This postRan across this nugget in C.S. Lewis’s review of Lord of the Rings:
The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity’. The child enjoys his cold meat (otherwise dull to him) by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savoury for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it the real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves.
Precisely. Speaking of books, it’s been a while since I’ve written about what I’m reading. I’m halfway through Charles Williams’ War in Heaven, a tale about the Holy Grail. I’m also reading An Experiment in Criticism, The Fellowship of the Ring, and Persuasion, and I’m still plugging away at War and Peace.
For my C.S. Lewis class, I recently read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Silver Chair, and I’m in the middle of The Magician’s Nephew. We’ll also be reading The Last Battle, and since that leaves three we won’t be reading as a class, I’ll probably go ahead and read them too. (It’s been a while since I read Prince Caspian or Voyage of the Dawn Treader or The Horse and His Boy.)
Both Lewis and Tolkien mention a story called A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay, and they both speak fairly highly of it. The only copy the library has is in Special Collections, however, so I turned to Project Gutenberg (A Voyage to Arcturus was published in 1920, giving it a nice, juicy public domain status), and there it was, etext #1329. I love Project Gutenberg. :) I haven’t actually started reading the book yet, but it’s on the list. Maybe I’ll put it on my iPod…
