Month: March 2024

“We Will Make Holiday.” C.S Lewis, The Inklings and Re-enchantment.

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  • Prince Caspian by C.S Lewis (Lions 1983) pp. 135-138; 167-174
  • That Hideous Strength by C.S Lewis (Pan Books1983) pp. 286-294

These thoughts have almost come about by accident, if such a thing as accident actually exists. Last week I tried to type the word re-enchantment in my post about Faramir’s questioning of Frodo and the device with which I was writing displayed a considerable reluctance to allow me to do so. Time and again it automatically corrected what I had written replacing it with the word, re-enactment. Of course it is possible to persuade a device to change its mind (does it have something that could be described as a mind?). All I had to do was to keep on typing the word that I wanted to use and to tap on it in the bar that either offers me alternative words or corrects the word that I might have misspelt or mistakenly chosen but the process aided by an attentive reader (thank you, Jo!) had got me thinking.

My title comes from Prince Caspian by C.S Lewis and the words are spoken by Aslan at the Fords of Beruna (p.168) after the battle fought between the disenchanted Telmarines and Old Narnia. There is no time here to go into the story in any detail and so if you have not read it I would encourage you to do so. Here in England it is a holiday weekend. Good Friday and Easter Monday are both public holidays, but for most these days are a grimly disenchanted affair and the roads will be jammed with traffic as people try to get from one place to another, getting very frustrated in the process. It is not a holiday in this sense for a parish priest such as I am in the Anglican (Episcopalian) tradition. I will spend much of the weekend in church walking in the footsteps of Christ in the journey from the Cross to the tomb before celebrating the resurrection on Sunday. There will be no long car journeys for me. But there will be another sense in which holiday will be made. Will it be in the same sense that Aslan speaks of?

If you type re-enchantment or re-enchanting into your search engine it is likely that you will soon come across a podcast of that name hosted by the excellent Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall from the roof of the library in Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, my boss. Views from the library look across the River Thames in the heart of London to the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Each week on the podcast Brierley and Tindall interview a personality who they perceive is re-enchanting life in some way. I enjoy it very much and would highly recommend it to you but again I wonder if C.S Lewis, Charles Williams or J.R.R Tolkien were to be guests would they recognise the material discussed each week as re-enchantment?

And what if Bacchus from Prince Caspian were to enter, or Merlin from That Hideous Strength? As Susan says to Lucy in Prince Caspian, “I wouldn’t have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we’d met them without Aslan.”

And that is the point that I wish to make. In my imagination I intend to take Bacchus and his maenads from Prince Caspian, and Merlin from That Hideous Strength into the library of Lambeth Palace for a recording of Re-enchanting. I don’t think that we will need to worry about security. Merlin will soon put everyone into an enchanted sleep as he did to MacPhee in the house of St Anne’s on the Hill.

Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall in the library of Lambeth Palace and their magnificent view across the River Thames.

But here I am claiming for myself an authority that I do not possess. Did I say that I would introduce Bacchus and Merlin to Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall? I doubt very much if either of these masters of enchantment would take orders from me. Unless Aslan and the Pendragon were present the holiday that I spoke of earlier would be mere chaos and, perhaps, worse than that: it might be carnage. There must be true authority if a re-enchanted world is to be life giving. In That Hideous Strength there is considerable doubt about whether Merlin will serve good or evil. The same is true of Bacchus and the Maenads also.

And what of the holiday of which I spoke earlier? I am sure that my readers know that the origin of this word is holy-day and so I am writing this on Holy Saturday, the eve of Easter, the day on which Christ rested in the tomb before his resurrection, or alternatively the day on which he harrowed hell. Or maybe both. He does not suffer from the limitations that we do. This is the holiest weekend of the Christian year.

So in what sense is the day about which Aslan speaks, Holy? It is a day of liberation. Souls, imprisoned within the disenchanted world are set free from bondage and join the festival dance with the maenads and trees and nymphs. The disenchanted world is harrowed. A holiday begins. But that is Narnia. Miraz and his Telmarines have not been able to disenchant Narnia for very long and Old Narnia is still very much alive, although hidden. Our world is different. As Ransome says to Merlin, “the soul has gone out of the wood and water. Oh, I daresay you could awake them; a little. But it would not be enough.” In That Hideous Strength the powers of heaven, the Oyéresu, must intervene to throw down the powers of darkness. In Tolkien’s legendarium we would be speaking of the Valar when they intervene against Morgoth in the First Age.

So maybe Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall are nearer to holy-day than I earlier suggested. Re-enchantment must begin with a refinding of faith in God. But let it be wild as it is in Prince Caspian or That Hideous Strength, or in a work that greatly influenced these, The Place of the Lion, by Charles Williams. Or might it be through one who was strangely marked by his journey through the perilous land of Lothlórien as was Frodo Baggins? However our dying world is to be re-enchanted let it be according to the spirit of the wild Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh. 

I will have love, Have love, 
And a life with a shapely form, 
With gaiety and charm, 
and capable of receiving, with grace, 
the grace of living, and wild moments too,
Self, when freed from you.

“Whatever Befell on the North March, You, Frodo, I Doubt No Longer.” Faramir Hears Frodo’s Story and Tells of The Death of Boromir.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 866-874

Boromir “was alive and strong when we parted. And he lives still for all that I know”, says Frodo to Faramir. “Though surely there are many perils in the world.”

Anke Eissman depicts the moment when Faramir encounters the funeral craft of his brother, Boromir.

“Many indeed,” says Faramir, “and treachery not the least.”

Frodo stands before Faramir and his men as Faramir judges the truth of the story that Frodo tells and also the teller of the tale. How did Boromir die? And what part did Frodo play in his death? Was Frodo a traitor who betrayed his companion to his death at the hands of orcs?

Sam reacts to the implied accusation of treachery with fury and he tells Faramir to mind his own business much to the amusement of Faramir’s men, but Faramir is determined to find out the truth, in part because he wants to know what happened to his brother, in part because he wants to judge Frodo fairly.

What persuades him that Frodo is a truth teller is the story of Lothlórien. As soon as we learn that Faramir knows the most name of the hidden land we know, as we began to think about last week, that he is a man of wisdom. Laurelindórenan, he names it, the valley of singing gold. Treebeard also used the ancient name of that land when he spoke with Merry and Pippin, sadly remarking that just as the name was diminishing to Lothlórien or even Lórien so too the enchantment of the elder days was fading away.

Fading it may be but Faramir still understands its potency. In part this power lies in its beauty. Faramir thinks of the beauty of the belt in which his brother was arrayed in the boat from Lórien that Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli had sent him down the Anduin on the day of the breaking of the Fellowship. He also recognises the beauty of the broach of green and silver leaf that fastens Frodo’s elven cloak about his neck.

But Faramir also recognises the potency of Lothlórien in two other ways. One is in the mystery of Frodo himself. Right at the beginning of his journey Gildor Inglorien names Frodo Elf-friend and Goldberry recognises him as such in the house of Tom Bombadil. Gandalf sees a light shining within him and a certain transparency to his body when Frodo lies in Rivendell recovering from the wound that the Lord of the Nazgûl gave him at Weathertop. Sam saw this light too as Frodo slept in Ithilien, seeing that his face was “old, old and beautiful, as if the chiselling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed.”

Frodo shares in the enchantment that comes from the elder days but is also marked by the wound he received at Weathertop and by the power of the Ring. Gandalf wondered which of these would prevail within him but concluded that he did not think that he would come to evil but might become “a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can.”

Faramir is one who has such eyes and can perceive this light. “There is something strange about you, Frodo, an Elvish air maybe”, he says. But here we recognise the third element of the potency of Lothlórien that Faramir perceives. Its peril. “It is perilous for mortal man to walk out of the world of this Sun, and few of old come thence unchanged.”

There are tales in so many cultures of mortals straying into Faerie and emerging changed. Later Faramir will speak of what change came over his brother to Frodo and Sam. Now he merely asks the question and perceives something of the beauty and the peril in Frodo.

There is much talk now of re-enchantment and who would deny the need for this in a dying world. But might there be a naive optimism about such speech? We want the beauty without the peril. In C.S Lewis’s Prince Caspian Susan says of the Maenads who surround her and Lucy and who unleash glorious chaos in a Narnia that is dying of rationalism that if Aslan were not with them she would be very afraid. The Christian wisdom of the Cross recognises both the healing that flows from it but also its horror. We cannot separate the two but would love to reduce our desire for re-enchantment to little more than a pleasant walk in the country or a neatly tendered border of pretty flowers in a garden. There is beauty in both of these but this is not the perilous beauty of re-enchantment. It is not what Faramir perceives in Frodo. He perceives it yet he has the wisdom to trust it.

“Faramir’s Face… Was Stern and Commanding, and a Keen Wit Lay Behind His Searching Glance.” Meeting Tolkien’s Faramir and Not Peter Jackson’s.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.866-871

When I think of Peter Jackson’s version of Faramir I think of the speech that Elrond makes to Gandalf in Rivendell before the Council.

“Men are weak. The race of Men is failing. The blood of Númenor is all but spent, its pride and dignity forgotten. It is because of Men the Ring survives.”

And then I think of the scene in which Faramir takes Frodo, Sam and the Ring towards Minas Tirith in an almost trance like state, seemingly overcome by the Ring’s malignant power.

What a contrast all this is to the man that we meet for the first time within the pages of The Two Towers.

I have been enjoying using this image of Faramir as created by Anke Eissman in the last few weeks. Compare it to David Wenham’s characterisation as illustrated below.

Sam awakes from sleep to find Frodo standing before Faramir and a company of about three hundred men. Faramir interrogating him and it feels as if a trial is taking place. We are told that Sam “could see Faramir’s face, which was now unmasked; it was stern and commanding, and a keen wit lay behind his searching glance.” Later on we hear Frodo’s assessment of the man before he stands, that he was very much like Boromir in looks but “a man less self-regarding, both sterner and wiser.” And later still we read Éowyn’s first assessment of Faramir that she could see “the grave tenderness in his eyes, and yet knew, for she was bred among men of war, that here was one whom no Rider of the Mark would outmatch in battle.” This does not put Éowyn off.

I do not blame David Wenham for the way in which he plays the part of Faramir in Peter Jackson’s films. He does it as was asked of him, as an embodiment of the weakness that Jackson’s Elrond speaks of. In Jackson’s films, rightly celebrated as a cinematic masterpiece even after twenty years, one of the major themes, alongside that of friendship, is power and weakness. The Ring is all-powerful and constantly exerts that power in its immediate and utterly malignant influence over any, Frodo for the most part excepted, who see it. In the scene in which Elrond speaks of human weakness we see Isildur fall immediately under its spell and refusing to destroy it in the fires of Orodruin. “It is because of Men that the Ring survives.”

David Wenham as Faramir and Elijah Wood as Frodo. I can’t quite believe that Wenham’s character is one that a woman like Éowyn would fall in love with. Now Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn is a different matter entirely!

Contrast this characterisation of Men with the one that Tolkien gives us. Pride and dignity are not spent. Aragorn is not in exile in the North by choice but because it is the land of his birth. Although he is Isildur’s heir he will need to prove that claim in Minas Tirith and there is considerable doubt that his claim will be accepted. Denethor, the Lord of Gondor, is both proud and dignified, and although we will find him cast down by grief over the loss of Boromir, he is not self-indulgent as Jackson portrays him, eating a hearty meal as Faramir risks all in battle, but austere and self-possessed until the end when overcome with despair.

And Faramir is far better portrayed in the work of Anke Eissman than by David Wenham’s and Peter Jackson’s characterisation. When I look at Eissman’s Faramir, sitting before Frodo, in complete command of the situation, I can see the man that Éowyn will first of all respect and later on fall in love with.

St Paul has a word that describes Faramir perfectly and thar is prautes, a word that he uses in speaking of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in his letter to the Galatians (5.22,23). In most translations this is usually rendered as gentleness but this is only a part of the story. Gentleness is all too often mistaken for weakness, a mistake that Êowyn does not fall prey to when she perceives Faramir’s “grave tenderness” but realises that he is one who few could outmatch in battle. In fact Éowyn understands prautes perfectly. It is a subtle mingling of strength and gentleness and Faramir is a fine, even exemplary expression of the word. He was one of Tolkien’s favourite creations and the weeks that we will spend in his company will refresh both the hobbits and I hope, my readers as well.

“It Was Sam’s First View of a Battle of Men Against Men and He Did Not Like It Much.” Tolkien Brings His Memories of War to His Great Tale.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.858-865

Sam is already battle hardened standing by Frodo at the attack of the Nazgûl at Weathertop, at the attack of wargs near the doors of Moria and again within Moria at the Chamber of Mazarbul when orcs and trolls assailed the Fellowship. It is not battle itself that affects him so deeply, that realisation that someone is your enemy and wishes you harm, wishes even to kill you, it is, as the English poet Wilfred Owen put it, “the pity of war” that touches his heart when the Rangers of Ithilien ambush the Men of Harad as they march northwards to the Black Gate of Mordor.

War in the trenches of the First World War of 1914-18

There are few passages within The Lord of the Rings that have the feel of the war literature of the 20th century as this one. Here we are reminded, if we need it, that Tolkien was writing a novel of his century and not a mere pastiche of medieval heroic literature. Tolkien was himself a veteran of the war in the trenches in France and took part in the Battle of the Somme that began on the 1st of July 1916 in northern France and during which a million men were either killed or wounded. The memory of that battle still casts a shadow over western Europe over a hundred years after it took place. My father gave us very little education in any deliberate sense; most of what I learned from him I did by observation rather than because he told it to me, but he was anxious to tell us of the horror of war and how a war in Europe should never be repeated. He himself was a veteran of the Normandy landings of June 1944 and his father of the naval Battle of Jutland of May 1916 and the memory of war played an important part in my education.

The capture of Frodo and Sam by Faramir and his men takes place just before the ambush begins and it is a measure of Faramir, the captain of war, that he does not treat his captives as mere irrelevances in the face of the serious matters of killing and being killed. In the few moments available to him he allows Frodo to tell his story before assigning two of his men to guard them. As they wait for battle to begin Mablung and Damrod speak of their leader and the respect in which they hold him. “He leads now in all perilous ventures,” they tell Frodo and Sam, and they are proud to follow him.

See ‘Faramir the Captain’ by Anke Eissman. Note how relaxed most of his men are. He is in charge and they don’t need to worry about what they have to do.

Tolkien gives us no overview of the battle that follows. We see it through Sam’s eyes, listening to the sound of steel against steel or metal cap, like the sound of “a hundred blacksmiths all smithying together”. We feel the terror as an oliphant charges straight towards them, veering away from them at the very last moment and we see a young warrior of Harad fall dead at their feet. Through all this their main ambition is to survive. Doubtless if battle had overtaken them they would have fought bravely but heroic deeds are not their first concern. This too is true to Tolkien’s memories of the trenches and of modern warfare.

The moment when Sam looks at the dead warrior is deeply moving. We are not shown war from the perspective of the war historian or the general in the staff room. We see it through the eyes of one man alongside other men. “It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if was really evil of heart, or what lies and threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace”.

Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury between 1980 and 1991, was a tank commander during the Second World War, winning the Military Cross, the second most important medal for valour that can be offered to the British Armed Forces for rescuing one of his wounded men from a crippled tank while under heavy enemy fire. He was greatly criticised by politicians for expressing sympathy and compassion for Argentine soldiers after the Falklands War of 1982. What moved him to speak of his pity was his memory of an incident in which his tank took out a German tank in battle and how, as was required of him, he checked to see if there were any survivors. He remembered looking into the tank and the dead young men within it and thinking of their mothers, wives and girlfriends who would never see them again. It was a Sam Gamgee moment and it remained with him for the rest of his life.

I haven’t found a photograph of Robert Runcie from the Second World War. You can tell that this is a photo of a British tank on show for the “top brass”, senior British officers, not one in the heat of battle.

“Now if I’ve Gone and Brought Trouble, I’ll Never Forgive Myself.” What Kind of Trouble Does Sam Gamgee’s Fire Bring to The Hobbits in Ithilien?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 851-861

I am glad that Frodo and Sam were able to eat the rabbits that Gollum caught before they were caught by the men of Gondor in the woodlands of Ithilien and I am glad that they were able to rest upon a bed of fern that must have felt like the greatest luxury. To be well fed and well rested is of great help when you need to keep your wits about you. I am only sorry that they were not able to smoke a pipe as well but then perhaps they did not have their pipes or pipeweed with them.

Frodo and Sam are in Ithilien, the garden of Gondor, Although it bears the unmistakable signs of Mordor upon it after a few years of occupation it remains a place of beauty and of plenty too. They are surrounded by herbs that grow in profusion and perfume the air, and there are game creatures about that Sam can cook.

The hobbits have eaten nothing more than lembas for about a week now and although it is wonderfully sustaining and even more so when it isn’t mingled with any other kind of food lembas cannot satisfy them in the particular way that a well cooked meal could and Sam, in particular, desires that particular satisfaction.

Perhaps it was always unwise to light a fire in a place where enemies might be lurking, certainly Gollum thinks so, but a fire is necessary if you are going to cook, and maybe if Sam hadn’t relaxed a little too much after eating a good meal then he would not have committed the cardinal error that all children are warned against when learning to make a campfire. Never leave it unattended.

But Sam did make this mistake and a small brand from the fire did start a blaze in a pile of fern lying nearby and the smoke from the fire was spotted by the Rangers of Ithilien, and the hobbits were caught.

These Rangers are a company of men from Gondor who are operating behind enemy lines in the woodlands of Ithilien. Their mission is to make sure that the forces of Gondor can never feel completely at ease in this land. They harry and harass their foes and on this day it is their intention to ambush a force that is travelling northwards from Harad to enter Mordor through the Black Gate, just the kind of force that the hobbits saw on the day when Frodo decided to trust Gollum as his guide into the dark land.

The Rangers are commanded by Faramir, son of Denethor, Steward of Gondor, and the brother of Boromir, who had travelled as part of the Fellowship from Rivendell until he fell at Parth Galen as he sought to defend Merry and Pippin from capture by the Uruk-hai of Isengard. And it was this same Boromir that tried to take the Ring from Frodo and so made him take the decision to go on alone to Mordor. As far as Frodo and Sam are concerned Boromir is still alive and Frodo’s last memory of him is of the madness that overcame him and led him to try to seize the Ring by force.

I have long appreciated the depictions of Faramir by the artist, Anke Eissman. Note how he sits on the ground before his captive and does not seek to dominate him by standing, but his authority is still unmistakable.

So at the moment of their capture Frodo and Sam do not know what kind of trouble they are in and Sam does not know whether he will ever be able to forgive himself or whether he will ever get the opportunity to do so. He cannot know that he has fallen into the hands of one of the noblest of all Tolkien’s creations and that much good will come of this encounter.

We might say that the “chance” meeting between the hobbits and Faramir is mere coincidence, if any circumstance in our lives can ever be described with the word, mere. It was the great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, who first coined the word, synchronicity, to describe a series of unrelated events that are connected through their meaning and the meeting of the hobbits and Faramir is a profound expression of this. Later, before they parted, Frodo says to Faramir that Elrond had told him that he would find unexpected friendship upon his journey and we will think more of this on another occasion but it is sufficient to say on this occasion that Sam can forgive himself for his “mistake”, if mistake it truly is.