In my previous post I touched
on the unhappy irony of the title of Philip and Carol Zaleski’s marvelous new
book, The Fellowship – The Literary Lives
of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles
Williams. When Lewis recorded his talks on The
Four Loves in 1958 (which subsequently became a book) he must have
reflected back on the Inklings when he prepared the section on friendship, one
of the finest treatments on the subject that I’m aware of. And yet…relying on
memory (and I will go back and reread that section), Lewis does not explore
what happens when friendship breaks down, nor does he, as I recall, explore how
friendships might be restored. By this time the Inklings are no more and his
friendship with Tolkien has been cold for a few years; and so while Lewis’s
treatment of friendship in The Four Loves
is touching and while there is much to be enjoyed and gained from it, it’s
failure to recognize the likelihood of conflict and breakdown in friendship is
unfortunate.
One of the characteristics of
the Inkling’s gatherings was the give-and-take, their argumentative
disagreements; yet eventually some of these disagreements fermented into some
of the members becoming disagreeable. It is painful for me to read of Hugo
Dyson’s attitude toward Tolkien reading sections of his draft of The Lord of the Rings- to the point
where Tolkien stopped reading from it altogether. This must have been painful
for Tolkien who was constantly struggling with writing and rewriting and doubt
about the worth of his Middle-Earth mythology. Here are Tolkien and Dyson, the
two men who took a walk with C.S. Lewis some twenty years prior to Dyson having
enough of hobbits and elves, a walk that led to Lewis coming to know Jesus
Christ, in such conflict that Tolkien gives up reading from the work which has
consumed much of his life.
Then there is Tolkien’s severe
criticism of Lewis’s Narniad, this after Lewis’s encouragement of Tolkien in
Tolkien’s writing of the Lord of the
Rings. Tolkien writes to the effect that Lewis’s encouragement was critical
in his completion of his Middle-Earth trilogy, but now Tolkien can’t let his
displeasure with Lewis’s Narnia go, he can’t leave his remarks at the level of
helpful questions and constructive criticism – he raises his criticism to
another level…a level that exits the pale of friendship.
It is warm to see the Inklings
as they were when times were good, it is sobering to see them when clouds
overshadowed their fellowship as the clouds of Mordor threatened the existence
of Gondor. It is one thing to see the Inklings as if they lived all their lives
in the Shire, it is another to see them as they encountered Orcs. The test of
fellowship, of friendship, is not found in the serene confines of the Shire of
hobbits, but rather in the challenges of ego, agendas, tastes, preferences, envy,
jealousy, gossip, and the choice between honesty and deceit.As Bilbo Baggins demonstrates
in The Hobbit – There and Back Again,
it isn’t just how a journey begins that matters, or the adventures found in the
journey that matter, but it is supremely important that the journey ends well. Tolkien
and Lewis demonstrate this in their writings – that is one of the joys in The Lord of the Rings; it is one of the
sorrows of the Inklings.
What can we learn from this?
To
be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment