C. S. Lewis on the Longing for Heaven

If you have not already caught the drift, I think Mere Christianity is an excellent work.  This is not to say that it is perfect or that I or the Catholic Church agrees with every one of Lewis' statements.  But I think non-Christians will find a compelling introduction to the faith which is grown up and thoughtful.  In spite of Lewis' own claim that the book is not for those trying to choose a denomination, I think it would be quite useful for considering the theme upon which the Christian denominations are variations and considering the degree of their fidelity.  And for those who already hold to the Christian faith, it is a cogent reminder of some of the faith's most basic truths.  So if you have not read it, buy a copy, visit your local library (virtually all have it), or read it online.  (Or, if you live in the Charlottesville area, I'll lend you a copy.)

Today's passages come from the chapter titled "Hope."


Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is.  If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.  The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.  It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.  Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither.  It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters.  Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you.  You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more - food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.

Most of us find it very difficult to want "Heaven" at all - except in so far as "Heaven" means meeting again our friends who have died.  One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world.  Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognise it.  Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world.  There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.  The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy.  I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers.  I am speaking of the best possible ones.  There was something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality.  I think everyone knows what I mean.   The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us. Now there are two wrong ways of dealing with this fact, and one right one.

(1) The Fool's Way. - He puts the blame on the things themselves.  He goes on all his life thinking that if only he tried another woman, or went for a more expensive holiday, or whatever it is, then, this time, he really would catch the mysterious something we are all after.  Most of the bored, discontented, rich people in the world are of this type.  They spend their whole lives trotting from woman to woman (through the divorce courts), from continent to continent, from hobby to hobby, always thinking that the latest is "the Real Thing" at last, and always disappointed.

(2) The Way of the Disillusioned "Sensible Man." - He soon decides that the whole thing was moonshine.  "Of course," he says, "one feels like that when one's young.  But by the time you get to my age you've given up chasing the rainbow's end."  And so he settles down and learns not to expect too much and represses the part of himself which used, as he would say, "to cry for the moon."  This is, of course, a much better way than the first, and makes a man much happier, and less of a nuisance to society.  It tends to make him a prig (he is apt to be rather superior towards what he calls "adolescents"), but, on the whole, he rubs along fairly comfortably.  It would be the best line we could take if man did not live for ever.   But supposing infinite happiness really is there, waiting for us?  Supposing one really can reach the rainbow's end?  In that case it would be a pity to find out too late (a moment after death) that by our supposed "common sense" we had stifled in ourselves the faculty of enjoying it.

(3) The Christian Way. - The Christian says, "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.  A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food.  A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.  Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex.  If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.  If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.   Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.  If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.  I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."

Today's image, which reminded me of Lewis' notion of "Northernness," came from this website.

C. S. Lewis on the Cosmic War

Having already shared passages from Lewis' Mere Christianity on the complexity of religion and on views of non-Christians, I would now like to share a third set of passages, about the reality of the cosmic war in the midst of which we live.  The first two paragraphs come from the chapter "The Invasion"; the third comes from "The Practical Conclusion."


One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe - a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin. The difference [from Dualism]  is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.

Enemy-occupied territory - that is what this world is.  Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.  He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery.  I know someone will ask me, "Do you really mean, at this time of day, to reintroduce our old friend the devil - hoofs and horns and all?"  Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know.  And I am not particular about the hoofs and horns.  But in other respects my answer is "Yes, I do."  I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance.  If anybody really wants to know him better I would say to that person, "Don't worry.  If you really want to, you will.  Whether you'll like it when you do is another question."...

Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil?  Why is He not landing in force, invading it?  Is it that He is not strong enough?   Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when.  But we can guess why He is delaying.  He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.  I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side.  God will invade.  But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does.   When that happens, it is the end of the world.  When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.  God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?  For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.  It will be too late then to choose your side.  There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up.  That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not.  Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.  God is holding back to give us that chance.  It will not last for ever.  We must take it or leave it.

C. S. Lewis on Christian Views of Non-Christians

Here is another passage from Mere Christianity, this time from the chapter "The Rival Conceptions of God."

I have been asked to tell you what Christians believe, and I am going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe. If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole word is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest one, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic - there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.

C. S. Lewis on the Complexity of Religion

I have been re-reading C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.  I am not entirely convinced that every one of his arguments holds or is presented in the best way possible, but I am nevertheless struck by how much the content of this work, now seventy years old, continues to speak to the questions posed by modern men, both believers and non-believers.  Here are a few paragraphs I thought particularly forceful (but too long for Facebook statues), from the seventh chapter "The Invasion."


It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not. The table I am sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it is really made of-all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain-and, of course, you find that what we call "seeing a table" lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. A child saying a child's prayer looks simple. And if you are content to stop there, well and good. But if you are not-and the modern world usually is not-if you want to go on and ask what is really happening- then you must be prepared for something difficult. If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple.

Very often, however, this silly procedure is adopted by people who are not silly, but who, consciously or unconsciously, want to destroy Christianity. Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable for a child of six and make that the object of their attack. When you try to explain the Christian doctrine as it is really held by an instructed adult, they then complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is all too complicated and that if there really were a God they are sure He would have made "religion" simple, because simplicity is so beautiful, etc. You must be on your guard against these people for they will change their ground every minute and only waste your tune. Notice, too, their idea of God "making religion simple": as if "religion" were something God invented, and not His statement to us of certain quite unalterable facts about His own nature.

Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect. For instance, when you have grasped that the earth and the other planets all go round the sun, you would naturally expect that all the planets were made to match-all at equal distances from each other, say, or distances that regularly increased, or all the same size, or else getting bigger or smaller as you go farther from the sun. In fact, you find no rhyme or reason (that we can see) about either the sizes or the distances; and some of them have one moon, one has four, one has two, some have none, and one has a ring.

Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys' philosophies-these over-simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simpler either.


The full text of Mere Christianity is available here.  Thanks to Wikia for the image.

I Do Have Favorite Novels

The other evening my wife and I were chatting with our pastor.  The topic of conversation turned to novels and he explained that although she has no sympathetic characters and no happy endings, Flannery O'Connor is his favorite novelist.  I have never read any of her works, but I had long intended to.  She may have a genius for writing, but without sympathetic characters or happy endings, count me out!

This set me off on a small crisis: Do I have a favorite novel?  Do I even like novels at all?  As I wracked my brain, I thought of great novels that I never managed to finish (A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo, Kristin Lavransdatter, The Brothers Karamazov), novels I finished but wished I hadn't (Great Expectations, The Grapes of Wrath, As I Lay Dying), children's novels (The Chronicles of Narnia, The Chronicles of Prydain, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle), biographies (Guerilla, Pitt the Younger), novels I like for some part, most often the ending (The Scarlet Letter, Brighton Rock), and novels that were pretty good but perhaps not great  (Many Dimensions, Dune).  But adult novels that are hands-down, unambiguously, sit-up-and-pay-attention, great works?  Do I really have any favorites, or am I a literary ignoramus?

Have no fear: my doubts were assuaged and - as my poor wife was trying to go to sleep - I assembled a list of some favorite novels:

C. S. Lewis, The Space Trilogy.  Although Lewis considered this a sci-fi series, it is really more fantasy simply set in space.  But the result is still excellent.  Weaving together Christian theology, Roman mythology, and Arthurian legend, Lewis crafts a story which contains several particularly stunning scenes and brings the medieval world-view to the modern age.

Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz.  This novel, set in post-apocalyptic America, tells the story of an order of monks which seeks holiness and truth while trying to re-build civilization.  The novel addresses questions of faith and science, Church and state, and the dignity of human life, all in a way that hangs together and is moving without being cheesy.

Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire.  I read an advanced reading copy of Gates of Fire many years ago and re-read it a couple times thereafter.  Pressfield's novel of the Battle of Thermopylae is not for everyone - the very first word of the novel is not one for polite company - but he has drunk deeply of both ancient Greek literature and the memoirs of modern soldiers, creating an account of ancient warfare which is convincing on both counts, while also asking big questions about human nature.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.  Jane Austen produces vivid and hilarious characters; her writing, though about a society more formal than our own, is deeply witty.  But her greatest genius is for understated insights into character and virtue.  Her prose flows along in such an enjoyable and almost obvious way that one might miss the keen observations of human nature, observations which might have been termed "common sense" in another age, but are largely lost on our own.

Finding a Theology of History

It is somewhat common in the history profession – or at least in graduate school – to be asked about one’s philosophy of history. What is your guiding framework? Economic determinism? Marxism? Gender theory? The Annales school?

I don’t generally think of myself as having a philosophy or overarching theory of history. I just read about the past and tell stories, trying to make sense of what happened, and why. But lately I’ve decided to think more about the biggest questions in history. After all, I am a Catholic and a historian, but am I a Catholic historian? Does my faith inform my work? Some days I think I have a better sense of what it would mean to be a Catholic physicist than a Catholic historian. So I’ve picked up Joseph Ratzinger’s The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure.

Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) is a theologian, not a historian, but he became interested in history for a very simple reason: our salvation occurs in history. This might seem trite, but in fact it is a major question with which Ratzinger wrestles. Most theology is grounded in metaphysics and asks questions about things that are eternal and universal, such as the Holy Trinity or the nature of man. But the key moments in salvation are moments, particular events. Jesus Christ was made incarnate at a particular time in the town of Nazareth in the womb of a woman named Mary. He was not made incarnate in an earlier age, nor in another land, nor was He born of another woman. His birth, ministry, death and resurrection also occurred as discrete events in particular places. What then is the relationship between theology (universals) and history (particulars), Ratzinger asks.

I have not finished reading The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, nor am I expecting it to definitively answer this quandary. Still, I am beginning to sketch out two distinctions that I think might be useful.

The first distinction is between “spiritual history” and “mundane history”. The former involves all things non-material: the working of God, the angels (including demons) and men (at least in their spiritual capacity). Mundane history, in contrast, involves things that are of little spiritual or eternal consequence. The Incarnation clearly belongs to spiritual history, while the fluctuations of the price of rye are fairly mundane. (To clarify, this is not a distinction between a history of the Church and the secular world. Ecclesiastical history can be just as mundane as the price of rye. Just ask any parish secretary.) There are, however, events which are not so easy to place, such as disasters which prompt men to turn to God in prayer. Rising water levels or spiraling inflation are, of themselves, mundane, but may take on spiritual significance. This is because man is himself a hybrid, possessing a spirit like the angels but also a body like the animals. To divorce these two aspects of man from one another is a grave danger; we should expect similar dangers if we try to divide history.

Moreover, Bonaventure notes that sapientia omniformis (omniform wisdom) perceives the traces of God’s work in all things. As St. Paul writes to the Romans, “What can be known about God is plain to [the nations]…. Ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature, namely His eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (1:19-20). Thus, if all creation points to God, it becomes problematic to label any of it “mundane”.

Still, I think the spiritual/mundane distinction has its merit. Most of the history that is written today is terribly mundane, though occasional works on the Civil Rights Movement in America or the battle against Nazism in Europe may touch the spiritual. Still, historians should be reminded that much of what they study, though interesting in its way, is of only passing importance. Moreover, they should be encouraged to push through the mundane and at least aspire to charting the spiritual, when possible.

Alas, that “when possible” may be the hang-up. C. S. Lewis argues in his essay “Historicism” that charting spiritual history by means short of divine revelation is impossible. First there is the problem of collecting data: how do you know if or when God has touched the hearts of men? Few people keep spiritual diaries, and I know of no World Bank of the spiritual world which tabulates such information, telling whether or not the spiritual life has enjoyed a good year. But even if we somehow had access to all the right data, Lewis points out that it would be overwhelming. Important things in politics get written down; key moments in art are recorded by the works of art themselves. Thus it is fairly easy to pick out the high points of political or cultural history, or at least to collect some events which are of arguable importance. But the spiritual life is both fuller and more subtle. At any moment of your life, you are experiencing life with all of your being: the five senses, recent memories, more latent concerns, a history of experiences and your particular intellectual and emotional formation. To see a picture of a place you have been is not the same as returning to a past visit. Even a second visit to the same place cannot recapture the old moment. If somehow you could be re-inserted into a past experience, it would take the whole of your being to re-live it properly. Thus, Lewis contends, for the spiritual historian to properly reconsider a single day of a single life would take him an entire day himself. He could never properly survey even his own life, much less a century or two of an entire nation.

Still, Lewis leaves the door open to spiritual history by freely conceding that his comments do not apply to those who claim knowledge by revelation. Indeed, Lewis clearly knows that Christianity makes just such a claim, contending that God has revealed Himself throughout the centuries and has made known His actions through Scripture. Thus, at least with regards to events discussed by Scripture, the Christian can claim knowledge of spiritual history by revelation.

But can we hope for a spiritual history of the 20th century, or must we settle for mundane history? Bonaventure’s understanding of “revelation” gives us hope for more recent spiritual history. He contends that the revelation of Scripture is not in the words on the page, but the spiritual understanding of the individual reading them. (After all, there are anthropologists and literary critics who have read Scripture inside and out but remain atheists; nothing has been revealed to them.) Bonaventure does not claim that any interpretation of Scripture has equal claim to being “revelation”; the authoritative interpretation is that found within the Church and her life of faith. Still, his definition may be seen as an invitation to consider “revelation” in a broader sense, one which allows us to apply the principles of Scripture to more recent events. I would not claim such an interpretation as authoritative or “revealed” in the same way as the Trinity is revealed, but I think it suggests a way out of Lewis’ dilemma.

Finally, we must consider the possibility of direct revelation, that is, spiritual insight apart from Scripture. The Church teaches that the revelation of doctrine is closed – expect no news flashes about a Fourth Person of the Godhead – but interpreting the events of history need not be a doctrinal matter. Thus, the historian who is faithful to prayer might reasonably consider the possibility of the Holy Spirit guiding his efforts.

This may sound a bit far from history as it is practiced in the academy. In fact, it may sound more like staring into a crystal ball. I advocate no such thing. But I do advocate an approach to history which is not divorced from faith. At the bottom of things I desire to understand history in a why that is meaningful, as are all things in a world created and sustained by a loving God.

That second distinction, you ask. Where is it? Today’s discussion has gone on long enough. Tomorrow we will consider divine and worldly history.

Looking for the King

I'm naturally skeptical of novels that have their own trailer, but I'm intrigued by Looking for the King, by David Downing.

The book is not another group biography of the Inklings. In fact, it sounds more like an imitation of That Hideous Strength or one of Charles Williams' novels, in which supernatural events in modern Britain evoke the island's ancient past and speak to the contemporary threat of evil. The background is Nazi-occupied Europe, the protagonists are two young Americans at Oxford, the object of desire an ancient relic and the wise old men who aid our protagonists are the crew you've been waiting for: the Inklings.

A variety of reviews have been positive, praising the novel for its measured action, its historical research and its decision to leave the Inklings in the wings, rather than trying to put them on center stage.

If you'd like to read a passage before buying a copy for yourself or a loved one, you can do so here. I found the excerpt a bit flat at first, but soon I was reading out of genuine interest, and not simply as a test. I ended by deciding not to finish reading the passage, since I'll probably read the book some day and it would make more sense to do it in order.


H/T to Maggie Perry for sharing this post.

Life in the Spirit, Part I: Emotionalism?

The Charismatic Renewal is often accused of emotionalism. This is an interesting claim. It is frequently true in practice, but masks a far more interesting understanding of the human person and of the work of the Holy Spirit found in proper charismatic life. Moreover, in addressing the question of emotionalism, I discovered that a lot of other important issues are addressed as well.

By way of introduction, it is worth pointing out that the Catholic Church has endorsed the Charismatic Renewal, particularly in the form of the Catholic Fraternity of Charismatic Covenant Communities and Fellowships. So if one accepts the Church's authority - and I realize not all do - then the question is not whether charismatic spirituality is legitimate, but how or why.

In the first instance, I think it important to remember the integrity of the human person. Loosely following Plato's tripartite division of the soul, we might describe ourselves as physical, emotional and intellectual. Since God made all three, He has declared them all good. Thus, use of reason is of God, and a good thing. (More on that below.) Only slightly less obviously, the body is a good thing and should be used for good purposes. One can take this in a Theology of the Body direction, but even more prosaically, one can look at something like liturgical gestures. Unlike the Gnostics, who contended that the body was at best irrelevant and at worst evil, we respect the body and the physical things we do with it. Thus, it matters if you stand or sit. Waving our hands about in the sign of the cross is meaningful, even good. Through our physical actions we can glorify God. Thus, it should come as little surprise that people may experience a physical response to the presence of the Holy Spirit: tears, laughter, speaking in strange languages.

And here it is worth a brief digression to clarify a point. C. S. Lewis, hardly a tongues-speaking charismatic - so far as I can tell - wrote an interesting little essay titled "Transposition". In it he makes the argument that there are more interior states or experiences than there are physical sensations for them. Thus, your stomach may leap when you hear bad news or when you hear a brilliant musical crescendo, but even if the two feel the same, they are manifestations of different things. (The same might be said for tears of sorrow and tears of joy.) Following this line, Lewis says that we should not be scandalized if speaking in tongues sounds like the kind of gibberish that results from mass psychology and hysteria. They may in fact sound exactly alike. That need not mean they are the same things (even if some people claiming to exhibit the one are actually suffering from the other). But more on tongues to follow...

Returning to the tripartite division of the soul. If God can work through and be glorified in the intellectual and the physical, so too in the emotional. This is not to say that one should give himself totally over to his emotions. But it should come as little surprise that the Holy Spirit might operate at times through our emotions. On a related note: if we sometimes utilize intellectual arguments to convince people of the truth, and we sometimes create beautiful works of physical art to attract them to it, is it so wrong to utilize the emotions to draw people to the truth? As Plato notes, the emotions should not run rampant on their own but should be harnessed to a higher purpose. But if that higher purpose is rightly understood, is a little mood lighting and music to place worshipers in a proper emotional disposition impermissible?

If, then, we conclude that the inclusion of the emotions in one's spirituality is plausible, even desirable, one might ask more specifically about receiving a "word" of insight from the Holy Spirit. Is this anything more than listening to one's own emotions? Here we can note several things: Prophesy happens in Scripture, both for revelation of doctrine (now closed with the perfect revelation of Christ) and for specific exhortations and admonitions for specific people. In some instances we see the prophet actually hearing a message, but as often as not, "the word of the Lord came unto..." How that word came is left ambiguous. But if one receives a word from the Holy Spirit, how do we know that is what it is?

We shall take up that question tomorrow.

Cultivating the Comedic Palate

I was going to post this reflection yesterday, but did not want to impede the heroism of German Catholic Nazi fighters (correct me if I’m wrong, Aaron, but wasn’t Bavaria—heart of beer-swilling German Catholicism and Caritas in Veritate—one of the few regions in Germany that did not support Hitler during his election?).

One of the great loves in my life is Comedy. I love comedy both personally (as either performer or audience member) and professionally (Aristophanes, Chaucer, and Shakespeare are three of my favorite authors to teach). Comedy is like a fine bourbon; most anybody who drinks a draught will appreciate its quality. It takes a connoisseur, however, to isolate the particular qualities and flavors and explain exactly why the bourbon is a fine one. The comedic connoisseur will have to sample a wide range of comedy, and along the way gain some appreciation for even the more broad and mundane varieties, just as a bourbon taster may grow fond of Old Fitzgerald while recognizing its profound inferiority to an 18-year-old Elijah Craig.

The comedic connoisseur will also be able to express, however inadequately, the specific qualities in a given comedic work that produce its kathartic effect (Aristotle’s book on Comedy, the second book of The Poetics, has been tragically lost, a loss mourned by Eco in The Name of the Rose). Though I could go on for volumes on this topic, let me suggest three of the many qualities that are routinely found in comedy, and a brief clip from the highly underrated mid-1990’s cartoon The Critic that illustrates what I find to be a harmonious blend of the three.

1. Mockery of Vice and Ugliness. Comedy from Terrance to Chaucer to Rabelais to Shakespeare to Swift to Gilbert and Sullivan to the Simpsons has delighted in taking vice and ugliness as its subjects. Our ability to laugh at the wicked and ugly demonstrates comedy’s social function, as well as the source of its cruelty. (This quality of comedy, by the way, is why Satan is almost always a comedic character in Medieval drama; see C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama.)

2. Parodic Love. Comedy often functions by parody—presenting exaggerated forms of earnest works and characters. In order to parody something well, however, the parodist generally needs some kind of knowledge of and affection for the subject parodied. The worst parodies are those in which the parodist despises the subject (consider how often the political satire of “Mallard Filmore” or “Doonsbury” drifts into the insipid); the best ones, like Christopher Guest movies, preserve affection for that at which fun is poked. In order for Chaucer to have parodied metrical romance in his Rhyme of Sir Thopas, he had to have understood works like Guy of Warwick backwards and forwards; in order for Joyce to have parodied the literary styles of Malory, melodrama, and the Catechism in Ulysses, he had to have intimate knowledge of, and some affection for, their stylistic limitations.

3. Audience Participation. When the audience is respected enough to put the pieces together on their own, the best comedy is born. I think that this is why great comedic works (like the Simpsons, seasons 3-6 or Shakespeare’s As You Like It) often throw in jokes that they know will fly over the heads of the majority of the audience (there are plenty of jokes that all will get); they know that those audience members who do get the obscure jokes will laugh all the harder for the surprise.

So, with these qualities in mind, here is Jay Sherman (voiced by Jon Lovitz), The Critic, showing his audience a clip from Disney’s The Cockroach King. The mockery of Howard Stern (a man worthy to be mocked) and the close parody of The Lion King’s cinematography should be clear. If you recognize the words used in the “African” chant, however, this clip will be all the funnier (and I know that The Guild Review’s Editor-in-Chief Aaron can enlighten us all on this matter).

Sarah Smith of Golders Green

It has been many years since I read The Great Divorce, but a few months ago I happened upon a quotation of one of its scenes and I have been paraphrasing it to various people ever since. But I finally decided one Sunday morning to dig out my copy, dust it off, and share the scene with all of you:

First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers - soundlessly falling, lightly drifting flowers, though by the standards of the ghost-world each petal would have weighed a hundred-weight and their fall would have been like the crashing of boulders. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done.

I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she was naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her innermost spirit shone through her clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye.

But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.

‘Is it?... is it?’ I whispered to my guide.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘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 these gigantic people… look! They’re like emeralds.. who are dancing and throwing flowers before her?’

‘Haven’t ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.’

‘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.’

‘Isn’t that a bit hard on their own parents?’

‘No. There are those that steal other people’s children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.’

~The Great Divorce, Chapter XII

Delighting in Beauty

When trying to make sense of the soul-less lives I see around me, I realized how few people take delight in beauty.

I think - I could be wrong about this - that the reason is that most people are atheists and egotists. Not in the sense that they would philosophically deny the existence of God or that they are haughty and pompous. But in their world there is no God and even the people around them are fairly uninteresting, unengaging. The cosmos is, for them, dead. If there is to be anything interesting in their lives, they have to generate it. (I am reminded, in stark contrast, of the scene near the end of That Hideous Strength where the pantheon of gods appears. The vibrancy of life they share with our human characters is just stunning.) For such atheists and egotists, it is hard to notice the beauty of a sunset, and even harder to see it as a love letter from a pursuing God. The very act of taking delight in something is to admit that we are not alone, that a world exists beyond ourselves.

For some of us, that is a great pleasure. But for many, that is hard to fathom. So my new goal is to share with others my delight in the world that is not me.


PS One of my favorite columnists, Susie Boyt, recently mentioned a collection of essays about the poetry of Keats, titled The Power of Delight, by John Bayley. Perhaps I shall pick it up some day.

Why I Love Puddleglum

I was recently reminded of a scene from The Silver Chair, after having a rather depressing conversation with several colleagues who were happily convinced that their soulless lives of drink and loose women were as good as it gets.

Do you remember the scene in the underworld where the witch is trying to cast a spell upon our heroes, trying to convince them that they have simply imagined the real world above? She tries to tell them that they have looked at a lamp and imagined a larger one, and called it "the sun"; they have seen her cat and imagined a greater one, and called him "Aslan." She has just about got them convinced when Puddleglum stamps out her magical fire with his webby foot and proceeds to give one of the greatest speeches in all literature:

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only real world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.

~Puddleglum, The Silver Chair, Chapter XII: The Queen of the Underworld