My fondness for the writing of C.S. Lewis would be less if it weren't for his "Chronicles of Narnia," where, among few other books, he somewhat allows himself to open to the disordering breath of human emotions and subconscious terrain. The article below critques a biography of Lewis that attempts to reveal the traumas which shaped him, to whatever degree, into the sort of thinker he was. The author of the critique has it that while the biographer is weak in numerous places, and often condescending, there is important value to be retained. We can see how Lewis underwent change as a person, and how it is reflected in his writing, although the analysis falls short of clearly connecting the dots. The loss of his mother when he was but nine years old, his distant father (and even more so after the death), the horrid english boarding schools he suffered, and the traumas of WWI, are all the more appreciated by the way a soldier comrade's mother took him in both before and after the war; she visited Lewis in the hospital even while uncertain of her own son's survival (he was killed), and the two helped heal each other in living together for many years afterward, prior to Lewis' conversion. There is little evidence of Lewis' having had an affair with her, as she seems mostly a surrogate mother figure to him.

There is Lewis' reference to this woman as having healed his long-standing "hatred of emotion," which one assumes may have had some roots prior to his mother's death, but made all the more ferocious by it, along with the boarding schools and a father who didn't even show up to say farewell to Lewis as he took ship to France for the war.

And then there was Lewis' marriage, and his journal that ended up being "A Grief Observed." I'm re-reading this and finding places where the shame of emotion still persists, but awareness of it as well. He is truly a broken man, and perhaps more real for it, but doesn't live for too many years after her death.

www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=774

This message has been edited. Last edited by: w.c.,

Good reflection/review in that article by Gilbert Meilaender. It's always an interesting and sometimes enlightening exercise to try to get at the formative influences in great writers like C. S. Lewis, as this surely leaves them with certain biases and blind spots. In the case of Lewis, one must also consider the times in which he wrote, which didn't consider "wholistic" or "integral" spirituality to be a high priority. Depression-era folk also found it necessary to repress a certain amount of frustration and disappointment to focus on survival issues.

All that said, I find a lively affectivity -- even joy! -- permeating C. S. Lewis' writings, especially his fiction (as you noted). His more apologetic works can seem arid, at times, but such is the nature of that genre. Even then, however, he can be most imaginative in the analogies he draws and often delightful to read.

quote:

Originally posted by w.c.:
...And then there was Lewis' marriage, and his journal that ended up being "A Grief Observed." I'm re-reading this and finding places where the shame of emotion still persists, but awareness of it as well. ]

Lewis published "A Grief Observed" under a different name. I heard Francis MacNutt speculate that this move was precisely out of shame for his brokenness, shame over his anger at God...Why else would he use another name for this work?

Hard for me to imagine the pain of losing your mother at such a young age and then your wife, how the former loss would relentlessly echo into the latter.

Yes, to what both of you are saying. It's interesting to remember my first experience of Lewis' writings. I was a bit late to the "Chronicles of Narnia," and read "Mere Christianity" first. So I was about 17 when reading that apologetic work, and about a year later for the fiction. But what is striking, at least as I recall it, is how these different genres affected me. As a young man I found quite an intellectual refuge in "Mere Christianity," as I was threatened by so much other reading (The library was a kind of shelter, but also a painful exposure to all that could threaten leftover childhood trust in matters of faith). So Lewis' apologetic works gave me a breather from all the headier stuff I was trying to digest, even Nietszche! But his fairy tales got too far under my skin at that age, stirring up the real defenses from horrible childhood memories and giving me more discomfort than pleasure. It wasn't until maybe ten years later, after a first long stretch of psychotherapy, that I could relax and let such reading carry me wherever it might (I had a similar struggle with Tolkien's fairy tales, which I read around 15-16 years of age). And, after becoming more friendly with my interior life, his apologetic works were easier to read. My head and heart were communicating more openly, and so I could see and feel the connections in those intellectual treatises to the wonderful fairy tales.

And so Lewis did seem to open, somewhat, to his inner life through his life experiences. He was often rather insightful about the psychological life of children. Some speculate the fantasy refuge he and his older brother created during their mother's illness, and which opened to moments of "Joy" as he described it in his autobiography, allowed him to re-visit his own unmet needs in some ways through the nurture he received after the war from his fallen compatriot's mother; this may have helped him write those fictions, which would be impossible without considerable access to emotions. Being a great writer must have given him some permission in this, and some protective distance, too.

For somebody of his era, as Phil alludes, not to mention his rather stultifying British culture, to speak of his former "hatred of the emotions," is quite an inner stretch. I don't think he could have said this, or created Narnia, without a heartful sensibility of considerable depth. But no doubt he couldn't have overcome his childhood pain and culture with the few supports we'd consider inadequate today for psychological healing.

As for the anonymity of "A Grief Observed," I'm not sure as to the motives. There may be something on record about this, but I think it just as likely Lewis was trying to protect a very private domain in which he still grieved, and which might not have been well received by his academic peers. He was criticized early on for not devoting all his energy to English literature, which many say was his real strength. But all of that could be true along with the personal shame and brokenness, especially since his decline in health began not too long after his wife's death. That loss may have pulled him under, but I don't know what the reports were about how Lewis managed among his friends after his wife died. He did lose one or more of the Inklings before his own death, so past, present and future may have become rather dark for him. In such despair, the mind feels rather useless, and the heart threatening.

Here's a link to a summary of reviews re: "A Grief Observed." Various angles considered, but what stands out for me is how shame-based British culture seemed to be back then. Why would Lewis expose himself to further loss, and rejection, going through what he was already suffering?

www.librarything.com/work/1539