*
The Inklings knew themselves to be swimming against the tide, and that their numbers were small.
The idea of a small 'company' (much like the Inklings themselves) up-against overwhelming odds and charged with saving the world from evil and destruction comes up in several of their key works, and in life.
*
There is the Fellowship of the Ring, of course; and in the legends of Numenor which Tolkien worked-on from 1936 (in relation to the Lost Road) and again from 1945 (in relation to the Notion Club Papers) there is a small band of The Faithful led by Elendil (elf-friend) who escape the downfall of the island to establish Arnor and Gondor in Middle Earth.
In the Lost Road, Alboin (the precursor of Lowdham) is a descendant of Erendil, and Alboin's son Audoin is linked with Elendil's son Herendil.
In the Notion Club Papers, Lowdham is seen as a descendant of Elendil, and his friend Jeremy as a descendant of Voronwe his friend whose name means "faithful" .
*
In life, Charles Williams was the inspirational leader of an esoteric Christian group (mostly of women) called the Companions of the Co-Inherence.
In That Hideous Strength, by C.S Lewis, the Company are 'four men, some women and a bear'; a heterogeneous group gathered around the leader Ransome who is in communication with angelic intelligences.
The character of Ransome in THS was influenced by Charles Williams, as is the whole novel - and it seems possible that Lewis regarded Williams as a spiritual leader - someone who seemed to be (to some extent) in touch with higher intelligences.
After Williams' death, Lewis edited Arthurian Torso, the work of a faithful friend in transmission of Williams' vision. Lewis was Voronwe to Williams's Elendil.
I do not think Lewis ever again met anyone who could 'replace' William in his spiritual role, or to whom Lewis would again adopt the role of disciple - C.W was perhaps regarded by Lewis as a lost (potential) saviour of his nation - somewhat like King Arthur.
*
Tolkien never saw himself as a spiritual leader, yet he was one because of his vision - which came to him and was not created by him. Tolkien was of course an elf-friend: Elendil.
And, as things have happened, JRR Tolkien's elf-friend legacy has been indispensably transmitted by the work of his 'faithful' son Christopher - such that the Elendil-Herendil/ Albion-Audoin/ father-son fictional explorers of the Lost Road turned-out to be a pre-vision of life.
*
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Charles Williams and the Positive Way
*
It has always been mysterious to me what Charles Williams was aiming-at with his writings on the Positive Way – also called the Via positiva or the path of “affirmation of images”.
But I think I understand now.
*
The Negative Way is the best known method of attaining sanctity, deification or theosis. It is the path of asceticism, as practiced by many monastics through Christian history; and still a focus of Eastern Orthodoxy exemplified by Mount Athos.
*
The Negative Way is merely a means to an end, not the end in itself – yet the ‘technique’ has proved itself many times – it entails (for example) long periods of prayer and chanting (often extending into night vigils), physical deprivation (heat or cold) and exercises (standing, prostrations), fasting, celibacy… In general, the purpose is to enable the aspirant to control worldly desires thus to enable a direct awareness of reality – that is God.
*
The Negative Way is the most direct and proven route to sanctity, yet it is apparently a path to which few are called – it is generally believed among Christians that there are other paths – less steep, and perhaps leading less high, but valid nonetheless, and perhaps more generally applicable.
*
What, then, is the Positive Way? Clearly it is not the opposite of the Negative Way; since that route would (presumably) lead to damnation.
As a married man with a child, a poet, writer, inspirational lecturer, conversationalist and spiritual counsellor; Charles Williams was deeply engaged with the world, and did not feel called to the ascetic path. He tried, therefore, to walk – and to clarify for others in similar state - the lesser known Positive Way.
In this he was, I think, only partly successful – at least, I have been unable until now to understand what he meant – and the explanations of Charles Williams scholars have not been clear to me.
*
The clue is in the alternative term Affirmation of Images – that behind the images is reality. The Positive Way is that the images of things – God’s works, and Man’s works that come from God – are visions of reality: visions, that is, of The Good: of God.
*
By images is meant words – poetry, prose, the worlds of scripture and ritual; also music; also the visual arts of painting, architecture, beautiful things… insofar as these beautiful things are divinely inspired – insofar as these things are consecrated to God.
The difficulty of the Positive Way is to engage with these images such that the individual may participate in the reality of Good.
*
In sum, the Positive Way is a kind of Platonism – in which the initiate sees past the change and corruption, distortions and deceptions of the world and perceives the eternal ideas underlying this. It is an instance of the principle that every small and transient thing is symbolic of greater and timeless things, the world is a microcosm, ‘as above so below’.
Hence (perhaps) Charles Williams attention to poetry and literature generally, his attention to the minutiae of everyday life, love and work – and his swift and sure relation of these worldly matters back to eternal principles.
It was this he hoped to teach by daily interactions, by formal lectures, from his books and writings, and through the Companions of the Co-inherence.
*
By means of various techniques such as the purposive use of contracts of exchange – the deliberate and explicit sharing of joys, fears, burdens - (techniques which could be considered analogous to the ascetic methods of the Negative Way) C.W. aimed to (or hoped to; albeit was sometimes corrupted and distracted away from) train his followers into habits of consecration: habits of referencing the mundane to the divine.
*
(And without any trace of approximation or dishonesty – he insisted upon maximum accuracy and precision in perceiving the phenomena which were to be referred – no blurring or haziness was to be permitted.)
***
It has always been mysterious to me what Charles Williams was aiming-at with his writings on the Positive Way – also called the Via positiva or the path of “affirmation of images”.
But I think I understand now.
*
The Negative Way is the best known method of attaining sanctity, deification or theosis. It is the path of asceticism, as practiced by many monastics through Christian history; and still a focus of Eastern Orthodoxy exemplified by Mount Athos.
*
The Negative Way is merely a means to an end, not the end in itself – yet the ‘technique’ has proved itself many times – it entails (for example) long periods of prayer and chanting (often extending into night vigils), physical deprivation (heat or cold) and exercises (standing, prostrations), fasting, celibacy… In general, the purpose is to enable the aspirant to control worldly desires thus to enable a direct awareness of reality – that is God.
*
The Negative Way is the most direct and proven route to sanctity, yet it is apparently a path to which few are called – it is generally believed among Christians that there are other paths – less steep, and perhaps leading less high, but valid nonetheless, and perhaps more generally applicable.
*
What, then, is the Positive Way? Clearly it is not the opposite of the Negative Way; since that route would (presumably) lead to damnation.
As a married man with a child, a poet, writer, inspirational lecturer, conversationalist and spiritual counsellor; Charles Williams was deeply engaged with the world, and did not feel called to the ascetic path. He tried, therefore, to walk – and to clarify for others in similar state - the lesser known Positive Way.
In this he was, I think, only partly successful – at least, I have been unable until now to understand what he meant – and the explanations of Charles Williams scholars have not been clear to me.
*
The clue is in the alternative term Affirmation of Images – that behind the images is reality. The Positive Way is that the images of things – God’s works, and Man’s works that come from God – are visions of reality: visions, that is, of The Good: of God.
*
By images is meant words – poetry, prose, the worlds of scripture and ritual; also music; also the visual arts of painting, architecture, beautiful things… insofar as these beautiful things are divinely inspired – insofar as these things are consecrated to God.
The difficulty of the Positive Way is to engage with these images such that the individual may participate in the reality of Good.
*
In sum, the Positive Way is a kind of Platonism – in which the initiate sees past the change and corruption, distortions and deceptions of the world and perceives the eternal ideas underlying this. It is an instance of the principle that every small and transient thing is symbolic of greater and timeless things, the world is a microcosm, ‘as above so below’.
Hence (perhaps) Charles Williams attention to poetry and literature generally, his attention to the minutiae of everyday life, love and work – and his swift and sure relation of these worldly matters back to eternal principles.
It was this he hoped to teach by daily interactions, by formal lectures, from his books and writings, and through the Companions of the Co-inherence.
*
By means of various techniques such as the purposive use of contracts of exchange – the deliberate and explicit sharing of joys, fears, burdens - (techniques which could be considered analogous to the ascetic methods of the Negative Way) C.W. aimed to (or hoped to; albeit was sometimes corrupted and distracted away from) train his followers into habits of consecration: habits of referencing the mundane to the divine.
*
(And without any trace of approximation or dishonesty – he insisted upon maximum accuracy and precision in perceiving the phenomena which were to be referred – no blurring or haziness was to be permitted.)
***
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
What did Charles Williams bring to The Inklings?
*
Charles Williams very clearly had an important role in the Inklings.
Someone of his stature and personality cannot fail to have influenced the other members of this group in frequent meetings, and indeed the work of Tolkien and Lewis underwent changes from around the time of Williams participation.
How can the nature of these changes be characterized?
*
The change relates to Unseen Warfare - the insight that Life is a battle between Good and Evil, a struggle: a matter of choices and temptations; one path leads up towards Heaven, the other down towards damnation.
Tolkien and Lewis were naturally aware of Unseen Warfare as a human reality - but Charles Williams very explicitly lived Unseen Warfare, analyzed it, spoke and wrote of it continually.
*
Unseen Warfare (the title comes from a classic of Christian mysticism) was C.W's big subject, especially in his novels, especially in his best novels: Place of the Lion, Descent into Hell and All Hallows Eve.
Tolkien and Lewis began to write fiction more seriously from 1936, shortly afterwards Lewis and Williams began to correspond and meet, and from late 1939 Williams was present in Oxford and regularly participating in social events and meetings.
I suggest that C.W. likely brought Unseen Warfare into focus for Lewis and Tolkien as the main thing in Life and potentially the main thing in story - and thereby provided a deep narrative purpose for the fictions of Lewis and Tolkien.
*
The topic of Unseen Warfare is so dominant in Lewis (yet so unusual a topic) that it is somehow easy to miss: Perelandra and That Hideous Strength are novels of UW and so are the Chronicles of Narnia: the Screwtape Letters is perhaps the most successful work about UW ever published.
In Tolkien, Unseen Warfare was present in The Hobbit, especially moments like the struggle of courage when Bilbo first approaches Smaug through the tunnel in the Lonely Mountain: there is on the one hand the right thing to do, and there is also the temptation of cowardice and dishonesty.
But UW expands to take a focal place in the story of The Lord of the Rings, with the major characters of the quest wrestling with their inner demons throughout.
LotR is essentially about Unseen Warfare, the sanctification and ennoblement of the heroes - especially the Hobbit protagonists but also Aragorn, Gandalf, Galadriel; and the failure and damnation of the villains (Saruman, Boromir+, Gollum, Denethor).
UW is not an incidental component of Lord of the Rings but the main thing.
*
Unseen Warfare - which Williams perhaps, arguably saw more clearly and lived more intensely than anyone of his era in England, therefore provided a major underlying narrative dynamic for Lewis and Tolkien's narratives.
***
The Inklings, by which I mean essentially Tolkien and Lewis with the others role being that of support and stimulus, had a great underlying purpose - which was to restore myth to modern man.
They wanted to restore modern man by re-connecting with myth - modern man who who was languishing in a literalistic and lifeless world of 'history'.
But which myth specifically? Because this was not a post-modern, eclectic, Jungian concern with myth as therapy and a tool for self-development: the Inklings concern with myth was salvific and Christian.
*
In a general sense, Lewis and Tolkien saw the world in terms of the 'Platonic' schema of Life versus Reality - that behind the growth decay and change of Life was an eternal, timeless, unchanging world of Reality.
Williams shared this, but was more explicit about it - The Place of the Lion is explicitly about a breakthrough of Platonic archetypes into the modern world.
But analytic elements such as the contrast between Life and Reality, or Platonic forms, are static and are not conducive to the telling of a story - for philosophy to generate stories there must be an individual who negotiates a path through Life; a path with Reality - truth, beauty and virtue - on one side; and on the other side the various temptations of the World such as vice, power, pride, despair...
This is a vision of life as Unseen Warfare - with the proper business of life being about these choices.
*
In sum, the Inklings already saw myth in broadly Platonic terms before the C.W. connection, their aim was to connect with myth, but the perspective of Unseen Warfare - coming into sharp focus in the person and works of Williams - joined up this general project with specific stories.
Unseen Warfare was a way in which philosophy could be brought alive in narrative; and which also implicitly Christianized that narrative in a manner that was pervasive and yet unobtrusive.
*
As such, Unseen Warfare need not be Christian, but for Williams it was - yet implicitly in the stories.
Williams novels are all about Christian Unseen Warfare, yet don't focus on explicit Christian theology and indeed contain surprisingly little reference to Christianity.
The same applies to Lewis and even more to Tolkien.
Unseen Warfare is built-in; specific Christian themes of Love and Humility are there, and also a great deal of Natural Law virtue - including heroic pagan virtues such as courage and loyalty, and the transcendental unity of virtue with beauty and truth - of wickedness with lies and the destruction of beauty.
*
Christian Unseen Warfare is thus built-into the post-C.W. novels of Lewis and Tolkien as the deepest structuring narrative element - and I suggest that this may have been a consequence of Williams intense participation in the Inklings.
***
+My mistake - Bronomir is not 'damned'. He repents just before his death.
*
Charles Williams very clearly had an important role in the Inklings.
Someone of his stature and personality cannot fail to have influenced the other members of this group in frequent meetings, and indeed the work of Tolkien and Lewis underwent changes from around the time of Williams participation.
How can the nature of these changes be characterized?
*
The change relates to Unseen Warfare - the insight that Life is a battle between Good and Evil, a struggle: a matter of choices and temptations; one path leads up towards Heaven, the other down towards damnation.
Tolkien and Lewis were naturally aware of Unseen Warfare as a human reality - but Charles Williams very explicitly lived Unseen Warfare, analyzed it, spoke and wrote of it continually.
*
Unseen Warfare (the title comes from a classic of Christian mysticism) was C.W's big subject, especially in his novels, especially in his best novels: Place of the Lion, Descent into Hell and All Hallows Eve.
Tolkien and Lewis began to write fiction more seriously from 1936, shortly afterwards Lewis and Williams began to correspond and meet, and from late 1939 Williams was present in Oxford and regularly participating in social events and meetings.
I suggest that C.W. likely brought Unseen Warfare into focus for Lewis and Tolkien as the main thing in Life and potentially the main thing in story - and thereby provided a deep narrative purpose for the fictions of Lewis and Tolkien.
*
The topic of Unseen Warfare is so dominant in Lewis (yet so unusual a topic) that it is somehow easy to miss: Perelandra and That Hideous Strength are novels of UW and so are the Chronicles of Narnia: the Screwtape Letters is perhaps the most successful work about UW ever published.
In Tolkien, Unseen Warfare was present in The Hobbit, especially moments like the struggle of courage when Bilbo first approaches Smaug through the tunnel in the Lonely Mountain: there is on the one hand the right thing to do, and there is also the temptation of cowardice and dishonesty.
But UW expands to take a focal place in the story of The Lord of the Rings, with the major characters of the quest wrestling with their inner demons throughout.
LotR is essentially about Unseen Warfare, the sanctification and ennoblement of the heroes - especially the Hobbit protagonists but also Aragorn, Gandalf, Galadriel; and the failure and damnation of the villains (Saruman, Boromir+, Gollum, Denethor).
UW is not an incidental component of Lord of the Rings but the main thing.
*
Unseen Warfare - which Williams perhaps, arguably saw more clearly and lived more intensely than anyone of his era in England, therefore provided a major underlying narrative dynamic for Lewis and Tolkien's narratives.
***
The Inklings, by which I mean essentially Tolkien and Lewis with the others role being that of support and stimulus, had a great underlying purpose - which was to restore myth to modern man.
They wanted to restore modern man by re-connecting with myth - modern man who who was languishing in a literalistic and lifeless world of 'history'.
But which myth specifically? Because this was not a post-modern, eclectic, Jungian concern with myth as therapy and a tool for self-development: the Inklings concern with myth was salvific and Christian.
*
In a general sense, Lewis and Tolkien saw the world in terms of the 'Platonic' schema of Life versus Reality - that behind the growth decay and change of Life was an eternal, timeless, unchanging world of Reality.
Williams shared this, but was more explicit about it - The Place of the Lion is explicitly about a breakthrough of Platonic archetypes into the modern world.
But analytic elements such as the contrast between Life and Reality, or Platonic forms, are static and are not conducive to the telling of a story - for philosophy to generate stories there must be an individual who negotiates a path through Life; a path with Reality - truth, beauty and virtue - on one side; and on the other side the various temptations of the World such as vice, power, pride, despair...
This is a vision of life as Unseen Warfare - with the proper business of life being about these choices.
*
In sum, the Inklings already saw myth in broadly Platonic terms before the C.W. connection, their aim was to connect with myth, but the perspective of Unseen Warfare - coming into sharp focus in the person and works of Williams - joined up this general project with specific stories.
Unseen Warfare was a way in which philosophy could be brought alive in narrative; and which also implicitly Christianized that narrative in a manner that was pervasive and yet unobtrusive.
*
As such, Unseen Warfare need not be Christian, but for Williams it was - yet implicitly in the stories.
Williams novels are all about Christian Unseen Warfare, yet don't focus on explicit Christian theology and indeed contain surprisingly little reference to Christianity.
The same applies to Lewis and even more to Tolkien.
Unseen Warfare is built-in; specific Christian themes of Love and Humility are there, and also a great deal of Natural Law virtue - including heroic pagan virtues such as courage and loyalty, and the transcendental unity of virtue with beauty and truth - of wickedness with lies and the destruction of beauty.
*
Christian Unseen Warfare is thus built-into the post-C.W. novels of Lewis and Tolkien as the deepest structuring narrative element - and I suggest that this may have been a consequence of Williams intense participation in the Inklings.
***
+My mistake - Bronomir is not 'damned'. He repents just before his death.
*
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