tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post8981731276579411246..comments2024-03-14T06:20:59.015+00:00Comments on The Notion Club Papers - an Inklings blog: Charles Williams regrettable tendency to regard co-inherence as therapeutic 'magic'Bruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-86471291685345855372012-12-07T00:36:05.644+00:002012-12-07T00:36:05.644+00:00Does this means that Williams thought that if I we...Does this means that Williams thought that if I were to somehow become anxious and put myself through pain it could eliminate the pain and anxiety in another (e.g. my neighbors)? As in, a very material and visible relief in this world?George Goerlichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07916687977887167466noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-64370932272556566942012-05-15T19:00:03.472+01:002012-05-15T19:00:03.472+01:00Dale
I'm not sure about self-knowledge. It so...Dale<br /><br />I'm not sure about self-knowledge. It sometimes seems like he may be trying to suppress accurate self-knowledge by sheer pressure of business and activity.<br /><br />When I wrote "he does not strike me as a naturally loving person - and his enormous and sincere efforts to become so seem forced and, at times, counter-productive" I was thinking of Williams letters to his wife published in To Michal from Serge (from which I have read generous excerpts on Google books - therefore not the whole thing). <br /><br />These are very strange productions indeed, especially when one remembers they had been married more than 20 years - the tone is so frantic, artificial and lacking in intimacy. Yet he wrote these long letters almost every day for about 6 years - so he cannot be faulted for lack of effort.<br /><br />A further factor is that his wife was by all accounts a very moody and difficult person, and perhaps required continual mollification.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-90042608045048871402012-05-15T17:52:39.979+01:002012-05-15T17:52:39.979+01:00Williams's imagination and thinking were slant...Williams's imagination and thinking were slanted by his interest in the occult and his view of himself as a poet.<br /><br />Maybe at the very end of his life he was getting free of the occult. He wanted to write a non-occult novel. But (as we've seen) occultism seems to have affected him even late in life, even after he'd been part of the Inklings for, I suppose, quite a few years. I do wonder if he often remembered experiences that had been induced by occult rituals or esoteric meditations. <br /><br />Williams had a higher idea of the poet than the other Inklings, I think. As the esoteric adept as a man apart, so, for Williams, is the poet. <br /><br />In both cases there may be the temptation to think and feel that ordinary morals are for ordinary mortals -- ?<br /><br />I wonder if there isn't in Williams a combination of self-preoccupation with lack of self-knowledge.Wurmbrandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17345523517796356674noreply@blogger.com