Volume 12 Number 3 Article 2

4-15-1986

Dance as Metaphor and Myth in Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams

Peter Schakel

Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore

Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons

Recommended Citation Schakel, Peter (1986) "Dance as Metaphor and Myth in Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 12 : No. 3 , Article 2. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol12/iss3/2

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm

Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm

Abstract Guest of Honor address at Mythcon 16. Notes the occurrence of images of dance, including the cosmic dance, and their metaphorical usage. Concentrates on Lewis but includes examples from Tolkien and Williams. Previously appeared in Mythcon XVI, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, 1985. Ed. Diana Pavlac. Altadena: Mythopoeic Society, 1985. 5–14.

Additional Keywords Dance imagery in literature; Ann Chancelor; Christine Lowentrout

This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol12/iss3/2 Page 4 MYTHLORE 45: Spring 1986

Dance as Metaphor and Myth in Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams Guest of Honor Keynote Address Peter Schakel

"'I should like the Balls infinitely better,' said dances were a torment... the discomfort of Caroline Bingley, 'if they were carried on in a one's Eton suit and stiff shirt, the aching different manner. . . . It would surely be much more feet and burning head, and the mere weariness rational if conversation instead of dancing made the of being kept up so many hours after one's order of the day.' 'Much more rational, I dare say,' usual bedtime. Even adults, I fancy, would replied her brother, 'but it would not be near so much not find an evening party very endurable like a Ball.'" Lewis quoted this passage from Jane without the attraction of sex and the Austen's Pride and Prejudice at least three times, in attraction of alcohol; and how a small boy essays and letters [1]: obviously he relished it first who can neither flirt nor drink should be because he enjoyed Austen, an author Jane Studdock in expected to enjoy prancing about on a That Hideous Strength asked for when she stayed in bed polished floor til the small hours of the all day recuperating from the burns inflicted by Miss morning, is beyond my conception. (Surprised Hardcastle's cigars [2] (as Lewis himself, "while ill, by Joy, pp.46-47 [ch.3].) . . . reread . . . Sense & Sensibility" [3] — he had learned, early on, ' ' t o make a minor illness one of the The appeal of dance for Lewis, it would seem, arises pleasures of life" [4] by spending the waking hours not from experience with it as an activity but from its with a good story, or two, or three). I suspect he aesthetic and imaginative impact as an idea, even as an relished the passage also because of what it says about Idea or archetype. Dance had been used for hundreds of dance, an image he used repeatedly in his works, years by authors Lewis respected greatly to depict a usually to depict that which is non-rational (he would physical and metaphysical universe Lewis emotionally say super-rational), imaginative, even mythical. I want longed for and spiritually lived in [5]. here to examine his references to dance, with occasional glances at passages from Charles Williams In the western cultural tradition music is better and J.R.R. Tolkien akin to them, and consider their known than dance as an image of the orderliness and implications for Lewis's views on literature and for harmony of the cosmos. The image is grounded in Plato's his world-view as a whole. adaptation of Pythagorean notions about the beauty and proportion of numbers to the physical universe: "On the upper surface of each circle is a siren, who goes round It is intriguing that dance as an image or symbol with them, hymning a single tone or note. The eight had such appeal to one who himself did not enjoy together form one harmony [6]". By association with the dancing. In his late fifties, Lewis describes myth of Amphion's use of the lyre to erect a wall, unpleasant memories of childhood dances: charming rocks and thus moving them into their proper places, music became also a symbol of creation, giving It was the custom of the neighborhood to give order to what previously had been chaotic. Thus, in the parties which were really dances for adults divine creative act, the elements, scattered about but to which, none the less, mere schoolboys "without form, and void" (Gen. 1:2), were drawn into and schoolgirls were asked.... To me these order by the harmonizing power of music. The opening of MYTHLORE 45: Spring 1986 Page 5

Dryden's "A Song for St. C ecilia's Day, 1687" (set to Wherein the daunce doth bid it turne or music expressively by Handel in 1739), expresses the t r a c e : myth powerfully: This wondrous myracle did Love devise, For Dauncing is Loves proper exercise. [13] From Harmony, from heav'nly Harmony This universal Frame began The important thing in all this is not the image When N atu re u n d ern ea th a heap itself, but the world view it affirms. It assumes that Of jarring Atomes lay. And cou'd not heave her Head, the universe is a cosmos, a harmonious system, and that The tuneful Voice was heard from high, human life , as an integral part of that whole, also has order, unity, and meaning. The universe is not doing Arise ye more than dead. rock or disco dancing — unpatterned, chaotic, Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry, individualistic; it echoes the stately movement of the In order to their stations leap, And Musick's pow'r obey [7], chorus in a Greek tragedy or the stylized formality of the country dance in an Austen novel, "The ladies and gentlemen ranged as two long rows facing one another, This myth is employed by Tolkien in the creation story whilst the couples at the extreme ends danced down the in his Ainulindale [8] and by Lewis in The Magician's set [14]." Lewis, Tolkien and Williams accepted that Nephew, as the Lion Aslan sings the land and creatures world view — it is one of the strongest and deepest of Narnia into existence [9]. areas of kinship among them. They could respond to such imagery with an empathy impossible for most of their In an analogous and closely related myth, the compatriots at Oxford: dinosaurs can dance, though the universe became orderly and regular by being made to curators of museums may not recognize or be able to dance. Andrew Marvell's retelling of how Amphion enter the movements. [15] constructed the walls of Thebes illustrates the easy transition from the one myth to the other: "The rougher Dancing occurs on several levels in Lewis's works. Stones, unto his Measures hew'd,/ Dans'd up in order First, dancing occurs as simple image — literal from the Qarryes rude [10]." Such use of dance as a dancing as part of the plot in his stories and poema. cosmological symbol, like the use of music, can be Fauns and trees dance in Prince Caspian, with Caspian traced to Plato, as, in the Tiaaeus he describes how and even the dwarf Trumpkin joining in [16], and the Creator fashioned the world after its eternal Bacchus and Silenus, later, lead a romp across the p a tte r n : countryside freeing those who have been held by the constraints of Miraz: "With leaping and dancing and When all things were in disorder God created singing, with music and laughter and roaring and in each thing in relation to itself, and in barking and neighing, they a ll came to the place where all things in relation to each other, all the Miraz's army stood flinging down their swords and measures and harmonies which they could holding up their hands [17]." Also, there is the dance possibly receive.... The fixed stars were J ill Scrubb sees when she emerges form the underworld created, to be divine and eternal animals, in The Silver Chair. Fauns and dryads were ever-abiding and revolving after the same manner and on the same spot; and the other doing a dance — a dance with so many stars which reverse their motion.... Vain complicated steps and figures that it took would be the attempt to tell all the figures you some time to understand it .... Circling of them circling as in dance,... and to say round and round the dancers was a ring of which of these deities in their conjunctions Dwarfs, all dressed in their finest clothes; meet, and which of them are in oposition, and mostly scarlet with fur-lined hoods and in what order they get behind and before one golden tassles and big furry top-boots. As another [11]. they circled round they were all diligently throwing snow balls,... throwing them through the dance in such perfect time with the music Used recurrently in the middle ages, especially in and with such perfect aim that if all the Neoplatonic writers, the image received its finest dancers were in exactly the right places at articulation in Sir John Davies's Orchestra, published exactly the right moments, no one would be in 1596; Lewis wrote of it, "Davies' Orchestra gives us hit. This is called the Great Snow Dance and the right picture of the Elizabethan or Henrican it is done every year in Narnia on the first universe; tingling with anthropomorphic life , dancing, moonlit night when there is snow on the ceremonial, a festival not a machine [12]." Davies’ ground, [18] narrator, Antinous, urging Penelope to dance with him, explains the origin of dancing: Dance is a central image in Lewis's unfinished poem which Walter Hooper entitled "The Nameless Isle." As the elf plays upon a magical flute, heroes and horses Dauncing (bright Lady) then began to be turned into stone are disenchanted and begin to dance: When the first seedes wherof the world did dancing "in order" and dancing in love, as they s p r in g . encircle the unmarbled maid and bring her to the The Fire, Ayre, Earth and Water did agree, narrator, "blushing as it were a bride m ortal,/ To hold By Loves perswasion, Natures mighty king, to her heart my head as I kneeled [19]." The members of To leave their first disordered combating; the company at St. Anne's dance, as a festive response And in a daunce such measure to observe. to the approach of the Oyarsa of Jupiter: As all the world their motion should p r e s e r v e . The chairs were pushed back, the floor Since when they still are carried in a round, cleared. They danced.... It seemed to each And changing come one in anothers place. that the room was filled with kings and Yet doe they neyther mingle nor confound, queens, that the wildness of their dance But every one doth keepe the bounded space expresses heroic energy and its quieter Page 6 MYTHLORE 45: Spring 1986

movements had seised the very spirit behind him because of its archetypal overtones, and which a ll noble ceremonies. (TBS, p.326 [XV.l].) readily unites his understanding of God with the Western cultural myth. That it should even occur to him On the whole, however, the paucity of references to to compare God to a dance can be understood from Plato. dance is as striking as the times it is used: no one Plato emphasizes that the act of creation involves dances in The Pilgrim'S Regress, or Out of the Silent correspondences, between the world and its pattern, and Planet, or The Great Divorce, or T ill We Have Faces. between the creation and the Creator. If creation can Dance is not something Lewis thought of for himself or be viewed as a dance, so too, by correspondence, can his characters as a desirable social activity; in each the Creator. Lewis simply follows through and example I cited, dance is a spontaneous celebration or concretizes what is implicit in the Timaeus (caps. a ceremonial occasion — it is valued for what it 29-30: The Dialogues of Plato. Ill, USO). And in doing expresses or stands for, rather than for what it is. so he relates the nature of God to the attributes of the world view dance has traditionally imaged: dance is Literal images of dance lead naturallly to the use active, orderly, and hierarchical, and Lewis of dance as metaphor. Here too the infrequency is deliberately attaches those qualities to God. The striking. Rarely in his poetry, for example, are there metaphor also posits qualities about the human-divine images like "Cast aloft by the fountains, with their encounter: it affirms that the human response to God soft foam/ A tremor of light was dancing in the emerald must be active, involved — one can know God dome [20]." Dance as a metaphor in Lewis's works authentically only by entering into relation with him usually is a thoughtful, deliberate way to encapsulate and participation in the activity which makes him what traditional values, not a casual reference to a common h e i s . social activity. This is confirmed by the use of dance as a figure in three vital passages, in That Hideous The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this Strength. Mere Christianity, and The Problem of Pain. three-Personal life is to be played out in In the first, near the end of Ransom's in itial meeting each one of us: or (putting it the other way with Jane, as they discussed obedience and marriage, around) each one of us has got to enter that Ransom says, "But you see that obedience and rule are pattern, take his place in that dance. There more like a dance than a drill — especially between is no other way to the happiness for which we man and woman w here t h e r o l e s a r e a lw a y s c h a n g in g ." w ere m ade. (MC, p .1 5 3 [ I V ,4 ] , ) (THS, p.149 [VII,2 ].) The dance metaphor draws together a key theme of the novel. For Mark and Jane's marriage Sim ilarly, in The Problem of Pain, in writing about the serves as a paradigm of the larger struggle for hellish quality of selfhood and the heavenly quality of independence and authority throughout the novel: of the self-giving, Lewis writes: "But when [the golden apple St. Anne's group to extend freedom within restraint, of of selfhood] flies to and fro among the players too the N.I.C.E. to have freedom without restraint. Mark swift for eye to follow, and the great master Himself and Jane must learn that obedience is different from leads the revelry, giving Himself eternally to His servility and authority is different from arbitrary creatures in the generation, and back to Himself in the tyranny, and that "equality is not the deepest thing sacrifice, of the Word, the indeed the eternal dance [21]." Each must recognize that humility and obedience 'makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.'" [25] are rooted in love, and that the source of love is Christ. "More like a dance than a drill" captures at In Letters to Malcolm Lewis (or rather the persona once the contrast between St. Anne's, and for marriage, he creates) half-apologizes for his use of such what Lewis said in Williams and the Arthuriad about the "frivolous" figures of speech for spiritual matters: knights of Williams' Camelot: "There! I've done it again. I know that my tendency to images like play and dance for the highest things is a There is, inside the company, no real slavery stumbling-block to you." But he further explains and or real superiority. Slavery there becomes justifies them because no "serious" imagery from our freedom and dominion becomes service. As world can convey at a ll adequately the utter beauty and willed necessity is freedom, so willed blessedness of heaven. In particular it cannot possibly hierarchy becomes equality. [22] convey heaven's reconciliation of what on earth are direct opposites, "of boundless freedom with order — The dance image projects the same ideas about marriage with the most delicately adjusted, supple, intricate, that Lewis expressed in Mere Christianity ("Christian and beautiful order [26]." Lewis's attempts to convey wives promise to obey their husbands. In Christian a ll this in That Hideous Strength and Mere Christianity marriage the man is said to be the 'head'" [23]), but use the metaphor of dance, with its combining of conveys them a good deal less rigidly and more spontaniety and pattern, inadequate though he knows p a la t a b ly . that figure ultimately must be. The most important allusions to dance in Lewis's The dance metaphors in Mere Christianity and The works are symbolic uses which draw upon or reestablish Problem of Pain are closely related. The former occurs mythology of the cosmic dance, that to which Doctor as Lewis, attempting to clarify the difficult and Cornelius refers when he assures Caspian that the stars abstract doctrine of the Trinity, says that "the words Tarva and Alambil are not going to collide: "Nay, dear 'God is Love' have no real meaning unless God contains Prince,... the great lords of the upper sky know the at least two Persons," since love is an activity steps of their dance too well for that [27]." Lewis is between individuals. Then he continues: celebrating the same dance that Plato and Davies In Christianity God is not a static thing — celebrated, but he does so with an emphasis not in not even a person — but a dynamic, pulsating Plato or Davies — that the Creator does not just activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. choreograph a clock dance and then lean back to admire Almost, if you w ill not think me irreverent, its color and beauty; rather, the Creator enters the a kind of dance. [24] dance as a participant. Thus in Miracles Lewis writes "the partner who bows to Man in one movement of the dance receives Man's reverences in another [28]." So it As Lewis gropes for a way to express the inexpressible, is in the magnificent scene in the final chapter of he turns to an image which has divine associations for Perelandra. Near the end of his stay on Perelandra, MYTHLORE 45: Spring 1986 Page 7

Ransom, confused by the complexity of all that he has "Where M aleldil is, there is the centre. experienced since his arrival on the planet, doubting He is in every p lace.... Each thing was make for the moment the coherence of things and fearful they for Him. He is the centre. Because we are are mere chaos and chance, is allowed a glimpse of The with Him, each of us is at the centre." Great Dance, "Each grain is at the centre. The Dust What had begun as speech was turned into is at the centre. The Worlds are at the sight, or into something that can be centre. The beasts are at the centre. The remembered only as if it were seeing. He ancient peoples are there. The race that thought he saw the Great Dance. It seemed to sinned is there. Tor and Tinidril are there. be woven out of the intertwining undulation The gods are there also. Blessed be He!" of many cords or bands of light, leaping over (Perelandra. pp. 216-217.) and under one another and mutually embraced in arabesques and flower-like subtleties. As Williams uses his dancing figures to emblemize the Each figure as he looked at it became the hierarchy and wholeness, so does Lewis: master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye "In the plan of the Great Dance plans without disentangled all else and brought it into number interlock, and each movement becomes unity — only to be itself entangled when he in its season the breaking into flower of the looked to what he had taken for a mere whole design to which all else had been marginal decorations and found that there directed. Thus each is equally at the centre also the same hegemony was claimed, and the and none are there by being equals, but some claim made good, yet the former pattern not by giving place and some by receiving it .... thereby dispossessed but finding in its new Blessed be He!" (Ibid, p. 217.) subordination a signficance greater than that which it had abdicated. [29] As Williams uses the movements of the figures across the golden board to epitomize correspondence, relation In this almost mystical vision. Ransom is shown, not and truth, so does Lewis: what the universe looks like, but the Truth about what it actually is like. "All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans The same is true of the image of reality in than it looked fo r.... Set your eyes on one Charles Williams' The Greater Trumps. In this novel movement and it w ill lead you through all about the vain desire to control the action of the patterns and it w ill seem to you the master universe, a set of magical figurines moving about on a movement. But the seeming w ill be true. Let gold-covered table in a secret room of a secluded house no mouth open to gainsay it. There seems no corresponds to the rhythm and patterns of the cosmos: plan because it is all plan: there seems no centre because it is all centre. Blessed be Upon that plate of gold were a number of He!" (Ibid. p. 218.) little figures, each about three inches high, also of gold, it seemed, very wonderfully The kinship of these dancers, of Lewis with Williams, wrought.... They were a ll in movement. Gently is evident; and though Tolkien's characters dance even and continously they went, immingling, less than Lewis's, Tolkien too moves in step with the unresting — as if to some complicated cosmological and social values the Great Dance measure, and as if of their own volition. embodies. Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams, in their There must have been nearly a hundred of fiction and other writings take for granted the truth them, and from the golden plate upon which and relevance of the Old Western model Lewis d escrib es they went came a slight sound of music — in The Discarded Image. That model affirms a universe more like an echo than a sound — sometimes full of life sympathetic with and interacting with quickening, sometimes slowing, to which the other levels of life; and elaborate cosmology with a golden figures kept a duteous rhythm, or hierarchy of created orders, physical and spiritual; perhaps the faint sound itself was but their all of it unified by a single supernatural reality harmonized movement upon their field . [30] whose Good and presence are sought by the immortal souls of people finding and accepting their place in The table and figures are microcosmic symbols of "the the- whole [32]. Tolkien and Williams would agree with created dance" (P. 153), of "the everlasting dance" (p. Lewis that the universe is best conceived of "as a 21; also 80,94) in which everything takes part (pp. 30, dance, a festival, a symphony, a ritual, a carnival, or 51, 94). Henry explains to Nancy that "all things are all these in one [33]." held together by correspondence, image with image, movement with movement: without that there could be no The Great Dance passage in Perelandra expresses relation and therefore no truth" (p.44) — in other all this in high literary and imaginative art: nearly words, to control the dance — by entering it through pure poetry, but also nearly pure myth. Beyond imaging the Tarot cards and using their power over the dance; the Old Western myth, dance images myth itse lf. Myth is he must learn that the dance should be entered through not nearly so rational as conversation, or as realistic the way of Sybil and Nancy, the way of love, which fiction, but is much more like a ball: it is redeems the dance without seeking to control it. imagination in motion, it reflects wholeness, unity, and harmonic pattern, it celebrates the richness and The details in Perelandra, particularly in the plurality of things. As Thomas Howard puts it, the twenty antiphonal sections of litiny celebrating the human spirit at its best is impatient with the small Dance and the Lord of the Dance, are similar to, if not and local and fragmented. Through the mythic directly indebted to Williams. [31] As Williams puts imagination it seeks for the perfection it b elieves is his Christ-figure, the Fool, at the center of the in and behind things — truth, beauty, goodness, Dance, but constantly moving so that the center is wholeness, form, order, the eternal [34], This is the everywhere and everwhere is the center, so does Lewis: dance in which Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams — and the Page 8 MYTHLORE 45: Spring 1986

best of more recent mythopoeticists — are [13] "Orchestra, Or a Poeme of Dauncing," stanzas participating: the term myth means, etymologically, 17—18; The Poems of Sir John Davies, ed. Robert Kruegar word as in "thing said, fact, matter, purpose, design," (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 94-95. and thus a the plot of a narrative work. Myth, then, is [14] Constance H ill, Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her the reality at the heart of things, the "thing said" Friends. 3rd ed. (Bungay: John Lane, 1923), p. 58. which all people deep inside long to hear. Those who [15] Cf. Lewis, "'De Descriptione Temporum,'" Selected love myth hear that word spoken through stories, Literary Essays. ed. Walter Hooper (Cambridge settings, and images which reach far into the past and University Press, 1969), pp. 13-14. deep into the individual and collective psyche, which [16] Prince Caspian (1951; rpt. New York: Macmillan, move and challenge and uplift and reassure, which, in 1970) pp. 77-78 and 134-35 [Ch. 6 and 10]. Thomas Howard's w ords, somehow reso n a te w ith ech oes [17] Prince Caspian, p. 198 [Ch. 14]; also pp. 191-198 from the Story which in Lewis and Tolkien and Williams' p a s sim . view, is the only story there is, finally [35]. That [18] The Silver Chair -(1953; rpt. New York: Macmillan, word, that myth, is a dance — full of life, joy, 1970), pp. 192-93 [Ch. 15]. motion, and meaning. If myth is a dance, it is [19] Narrative Poems. ed. Walter Hooper (London: participatory — one must enter the dance. A w a llflo w e r Geoffrey Bles, 1969), p. 123. Passing references to d o e sn 't know th e dance — on ly a v is u a l im age, a literal dance also appear in "The Magician and the shadow, of the real thing. To experience the dance one Dryad," line 2, "The Landing,” line 18, "The Small Man must step into it, yield to its rhythms, become Orders His Wedding," line 4, and "Infatuation," stanza involved imaginatively and emotionally. That is our 7 — Poems. ed. Walter Hooper (London: Geoffrey Bles, challenge and opportunity in the next few days — to 1964) , pp. 8, 27, 31, 74. enter the dance, to extend our understanding of the [20] "Solomon," lines 3-4 — Poems. p. 46. See also kinships within the manifold and intricate movements of Poems. p. 36; Narrative Poems, pp. 146 and 165; and the dance, and to appreciate more fully the kinships Spirits in Bondage: Cycle of Lyrics (1919), ed. between those who lead us in the dance. You've come to Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, a ball: dancing, not conversation, is the order of the 1984),pp. 16, 34, 55. day — today, this weekend, and forever. [21] THS. p. 148 [VII, 2]. I found very helpful the discussion by John H. Timmerman, "Logres and Britain: NOTES The Dialectic of C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength," CSL: The Bullitin of the New York C.S, Lewis Society. [1] See "Priestesses in the Church?", God in the Dock: 9, no. 1 (November 1977), 1-8. Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand [2 2 ] Lewis, Williams and the Arthuriad. in Charles Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1970), p.234; also "Myth W illiams and C.S. Lewis, T aliessin through Logres. The Became Fact," God in the Dock, p. 63, and Lewis to Region of the Summer Stars. Arthurian Torso (Grand Arthur Greeves, 13 August 1930 — They Stand Together: Rapids, M ich.: Eerdmans, 1974), p. 326. L e w is u s e s The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves. ed. "dance" to imagine the same idea in ^ Preface to Walter Hooper (New York: Macmillan, 1979), p. 376. The Paradise Lost (London: Oxford U niiversity Press, 1942*77 quotation is from Pride and Prejudice. Ch. 11. p . 8 1 , where the paradox of discipline and freedom, in [2] That Hideous Strength (1945; rpt. New York: an unfallen world, is a "pattern deep hidden in the Macmillan, 1965), p. 163 [Ch. VIII, section 2]. dance, hidden so deep that shallow spectators cannot Hereafter THS. s e e i t . " [3] Letter to Arthur Greeves, 22 April 1922 — They [23] From Lewis's BBC radio talks on "Christian Stand Together, p. 302. Behaviour," 1942, published under that title in 1943 [4] Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early and included in Mere Christianity (1952; rpt. New York: Life (1955; rpt. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Macmillan, 1960), p. 102 [III, 6]. 1956), p. 189 [Ch. 12]. [24] . From Lewis's BBC talks on "Beyond Personality: [5] On Lewis and Williams' use of dance and the or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity," 1944 backgrounds they drew upon, I am indebted to Roland M. (published 1945) — Mere Christianity, pp. 151-52 [IV, Kawano, "C.S. Lewis and the Great Dance," Christianity 4], Hereafter MC. and Literature, 26 (Fall 1976), 20-38, and an [25] The Problem of Pain (1940; rpt. New York: unpublished paper "The Celestial Dance" by Sarah E. Macmillan, 1962), p. 153 [Ch. 10]. Lewis also uses Thompson. dance, in a metaphor closely related to this one, for [6] The Republic. Book 10 (617a): The Dialogues of the object of Joy, that is, the heavenly world and the Plato, trans. B. Jowett, 3rd ed., 5 vol. (New York: presence of God: "For a few minutes [in an experience Macmillan, 1892), III, 334. On traditional ideas about of Joy] we have had the illusion of belonging to that music, see John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: world. Now we wake to find that it is no such Ideas of Music in English Poetry. 1500-1900 (Princeton: th in g.... We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken Princeton University Press, 1961). into the dance" ("The Weight of Glory," The Weight of [7] The Poems and Fables of John Dryden, ed. James Glory and other Addresses, rev. ed., ed. Walter Hooper Kingsley (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. [New York: Macmillan, 1980], p. 14). 422. [26] Letters to Malcolm. Chiefly on Prayer (New York: [8] The Silm arillion. ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), p. 92 [Letter 17]. Houghton M ifflin, 1977), pp. 15-19. [27] Prince Caspian, pp. 45-46 [Ch. 4]. See also the [9] The Magician's Nephew (1955; rpt. New York: opening lines of "Le Roi S'amuse," Poems, p.23. Macmillan, 1970), pp. 98-107, 113-14 [Ch. 8-9]. [28] Miracles: A Preliminary Study (1947; rpt. New [10] "The First Anniversary of the Government under York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 218 [Ch. 17], O.C.," lines 51-52: Poems and Letters, ed. H.M. [29] Perelandra (1944; rpt. New York: Macmillan, Margoliouth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), I, 104. 1 9 6 5 ) , p . 218 [Ch. 17]. [11] Timaeus, caps. 69 and 40: The Dialogues of Plato, [30] The Greater Trumps (1932; rpt. Grand Rapids, I I I , 491 and 459. Mich.: Eerdmans, 1976), p. 28 [Ch. 2], [12] English Literature in the Sixteenth Century [32] See Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction Excluding Drama, vol. Ill of the Oxford History of to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: English Literature, ed. F.P. Wilson and Bonamy Dobree Cambridge University Press, 1964). Also Robert Houston (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 4. con tinu ed on page 23 M YTHLORE 45: Spring 1986 Page 23

Redeemed City," written by Williams in 1941, continued from page 8 foreshadows All Hallows' Eve in some interesting ways. Smith, Patches of Godlight: The Pattern of Thought of He uses the term the City, and opposes that to the C.S. Lewis (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981), Infamy. The former is free redemptive exchange, Ch. 2 and 4. Christianity, and love, and is identified with England, [33] "Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages," while the latter is forced substitution, selfishness, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. and hatred, and is identified with the Nazis. "There Walter Hooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, is, in the end," writes Williams, "no compromise 1966), p.60. between the two; there is only choice." [12] This is the essential truth of All Hallows' Eve. The Infamy is [34] "Myth: A Flight to Reality," The Christian truly parodic, and bears certain resemblences to the Imagination: Essays on Literature and the Arts, ed. City, but this just makes it more dangerous — and the Leland Ryken (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1981), pp. 203-4. City, more precious. [35] The Achievemant of C.S. Lewis (Wheaton, 111.: NOTES Harold Shaw Publishers, 1980), p. 39 continued from page 9 [1] C.S. Lewis, Arthurian Torso (London, 1948), p. ostentatious display of historical facts. Every word, 123, cited George P. Winship, Jr. "The Novels of Charles Williams," in Shadows of Imagination ed. Mark every gesture of her tenth-century characters seems R. Hillegas (Carbondale: Southern Illin ois University right. Details of behavior are used eloquently to Press, 1969), p. 121. express the contrast between the Celtic and Norse [2] Charles Williams, Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids, cultures. Most welcome is her vivid and sympathetic Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975), p. portrayal of Celtic Christianity (although it may be 9 8 . that she gives pre-Roman Church practices a greater [3] Charles Williams, "The Way of Exchange," in his prominence than they would have had at that late date). The Image of the City (London: Oxford University Press, For this journey back to a pristine ancient Ireland is, 1958), pp. 151-52. in the end, a journey to spiritual sources, to an [4] Charles Williams, "The Cross," in his The Image of unveiling of inner truth, wonderfully articulated in the City (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. the climatic duel of poetry between the Odinist 1 3 1 -3 9 . berserker and the C eltic Christian bard. One closes the [5] Lewis, cited in Winship, op. c it., p. 121. book with after-images of pure delight. It is hard to [6] Alice Mary Hadfield, An Introduction to Charles imagine a Celtophile who would not be charmed by this Williams (London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1959), p. 190. story, or indeed any sensitive fantasy reader who would remain cold to its simple, quiet evocation of joy. [7] J'nan Sellery, "Fiction Modes in Charles Williams* All Hallows' Eve. Genre. No. 1 (1968), p. 323. [ 8 ] Edmund F u l le r , C h a r le s W illia m s ' A ll H a llo w s ' Eve continued from page 18 (New York: The Seabury Press, 1967), p. 28. up in last word of Gilraen's lament to Aragorn; "anim" [9] Charles Williams, All Hallows' Eve (New York: means "for myself" (III, p. 342). #37 is undoubtedly a Noonday Press, 1971), p. 146. Hereafter cited in text. concatenation of two or more morphemes, but other than [10] T.S. Eliot, "Introduction," Charles Williams' All "tin" as "spark;star" it is difficult to say. Hallows' Eve (New York: Noonday Press, 1971); p. xvIT" [11] Mary McDermott Shidler, The Theology of Romantic There are, however, glossings for "nef", "nev", Uve: A Study in the Writings of Charles Williams and "niv" meaning, respectively, "on this side of", (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans "hither", and "west". Could it not be that western Publishing Company, 1962), p. 138. shore of Middle-earth is the "hither" shore "on this [12] Charles W illiams, "The City Redeemed," in his The side of" the "sundering seas" between Beleriand and _Imag e of_ the City (London: Oxford University Press, Valinor. Indeed, we are told that it is so (S, p. 343). 1958), p. 103. It is the land and shore of the Sindarin, the Grey-elves, the "twilight Elves". They are not Calaquendi, "Elves of the light" who had lived in Aman; nor were they Avari, the Unwilling, the Darkest of the Moriquendi; they were those who came as far as they could out of the dark without being completely in the light (S, p.348). Thus, "tinuv-" may simply mean "twilight-spark", a poetic enough kenning for Nightingale (literally meaning "singer in the dark").

A loose, but semantically reflective translation c o u ld b e:

"0 thou rising Moon, Child of the One, magical jewel of the#region of stars, thou who hast watched ever shining, I say to thee. Stay! Dwell where thou art! Now flower and tree, listen in silence here beneath. [To Gilthoniel] 0 Lord of the Sunset, of the Twilight, Star-Kindler, I must sing to thee; for I am, myself, Tinuviel, a spark of the Twilight, a Star ever in Twilight, the Nightingale."

A simple principle "language-legend and legend- language". I am glad Christopher reminded me of it.