a sissy, and that the Battle of the Atlantic was going on, and that Germany had just conquered Norway and Iceland was the key to the North Atlantic sea lanes. (for history review of what was going on back then, check out this Podcast on the Battle of the NorthAtlantic here.)

So why shouldn't Lewis cooperate to help his country?

He spoke on the subject “The Norse Spirit in English Literature.” Lewis provided a touchstone between the Norse people and the English, which Lewis made clear in his first recorded statement. He said that he did not know why he had been asked to address the people of Iceland, but that he agreed to do it in order to repay a great debt. He explained that his imaginative life had been awakened by Norse mythology when he was 14. He went on to explain how his love of Norse mythology only deepened when he began to learn the Icelandic language at Oxford.

Most Lewis/Tolkien fans are aware that he got to know Tolkien when he joined a group that used the sagas to learn the Icelandic literature.

As for this comment:

If Lewis felt so strongly about the Norse influence on the development of English literature, why did he never write on the subject later? We know that he felt strongly about the subject in his personal development, but why the great silence in his major critical works? 

well, maybe because his area of academic expertise was medieval and Renaissance British literature... but one might argue that the Icelandic sagas and mythology were a hobby that helped inspire his fantasy writings...

Tolkien might have been a more "logical" choice, but Tolkien was a deep scholar but lousy at lectures, whereas Lewis' lectures were famous for being easy to understand and for his enthusiasm.

in an unrelated item: Tolkien was approached to be a code breaker (he trained as a communications officer in WWI and had a background in this) but Tolkien had four kids and decided he couldn't afford to give up his job as a professor (i.e. that had tenure), and noted it was not his area of expertise.

headsup GetReligion

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related item: Right now, on Scribd,  I'm listening to the audiobook of A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War.

about how the war affected Tolkien and Lewis.

It's an easier read than Garth's encyclopedic book on Tolkien in the war, and it also brings up how religion was used to see the war as a great crusade (Jenkins has a book on this that I have not read).

The first few chapters is for the average reader who knows little or nothing about the cultural background of that war. I've only hit Chapter 3, which notes the Battle of the Somme, and the similarity of the horror of the trenches to the Dead Marshes in LOTR.

So I haven't hit the later part of the war, when Lewis arrived.

CSLewis

AlisterMcGrath, who recently published a biography of CSLewis, has a short introduction to the author Part One HERE

the audiobook of Lewis' biography HERE.

For Later viewing

Hieropraxis has a report on a CSLewis symposium

video links:



for later watching, as today is housecleaning day.

Mythgard lectures on youtube

the Tolkien professor is involved in on line teaching for college level courses (for credit) at Mythgard Institute...

I didn't pay much attention since I am not looking for college credit (and am retired and on a strict budget).

But they posted some of the lectures on youtube, if you want to take a look. This one is the Lion the witch and the wardrobe, but they also have one on Tolkien and another on Harry Potter...

Myths, lies, and the importance of escapism

a re-enactment of the famous argument between Tolkien and CSLewis.

Actually the conversation was late at night and included several people, but this is the jist of Tolkien's argument.

and a strong defense of the importance of creativity and being an artist in a world that insists everything should be dull and utilitarian...

the poem that expresses this is Mythopoeia...

The Tolkien professor reads the poem and then discusses it (MP3LINK) as a lecture in his Tolkien course...

Stuff below the fold

 Yum...guinea pigs.

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why some american Indians had weird shaped heads.

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The ancient script of the Philippines.

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Dumping medical waste in Pakistan...hospitals just throw the stuff out, and to make things worse, some hospitals waster from Europe is sent as "plastic" imports for reselling.

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An article about CSLewis' correspondence with Sister Penelope, discussing his early science fiction.

 For Lewis, as for Tolkien, such stories of derring-do, daunting quests, vistas populated by fantastic yet credible characters accomplished what mere philosophical argument could not. Their narratives proffered central themes that simultaneously uplifted the spirit while challenging the conventional wisdom, our “disenchantment,” of the present age, pushing readers toward the true reality now made visible. 

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the Chinese are pushing against the Philippines again...only 100 miles off shore this time.
oh no, not aggression: Their fishing ships always travel with three warships for protection....

on the other hand, since the NoKo rocket piffed out, flights here can resume.

and some good news from the Philippines: Winter season harvest has been good (last summer's harvest was partly destroyed by the typhoon).
that goes for our fields too...we've had to pinch pennies for the last six months...
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Everything you wondered about Homer Simpson, including the inspiration of the town of Springfield.

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How to whistle through your fingers 
(headsup NewAdvent)
 
 my mother could do this, and it was quite loud. When we lived in Africa, the nurses would ask her to do it and then laugh...

Starship sofa

The Audio magazine of science fiction, Starship Sofa, has a podcast that includes a discussion of Tolkien by Amy H Sturgis.

Her website includes lots of downloads and links, and has a photo of her with Douglas Gresham (she edited Past Watchful Dragons, Fantasy Faith in the world of CSLewis).

her blog is HERE.

Thulcandra

The link is to the very nice Wikipedia article on CSLewis' space triology...

I am familiar with all the webpages on Elvish languages, but LINK is about the Languages of the space trilogy...

Headlines below the fold

It's not all Black and white to explain Hillary's success:
"Clinton got more popular votes than Obama in Arizona, California and Texas, and she won the Nevada caucus because of her huge margin of support among Latinos."
and the ratio is even more impressive among Asians...

and some Catholic sites are noticing: Obama is not only "pro choice", but in the Illinois Senate stopped a bill mandating basic medical treatment for those born alive after abortion...

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On the other hand, ordinary folks are haunted by killing embryonic mice coats...
where is PETA when we need them?
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Need to recharge your cellphone? Just plug it into your bra..

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McClane for President...yippee kay yay M***** F*****s.
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Prince Caspian is being marketed to conservatives and geeks. ...conservative review here, and the geeks at Aintitcoolnews will be having a sneak preview on the 15th.

And Eddie Izzard is doing the voice of Reepicheep...

Beware the mouse!

Ain'tItCoolNews reports on the savage mouse in Prince Caspian:

this "Exclusive" One Sheet debut reveals a new heroic and intensely violent rodent given weaponry and a slashing tongue. That's right - right there is Reepicheep, officially debuting on this here one sheet. He's being voiced in the film by Eddie Izzard...the action showed him being pretty darn violent with that blade of his....

LINK for slideshow
More information LINK

And did you know NarniaFans has a podcast? LINK

Prince Caspian

Trailer now on line...

Prince Caspian concept Art

I'd make the photo larger but I am afraid Disney will sue me...they sue everyone for copyright infringement except Hamas (who had Mickey the suicide bomber mouse on their TV)

Headsup from LINK

CS Lewis trivia

I am listening to a lecture on CS Lewis, where the teacher mentioned about his problem in sports due to a stiff thumb. We were told about this in Medical school, and it took me awhile to find exactly what it was, but if you are interested in medical trivia, go to the link.

And here is a Flannery O'Connor quote about Lewis' books:

"This book of C.S. Lewis on prayer is a good one but I don't like to pray any better for reading it. I also just read one of his called Miracles, which is very fine. Deceptively simple. You really need to read every sentence twice. Go among the biblical scholars, says he, as a sheep among wolves...."

The question of God

I missed the PBS special about God, CSLewis and Freud, however I downloaded the book a couple years ago but didn't bother to read it until I moved here and had time.

Well, the professor has a summary of the special on line at Yahoo videos...

and the LINK to Univ Calif tv lectures on line has a lot more interesting topics