Report on the Perelandra Colloquium (#1)

On June 26 & 27, G & I attended a conference at St. Stephen’s House, a theological college of the Church of England and a private hall of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. This conference was part of the Perelandra Colloquium, organized around the second premiere of Perelandra: The Opera by David Marsh & Donald Swann. The opera was first performed in London in 1964 and in New York City in 1969. However, a legal entanglement upon CSL’s death left the opera unperformable until now. The Oxford C. S. Lewis society arranged for a performance and concurrent conference focused solely on Perelandra.

The conference was splendid. The speakers were excellent, the papers intellectually stimulating, and the setting as much of a fairy tale as I remembered. Oxford is, indeed, my heart’s home. The weather could not have been better: warm, clear, beautiful. I am still in love with every block of sandstone, every gargoyle, every cobblestone, every tendril of ivy, and every vocal accent. If ever I can live there, it will be my earthly Atlantis.

Here are summary reports on the plenary sessions and the papers presented. At the end, I will comment briefly on the other events (a tour of Oxford, a round-table discussion with the opera producers) and on the opera itself.


Friday’s sessions

Opening Keynote Address: Rev. Dr. Michael Ward, “Voyage to Venus: how Lewis found his imaginative way to Venus”.
Dr. Ward’s paper was grounded in just one word and all of its applications: PLENTITUDE. He pointed out that there were many, many themes and approaches to Perelandra in this conference, and that none of them seemed forced or falsely academic. The reason for such variety, he suggested, is the sheer volume of ideas with which the book itself is packed. “Plenitude is the foundation of the book”—and so are all of the other themes for which we argue, each for our favorite. This is, of course, just like the Great Dance with which the book closes. “All is central, because all is loved.”
Furthermore, plenitude is not just a category; it has a peculiar flavor of its own, because it is the hallmark of the planetary deity Venus herself. With this in mind, Dr. Ward took us on a journey through all of the references to and uses of Venus and ‘venereal’ imagery [he prefers this adjective over ‘venusian’ for etymological reasons] in Lewis’s oeuvre.
In his teen years, CSL was enamored of the Venusberg music from Wagner’s Tannhauser, Holt’s Planets suite, and other musical depictions of Venus. In college, he hung the painting ‘The Mirror of Venus’ (perhaps Botticelli’s?) on the wall of his dorm room. In his copy of Chaucer’s works, he indexed all the references to Venus. Of course, Venus is in his poem ‘The Planets’ as well as in other poems throughout Spirits in Bondage, and, according to Ward, in The Magician’s Nephew.
Venus, in Medieval thought and in CSL’s work, has two sides. There is the celestial, planetary, or ‘good’ Venus, which can readily be used as a symbol of God, or, more specifically, of Christ: the Morning Star. There is the earthly, infernal, or ‘bad’ Venus, which is expressed simply as lust, and can be identified with the Devil: Lucifer (‘How you have fallen from Heaven, O Morning Star, Son of the Dawn!’)
In Perelandra, Ransom is identifiable with St. Paul (who was taken up to the 3rd heaven, II Cor. 12:2). Weston is a parallel to Venus Infernal; he is the Un-Man, bringing ‘Death in abundance.’ He brings fear; fear is privation, but perfect love casts out fear: love is plenitude.

Panel session 1: Medieval Astronomy and Alchemy, chaired by Michael Ward

My paper was first: here is a link to my abstract

Rev. Micah Snell, “Alchemy in Perelandra: A Donegalitarian Proposal for the Gold Ransom”.
Rev. Snell began by pointing out that although CSL does not talk much at all about alchemy (one would almost expect a chapter about it in Discarded Image), it was such an essential part of Medieval thought that surely CSL had pondered it. In addition to the fraudulent practice of quack alchemy, there was a legitimate science: the study of the substances of life. It is a work of transformation; it is easily adapted for use as a symbol or even a meta-theme.
Mr. Snell then described the phases of the alchemical process, which progress through different colors and have an ascending trajectory. He proposed that Perelandra may be read according to these colors and phases, and that Ransom is the Philosopher’s Stone—the ultimate goal of the alchemical process. He supported this thesis with references and quotes that deal with colors and other ‘stock alchemical images,’ especially the multiple references, at essential moments, to stones. During Ransom’s scene of great decision, the narrator says: ‘A stone may determine the course of a river; he [Ransom] was that stone.’ Ransom goes through the black, red, and white stages and also ascends as if up through a beaker. Then he must be purified. In the end, the salvation of Venus is integrally tied up with the transmutation of Ransom. Furthermore, in That Hideous Strength, Ransom is not the hero; he is only the precipitating agent (the philosopher’s—or philologist’s—stone) through which the action is achieved.
Weston, on the other hand, is like the dupe, the con-man, the charlatan who tries to sell false alchemy. The Un-Man is the waste by-product of the alchemical process.

Dr. Nikolay Epplee, “The Centre and the Rim: The Inversion of the System of the Heavens as a Leitmotif in Perelandra and The Discarded Image”.
Dr. Epplee claimed that CSL was not only backward-looking in his work, but that he was an ‘anti-modern’ [he hadn’t heard Dr. Schwartz yet!]. This paper was very difficult to understand, but its basis was [of course] Dante’s sublime inversion of the universe: the earth is in the center, the planets circle the earth, and God’s dwelling is the circumference of all (God contains all things) BUT a theophanic vision reveals that God is the centre of all things and poor earth is out on the rim, in the dark, as far from God as any created thing can be. Dr. Epplee made the beautiful association of Dante’s vision with the end of The Last Battle: Aslan’s country is like the rings of an onion, only as you go deeper and deeper in, each ring is larger than the last.
The most important similar reference in other literature is by Nicholas of Cusa: God is the circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. In order to see the centre, you must cease pretending to be the centre.
There were a few other points of importance, although I couldn’t grasp their relationship. One was that Milton is responsible for bringing the term ‘space’ into English as a word for ‘the Heavens’—I’ll have to look into this. He also quoted from ‘Science-Fiction Cradlesong’ and used this as an example of one of CSL’s rare apophatic or via negativa moments; I argued with him later that CSL was parodying the apophatic in this poem, but we did not come to any understanding.

Panel session 2: Plenary Papers, chaired by Brendan Wolfe (co-editor of the Oxford CSL Chronicle

Prof. Sanford Schwartz, “Paradise Reframed: Modern Times on Perelandra”
This was pretty much just a repeat of his paper from the Wake Forest conference, and was also the introduction to his new book (which I just received in the mail on the day we left for the colloquium, and which I’ll be reviewing for Sehnsucht magazine). Dr. Schwartz proposed that in Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, C. S. Lewis simultaneously parodied and “baptized” two kinds of evolution respectively: first a Wellsian/Darwinian “nature red in tooth and claw” nasty, stronger-devouring-the-weaker kind, and second, a Bergsonian life-force, developmental, powerful, spiritual, positive kind. CSL parodied these types of evolution by having the antagonist Weston believe in and attempt to propagate Wellsian evolution in OotSP, and Bergsonian life-force evolution in P, and in each Weston is defeated. However, Lewis once wrote that there must be a true principle of which Bergson’s ideas were a perversion; Dr. Schwartz proposed that in the Space Trilogy Lewis was imagining what that true principle would look like, and embodied it in the species and landscapes of his Mars and Venus. So on Malacandra, there are three species living in harmony, while the spiritual life of the hrossa depends upon their mutal, and mutally satisfactory, rivalry with the hnakra. This is perhaps the good original of which natural selection and the preying of the stronger on the weaker which Darwin proposed is a poor copy. In the same way, on Perelandra the entire planet is in flux, and Tinidril herself is in a state of rapid development. This seems to be a Christianized version of Bergson’s life-force evolution.


Rev. Prof. Paul Fiddes, “’For the Dance all Things Were Made’: The Great Dance in C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra”
This may have been the best paper of the conference (although I believe that Sanford’s premise will be the most influential). Dr. Fiddes has an engaging manner and a compelling personality: his paper was like himself. He proposed that ‘The Great Dance’ in Perelandra is not just the simple Medieval convention that we have always assumed it to be; rather, it is a much more interesting idea, for several reasons.
1. The Dance has a centre that moves. Each participant is at the centre, because Maleldil is at the centre, and he is everywhere (cf. Nicholas of Cusa, Bonaventure). This is the concept of ‘panentheism’ (OED: the belief of doctrine that God is greater than the universe and includes and interpenetrates it); everything is in God. This doctrine is able to contain the seemingly contradictory teachings of both transcendence and immanence.
2. The Dance merges two traditional images: first, the Cosmic Dance, and second, the Centre. Usually the Dance has an unmoving centre in Platonic stasis (cf. Boethius). Lewis has God, the centre, dancing as well! This reverses NeoPlatonism. God is no longer just the Beloved: He is also the Divine Lover. He is dynamic, not static.
Perhaps this concept is apophatic (OED: Theology [of knowledge of God] obtained through negating concepts that might be applied to Him)—the via negativa, because you cannot picture the Great Dance. Instead, you must participate in it! It is perechoresis.
3. There is no precedent for depicting the Trinity as a Dance—except perhaps in Bergson, and in Charles Williams. In the Cosmic Dance from The Greater Trumps, the Juggler = the Primum Mobile, while the Fool = God. The Fool stands still, motionless, while the Juggler dances around. But then CW reverses this: Sybil sees the Fool dancing! When the Fool rescues Nancy, he comes from all sides at once. He is centre and rim, motionless and moving, here, there, and everywhere. This represents (or at least is reminiscent of) the eternal generation of the Son by the Father: the Son goes out from the Father and returns. THE DANCE IS LOVE.
Just as there is no good game without rules, so our obedience = perfect freedom and our share in the Dance.

The Heraldry of Heaven: Cosmic Longing in Lewis’s Dantean Universe

This coming Wednesday, we're heading over to Oxford for the Perelandra Colloquium. What follows is the original version of my paper abstract; the paper has changed somewhat in scope and organization since then. Now, I am not going to talk much about the "ineffability" aspect, and I am going to compare CSL's embodied topography with Dante's more directly. So the whole paper is going to focus more on CSL's response to Dante.

The Heraldry of Heaven:
Cosmic Longing in Lewis’s Dantean Universe

ABSTRACT:
The publication of Dr. Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia last January awakened a new interest in Medieval aspects of C. S. Lewis’s fiction, specifically his emblematic use of the geocentric cosmology. Ward traced Ptolemaic imagery in the Narniad; this paper (part of a larger study on the development of Lewis’s sehnsucht) will trace several ways in which the Ransom trilogy revives Dante’s sacramental view of the geocentric planetary arrangement. Lewis saw the Medieval Model of the Universe as a vehicle for spiritual truth: specifically, as a means of communicating sehnsucht, the crux of his theological imagination. This brief study will begin by showing seven ways that Lewis employs the Ptolemaic/Dantean universe. The most important is the motion inherent in the spheres; Lewis’s planets have a clear theological motive for motion: “the revelry of insatiable love.” Lewis embodied his immortal longings in the orbits and Oyeresu of his planets.
Next, this paper will explore the sensory expressions of sehnsucht on Malacandra and Perelandra and their teleological implications. Lewis incarnates divine discontent in physical locations. He carefully crafted the topography of Malacandra to embody heavenward desire; everything on Mars strains upward. On Perelandra, features of the lush environment arouse and incarnate longing. The landscape expresses the elusive nature of joy through the vicissitude of the floating islands.
This discussion of longing on Perelandra leads to an exploration of two paradoxes central to sehnsucht. First, each of Ransom’s sensory experiences arouses desire, yet the satisfaction/evocation of desire does not seek a repetition of its stimulus—suggesting it is a fulfillment, rather than/as well as a yearning. The longing is a desire for the longing; or, the longing is its own fulfillment. Lewis explored this conundrum in Surprised by Joy, ultimately relegating it to a one-dimensional role as signpost to God. However, the rich complexities of his mythopoetic fiction are more imaginatively suggestive and satisfying than any prosaic taxonomy.
The second paradox arises from the very nature of textuality. Language falls short of expressing or conjuring a sensory reality (Lewis returns to this theme often, including in his letters), yet authors choose to employ language to continually reenact and portray that failure. The text of Perelandra enacts not only the central paradox of language, but its exponential relative: joy’s mystical ineffability. All his life, Lewis strove to articulate an incommunicable joy. This ongoing struggle led him to personify the telos of sehnsucht in the eldila, Tor-Oyarsa, Ransom, Maleldil, and the physical planets. In the end, Lewis’s narrative transcends this paradox in a glorious, ecstatic synaesthesia about the consummation of sehnsucht: the mystical “Great Dance” at the end of Perelandra. Mythical/mystical description, by embodying joy, absorbs and so sublimates ineffability into afflatus.


~ Sørina

quick little post

I am sorry that the blog has been in semi-hibernation. Many possibilities are brewing, some are shutting down, others are just awakening [yikes, what an awful mized metaphor!]. In the meanwhile, here's a link to the trailer for Michael Ward's documentary The Narnia Code. The preview is super cheesy (makes MW out to be James Bond, Dan Brown, and Harry Potter all rolled together); I hope the documentary is better! Here's a place you can sign up to be notified when it's available on DVD.

The Art of the Impossible

In a previous post, I wrote that I cannot read nonfiction. That was, of course, a somewhat facetious statement: I can read it, I do read it, but I wanted to make some observations about the mental requirements for reading fiction as well as the comparative powers of persusasion nonfiction has beside fiction.

Well, now I want to add some thoughts on nonfiction film -- or at least one specific nonfiction film. This is the documentary "MAN ON WIRE." This poignant, delicate, stirring little movie proved that when nonfiction is done like art, its affect is that of art.

"Man on Wire" is the vastly improbably true story of a quixotic French tightrope walker who plotted and schemed with several equally wacky friends to invade the newly-constructed World Trade Center, rig a circus cable, and dance his way back and forth in the haze above NYC. And he did it.

There are several reasons that this film is exquitely appealing. Some are mere personal quirks of my own; others are more universal.

First, the sheer bravado, chutzpah, and talent required to pull off such a mad stunt amazes me. I'm easily wowed by quirky, random skills taken to the extreme. Plus, my body goes wild with the shakes when it mounts to even a moderate height off the ground (when not supported by an airplane!), so my awe was increased as Philippe tackled higher and higher obstacles.

Second, I am turned on by lovely French accents and Gallic turns-of-phrase. The lilting voices, the goofy expressions, all delighted me. The story was that much better told in and out of French and English thick with "frog"!

Third, the filming was fascinating. Maybe not extremely slick, but full of odd angles, intriguing shadows, and so on [I should have a limited number of adjectives I'm allowed to use per post]. There was a scene in which the plotters had to hide from a night watchman in the top of one of the WTC towers, and it was all shot in sillhouette. The music was fun, the pacing perfect. It just tickled me pink!

Fourth, as I'm sure you guessed, the whole unstated irony of a non-terroist "attack" or "invasion" on the World Trade Center. The ineptitude of security would have been funny, were it not for recent history. Although I laughed through most of the film, there was a quiet sadness underneath.

And this, of course, leads into the last charm of the movie: the poignancy of the fact that it can never be done again. Nobody, of course, would do exactly that mad crazy stunt again -- but if they so desired, it can never be done. The towers are gone.

Lost Generation

A friend shared this video poem with me. Watch it and be surprised as the form of the poem emerges.

March Poem of the Month

I have recently been working on a series of "persona" poems, in which I take on the identity of some real, fictional, or archetypal character and speak in his or her voice. What's fascinating about this is how I can comment on my own inner workings or on those of my friends, family, and acquaintances, while also revealing or discribing universal psycho-spiritual truths. This was written for a friend who is in an agnostic phase. Enjoy.

In Persona II: Wotan Wonders if there is a God

If I took off this eye patch, maybe I wouldn’t be blind.
Maybe I would see myself, reflected in the pools of Erda.
If only I could remember I am a god—or else a son of God—
perhaps the clouds would open and I would understand.
If I dropped this twisted walking stick, maybe I could stand.

I could thunder and rage at the tall empty sky—
as that frog-faced Alberich blasphemes me,
paddling his webbed-footed fingers in puddles of earth,
dabbling in divinity—what does he know (but do I?)—
Beneath this intentional eye patch, maybe I am not blind.

From the altitude of Valhalla, I suspect the rarity of air
is a function of some vast expanse where I should be,
where a perfection dwells; but down here, wandering,
I shake my thunder-fist and howl dirty songs against the sun.
I cannot remember I am a god—or else a son of God.

I am a wonder, I know: the music made around me,
the glories of my face, the strong amazement of the body
that I wear among mortals; and I should pose tall
and pull the spear-deep wisdom from the world ash tree:
If I stopped leaning on a walking stick, maybe I could stand.

Your love is better than gold, more beautiful than magic golden rings,
I thought I told her: but she grew invisible and maybe turned away—
so I wander, wondering, imagining my fits of rage
do not shake the stars, do not wake dragons. I could blame
the eye patch, say that without it maybe I wouldn’t be blind.

I could learn from reading, writing: books of wisdom,
books of nature; facts that I should know, and do know
in the core of me. But in my handsome earth-suit I prefer
the alias of espionage, of unrequital, victimized agnosticized
skeptical despair. Remember, I am a god—or else a son of God—

a subcreator of my introspective self. I forge my right
to see peripherally or not at all; to understand
or miscomprehend; to fight the dragon or to walk away.
How many miles have I traveled, crawling, among men?
If I dropped this twisted walking stick, maybe I could stand

to listen to the answers:
Is invisibility necessary for ignorance?
Is infatuation the same as incarnation?
Is immortality the opposite of immolation?
Is identity a sole conception, or the soul’s receptacle?
If only I could remember I am not blind,
I could stand being a son of God.


--Sørina

Why I Cannot Read Non-Fiction

I am exaggerating a little in the title. I can and do read non-fiction; more now than ever. I regularly read bits and pieces of literary criticism, history, biography, apologetics, and so on, but I rarely read a work of non-fiction straight through for fun. I generally treat it as reference materials. Recently I've been trying to be more intentional about reading non-fiction works cover-to-cover. Too many years of my life have gone by for me to remain ignorant in many categories! But one of the main motivating factors has been reading Louisa's book. And this leads me to the first way that I "can't read non-fiction":

1. My brain has atrophied
So, I'm trying to read Louisa's brillant, challenging book, and I find that too much novel-reading has weakened my brain cells. When I was in graduate school, I was more used to applying mental power to understand, classify, and apply difficult writing. But now I'm used to reading only what high schoolers read, plus pleasure reading! So I need to get my brain back in shape.

But that's not the serious problem. That's my own fault, and [more or less] easily remedied by some good brain-application. The more serious difficulty is:

2. Works of non-fiction convince me of the opposite of what they are attempting to prove.
Yes. You see, I am such an in-grained skeptic that I naturally argue with writers. I search for the holes in the arguments, look for alternative interpretations, and consider what might be written to prove the exact opposite. I recently read Between Heaven and Hell by Peter Kreeft; a delightful little Socratic dialogue with C. S. Lewis trouncing the weak atheistic and humanistic arguments of [caricatures of] Aldous Huxley and J. F. Kennedy. It's a cute book, but it has some problems. First of all, Lewis made the arguments better in the first place. Second, JFK and Huxley are really just straw men, not themselves nor even well-rounded 3-D characters at all. Third, the "inescapable logic" that Lewis used to "prove" incontrovertibly that Jesus is God really didn't feel incontrovertible. I'm not a good enough logician to really say what's wrong with the logic, but here's how it felt to me. It felt as if each syllogism, each step of the argument, was correct, but that the sudden conclusions had somehow skipped a point. To me, the point is the "leap of faith" -- Kierkegaard's subjectivity as truth -- but Kreeft never mentioned that. So his wonderful work of great apologetics left me feeling funny and doubtful inside. I'd rather read a great work of spiritual fantasy and sense God's presence in nature, imagination, and art than read a work that "proves" His existence yet leaves me feeling far away from Him.

And it's not just spiritual "non-fiction" that has this effect. I'm also reading The Language of God by Francis Collins. OK, I guess that's spiritual, but the main points are scientific. It's supposed to be proving that evolution is completely consistent with Biblical Christianity. I approached the book ready and willing to be convinced. But the more I read his impassioned descriptions of how Darwinian evolution is proven fact, and beautiful fact, and Biblical fact, the more I feel the whole thing is complete nonsense!

I wonder why this is? Am I just an inveterate skeptic, or is there actually some truth to the idea that FACT CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE IMAGINATION? Let me know what you think.