Circling back to Charles Williams

Durham Castle (University College) is the silhouette on the right (Cathedral to the left) and my rooms were located just to the right of the keep, looking out on this view

I have recently been re-reading some of my favourite Charles Williams bits and pieces - including what began my interest in this writer: Humphrey Carpenter's biographical account in The Inklings (1978). I would recommend this to anyone who thinks they might be interested, because Carpenter highlights Williams's most appealing and exciting aspects. 

I recall first reading about 'CW' in my dark rooms located in Durham Castle one autumn morning; and being so energized and gripped that I dashed off to the university library to borrow some of his books. The included the Place of the Lion novel, Image of the City collection of essays and the Taliessin through Logres and Region of the Summer Stars poems.   

Yet I have never appreciated the actual work of Williams as much as I did the biography, the idea of what he was trying to do; the fact that he lived this strange life in which the natural and supernatural were not divided - and in which the eternal and perfect forms of reality were perceptible behind the everyday and mundane. 

For this reason - one of my favourite Williams books is the early (long since out of print) An Introduction to Charles Williams, by his friend Alice Mary Hadfield - since this gives the deepest and most vivid account of the best aspects of William's point of view on life.  

However, after periods of immersion and when I attempted to live my spiritual life in a way modelled on that of Williams; I have ended in a very different place indeed. And I am much now more aware of the fact that Williams's ideas failed in Williams's own life: that he was always a deeply unhappy (even desperate) man, who consistently made (and doubled-down on) wrong choices. 

Because (again and again) that which he most wanted at a surface level, and which he adopted as life-assumptions; was also exactly what hurt him the most profoundly. And as a consequence, made his own life worse than it needed to be.

This tragic situation (which lay behind the surface of success, charisma, and apparent spirituality) was mostly a consequence of CW's deepest metaphysics and most rigorously followed-through philosophical convictions. 

So, you can see why Charles Williams continues to fascinate over such a time span, and draws me back recurrently to engage with his life and work. 

Who was the best poet of The Inklings?

Several of the Inklings were poets; and all the Big Four - CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield - began their literary careers intending primarily to become poets; only Williams ended his life regarding himself a poet. 

Williams was the only successful poet among them; being regarded as one of the leading British poets of his generation; albeit mostly for the poetry that was published before Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars - which Williams himself regarded as his best and only significant work. 

At the other extreme, it has been said that Tolkien is, because of the songs and verses in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, the most often read of twentieth Century poets (this is assuming that the verse is not just skipped by readers - as has been suggested). 

Tolkien wrote a great deal of unpublished poetry in his early years (including unfinished long poems), published quite a few shorter and comic or lyrical works, including translations and modern-language development of ancient works, mostly in small magazines.   

Lewis's first two books were poetry - and it was only the critical and sales failure of Dymer (when he was aged about 28) that he decided not to continue on that line; although he published many more verses in magazines through the rest of his life. 

Barfield wrote considerably more poetry than he published; but he did publish in small magazines - mostly later in life. 

But which was the best poet? Williams seems like the obvious candidate; but I do not regard Williams as a real poet. And to my inner-ear; Lewis and Barfield were also 'contrived' versifiers; whose work lacked that something unique to real poetry.  

So there is no doubt in my mind that JRR Tolkien was the best Inklings poet - indeed the only real poet among the Inklings if judged by the standard of English lyrical poetry (i.e. song-like verse, plus something more) that defines for me what is 'poetic' about poetry. 

If I was asked to define what makes real poetry - as contrasted with verse - I could only do so indirectly; for example by pointing out that Palgrave's Golden Treasury (1861) displays the nature of this tradition in a very pure and concentrated form. 

Most of Tolkien's output would best be characterized as verse; and it varies pretty widely in quality (as does the work of most real poets) - but Tolkien at his best was a real poet; whereas the other Inklings were writers of verse, and not true poets. 

My selection of Tolkien's poetry at its best would include these five poems; The Sea Bell; Imran; and Aotrou and Itroun - and also some others, including a few of the earliest poems posthumously published in Lost Tales.