Dr Malcolm Guite's Keynote Talk on C.S. Lewis at Ulster University's First Annual CS Lewis Symposium
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- Опубліковано 24 лис 2022
- This is Dr Malcolm Guite's keynote talk from Now We Have Faces: The First Annual C.S. Lewis Symposium at Ulster University (3 Nov 2022). His talk is entitled 'A Little Incarnation: C.S. Lewis and the poetry of embodiment'. Here, Malcolm traces the links between Lewis’s theology of incarnation and his imaginative vision as a writer. (The views and perspectives expressed in this talk are those of Dr Guite and remain his intellectual property.)
Here is the text from the 'handout' which Malcolm mentions in the talk:
A Little Incarnation’: CS Lewis and the poetry of embodiment’
From Reflections on the Psalms
It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own delight and for the delight of men and angels and (in their proper mode) of beasts, had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech, that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible. (p5)
From a Midsummer Night’s Dream Act V
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
From surprised by Joy
‘Such then was the state of my imaginative life; over against it stood the life of my intellect. The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow ‘rationalism’. Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.’
From Collected Poems: Reason
‘Set on the soul's acropolis the reason stands
A virgin arm'd, commercing with celestial light,
And he who sins against her has defiled his own
Virginity: no cleansing makes his garment white;
So clear is reason. But how dark, imagining,
Warm, dark, obscure and infinite, daughter of Night:
Dark is her brow, the beauty of her eyes with sleep
Is loaded, and her pains are long, and her delight.
Tempt not Athene. Wound not in her fertile pains
Demeter, nor rebel against her mother-right.
Oh who will reconcile in me both maid and mother,
Who make in me a concord of the depth and height?
Who make imagination's dim exploring touch
Ever report the same as intellectual sight?
Then could I truly say and not deceive,
Then wholly say that I BELIEVE’.
…that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)
From Collected Poems: To Roy Campbell
In England the romantic stream flows …
…from Scott; from Coleridge too.
… Newman in that ruinous master saw
One who restored our faculty for awe,
Who re-discovered the soul’s depth and height
Who pricked with needles of the eternal light
An England at that time half numbed to death
With Paley’s, Bentham’s Malthus’ wintry breath.
From Coleridge Biographia Literaria
In this idea originated the plan of the lyrical ballads in which it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and character supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
From On Three Ways of Writing for Children
‘Its fulfillment on the level of imagination is in very truth compensatory: we run to it from the disappointments and humiliations of the real world: it sends us back to the real world undivinely discontented. For it is all flattery to the ego.
It would be much truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he know not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he had read of enchanted woods: this reading makes all read woods a little enchanted.
From the Voyage of the Dawn Treader
“You are too old, children,” said Aslan, “and you must begin to come close to your own world now.”
“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”
“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.
“Are - are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund?
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
The pictures were fewer here but very beautiful. And what Lucy found herself reading was more like a story than a spell. It went on for three pages and before she had read to the bottom of the page she had forgotten that she was reading at all. She was living in the story as if it were real, and all the pictures were real too. When she had got to the third page and come to the end, she said, “That is the loveliest story I’ve ever read or ever shall read in my whole life.”
“Shall I ever be able to read that story again; the one I couldn’t remember? Will you tell it to me, Aslan? Oh do, do, do.”
“Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years”
From Bluspels and Flalansferes
“For me reason is the natural organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning.”
CS Lewis (From The Singing Bowl)
From 'beer and Beowulf' to the seven heavens,
Whose music you conduct from sphere to sphere,
You are our portal to those hidden havens
Whence we return to bless our being here.
Scribe of the Kingdom, keeper of the door
Which opens on to all we might have lost,
Ward of a word-hoard in the deep hearts core,
Telling the tale of Love from first to last.
Generous, capacious, open, free,
Your wardrobe-mind has furnished us with worlds
Through which to travel, whence we learn to see
Along the beam, and hear at last the heralds
Sounding their summons, through the stars that sing,
Whose call at sunrise brings us to our King.
what an amazing lecture, thank you for posting.
You made me laugh when you said you “owed a debt too this honest Ulsterman”. I’m very much enjoying your talk (not finished yet) and have shared it with two of my sons - one who is studying philosophy and religion and the other who is writing a fantasy novel. Both love philosophy and comprehending the apprehensible. Thank you.
I just discovered this astonishing lecturer, my second full lecture in as many hours. Where'd this guy come from? Amazing.
THA Legend!
Pure joy
Imagine being a person who decides the first 10 seconds of a lecture is the perfect time to blow your nose full-push.