Chapter 11

Currently Reading (for the Third Time) Perelandra (Space Trilogy, Book Two) By C.S. Lewis see related

I've been reading quite a bit this summer, and I absolutely love it. Unfortunately, it can be slow going (between eight-hour workdays and falling asleep at the end of them, it's hard to get more than a few chapters at a time), but I've really been enjoying the literate summer.

I mentioned earlier that I was re-reading the Space Trilogy, which I like to do. I absolutely love these books (and I was surprised to find that one of my future roommates brought them to college, too).

C.S. Lewis is "the man."

Tonight, I got around to the eleventh chapter of Perelandra, roughly the middle of the trilogy, and just about my favorite bit of writing out of all the fiction I've ever come across. It contains so many of the things that I've found absolutely brilliant in some of Lewis's theological works, wrapped up in a great story and written from the perspective of Elwin Ransom, a character with a linguist's love of words.

It addresses everything from the debate over predestination and free will ("He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heard on the subject.") to the Truth not as a distinction between myth and fact but the junction of them ("Even on Earth the sacraments existed as a permanent reminder that the division was neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation had been the beginning of its disappearance. In Perelandra it would have no meaning at all.") to the position of mission work ("And then - he wondered how it had escaped him till now - he was forced to perceive that his own coming to Perelandra was at least as much of a miracle as the Enemy's. That miracle on the right side, which he had demanded, had in fact occured. He himself was the miracle.").

And it also speaks to the improbable nature of small miracles and the intricacy of God's plan in a passage which I've mentioned - at least indirectly - on this blog before. Let's see if I can find it...

Then there's the rare case of someone who thinks so much like you that it stops becoming surprising that you agree on something, and reactions in those cases are amazing. For example, earlier this fall, after the Andrew Peterson concert at Bubba's Bagels (during which he sang my current favorite song, as-yet-unreleased on CD, which contains a lot of lyrical references to Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series), I was talking to Abby Carpenter and David Kartzinel, and we started talking about Lewis' books, and I asked if either had ever read the Space Trilogy (great, great books). David had, though he didn't remember them very well. The second book of the trilogy, Perelandra, contains one passage in Chapter 11 that constitutes my favorite piece of writing, perhaps of all time. When I first read it after getting the trilogy for Christmas a few years ago, I had to stop and look over it a few times; when the final line of the passage hits, it honestly hits you in a way that you stop to look over it again. Doing my meager best to describe the passage in brief, I got to the final line, and David physically staggered backwards, with the lone comment of "Wow." If he ever gets some time for extracurricular reading, I'll have to loan him my copies of those to thank him for loaning me some of his Discworld novels.
--Originally Posted 7 January 2005

'It is not for nothing that you are named Ransom,' said the Voice.
And he knew that this was no fancy of his own. He knew it for a very curious reason - because he had known for many years that his surname was derived not from ransom but from Ranolf's son. It would never have occured to him thus to associate the two words. To connect the name Ransom with the act of ransoming would have been for him a mere pun. But even his voluble self did not now dare to suggest that the Voice was making a play upon words. All in a moment of time he perceived that what was, to human philologists, a merely accidental resemblance of two sounds, was in truth no accident. The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience the appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can. Hence we rightly, for our use, distinguish the accidental from the essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down into the void, fluttering useless wings. He had been forced out of the frame, caught up into the larger pattern. He knew now why the old philosophers had said there is no such thing as chance or fortune beyond the Moon. Before his Mother had born him, before his ancestors had been called Ransoms, before ransom had been the name for a payment that delivers, before the world was made, all these things had so stood together in eternity that the very significance of the pattern at this point lay in their coming together in just this fashion. And he bowed his head and groaned and repined against his fate - to be still a man and yet to be forced up into the metaphysical world, to enact what philosophy only thinks.
'My name also is Ransom,' said the Voice.
--From pages 147-148 of my paperback edition, emphasis mine

I'm sorry for being so quote-happy this evening. Things are quiet, so that passage is about the biggest excitement of the week thus far.

But you know what? I love having a quiet summer at home with my family, and I've been loving my very literary break.

Oh, and just for Dad: Check out the new e-mail answered by Strong Bad at Homestar Runner, which makes a little joke out of "Feed the Childrens."