Not Necessarily a Book Review - Perelandra

Let me offer a big disclaimer here at the beginning of this post; I am not a literary critic... or a literary anything, for that matter. I'm not qualified even to do real criticism in my own field (fine art). I do offer social criticism pretty often, but I feel more comfortable in that role, as I have a fair amount of experience with society, having lived in it nearly every day.

What follows, then, is no more a real book review than my posts on movies could be considered movie reviews. I don't know enough about either books or movies to put things in proper perspective. If I want real movie reviews, I try to find out what pros like Steven Greydanus or Barb Nicolosi are saying.

So consider this a kind of loose recollection of how one average schlub felt about reading C.S. Lewis' space trilogy.

I knew almost nothing of the story before I began (I have yet to read That Hideous Strength, so shaddap, already, and no spoilers please). My ignorance may be confirmed in recalling that not long ago, I spoke of the entire trilogy as being "about Mars", which is only partly true of the first book, Out of the Silent Planet.

Out of the Silent Planet was a fun read, imaginative, and profound at points. Certainly as serviceable a "let's pretend we're on another planet" tale as one could reasonably ask for. It was a pleasure to read a space story written before (but not too long before) we actually did begin to go into space, when the Unknowns were so much bigger (this begs to be made into a cool Steampunk graphic novel).

That said, I wasn't bowled over. I was surely engaged enough to pick up book two, but I did not have extremely high expectations. Then Perelandra (the aforementioned "book two"), over the course of a couple of chapters, became one of my favorite books ever (not that I'm widely read).

More after the break. AHOY!! SPOILERS AHEAD!

The central drama of Perelandra is ingeniously imaginative and breathtaking in its spiritual insights. It is essentially the story of a man who is transported to another planet's Garden of Eden - complete with its own Adam and Eve and even a type of Serpent - and finds himself charged with the task of heading off a repeat of The Fall, as it happened on Earth. It is on his shoulders and within his power to prevent on Perelandra (what we call Venus) all the suffering and evil that has deformed and desecrated the history of Mankind. I found it gripping. The unrelenting peril of the situation, and the significance of every thought, word and gesture on the part of the characters - particularly the Green Lady, Perelandra's Eve, - had me at points in a kind of agony of spiritual suspense.

It is a deeply considered meditation on the nature of temptation, obedience, joy, deception, evil, virtue, innocence, love, courage, duty... a number of times, having completed a paragraph or a bit of dialogue, I had to lay the book aside and think for a while. This kind of writing one hopes for but rarely finds.

Both books also offer an unfolding meditation on the nature of the physical world, the cosmos, angels, demons and myriad unnamed or as yet unimagined beings, as well as our relationships to these things and to God as the creator and sustainer of all. Lewis is, I think, as successful in this creation of Myth as Tolkien was in The Silmarillion. Not nearly as exhaustively worked out and detailed, but certainly as fundamentally substantial.

After all, why should Outer Space not be crowded with angels? Perhaps the biblical authors and our pagan ancestors were not so far off, anyway, in looking to the sky as Heaven? As Chesterton has noted, the idea of space as something vast, empty and forbidding is not anything like a fact, but only a kind of mood;

"Why, then, should one worry particularly to call it large? There is nothing to compare it with. It would be just as sensible to call it small. A man may say, "I like this vast cosmos, with its throng of stars and its crowd of varied creatures." But if it comes to that why should not a man say, "I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent number of stars and as neat a provision of live stock as I wish to see"? One is as good as the other; they are both mere sentiments." - from Orthodoxy

Unless I miss my guess, the astrophysicists would confirm that if space were much more crowded, everything would have collapsed on itself a long time ago. We need space in order to exist. And as for the cosmos being empty, in what other medium should God have suspended the celestial orbs and galaxies... Sawdust? Cotton fluff? Packing peanuts?

The day after I finished reading Perelandra, I went to Mass, and was delighted to find that Lewis' space mythology served as an unconscious aid to sacred imagination. It was a little easier to believe and to sense that Heaven and Earth, time and eternity, had merged and mingled on the altar. The Communion of Saints became a less abstract and a more concrete concept. I find myself more often haunted (in the best possible meaning of the word) with the sensation of the company - just offstage - of heavenly messengers.

This is an article of faith, for Catholics; that angels and saints attend us and hear our prayers. This was no invention of C.S. Lewis, but he was able to re-cast the idea in imaginative language in such a way that one could - at least briefly - see these things again as if seeing them for the first time.

Now, on to That Hideous Strength!

Comments

[M. B.]

"As Chesterton has noted, the idea of space as something vast, empty and forbidding is not anything like a fact, but only a kind of mood..."

I've got an essay on this very topic coming up in the Sep/Oct issue of Touchstone, in which I argue that the view of space Lewis described in his Space Trilogy is actually supported by modern science:

http://www.touchstonemag.com/

As I argue in the article, modern science looks at simple size and concludes that man is adrift in an abyss. In reality, though, what we find around is is an energetic cosmos that shows evidence of its dramatic birth, and we are also crucially dependent on cosmic processes for out very lives -- our bodies are made of elements made through nucleosynthesis in stars, and we depend on nuclear fusion in stars to produce the energy that fuels almost all life on earth through photosynthesis. Lewis was right, the heavens are a lively place.

[M.B.]

Oh, and you're in for a treat, Tim. That Hideous Strength is the best of the three, in my opinion.

[The Pachyderminator]

"That Hideous Strength is the best of the three, in my opinion."

I would call Perelandra not only the best of the three, but one of the best of Lewis's entire canon (as I've said before), but I'm also enthusiastic about That Hideous Strength. Fun fact: Tolkien disliked That Hideous Strength because it was too much influenced by Charles Williams, whom Tolkien didn't like, and perhaps because Lewis "borrowed" one of the concepts from Tolkien's mythology and then misspelled it.

[M.B.]

Which is somewhat ironic, Pachyderminator, since Ransom is based on Tolkien himself!

[The Pachyderminator]

In Out of the Silent Planet, yes. In That Hideous Strength Ransom is based more on Charles Williams.