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The Inklings [Generated] 2008-08-22 12:53:41 GMT +1000 [URL]
http://jesus.com.au/html/page/inklings [Path] Home / Christian Theism /
Creativity / Inklings
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[[ J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams ]]

*The Lord of the Rings*, *The Screwtape Letters* and 
*The Chronicles of
Narnia* have each sold millions of copies.  But 
when they first
appeared in public, it was as unfinished drafts.  
They were read aloud
as they were being written, to a group known as 
the 'Inklings'.

The group included C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and an individual in 
many
ways more fascinating than either:  Charles Williams.  Throughout 
the
nineteen-thirties and forties this group of authors and their 
friends
would meet at Lewis' rooms in Oxford, or at one of two nearby 
pubs. 
They would read aloud and criticize the works that each were 
then
writing.

Charles Williams, through his novels and lectures, gained a rabidly

enthusiastic following in some ways resembling a cult of personality. 

In England the Charles Williams Society [1] is still active long after

his untimely death in 1945.  His work and thought is more complex than

I can do the slightest justice to in this space, however, and I choose

with some regret to pass over him for now, and to focus on Lewis and

Tolkien instead.  I recommend the account of his life given in Humphrey

Carpenter's prize-winning biography *The Inklings* (referenced below),
and suggest *Descent into Hell* (republished, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1993) both as one of the best novels that I have ever read, and also as
the best encapsulation of his main ideas.

[1] http://www.geocities.com/charles_wms_soc/

To begin with the perfectly obvious:  Lewis and Tolkien enjoyed 
a level
of popular and professional success that most people only 
dream of. 
They were bestselling authors and today, a generation 
after their
deaths, are read by tens of millions.  In Lewis' case, 
his popular
success, together with his more explicitly Christian 
writings, arguably
denied him a professorship at Oxford University 
(Tolkien had been
Professor of English Language and Literature since 
1945), and led to
his move to Cambridge as Professor of Medieval and 
Rennaisance
Literature in 1954.

> 
What many in Oxford resented most of all was the breadth of 
appeal
> of such things as *Screwtape*.  Lewis' books (and 
Tolkien's too,
> after the publication of *The Lord of the Rings*) 
were eagerly read
> by children, by working people, by the poorly 
educated, and by many
> other categories very alien to the world of 
professional scholarship
> in general and 'literary criticism' in 
particular.  A good many at
> Oxford did not care much for 
this.  They resented the remarkable
> capacity of Lewis and Tolkien 
for getting themselves across to an
> enormous range of readers, a 
capacity for climbing the walls that
> surround academicism and 
communicating with the world outside. 

Lewis and Tolkien's major achievement, however, lay underneath their

public success, and formed its foundation.  They embodied and

articulated what may be called a spirituality of literature, although

its implications touch on all of art.

There were several aspects to this.  They maintained a vision of 
a
human role as 'sub-creators' -- beings whose creativity reflects the

greater creativity of God, and which becomes an act of worship engaging

the intelligence and the imagination, ultimately uniting the 
spiritual
world with the realities of everyday life.  They believed 
also that
myth, which as literary academics they were steeped in, could 
not keep
itself from shadowing spiritual reality and, in particular, 
the gospel
of which Jesus is the focus.

Frazer's *The Golden Bough* and other works had noted parallels 
between
Jesus' life and teachings, and a number of ancient 
mythologies, such as
those of Osiris (in Egypt) or Mithra (in 
Rome).  (Recently *The Jesus
Mysteries* by Timothy Freke and 
Peter Gandy has tried to revive the
same ideas at a popular level.)  
Did the gospel have it's parallels
with myth because it *was* a 
myth?  To Lewis and Tolkien, history
seemed to exclude this option.  
But how to explain it?  Was Jesus'
gospel in fact the reality that myth 
and literature had foreshadowed
all along; the pattern for its 
universal themes, a subjective aspect of
what is called 'natural 
revelation'?  Was the gospel the intended
answer to the collective 
subconscious longings and understandings of
humanity, as they 
invariably bubbled up in myths and dreams, in the
recurring forms that 
Jung called 'archetypes'?  Lewis thought this.  He
wrote:

> ...myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world 
of
> thought with that vast continent we really belong to.  It is 
not,
> like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to 
the
> particular.

And so, a 'real' myth will have universal relevance, and resonate 
with
personal experience for a great many people.  It is a perfect 
medium
for awakening a wide audience to a realization of things already 
known,
if not explicitly recognized.  Anyone having read  *'Till we 
Have
Faces*, by Lewis, or  *The Lord of the Rings*, by Tolkien, 
will have
felt this effect:  A situation is described, and some 
puzzling little
aspect of life clicks into place.  It is for his great 
myth that
Tolkien is still read today, though Lewis was mainly popular 
for other
reasons.  But Lewis continues:

> Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends 
myth.  The
> heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a 
fact.  The old myth
> of the Dying God, *without ceasing to be 
myth*, comes down from the
> heaven of legend and imagination to the 
earth of history.  It
> *happens* -- at a particular date, in a 
particular place, followed by
> definable historical consequences.  
We pass from a Balder or an
> Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, 
to a historical person
> crucified (it is all in order) *under Pontius 
Pilate*.  By becoming
> fact it does not cease to be myth...  
I suspect that men have
> sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance 
from the myths they did
> not believe than from the religion they 
professed.

Through this understanding a spiritual, inquisitive role for myth 
and
literature emerges, bound into human self-awareness, but running at

right angles to the psychological account of myth  (and religion)  as

wish-fulfilment.  It is contrary too to the common views of 
literature
simply as entertainment or self-expression.  In 1939 
Lewis published
'Christianity and Literature', in which he wrote:

> ...we should get as the basis of all critical theory the maxim that
> an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence
> beauty or wisdom that did not exist before, but simply and solely as
> trying to embody in his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and
> Wisdom.

Lewis' view has more in common with the holistic, synergetic 
emphases
of our own times than with the egocentric modernism of the

nineteen-thirties, when he wrote.  What we recognize in myth, we cannot

necessarily obtain from abstract argument.  And yet, unlike

post-modern views, it tethers to realities beyond our language, and

illuminates them.  For example, consider how literary 
deconstruction
is powered by a concept of justice -- the power contests 
and
unjustified authority stuctures in our communications must be 
exposed. 
Where does this 'big-picture story' come from?  Lewis would 
say, I
think, that it comes from us all.  Our every expression of 
justice
becomes, in this quaint wording, a "reflection of eternal 
Wisdom",
which flows out of us all and has given us concepts of law and 
equity
and retribution and forgiveness throughout history.  Perhaps 
this
principle of Lewis' is also in several ways an illustration of 
itself.

That same year, 1939, Tolkien gave a talk at Oxford on 'Fairy-
Stories',
later published in  *Essays presented to Charles 
Williams*.  In this he
quoted a poem he had written for Lewis (cf. Carpenter, Inklings, 63):

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons -- 'twas our right
(used or misused), that right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.

Thus Tolkien saw our creativity as something like *craft*:  a 
pleasant
matter of professional obligation as a human being.  For 
this reason,
Tolkien had a marked aversion to Lewis' *Narnian* 
Chronicles, the first
of which appeared in Tolkien's eleventh year of 
writing *The Lord of
the Rings*.  They were Children's Fantasy 
novels, dashed off in a rush,
and highly eclectic, lacking the 
coherency and the sense of history of
Tolkien's world, Middle Earth.  
He felt the role of 'sub-Creator' was
linked intrinsically with 
excellence.

Worst of all, they were quite plainly allegorical  ( Aslan 
= Jesus ), 
which was to Tolkien something of an insult:  
He denies in his Foreword
to *The Lord of the Rings* that it is 
allegorical in any way.  This, of
course, has not stopped all kinds 
of parallels being drawn:  Gandalf in
particular offers a striking 
Christ-figure in his figurative
self-sacrificing death, victory over 
death, transformation and
resurrection.  Gollum gives us an 
instantly recognizable image of
corruption, possible redemption and 
final self-destruction.  What,
then, is going on?  Is it 
allegorical or not?

This is a subtle point, but no, it not allegory.  What is happening 
is
that Tolkien's belief that myths tap into spiritual truths is 
working
itself out in his book.  For example he stated:

> 
'...I do not now feel ashamed of the Eden "myth".   It has not, of
> course, historicity of the same kind as the New Testament, but
> certainly there was an Eden on this unhappy earth.   We all long for
> it, and we are constantly glimpsing it:  our whole nature at its best
> and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked
> with the 
sense of "exile".'

This was a special case of a broader principle.  Tolkien expected

Christ-figures in particular to appear in myths, because he saw them as

emerging from human minds in which were found all the longings and

yearnings that 'the Christ-event' was meant to fulfil. It would, as

such, have been extremely strange to find them absent from the world of

*Middle Earth*.  Why would Tolkien write a mere allegory to 
*contrive*
spiritually significant themes, when they will 
naturally turn up in the
in the greater works of myth in any case?

Lewis once said that most adults gave far too little time to "the 
truly
important things in life, like children's fantasy."  In many 
ways this
statement highlights the insight underlying the uniqueness of 
Tolkien
and himself, as well as their significance and popular 
success.  In
literature, they were caught up in a conflagration of 
artistic
expression, spiritual discovery and popular appeal, all bound 
together
by the common thread of myth.  Mining a deep and age-old 
literary vein,
they dug themselves into the popular mind.

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