Not a lot. It not only assumes a Christian view, it attributes that Christian view to *non-*Christians. Why would some-one honestly seeking God (or “dabbling in religion”) think they would find “Him”? If they did think that, why would they be afraid of finding “Him”? It’s more Cthulhu than Christ.
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I understand this sentiment, and experience that sort of tension myself.
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!!!
The Space Trilogy didn’t present a world? The Narnia tales didn’t present a world? And Lewis’s imaginary literary activities from early childhood, recorded in his autobiography and elsewhere, aren’t exercises in world-building?
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Not a very convincing one, but I was talking specifically about Narnia, which is absurdly slapdash. I know nothing of his imaginary literary activities, whatever those are.
Well, all right, but your wording in context did not make that clear. You seemed to be comparing Tolkien in general with with Lewis in general, not Tolkien with just Narnia:
“Tolkien built a world, something Lewis never managed or perhaps wasn’t interested in.”
You say that Lewis “never managed” the creation of a world, implying that the failure extended beyond the Narnia series. So I took it that you were generalizing about the totality of Lewis’s imaginative writing. And I would say that he did create worlds (even in the Narnia series, but also elsewhere); hence my objection. Whether they were coherent or plausible worlds, or were as impressive as Tolkien’s world, is a different matter.
Is it really fair to compare Narnia to Middle Earth? Narnia was meant to be a children’s book.
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Agreed, Narnia was meant to be a children’s book. Still, Lewis does create an imaginative world in it, and that’s the only point I was trying to make. I think John Harshman is saying that it is an impoverished or otherwise inferior imaginative world compared to that of Tolkien, but that is neither here nor there regarding my point. He said that Lewis “never” managed to create a world, and I don’t think that’s true, even regarding the Narnia series, and as I pointed out, Lewis wrote other things.
I wasn’t, but I could have. Lewis didn’t have much imagination, really. And building a world requires more than just making up any story about some imagined world. Still, I don’t feel like quibbling with you over definitions.
So was The Hobbit.
I would disagree that Narnia was at all imaginative. It was of course imaginary, but that’s hardly the same thing. If you want to defend Lewis’s imagination, you will have to try something else.
7 posts were split to a new topic: Eddie and John on C.S. Lewis
The only sense I have ever had of being treated “personally” by the universe, the great beyond, or whatever one calls it, is really rather trivial. My financial situation was once quite desperate, and an idea I’d had for a business startup which I recognized probably wasn’t that great an idea (and which, in retrospect, I am sure was actually a worse idea than I thought it was) succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I would say that there was no word for the subjective feeling of this experience better than that I felt “blessed,” as though some personal force had witnessed my despair and reached out.
But I never thought that rather compelling feeling was in any sense true. Indeed, I thought it was quite funny because I deplore such things as the “prosperity gospel” notion and because I was well aware that this is just what one might call, for lack of a better characterization, “contingency.” Things fell together better than I had a right to expect them to do, a fact for which I would be forever grateful if there were anyone to thank (well, anyone other than customers).
But when it comes to what one might deem more purely “spiritual” feeling, never; not at all; not one bit. The last run I had with a truly “personal” god was when I was about five and my parents were still attending church. I found that the voice of God himself would answer me when I focused and asked him things. And then, possibly being a bit of a born empiricist, I began to wonder whether that was really the voice of God. I tested that notion by seeing whether I could make it say whatever I wanted it to say, and I found that I could. Elementary though the experience may have been, it was enough to teach me that the subjective experience of knowing something is quite distinct from that “something” being true.
Do I have the sense that there is “something out there”? Not in the way that is usually meant. I have the sense that the universe is a lot bigger than me and that it is vaster and more complex than I probably can imagine. I have the sense that my life is too short, and neural circuits too small, to learn more than a small part of what humanity knows about it. But the sense that there is some all-pervading personality looming over it? The sense that our physical realm is shot-through, interpenetrated, suffused with some sort of spiritual or divine essence? No. Not at all. The closest I get to that is, perhaps, when I am alone in some Neolithic stone circle somewhere as a breeze starts up or the sun reddens. At moments like that I come closest to the feeling that there is something personal – the spirits of the ancestors, perhaps, blowing about and making me feel awe and mystery. But that feeling is paper-thin; my sense is that our brains are effective at generating awe, mine no less than others’, but that all it does for me is to help me understand WHY some people believe in spirits.
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I used to feel Narnia compared unfavorably to Arda back in my high school / university years, though as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to appreciate it more - Lewis wasn’t trying to do the same thing as Tolkien so they should be judged by different standards.
Interestingly, I just came across this link, promoting a book (entitled “Planet Narnia”) suggesting that there’s a lot more depth to the Narnia series than meets the eye:
I only really started to realize the extent to which Lewis’s work was intentionally influenced by medieval cosmology when I re-read his space trilogy recently. It would be interesting to see how that plays out in Narnia; I might have to pick that book up.
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