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The Transmogrification of the Mythical Merlin in CS Lewis's That Hideous

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The Transmogrification of the Mythical Merlin in CS Lewis's That Hideous Inklings Forever Volume 9 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Ninth Frances White Ewbank Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Article 8 Friends 5-29-2014 The iW zard in the Well: The rT ansmogrification of the Mythical Merlin in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength Mark R. Hall Oral Roberts University Follow this and additional works at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Hall, Mark R. (2014) "The iW zard in the Well: The rT ansmogrification of the Mythical Merlin in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength," Inklings Forever: Vol. 9 , Article 8. Available at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol9/iss1/8 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis & Friends at Pillars at Taylor University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Inklings Forever by an authorized editor of Pillars at Taylor University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume IX A Collection of Essays Presented at the Ninth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM on C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS Taylor University 2014 Upland, Indiana The Wizard in the Well: The Transmogrification of the Mythical Merlin in C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength Mark R. Hall Oral Roberts University Hall, Mark R. “The Wizard in the Well: The Transmogrification of the Mythical Merlin in C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.” Inklings Forever 9 (2014) www.taylor.edu/cslewis The Wizard in the Well: The Transmogrification of the Mythical Merlin in C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength Mark R. Hall Oral Roberts University Since his boyhood, C. S. Lewis had pleased at having bought it every been enamored with mythology and the tales day, as it has opened up a new world of Arthur and Merlin as reflected in his early to me. I had no idea that the diaries and letters. He originally desired to Arthurian legends were so fine. be a great poet,1 to compose an epic that (The name is against them isn’t it??) would be praised alongside such poems as Malory is really not a great author, The Faerie Queene and Orlando Furioso, works but he has two excellent gifts, (1) that he admired and read (Hannay 241; that of lively narrative and (2) the Ross).2 At thirteen he crafted a long poem power of getting you to know that focused on Nibelung in Wagner’s Ring characters by gradual association. cycle (King 4-5);3 at fifteen he was creating a (The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis tragic Norse opera Loki Bound with plans to 1:103; hereafter abbreviated as CL) have his friend Arthur Greeves compose the music.4 Other subjects that interested the Lewis demonstrates great enthusiasm for young Lewis and influenced his early writing Malory in a letter dated February 2 of that included Medea’s childhood (Medea being the same year when he writes, “I am deep in enchantress who helped Jason gain the Morte D’Arthur by this time, and it is really golden fleece),5 Helen (of Troy),6 Sigrid,7 the greatest thing I’ve ever read” (CL 1:104). Nimue (the sorceress who seduced Merlin),8 Showing his interest in the frontispiece to an and the story of Cupid and Psyche,9 which edition of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur he was the source and inspiration for his last obtained, Lewis comments on the style of the novel Till We Have Faces (Hannay 241; All My picture in a letter to Arthur Greeves dated Road 262n2; hereafter abbreviated as AMR). October 28?, 1917: Lewis’s familiarity with the Arthurian literary tradition, especially Merlin, is I have also got the 1st 2 volumes of revealed in some of his letters to Arthur Malory in the Temple Classics. The Greeves. Lewis writes in a letter dated frontispieces are from designs by January 26, 1915 concerning Malory: Beardsley. They are v. good in the extremest style of mediaevalism— Now that my friends have gone, perhaps rather affected. One is of there is nothing to do but sit & read the finding of Excalibur & the other or write when it rains, and of someone giving Tristam a shield. consequently I have nearly finished In the Excalibur one, Merlin is The Morte D’arthur. I am more shewn as a not very old clean- The Wizard in the Well · Mark R. Hall shaven but beautifully wizened man. And rubbed his eyes and took his Not what I’d have imagined him but tarnished spear good all the same. (CL 1: 340) And hobbled to the doorway and unbarred.’ (CL 1: 465-466) It is clear that Thomas Malory had a formative and lifelong influence on Lewis’s Lewis writes to Arthur Greeves on April 11, writing. 1920 that he was still working on the poem: In a letter dated September 18, 1919, Lewis relates how he has abandoned his Look at me—I am still working at Medea poem while continuing to revise my poem on Merlin and Nimue. It Nimue, an Arthurian poem he was has been in succession—rhymed constructing. According to Walter Hooper, monologue—rhymed dialogue— this excerpt in the letter is the only stanza of blank verse dialogue—long the poem that has survived. narrative in stanzas –short narrative in couplets—and I am at present at On getting back to England I had the work on a blank verse narrative pleasure of looking over my ‘Medea’ version. I hope I am not wasting my of which I told you and finding that time: but there must be some good it was all hopeless and only fit for in a subject which drags me back to the fire! Nothing daunted however I itself so often.” (CL 1: 482-483) bade it a long farewell—poor still- born—and consoled myself by Lewis’s diary entry for Thursday, May 4, turning the ‘Nimue’ from a 1922, records that he submitted the poem to monologue into a narrative, in which Squire with little hope of it being accepted for form it may do. It appears in publication (AMR 29). Don King notes that ‘stanzas’ of my own invention and is this was probably the blank verse version of rather indebted to ‘St Agnes’ Eve’ the poem that had been sent to the London with touches of Christabel and some Mercury and was rejected (50). references to contemporary In another letter to Arthur Greeves, politics—by way of showing how written on October 18, 1919, Lewis shares his much better I could manage the opinion of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work and country if they made me Prime refers once again to his Merlin poem Nimue: Minister. Sounds promising, DON’T it? It relates the events of a single Since then I have read Geoffrey of evening—Merlin coming back & Monmouth’s ‘History of the Kings of catching Nimue at last. This is the Britain’. I don’t think you would care first stanza, do you think it any much for it, there are a good many good? dull battles and his Arthur is merely ‘There was none stirring in the hall contemptible. Where he really is that night, good is in the early part. Who would The dogs slept in the ashes, and the not hear about the first coming of guard Brut, and Bladud (our first aeronaut, Drowsily nodded in the warm fire- the British counterpart of Daedalus), light, and the birth of Merlin and the Lulled by the rain and wearied of building of Stonehenge (its his ward, delightful alternative name being Till, hearing one that knocked The Dance of Giants) and the without full hard, Vortigern and Lear and Locrine? Half-dazed he started up in aged One learns a little too. ‘Kaer’ fear apparently is British for ‘city’. Hence The Wizard in the Well · Mark R. Hall Leil builds Kaer-Leil (Carlyle) and The story begins with the narrator Kaer-leon is the city of legion. entering the restricted Bragdon Wood—an ‘Kaerleon of the legions’ (as I call it enclosed garden on the property of Bracton in Nimue) what a name! (CL 1: 468) College—experiencing a sense of the sacred, journeying to “the centre of the Wood” (THS From the “History of the Kings of Britain,” as 21). There he encounters Merlin’s Well, this letter indicates, Lewis found his word for described by Doris Myers as “a numinous Cair Paravel, “the castle of the kings and place” (93), “a well with steps going down to queens of Narnia in Lewis’s Chronicles of it and the remains of an ancient pavement Narnia,” “cair” actually meaning “city” (CL 1: about it. It was very imperfect now. I did not 468n93). step on it, but I lay down in the grass and Lewis’s fascination with Merlin and touched it with my fingers. For this was the the Arthurian tradition is finally realized heart of Bracton or Bragdon Wood: out of this almost thirty years later in the third book of all the legends had come and on this, I his Space Trilogy That Hideous Strength suspected . the very existence of the College (hereafter abbreviated as THS) published in had originally depended” (THS 21). Lewis 1945. In a letter to I. O. Evans, dated continues his detailed description of this September 26, 1945, Lewis discusses the ancient location, presenting a historical novel and provides a list of Arthurian works framework and relating the important events that he knows: surrounding “Merlin’s Well”: About Merlin: I don’t know much The archaeologists were agreed that more than you do.
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