Online Conversation | What C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien Teach us about Resilience and Imagination

[Music] by any measure this has been a frustrating and unsettling time for all of us but in the midst of uncertainty it can be helpful and even encouraging to explore the real life examples of others whose lives work and imagination and relationships were indelibly changed by the difficult times that they were in and the way they redeemed those times to leave the world a more thoughtful and graceful place and it's hard to imagine two authors who were close in long time friends who did more to influence the moral literary and spiritual imagination of new generations than CS Lewis and junior are Tolkien so it seemed especially fitting to consider the topic of what CS Lewis and junior Tolkien had to teach us about resilience and imagination and our own time and we are so glad to be joined in that venture by the ever energetic and the ever enthusiastic Jolla Conte Joe is a professor of history at King's College in New York and the author of several books including The Searchers the quest for faith in the valley of doubt the end of illusions and religious leaders confront Hitler's Gathering Storm God Locke and Liberty which I seem to see on your shelf just behind you Joe and his newest release a hobbit a wardrobe and a Great War which is in the process of being made into a documentary which will show a trailer for which at the very end of today's online conversation Joe it is great to have you here hurry it is just terrific to be with you and I love the title of this talk suffering friendship and courage because you've been suffering through your friendship with me over the last couple of decades and it's been a great courage so it's terrific to be with you thanks so much for having me so Joe for as long as I've known you which I think has been over two decades now could an avid fan and close reader both Lewis and Tolkien and in fact I think when I first read you you were in the midst of hosting a Louis and linguini supper where you were trying to introduce more people to the works of CS Lewis I think you continue those suppers so how did you first discover Lewis and Tolkien and what caused you to love their works yeah thanks for that question Cherie for 4cs Louis it was my undergraduate days at the campus at the University of Illinois where I would say I really became a Christian committed my life to Christ and then just stumbled upon mere Christianity in a bookstore and then I'm hooked because he's explaining the Christian understanding of life in a way I could grasp for tokin he came much much later in life I was doing my my graduate work my dissertation work on John walked by the way there in London at the University of London and after the movies come out I decided I need to read tokens Lord of the Rings and so it was John Locke during the day and it was talking at night and in an English pub it was a great way to spend the evenings now Joe you're a historian and both Lewis and Tolkien were soldiers and we're on the front of World War 1 it's been over a century since World War one and so it's often now we tend to forget just how what a huge impact the war had on the public imagination and what disillusionment it caused I was hoping you could just kind of walk us through and impact some of the context of the time the way that the war affected the world views of people really all over the world and the impact it had on both Lewis and Tolkien thanks for that question and there's so many wonderful biographies of both those men out there that I've benefited from and yet I don't think there's been enough attention to the way in which both of their lives were really framed by war they both fought in the First World War in the trenches in France and then they have to live through a second world war and everything in between and it's kind of the in-between that is really pretty remarkable and some ways terrifying because after the first world war all the hopes that were placed on this generation and European civilization and then Europe is engaged in basically a mutual suicide pact in the trenches in France they survived that and then the mood in Europe not so much in the United States but certainly in Europe was a deep disillusionment with the ideals and the institutions of the West our political institutions religious institutions and just think about what is sent loose and the midst of the First World War not only the influenza virus which killed more people than the de war itself but new ideologies new pandemics if you will communism fascism eugenics materialism these new ideologies that were given kind of a free reign in the aftermath of that first world war and token and Lewis have a ringside seat to all of it there in Great Britain and of course as you point out in your book at the very start of the war there was a sense that this war would be easily won over 16 million lives later and division after division of young men being just thrown basically fed to cannons to either defend or take trenches this presumably had quite an impact on the way people saw Authority at the time yeah it is a couple of level shuri they begin to destruct distrust their political authorities no question about that because it's the politicians who sent them into this war and the politicians who keep telling them that it's gonna come to a quick end we just need another ten thousand fifteen thousand fifty thousand men and we'll turn the tide but of course it never happens they rush to stalemate so there's that level of kind of disillusionment with authorities but there's also a disillusionment with even the individual because the individual himself the individual soldier is caught up by cannon fodder and the idea of individual heroism or virtue or that your life could make a difference that is obliterated for many many young men and women after the war you think about some of Tolkien and CS Lewis's literary contemporaries you know whether it's or perhaps a little bit earlier if scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway or aramark and there's a sense of disillusionment I mean it was a lost generation but Tolkien seemed to have retained very strongly the ideal of heroism what enabled them to respond differently to the same war it's a terrific question I'm still kind of grasping it I'm still trying to plunge the depths of that you have a TS Eliot the wasteland you know kind of kind of response to the war and yet token and Lois go on to write these epic mythic tales of heroism and a fight between good and evil how did they do that well Anna we have to say it initially at a rock-bottom level their Christian faith gave them a kind of realism about human suffering and the problem of evil they were they didn't get sucked into the utopian ideologies on the one hand but neither could they become cynics about the grace of God and the dignity of man think that they will not become cynics about those things and I think they even will draw on some of their war experiences where they did see genuine acts of compassion forgiveness heroism that they couldn't shake they couldn't forget and I think entered into their their great epic works both Lewis and Tolkien seem to grapple a lot with the with ideas of power I mean you have the ring itself and Lord of the Rings as being one of the causes of great evil and of course CS Lewis wrote the inner ring an essay you well know how did the war shape their view of power yeah I think it's it and it's probably certainly the first world war but it's probably as much the second world war as well and the rise of these totalitarian power shuri that is really driving home to them the danger of the will to power because think about it they start writing they're they're really they're epic works when the Nazis and the Communists are on the march in the late 1930s Tolkien starts writing the Lord of the Rings in 1937 Hitler has already torn up the Versailles Treaty he's already absorbed Austria and so he's on the march the Communists are on the March Louis will write the space trilogy 1938 he'll start that kind of work so the temptation to power and the use and abuse of science in in the service of power becomes a huge theme in their works and it's just no coincidence they are deliberately pushing back I think in a way that that some biographers and that may be fully appreciate they are pushing back in their writings against the totalitarian impulse and try to defend the role of the individual the choices that individuals have to make to push back against the will to power right so we're going to talk about the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien in just a minute or two but both of both Lewis and Tolkien as young men with your experiences we're in tokens case almost all of his close friends were killed at the front and with Lewis many of his closest friends were killed yes where you know the friendships they really invested in the individuals they really identified with yes we're suddenly gone how does that kind of loss at a young age you know and of course both of them talked about how the loss of a friend is really the loss of a civilization how does that kind of loss at such a young age form their view of friendship but also shape their literary imagination those are wonderful questions and I'm still exploring it we'll certainly explore it in the film series that were working on you know they Tolkien had his own band of brothers going into the first world war three other men the four of them met it met in boarding school and then they were off to Oxford and then they're off to war together and two of those close friends Paris another survived Christopher Wiseman survived Tolkien would name one of his sons after Christopher Wiseman and the sense of so much has been robbed from them that shared sense of camaraderie the deep friendship their shared moral vision which they really had you know the young men they wanted to change the world at seventeen eighteen nineteen and then half of them are just gone Louis it was the same he lost most of his closest friends in the war I think one of the things that gave them was of course they wanted to recapture that deep sense of camaraderie and sense of mission and purpose I think after the war and we can get into it more in other questions but I think that's one of the reasons they were so determined to form their group of French friends known as the Inklings at Oxford and they were so devoted to that circle of friends lewiston token ethic at the core of it but then other men would join in over the years I think that war experience had a huge huge role to play in their commitment to friendship throughout their lifetime yeah so how did Lewis and Tolkien become friends you know it didn't start out well actually they met a faculty meeting and you know perfectly go like me faculty meetings can be a real chore this was probably one of the most important faculty meetings in the issue of Western civilization you know in in 1926 is when they met at Oxford for the first time and they didn't quite like each other they were on different sides of a debate about curriculum reform but then they began to spend some time together Tolkien pulled Lewis into a little a kind of a reading group they were reading Icelandic sagas in their original languages only Oxford Don's would do that right but Lewis loved it and they loved the kind of northern heroic spirit that was embodied in these works and that's what they began to figure out that they loved together they loved mythology they loved stories of great heroism and sacrifice and of course the real problem of evil the tragedy of the human condition but men and women fighting back against it they loved those stories and that really drew them together you'd mentioned a couple times the Inklings and of course this is a group that has had an incredible impact on the moral spiritual literary imagination of the middle you know the world over tell us a bit about the inkling so who were they we actually do when I go you know it's so amazing they never they never imagined that it would become the kind of group influential group that it did Louis wrote to a guy that he was inviting to join the Inklings I think Owen Barfield he says there were two to requirements you haven't you have a tendency to the right and you and you are a Christian those were the two qualifications you write and you're a believer in the Christian faith they were probably scholars identify maybe something like 19 different people would have passed through on a semi-regular basis through the years and they met for the better part of 20 years every Thursday evening in Lewis's rooms does academic rooms at Moore Glen College for them also at the eagle and child pub on on Tuesday mornings I've been to both those places of course and what they did was they they shared the works the literary works that they were all laboring over they would read a portions of a token read most of the Lord of the Rings out loud to the Inklings Lois would write would read aloud many of his works to the English and received this sort of serious fierce but also loving criticism and sharpening each other in the context of that week after week after week it's a really an amazing group of men if I could mention maybe just one of those other men that's not well known quickly if Sheree one of them was Owen Barfield Barfield was one of the original Inklings he knew Lewis from his early Oxford days as a student they were friends for forty some odd years Barfield was a writer in his in his own right he was working at the I think Oxford English Dictionary when Steven the Oxford literary review when Lewis sent in a manuscript one of his own manuscripts so here's Owen Barfield reading a work from Louis and he's loving it and he starts writing a letter to Louis to tell him how much he loves it well Louis is picked up at the same time a book from Barfield and he loves that and he's writing a letter to Barfield and says you've got to come join the Inklings so it's things like that just a kind of organic a natural organic kind of coming together these men so even before the Inklings and even before Louis's conversion to Christianity he and Tolkien were friends yeah I guess having developed from this faculty meeting yeah we'll just drive in your book an important conversation that took place September 19th of 1931 that lasted into the wee hours of the night you can tell us a little bit about that and how that conversation between friends changed the world it really did I think it's one of the most important conversations probably in the history of the world it's not putting it too strongly one of the most important conversations you gotta remember that Lewis was a he grew up at a time when it was seen by the academic elites that Christianity was a myth like all the other myths out there the ancient pagan myths there's no truth value to it and he very much believes that as a young man a young atheist and then he meets junior Tolkien who was a believing serious Catholic and and token thinks about myths in a different way the conversation they have on Addison's path Addison's walk which I've been over there till three o'clock in the morning they're talking with another man hugo dice and the three of them particularly lewis and token they're talking about myths and they're arguing about myths and could christianity be anything more than just an old pagan myth and but Tolkien helps Louis to understand is that Christianity is law is in some ways like these other ancient myths in that there's the idea of the God who comes to earth on a great mission a mission of redemption to give his life for his people Louis loved that kind of idea when he saw a sort and Pagan literature but not in Christianity and what Tolkien helps them to see is Christianity is the myth that became fact it's the true myth it's the myth from which all the other myths are derived they're hints and intimations of the great myth the Christian myth that became fact and that conversation Louis says it just cleared away these prejudices and thinking and opened the door to his mind and he says later that as he wrote to one of his friends I had a conversation with Tolkien last night it was the immediate cause of his conversion to Christianity it was it was decisive for him and within days he becomes a committed Christian you know it's fascinating because they're talking about myth at the very time when around the world myths are dying disillusionment reigns why do you think myth became a portal to cook to faith for Lewis at the very time that myths seem to be closing in the minds of other people's imaginations that's a fabulous question surely I you know what your questions I never get yes/no questions I always get these these amazing questions that I've hardly thought about it's a question probably more for a professor of literature but I'll take a stab at oh I'm sure you're up to it Joe oh well your audience is gonna be more up to it than me but I'll take a stab at it you know we think of myths as just falsehoods even today we think well it's a methods nothing to that but a myth a myth and a culture it really represents the best myths represent deep truths about the human condition about our nobility but also about our depravity our sin our weaknesses of the common the tragedy of the human condition of what these myths represent so qualities like heroism and sacrifice for a noble cause those virtues they're embedded in the best myths they have this universal appeal and I think token and Lewis are they want to use that genre because they want to reinvent the ancient myths for the modern mind to hold on to these great truths of the faith that's their strategy and here we are with the results of that strategy right yeah one of the things I'd love to get your thoughts on is the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien other members of the Inklings it was clearly so pivotal to their life it had such an influence and their their life their thought their imagination their work and one of the things that's interesting in both Lewis and Tolkien --zz work friendship and courage is often linked and there's often a theme of a character whether it's a child or a hobbit who is called a great difficulty and does not initially have the resources they need to meet that difficulty but essentially gets called in to the quest largely from the formation of both character and encouraged through friendship and wouldn't just get your thoughts on how Lewis and Tolkien how did they regard the relationship between friendship and courage Wow fabulous question I think it they drew from different sources sharee I think that at some level they did draw from those ancient great stories that they loved where they would see friendship King Arthur the knights of the round table those kinds of stories but then also I think they're war experienced as well shapes them so what are they doing in their works think about Lucy the character of Lucy in The Chronicles of Narnia who has that moment when Aslan asked her to do something that she doesn't want to do and she's afraid of where where it's going to lead and she tells herself but I just I just must do it I just must obey and that little act of obedience then we're told all Narnia will be made free the consequences of a little child's decision deliberate on the part of these guys that she in communion with her with her siblings and these others they're involved in this great task in quest and of course the Lord of the Ring is all about the Fellowship of the Ring right the Fellowship of the Ring and I think token saw that in the trenches in the first world war because he says specifically that his Sam Gamgee and this is a pretty much an exact quote my Sam Gamgee is indeed based on the the privates that I knew in the 1914 war and regarded as so far superior to myself so he made those hobbits small of stature but put them in community to remind the reader about this dynamic between friendship individuals who don't seem to matter but do but they have to have the help of their comrades and their companions along the way they can't do it by themselves Frodo doesn't succeed on his own does he at the end of the day he can't you need Sam you know in addition to friendship being a spur to courage both Lewis and Tolkien but perhaps Lewis in particular also seems to regard story in the same way you and here I'm thinking about used to scrub and we know right from the beginning that Eustace is an objectionable guy not only but Lewis also goes on to tell him that Lewis of it rather scrub likes to read about imports exports and plumbing drains but he's never read about dragons right away there's something off with Eustace Eustace then confronts a dragon he has no idea what to do and worse he eventually becomes one himself and we're at a time now where some of us actually have a little bit more time to read than we may normally would we may not really have so I wanted to ask your thoughts on what Louis in particular thought about the way that story especially were these story forms our character and our courage yeah a character our courage our moral imagination and both of them are drawn to a token of course as well I'll stay quickly on dragons because you maybe think of dragons I went to the Bodley library here in November there in Oxford for a part of the film trip and found a manuscript that it's not widely known a talk that token gave on dragons and what they represent in in mythology and in the world they represent evil and it's the idea of people coming together to battle this dragon so for Lillis you know what's what's what's driving him and so much of his of his writing about the heroic quest and what's important um Wow I mean think about heroism and think of how important he regards heroism at a time when it has been discarded in the 1930s and 40s people have simply let go of the idea that individuals can really combat evil they're caught up in these epic forces beyond them beyond their capacity to respond but it's so crucial for them to I think to hold on to that so so how does story how does storytelling help us to do that one of the huge authors that was immensely important to to Lewis was George MacDonald and when what MacDonald did him in books like fantastic that Louis encountered as a young man when he's still an atheist Lewis says at that story it an awakened his moral imagination it taught him to learn to love goodness to learn to love goodness but it happened through storytelling it didn't happen through philosophical argument for Lewis he says very explicitly it didn't necessary challenge his conscience or his his kind of rational reasoning processes it got to his heart and helped him to learn goodness and it's part of his conversion story so there's something about a narrative that pulls us in and and it kind of takes us unawares and it takes down our defenses and that's something that Louis went back to again and again the power of a well told story to sneak past our prejudices right and introduced us to beauty and to truth you know one of the lovely things about the Inklings is that combined friendship and story and I think probably a lot of our listeners are thinking you know that sounds wonderful maybe not the ancient Iceland languages but my cup of tea yeah how does one form Inklings in one's own life yeah I'll share a little bit from these guys to maybe give us some some hints about that they're deliberate about it and they're faithful so not only are they meeting every Thursday night I mean through the Second World War they continue to meet with all the demands on their time and they're very committed to their own family relationships they haven't let go those are very grounded in their own family relationships but this is something different outside of the family that they feel like they need they can't really do without so and they took long walks sometimes multiple days at a time in the English countryside and they'd hang out at these ends on their walking tours toka would complain that Louis would would walk with the cadence of a drill sergeant he's always on the move if I could read a couple of lines cherie if I could from Lewis's wonderful book the four loves from his chapter on friendship and I think you know these lines I think we've talked about him before sharee he's talking about friendship and he's obviously harkening back to the to the friendships that he's established over the years with token with Barfield with these others and here's how he describes what it can look like he says when the whole group is together each bringing out all that is best wisest or funniest and all the others those are the golden sessions when four or five of us after a hard day's walking have come to our Inn and when our slippers are on our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks and our elbows when the whole world and something beyond the world opens itself to our minds as we talk and an affection mellowed by the years and folds us life natural life he says has no better gift to give who could have deserved it there's no better gift than that but you have to work at it you have to be committed to it and it has to be about something important right Lewis said they came to talk about literature that was their goal but he says in a letter but always we talked about something better something better we don't always know what the better was but boy you about a fly in that room right absolutely well Joe as you might imagine the questions are piling up we have a couple of dozen questions from our our listeners to ask you but we're gonna start with a question from our co-host in this venture faith in law and so Laura noise ask you to name one aspect of the achievements of Tolkien and Lewis that is not widely known or appreciated yeah Lauren thank you for that question and I'm gonna unpack a little bit what I just suggested with Cherie I think these guys in their writings if you think about the Lord of the Rings The Chronicles of Narnia the space trilogy the abolition of man The Hobbit these guys are I think very deliberately pushing back a mindset of pushing back against a mindset in the 1930s especially that is raging itself against human dignity against against things that are transcendent it's a very materialistic age and a very totalitarian age and I think in their works it is a deliberate a very conscious very textured approach to saying no that's not the truth about the human condition the will to power the state the individualism is subsumed into the state I mean think about the heroic narratives and they're strong individuals working in community they really matter whether it's a mouse named Reepicheep or little children in a wardrobe or a little Hobbit they matter supremely and that is simply not what's now dominating the political and cultural landscape of Europe in the 1930s I think they are deliberately pushing back and I'm not sure that fact has been appreciated enough by their fans but we're gonna try to rectify that with our film series so stay tuned for that so Cheryl Moore asked what biographies of Lewis and Tolkien would you recommend oh great I've got a couple here all right up by my elbow here I will recommend Alister McGrath of course on CS Lewis a life also rather recently the fellowship the literary lives of the Inklings very good the gift of friendship token of Lois by Colin dorias and I can't forget also Diana gly or the company they keep CS Lewis Tolkien as writers in community we've interviewed all of these people most most all of them for the films series I have benefited immensely from that scholarship you know I think it was I think it was Isaac Newton who said we're all midgets standing on the shoulders of giants you know Isaac Newton said that well LeConte II can say it too you know we're midgets the shoulders of giants so the giants have come before me and done some amazing work and we're just trying to kind of put them in their historical context of friendship in its real cultural historical context it's a rific question those are all great biographies yeah right so a question from Michael Lundy who asked how instrumental were tokens and Lewis's visions of Hell in their pursuit of a heavenly one Wow you've got one smart cracker questions that a story has never think to ask are now being asked so the role of Hell in their understanding of heaven I mean just say something about Hell before I forget which make I I think connect to the question I let me get this thought out on Hell like I've got Hell right now Louis conceived of the Screwtape Letters should we think of there's a meditation on the devil and on Hell right he conceives of that book ladies and gentlemen when he's sitting in church in his Church in Oxford in 1939 it's uh it's within a few days I think after no sudhi's 1940 Britain is at war with Germany and he's just heard us say a speech from Adolf Hitler for the first time on the BBC simultaneously translated into English he heard that speech I think on a Friday night Sunday in church while the sermon is going on he's thinking about the devil he says later on it was then that he conceived of the idea of the Screwtape Letters sitting in that church so he's meditating on the problem of evil at it again is is cultural historical context this great evil that is now in developing Europe Britain is fighting for its life the Battle of Britain is literally on in 1940 so the relation between that in heaven that's a that's a great theological literary question you know Louis and token both it seems to me in their writings they want to emphasize individual choice and that heaven in heaven is a is this opportunity and this invitation that God gives to offers to every person Lewis says some place that no man who seriously continues contused a desires joy will ever miss it and and the desire for joy is the desire for heaven and so what's the counterpoint if people do not seek joy and seek the good if they don't respond to those longings that God has given them in their own hearts then there's no place else to go the only place outside of heaven and joy is a hell is an abandonment so it is absolutely part of their their thinking there's a whole conceptual approach to literature and there in their lives their literary lives is you have to be allowed a choice to choose heaven or to choose the alternative abandonment by God in hell they're there in that sense they're inseparable because of the way God has made us and made the universe a loving relationship based on choice mm-hmm that's great so our next question comes from Carl Lynch and one thing I should have mentioned to our viewers earlier is that in addition to asking a question you can like a question and more questions are liked the more likely we are to ask them so this question comes from Carl Lynch who asked we know that Churchill early recognized the evil of Hitler I have never seen any or at least not many comments of CS Lewis or j.r.r tolkien on Hitler and Nazism and he wants to know if you have thoughts on that yeah that's a great question I've been looking over their letters a little bit more recently in the 1930s and 40s I just read the other night actually Tolkien is commenting on Hitler's Germany and he's so he and he says he's angry at different levels at this vile brutish of figure in Germany not only because of his anti-semitism because I there's not an anti-semitic bone in tokens body or in Lois body not only the anti-semitism but from tokens perspective Hitler is doing such damage to what he loved about the German people the heroic Germanic spirit and Hitler has taken it and perverted it and blackened it he fears what he thought of as a northern German heroic spirit and now Hitler is just giving such a dismal account of all that for the German people and this is I think it's a letter he writes to his publisher Tolkien does at the time it's around 1939 in 1940 in the midst of the war and Lewis will have his own comments about Hitler and and communism and fashion and fascism both so it's a terrific question I'm gonna explore it more thank you for that prompt so this question comes from Katherine s will you please comment on why Tolkien was so opposed to the idea of the Lord of the Rings being an allegory especially World War two when his dear friend Lewis seemed to embrace his own in Chronicles of Narnia as a clear allegory was this variation and approach due to differences in their personalities or how they viewed their own writing that's an excellent question I can only take a stab at and many in your Oren's gonna have a better answer than this but but here we go I think some of it was their experience of faith their faith commitments Lewis came to faith of course as an atheist of a pretty strenuous atheist and his Christian conversion is it over a over a course of time it's a dramatic event in his life touken becomes a Catholic early in life and it's with him and it grows and deepens and Louis has I think the heart and this sort of soul of the Evangelist in a more explicit way he wants to use his writing to introduce people to the Christian faith in us in a more kind of direct way and I don't think token approached his Catholic faith and its relationship to his writing in quite the same way even though he believed that the lord of the rings' and he writes about this in some of his letters Tolkien does the Lord of the Rings he says it's a deeply Catholic work deeply Catholic but for Tolkien it's much more subtle it's clearly a moral universe with a transcendent moral code and a fight between good and evil but it's these deep transcendent ideas are kind of embedded in a narrative and that's just part of I think his own theological approach as much as perhaps anything else literary taste I could be wrong and I'm happy to be corrected but I think it explains some of it it's great so a question from Peter petit who wrote writes you just spoke about Lewis and Tolkien 'he's friendship not beginning well we speak about it not finishing well I think it is important to round out the picture well I said that's an excellent question they it was it was strong for many years right through the 1940s it went through a rough patch I would say in the 1950s for different reasons some of it may have been of the introduction of joy d-david men into his life the marriage to joy I don't think token liked her very much oh that's I guess debatable a bit he was kind of taken taken by surprise by her by the presence of her the arrival of joy this whirlwind New Yorker that takes a lot of people by surprise that's off-putting for a lot of people as a native New Yorker I can say that that's some of it also Lois I think had a greater capacity for friendship with different people than Tolkien did and there may have been some a sense of being hurt that token felt like Lois was expanding the circle of the ink links to other people and I think token may have felt a little a little wounded and that maybe the fact that Tolkien may have just emotionally needed more of that relationship with Lois because he he was an orphan at a young age and as a young man and that sense of vulnerability may have been more heightened with token I'm not sure but I want to say I think it did end well because near the end they are exchanging letters to each other and when when CS Lewis dies in 1963 Tolkien writes in a letter I think to his son Christopher he says this feels like an axe blow near the roots and explode near the roots well that's a friendship that's still intact as far as I can tell Lewis certainly felt the affection to token I think Tolkien came around came back around at the end so Noel asked what is professor Lacan T's opinion on the latest Tolkien movies The Hobbit trilogy but other movie adaptations of Luis and tokens work well I met a film critic so my opinion is no better than anybody else isn't probably worse than anybody else's you know having recently reread The Hobbit I can only say I doesn't seem to be there were three movies in that in that particular book and just and I think the Tolkien estate probably felt the same way from what I understand it just seemed to go in directions that tokin never really intended and it just became too much battle scene oriented some people make the same criticism of the Lord of the Rings though I think it's much finer films more faithful I think probably to the to the original so I think it kind of lost it just lost kind of some of the magic in the Wonder I mean the Hobbit is not nearly that sort of heavy story that the Lord of the Rings becomes right it's really aimed the children but teaching them some important moral truths and lessons battling a dragon the Lord of the Rings is a heavier tale at the end of the day for good reason so I wasn't pleased with the film adaptations look anything that draws people's attention to the writings of Tolkien you know I'm generally speaking gonna be fool that's great so David wills asked what's the most underrated or underappreciated work written by a member of the Inklings oh wow any member of the Inklings a member of the Inklings Wow that is a fabulous question underappreciated I'm most familiar with the work of Lewis and Tolkien so I'm gonna confine myself to these guys you know I actually think and Cherie you'll probably appreciate this I've been hosting in my home this little Lewis and linguini a group as you mentioned it's the monthly discussion group about the essays of CS Lewis and I think that many of his essays are simply not known to a wider audience that's what I've discovered in the 15 plus years I've been doing my little Lewis linguine group over here and for the first time young people especially are being introduced to these wonderful essays that speak into the contemporary moment and you mentioned his essay the inner ring is a beautiful example of that in some ways a neglected essay but it's so relevant especially to to our town here DC Washington DC Sheree the swamp the inner ring the inner circle the desire to be in the know and then to exclude people put them on the out the power of that and how that temps an individually can lead a young man or a young woman into deep darkness that desire to be in the inner ring I mean it's a wonderful essay written you know 70 years ago but it speaks to the moment so I put that near the top of the list of underappreciated writings that's great Peggy Parr asked from Lexington Kentucky is it correct that Tolkien didn't like Louis's wife joy and why so this harkens back to a question you are a topic you mentioned earlier yeah you know this was this probably goes back to tokens and by his own description he didn't have the same capacity for friendship he was just more guarded that way I think and the introduction of joy just seemed to take Louis away from things that token thought maybe they were a little bit more important she just seemed too erratic to too out there but I don't want to go further than that I just I don't I haven't explored that with care so I don't want to be uncharitable in any way because obviously joy meant the world to Louis and his reflection on her on her death is just a remarkable you know grief observed his reflection on her death and what she meant to him is this one of the most moving reflections on grief you will ever read so I want to maybe leave it at that mm-hmm this is a great question from Kamryn Zeller who asked what older myths or story should we read alongside the works of Tolkien and Lewis Wow older myths older myths the ones I've been reading the ones I've been trying to get my hands on actually when you say older I'm I've been trying to read some of the stuff that influenced token and Louis oh certainly I put some George MacDonald on this coffee table you maybe can't quite see it but it's the title long title the story of the glittering plane which has also been called the land of living men or the acre of the undying written by William Morris William Morris was this yeah go ahead tada he couldn't decide what the call and I guys but William Morris had a real influence on Lewis's generation on Lewis and Tolkien especially this romantic mythic story and you start reading some lines and yeah that sounds like something Lewis would have loved to have read for the first time the way it kind of it stirs the heart with its nobility or the idea of sacrifice you see it in William Morris oh I might put William Morris the story of the glittering plane you'll probably have to get it on eBay you know it's a little tough to get but it's worth where I'm just about halfway through it lovely book yeah you know related to that in your mind who were the greatest literary influences on both Tolkien and Lewis you know for for token it's probably if I had to name a single kind of a mythic writer it would be bit the story of Beowulf Beowulf you're the Scandinavian hero back from the sixth century goes back back that far when token discovered Beowulf he just became absorbed in the story this epic quest really against impossible odds at the end of the day and then ultimately they were dying in the in the final battle he not only absorbed it but he he taught a course on Beowulf he translated Beowulf he delivered it a really important lecture on Beowulf in the 1930s which transformed the academic approach to Beowulf so that was a really a hugely important part of his I think his intellectual formation his academic career that concept for Lois I'd have to say George MacDonald and he encountered McDonald when he was an atheist is about 1916 he's he knows he's going off to war the first world war but he's not there yet he's on a train platform and he picks up the book in a little bookstore and he says when he read fantastic George MacDonald's book fantastic when he read it he says after a few hours I knew I had crossed a great frontier Lewis will be recommending George MacDonald's fantastis up until I think the week before he died in letters that he's writing to other people he committed the book again and again and again in the 1920s when he's still an atheist he says to one of his friends in a letter I just finished reading McDonald's fantastic again over my tea I have read it many times it's become a kind of devotional work from it so hugely important book in his life yeah that's great so this is an interesting question from John Morris who asked if we could imagine Lewis and Tolkien living in the 21st century what might their discussion focus on as they facetimed on Friday April 24th 2020 you know that question John I have to say the risk of making another shameless plug we want to have like Episode five of the film series explore kind of that question what would token of Louis have to say to us today the issues and how would they you know react to it I I think on the one hand they probably would be troubled by the lack of the sort of the foundation the literary and intellectual foundation that they got and they took for granted in their Oxford days they were steeped in the classics the classic the Canon of Western civilization they knew it those great texts the Christian Greek Roman foundation for our civilization they knew those great works and that helped to really inform the literary imagination no question so I think they'd be weren't wondering why we've abandoned that almost entirely in our in our society because they they knew how important that was to carrying on the legacy because the threats to your civilization are gonna continue to come and you have to know what's worth defending so I think that would be one thing well I couldn't necessarily name the most important issue that they would be concerned about but just think more more kind of broadly about we have our own assaults on human dignity today and what it means to be human and I think they would be coming back to that question particularly with the spiritual dimension in mind that we're not just matter and yes in the mists of this pandemic crisis we want to save lives but we also want to remember that there actually are even more important things than even our physical life and preserving our physical life there are things even more important than preserving our physical lives there are these other transcendent values however we go about that we've got to keep that in mind I think they might be speaking into that kind of moment what we value the material the spiritual the eternal mm-hmm so a question from Shana Casspi who asks I tend to keep my professional relationships and friendships separate do you think there is an intentional reason for that today we're trained to compartmentalize I would love to have friendships that had such deep purpose that's fabulous that's a family's observation you know one of the things this I hope this connects to the question one of the things that has struck me about these men as I've studied their lives which again is not widely appreciated their work they're doing these great creative works in community with each other because they have this shared moral vision they realize things aren't going the way they should be going in their culture and the works that we love that we know of too you know Hobbit the Lord of the Rings The Chronicles of Narnia the space trilogy you gotta remember what those two men were paid to do their professional work they were paid as oxford instructors to hold seminars with students graduate or undergraduate seminars at 3 or 4 or 5 people in a room and we actually interviewed one of CS Lewis two students a lovely woman in her 90s who was tutored by CS Lewis they were paid to do that they were paid to deliver lectures they're paid to write academic papers to their peers the one thing they weren't paid to do was to write the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia but they had this passion for this other aspect of their lives their personalities their gifts their gifts weren't just in one place I think they enjoyed their scholarship and their work with students but they had these other gifts to the gifts of imagination that Oxford didn't really appreciate at the time they weren't praised by their peers for these works these were seen as strange hobbies touken described his love of languages and his Hobbit stuff as a man hobby and Lewis helped persuade him it wasn't just a mad hobby he helped he helped persuade token that there was something in it so I'm not sure how to answer the question except to say I've been so deeply encouraged that these men pursue their mad hobbies their sense of their other sense of calling a broader sense of calling their gifts outside of their paid work their payed profession and look at the results again that's great so Mimi asked how'd it see us Louis and Jarrah talk and connect two Bonhoeffer how did they connect to Bonhoeffer hmm I have not yet found and I'm not saying it's not there I have not yet found a discussion in their writings in their letters to Bonhoeffer specifically it's a good it's a good thing to start searching out there obviously aware of everything that's going on in Nazi Germany more so than the Americans are you got to remember because you know right across the English Channel you're not far to Berlin and when the when the Blitz starts when the bombing of London starts they are really uncertain if English civilization is going to survive so they're paying close attention to what's happening over there I don't know that they had a particular kind of thought or insight into what Bonhoeffer was his role over there I just don't know the answer it's a good question to ask as we move forward with other other research projects so thanks for the question so Becky Imperial asked how can reading the works of Lewis and Tolkien help us presently in the area of suffering how can we teach our kids with these works to move through suffering and towards courage yeah Thank You Becky for that question that that is such a rich question and again I can only just take a stab at it when I when I so appreciate about these men and good biographies should do this for us you see you understand that they went through suffering they and and they they somehow came out stronger men they didn't allow it to overwhelm them and I love part of our topic today the title I mean the this resilience and imagination there is a deep relationship between the two part of the way that these men process their suffering and dealt with it and faced it was through the use of their imaginative creative gifts they did not allow themselves to take on the role of the victim and it would have been very easy to do as War veterans who didn't have much to come back to after the first world war no promises no guarantees no Social Security they're fending for themselves in a war that their own country came to kind of resent almost in a way that we came to resent the Vietnam War maybe not quite that bad for the English but there was a growing resentment about the whole enterprise so easy for them to play the victim they're not going to do it I think again without question think about the group of the Inklings a lot of the members of the Inklings were former war veterans themselves they'd also survived the trenches and we don't know this I haven't found it yet they must have talked about the war in those sessions together it had to come up right that kind of yes you too kind of discussions you know and that in itself that knowing that understanding is that help as a way to kind of in fellowship together but of course at the end of the day their Christian faith that realism about suffering that it is part of the tragedy of the human condition and yet there's hope there is a rational biblical basis for hope not a kind of false utopian optimism but a real hope grounded in something real the Christians story and they came back to that again and again and again the reality of the Christian story as the great anchor for them I think through their darkest days not only the first world war but right through the second world war as well a witching hour is almost here so we're going to take just two more questions and have a great question from our mutual friend Patrick Wilson who writes all the Inklings also like poetry not just prose or stories yeah what role does this kind of art and perhaps music to play in their argue play in their arguments on the Christian lives what roles they play in their lives in the Christian lives sure II you know I took a shot at poetry when I was an undergraduate failed miserably at it so it's always been another one of those knowledge gaps and we in my life we entered the weaknesses but you're right they they did think of themselves Louis thought he was going to be a poet initially and then he found out this is a good another good lesson for us he just found out the reviewers of his poetry weren't necessarily encouraging him in that direction and he had to kind of rethink his life aspiration and yet there is a sort of poetic quality to their works isn't there the both of their works they have the poet's ear for the rhythm them the magic that can come with poetry in the way it opens up the imagination and at the beauty that that great poetry can communicate it just opens up our senses in ways that ordinary prose doesn't do token especially I mean how many how many times are the hobbits breaking out into song it is some kind of poetic song as they're on their great trek so it plays a really important role it seems to me in their literature it's another genre of writing that they obviously thought was essential it was part of how they were going to communicate the great truths of the faith and the the beauty and the goodness of the faith that they were trying to reintroduce to their generation great question so we have lots of questions remaining and very little time so I will somewhat awkwardly try to combine two unlike questions and just throw them at you for four quick responses one comes from mr. Shahid who writes that as a Muslim I've always been drawn to both Tolkien and CS Lewis's writings and mythologies can you comment on any Eastern influences that may have made an impression on them and then there's another question on an unrelated topic from an anonymous attendee who asks that is I recently shared an article about how we shouldn't just be content with Lewis and Tolkien when it comes to literature are there any contemporary authors who put forward similar themes that you would recommend contemporary authors yeah I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to try to follow up with our Muslim friend on that question I don't know the answer to that question and I'd love to follow up with them and try to explore that maybe together other contemporary writers I do want to say though we could do worse than spending many many months and even years immersed in the writings of Tok it's so rich and I'm finding that out as I'm working on this film project as I'm reading them again and again and then reading what they were influenced by I think a good place to go to get your shortlist of the authors who influenced token and Lewis whether it's a Beowulf whether it's McDonald or William Morris I think that'd be a pretty good collection of works so as we wrap up I'd love to give you the last word on Tolkien Lewis resilience and imagination yeah I think maybe the best way to close is a little portion from the Lord of the Rings because I think it's so captures their basis for hope and a source of great resilience for them it's just a few lines of Cherie from the lore the Rings it's near the end of the quest with Frodo and Sam they're in the land of shadow on the way to Mordor and everything looks hopeless on the way to Mordor now it looks hopeless hope fails and in comes Frodo tell Sam we have only a little time to wait now we are lost in ruin and downfall and there's no escape and then Frodo he's just given up any hope or thought of ultimate success but not Samwise Gamgee sam hasn't given up their peeping among the cloud rack above a dark tor high up in the mountain Sam store a white star twinkled for a while and the beauty of it smote his heart as he looked up out of the Forsaken land and hope returned to him for like a shaft clear and cold the thought pierced him that in the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing there was light and high Beauty forever beyond its reach light and high Beauty forever maybe that's the prayer for a story that we have the heart and the faith and the imagination to see it Joe thank you for joining us it's always a delight to talk with you thanks so much for a great being with you and to all of our viewers thank you for joining us we appreciate your time your attention have a great weekend and happy reading [Music] you

Channel: The Trinity Forum

Views: 4,130

Keywords: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Suffering, Friendship, Courage, Resilience, Imagination, The Trinity Forum, Online Conversation

Id: KAZ74VqUaWM

Length: 58min 16sec (3496 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020