For Inklings' Fans

Mark Cameron of Mystique et Politique calls our attention to this provocative article by Michael Ward in The Times Literary Supplement, Apr. 23, in which Ward examines CSL's poem "The Planets" for "plot summaries" of the seven Narnian Chronicles.

I had thought of blogging the poem, since I have a hunch I'm one of the few bloggers who actually has Lewis's Poems — pace Dylan? — in which "The Planets" is on pp. 12-15. (I have my own list of about 30 of my favorite poems in the book; "The Planets" is not among them.) I see from this article, though, that the poem is already on-line.

I decided to do a little more reading, so I looked up the article referenced by Ward: "The Alliterative Metre" in Selected Literary Essays, ed. Walter Hooper, pp. 15-26. (Yes, I have that book, too.) It is noted there that the essay had been published in Rehabilitations and Other Essays, 1939. In that book (yes, I have it, too), "The Alliterative Metre" is the sixth essay, pp. 119-132; the poem itself is on pp. 129-132. In the Preface, Lewis wrote one of the more memorable acknowledgements that I've ever come across, concerning the essay in question, which appeared originally in a publication called Lysistrata (May 1935, according to Hooper, p. xviii):

As far as I know this periodical did not survive my contribution, and I have been unable to discover the name and address of the lady who edited it. I hope that if these lines meet her eyes she will forgive me for assuming her permission to reprint.

Little did "the lady" know, I surmise, that she had published an early work by someone who would become one of the century's more famous authors.

Instead of providing the text of "The Planets", which would be superfluous, I will provide instead another, much smaller, alliterative poem by CSL, also in "The Alliterative Metre" (Rehabilitations, p. 122), which I cannot recall having seen before:

We were talking of dragons, | Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. | The big workman
Who had sat silent | and sucked his pipe
All the evening, | from his empty mug
with gleaming eye | glanced towards us;
'I seen 'em myself', | he said fiercely.

Hooper, p. 18, says that JRRT provided him with the following information (which, I think, is rather well known among Inklings' fans) as a possible real-life inspiration for CSL's little poem:

I remember Jack telling me a story of Brightman, the distinguished ecclesiastical scholar, who used to sit quietly in Common Room saying nothing except on rare occasions. Jack said that there was a discussion on dragons one night and at the end Brightman's voice was heard to say, "I have seen a dragon." Silence. "Where was that?" he was asked. "On the Mount of Olives", he said. He relapsed into silence and never before his death explained what he meant.

Enough of pedantry........ :)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 04/30/03 08:32:44 PM
Categorized as Literary.