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Home , Puddleglum, Rilian, The Silver Chair, Underland (Narnia)

Inklings Forever Volume 8 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth Frances White Ewbank Article 17 Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends and The C.S. Lewis & Society Conference

5-31-2012 'Few Return to the Sunlit Lands': Lewis's Classical Underworld in The iS lver Chair Benita Huffman Muth Macon State College

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Recommended Citation Muth, Benita Huffman (2012) "'Few Return to the Sunlit Lands': Lewis's Classical Underworld in The iS lver Chair," Inklings Forever: Vol. 8 , Article 17. Available at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol8/iss1/17

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 VIII A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of

The Eighth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM ON C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS and

THE C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS SOCIETY CONFERENCE Taylor University 2012 Upland, Indiana

Few Return to the Sunlit Lands: Lewis’s Classical Underworld in

Benita Huffman Muth Macon State College

Muth, Benita Huffman. “Few Return to the Sunlit Lands: Lewis’s Classical Underworld in The Silver Chair.” Inklings Forever 8 (2012) www.taylor.edu/cslewis 1

Few Return to the Sunlit Lands: Lewis’s Classical Underworld in The Silver Chair

Benita Huffman Muth Macon State College

In re-reading the books as asserts his commitment to individual free an adult, classical studies professor Emily will. Wilson writes that Lewis fails to create a As his early interest in Greek world that “hangs together seamlessly mythology and Aeneid translation testify, and convinces us of its reality on its own classical motifs resonated with Lewis. terms. In Narnia, you can see the stitches A.T. Reyes reminds us Virgil in particular that patch a chunk from Mallory to a becomes a “personal touchstone” (6) for gobbet from Ovid.” John Goldthwaite Lewis. Virgil’s role in the development of sometimes finds this mingling of literary epic becomes central to Lewis’ “incompatible borrowings [. . . as] the scholarly work (9), and Virgil’s standing uncomfortable murmurings of The Man as a pagan prophet of Christianity made Who Read Too Much” (222), taking him a compelling model for both general particular issue with Lewis’ appropriation and personal religious parallels, as Lewis of classical material to create a Christian found in Aeneas the type of one who finds world (224). Yet today I wish to examine home after much wandering (7-8). these chunks and gobbets Lewis chooses, The Silver Chair’s the manner in which he stitches them echoes the classical Underworld: dark, together, and the final effect of such a underground, and encompassing compilation. Wilson and Goldthwaite immense space. Its first cavern “was full rightly see Lewis’s extensive, of a dim, drowsy radiance” (125). It is “a multifaceted, and unabashedly displayed mild, soft sleepy place [. . .] with a quiet borrowing from other texts, but sort of sadness like soft music” (215). mistakenly pass over these literary Like the Hades of Homer and the allusions merely as a world-building short Underworld of Virgil, the Underland is cut or as evidence of intellectual highly populated – there are Earthmen, braggadocio and ideological strange creatures, the Giant Time -- and inconsistency. Instead, Lewis’ multiple these inhabitants are either asleep or literary sources strategically point toward joyless. Just as Aeneas meets many his views of theology and humanity. For shades, Eustace, Jill, and meet example, Underland of The Silver Chair a hundred “dreadfully pale” (123) reformulates classical motifs and Miltonic Earthmen, who despite various forms references for a Christian purpose: to were “in one respect [. . .] all alike: every create an Underland markedly face in the whole hundred was as sad as a differentiated from the 20th century’s face could be” (123). common, trivialized vision of Hell. In David Downing traces the doing so, The Silver Chair reflects Lewis’ similarities in their journey to Aeneas’ in position on what constitutes Hell and Lewis’ Aeneid translation. In both,

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travelers encounter a “ghostly multitude” His eventual rescue comes only at great and strange, monstrous creatures. They cost. Herakles rips him out of his travel through a silent forest, cross dark imprisoning chair, leaving part of his water in a leaky boat, encounter fiery buttock behind (Martin 138). , too, rivers, and learn secrets to aid their had been on a dangerous mission and escape. Downing also remarks that the succumbed to an imprisoning repeated commentary “Many fall down, enchantment. Rescue attempts cost the but few return to the sunlit lands” echoes lives of many heroes; Rilian himself Dryden’s translation of the Sibyl’s looses irreplaceable years with his father. warning: “Smooth is the descent, and Thus, heroes can become victims, a threat easy is the way: / But to return, and view Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum also face. the cheerful skies, / In this the task and Such victims may be irretrievable, as was mighty labor lies.” Theseus’ companion Peirithoos. Herakles The invocation of the epic hero’s elects to leave him behind, as wrecking underworld journey conveys mythic his chair would have caused Hades to scope and archetypal significance to in (Martin 138). Although freed Lewis’ Underland, and Lewis’ classical from his chair, Rillian’s escape remains echoes do not confine themselves to uncertain, as the Lady’s death precipitates Virgil. Virgil’s epic itself responds to the Underland’s destruction. Odyssey, when Odysseus summons the In spite of classical resonance, dead on his journey home. Also, Lewis’ Donald Glover finds The Silver Chair’s travelers’ mission closely resembles Underland disappointing; not noting its Orpheus’ journey to retrieve Euridyce, classical sources, he calls it “dull and Theseus’ plan to liberate Persephone, or drowsy rather than sinister” (168). So it Herakles’ rescue of Alcestis. Like them, is worth noting that Lewis had other Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum come to underworld models he might have rescue the presumed-dead Rilian from a foregrounded. Lewis is certainly not the shadowy underground realm. first to create an underworld with Orpheus’ and Theseus’ failures classical flavor to evoke Christian show the near-impossibility of this task. concerns; both Dante and Milton connect External and internal dangers threaten its their overtly Christian infernal worlds to completion. Theseus fails to exercise classical models. More prominent proper wariness in the underworld. allusions to either would have added Though he cannily refuses to eat, he gets more thrill and menace and likely would permanently stuck in his stone seat have more strongly evoked Christian (Martin 138), reminiscent of the Silver reference for a popular audience. Chair into which Rilian is bound every Milton’s Hell in particular with its fire, night. While Orpheus gains Euridyce’s sulfur, and the “darkness visible” (1.63) of release, that success is snatched away by its burning lake has influenced English a failure in virtue, his impatience in visions of the underworld. Lewis’ looking back (Martin 49). Likewise, this scholarship was firmly grounded in mission is threatened by exterior perils -- Milton, as his Preface to Paradise Lost capture, imprisonment, and enchantment testifies. He also frequently draws from – and even more jeopardizing self- and manipulates Miltonic sources in his sabotage -- their voluntary capitulation to fiction, as in and The the Lady’s drugging insistence that there ’s Nephew, to name only two is no Sun, no Overland, no . examples (Hannay 73-90, Baird 30-33, None but heroes can expect to and Muth). return from such a realm, and not all of Miltonic echoes are also present them, as evidenced by Theseus’ failure. in Underland. Milton’s Satan prefers to

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“reign in Hell rather than serve in no “darkness visible” here, as the Heaven” (1.262) and thus consolidates account emphasizes light and brilliance, power to create a kingdom. He and viewers eventually come to see. appropriates the region into which he has Rather than “ever-burning Sulphur” been thrown, recruits others, and directs (Milton 1.69), Bism’s smell is “rich, their building of Pandemonium. The sharp, exciting, and made you sneeze” Green Lady also has claimed an (The Silver Chair 180). Its colors remind undesirable property and recruited a of “a very good stained-glass window work force to recreate a kingdom, with the tropical sun staring straight complete with castle. Like Satan, through it at mid-day” (180). Instead of dissatisfied, she plans a stealth attack on Miltonic fallen angels ripping “the Aslan’s Narnia, beginning with the bowels of their mother Earth” for successful corruption of Rilian. As surely precious metal (Milton 1.687), gold and as Adam and Eve, Rilian exchanges his gems are “alive and growing” (The Silver inheritance for self-deluded enchantment. Chair 182) and may be squeezed for He thus becomes the Lady’s tool for drink. Bism is a wondrous part of a conquering his own country, with puppet fantastic Narnian creation, and rulership as his reward. As with Milton’s definitively not Milton’s Hell. Adam and Eve, recognition and Nor is Underland a classical repentance are his first steps toward Tartarus. Just as tweaking Miltonic redemption from the severe expectations highlights the significant consequences. differences between this place and Hell, Clearly Lewis can – and frequently Lewis’ tweaking of the classical does – riff on Milton. Yet the most expectations the text more obviously pronounced and frequent echoes in evokes emphasizes the differences Underland’s geography are classical, not between Underland and its more Miltonic. Even where echoes of Milton’s prominent models. The Silver Chair’s Hell are present in the geography of Underland is not a place of supernatural Underland, they are evoked only to be insight: its characters have not travelled instantly reformed. For example, Golg’s there to receive prophesy. They do not, description of Bism recalls Milton’s Hell, like Aeneas and Odysseus, consult with then sharply differentiates Underland the Sybil or Tiresius. While they see from it. Certainly, fiery Bism initially much, they meet with no dead spirits, a suggests the traditional English hell common feature of Aeneas’, Odysseus’, evoked by Milton: and later Dante’s journeys. Although a place of imprisonment, Underland is not a A strong heat smote up into their place that metes out judgment, as Salwa faces, mixed with a smell which was Khaddam has also noted (93). It holds no quite unlike any they had ever earned rewards or punishments, no smelled [. . . .] The depth of the Elysium Fields, no Sisyphus or Tantalus. chasm was as bright that at first it While classical echoes connect the text dazzled their eyes and they could with other epic journeys, marked see nothing. When they got used to revisions differentiate this place from any it, they thought they could make out realm of the dead, either classical or a river of fire, and, on the banks of Christian. the river, what seemed to be fields These differences resonate in a and groves of an unbearable, hot distinctly Christian way. Goldthwaite brilliance. (180) criticizes Lewis’ classical allusions, Yet despite the fire and smell, the full claiming they create a “theological description shows this not Milton’s Hell: morass” (224) and that associating

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Christianity with “a dead make-believe” and Virgil’s epics, as incidental episodes could imply Christianity is itself merely in the visit, heroes are asked to help make-believe (235). Yet it is the revision, spirits rest in death; in The Silver Chair, not the mere appropriation, of classical the specific, primary goal of Lewis’ moments, that contribute to Lewis’ travelers is to free the living to live more Christian themes. As Lewis says in abundant life. One set of parallels and response to what he sees as the distinctions is particularly pointed. In shortsighted habit of measuring Virgil by the Aeneid, Aeneas’ former companion Homer, “Nothing separates him [Virgil] so Palinurus begs Aeneas to help him cross sharply from Homer” as his “theme of the the Styx by either throwing dust on his great transition,” seen most distinctly in unburied body or taking him across now “places where they are superficially most by the hand. Lewis translates his plea, alike” (A Preface to Paradise Lost 37) . In “But by thy father’s name, by young Iulus, a similar fashion, nothing separates Lewis now /full of thy hopes, by heaven’s sweet so sharply from the classical world view light and wind, oh thou / Unconquerable, as his Christian themes, and those are I thee adjure; out of this woe / Save me” seen most distinctly in those places which (6.362-365). Bound in the Silver Chair are superficially most alike, such as in and for an hour disenchanted, Rilian says, Underland. “For once and for all [. . .] I adjure you to While superficially classical, this set me free. By all fears and all loves, by journey into Underland is markedly the bright skies of the Overland, by the different from its sources in the Great Lion, by Aslan himself, I charge you” independent action and success of its (145). Rilian’s language echoes ordinary travelers. The Silver Chair’s Palinurus’s. Both make commanding travelers meet no prophets or teachers. appeals for release from a shadowy, Instead, Jill has much earlier conferred marginal existence, and each invoke face-to-face with Aslan, and although strong loves and the sun. Palinurus given guiding Signs, they must otherwise commands Aeneas by “thy father’s name,” fulfill their task using their own insight, Rilian by Aslan’s, surely a subtle without Odysseus’ rituals to map actions connection between God the Father and or Aeneas’ Golden Bough to assure Aslan. passage. They are also, significantly, not The listeners’ power to respond warriors or poets, but unlikely children marks a key difference between The Silver and a melancholic Marshwiggle who Chair and its classical model. Aeneas nevertheless succeed where others fail. cannot respond. He is far from Even Herakles decides leaving Peirithoos Palinurus’s body and cannot offer him the is the better part of valor, but Puddleglum hand Palinurus requests to cross the does not give up, crushing the drugged river, as the Sybil says that prayers fire and holding his faith in Narnia and cannot bend eternal wills and calls it a Aslan. Nor has Rilian become a passive “fell desire” to cross the river unburied prisoner like Theseus. Instead he and unbid (6.374). Conversely, Jill, participates in his own rescue by Eustace, and Puddleglum do have power destroying the chair and killing the Lady. to act and can in fact free Rilian. Rilian’s Thus, their success confirms the power of use of Aslan’s name is one of Jill’s Signs ordinary people who voluntarily follow and the only one they do not mistake. Aslan’s guidance and their own Despite their fear, they can and do act. consciences. In addition, the potential for The differences between complete satisfaction and success is imprisoned inhabitants, like Rilian and stronger. The Sybil does assure Palinurus the Earthmen, are also telling. In Homer’s his body will receive funeral rites: “And

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so the dead man’s care is stilled, and woes change it; and at the book’s end, this hell subside in part.” Yet Palinurus’ “woes is harrowed by Eustace, Jill, Caspian, and subside [only] in part,” while Rilian is Aslan. fully restored to his identity. Neither Likewise, other imprisoning rescue is yet finished; Palinurus is not yet places in initially buried and Rilian has not yet physically seem Hellish, yet prove escapable. In The escaped, but the difference in eventual Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Rhoop destination is clear. Palinurus will cross spends years on an island tormented, not the Styx and join the dead, his most due to a deity’s punishing justice, but due ambitious desire not to “miss death’s to his own choice to come and his own quietness” (6.371). Rilian could rejoin the dreams. The stable into which Jill, living. Palinurus ultimately has no choice Eustace, and are thrown in The Last about where he goes. Yet Rilian’s Battle actually leads them to Aslan’s destination, as evidenced by his two county. The dwarfs find it a prison subsequent bouts of temptation, is from because they choose. Like these places, this point largely in his own hands. Underland could become hell but only Such source revision highlights incidentally, if characters chose to make one of Lewis’ strongest spiritual them so. This fact highlights the ideal that commitments: the ability of humanity to the combination of Christ’s sacrifice and choose their spiritual path. Lewis goes to human free will means a soul’s residence some trouble to give Underland mythic is not inevitable and largely subject to quality while distinguishing it from either choice. Hell or Tartartus. By doing this he makes This self-imposed mental prison is in his fictional world the distinction he the real Hell for Lewis; as he writes in a sees necessary in : 1946 letter to Arthur Greaves (13 May), separating the doctrine of Hell from the the hell which exists in the mind “is actual imagery of it (124) as a physical location enough” (508). Any who wish can leave of inescapable torment for wrongdoers, ’s ever-growing city. an idea so easily subject to self- That expansive city with ample bus righteousness and trivialization. In both service is later put in new perspective by The Problem of Pain and A Preface to George MacDonald’s revelation of its Paradise Lost, Lewis presents Hell as a actual smallness and his explanation of a place in which “the doors [. . .] are locked damned soul, which “is nearly nothing: it from the inside” (Problem 127, Preface to is shrunk, shut up in itself” (139). Paradise Lost 105). To underscore the Similarly, the mental hells of The Silver difference between Lewis’ conception of Chair are much more dangerous than the Hell and the popular idea of Hell as a physical Underland. Jill and Eustace are single prison with a divine jailor, The closer to Hell on the open moors Silver Chair offers other potential hells neglecting the signs than when captured besides Underland into which characters in Underland. Rilian is closer to voluntarily enter and from which they damnation when riding outdoors but have the ability to escape. These include enchanted than when bound in the chair the giant city of Harfang; had they stayed, but lucid. Their greatest peril comes not they would have ultimately been when Underland’s sea threatens to engulf consumed, like Screwtape and them all, but when they start to accept the Wormwood’s patients. The human world Green Lady’s pleasant pseudo-logic and has the Experiment House. Previously, its much smaller world, devoid of sun, Eustace himself has contributed to its Overland, and Aslan. character; his current behavior at the Rather than being mere ill- book’s beginning has started to resist and stitched gobbets recycled from other

6 Few Return to the Sunlit Lands · Benita Muth writers, Lewis’ allusion to classical Works Cited underworlds and his transformations of Downing, David C. “Journeys to the those allusions emphasize that this Underworld in the Aeneid and The fictional place, although dangerous, is not Silver Chair.” Books by Lewis Hell, at least not that geographical Blogspot.com. 27 April 2011. Web. imagery so common to and so easily 16 May 2012. dismissed by the 20th-century Glover, Donald. C.S. Lewis: The Art of imagination; nor is it the more Enchantment. Athens, OH: Athens UP, threatening self-imposed, mental Hell of 1981. Print. Lewis’ thought, unless one makes it so. Goldthwaite, John. The Natural History of Here, as in Lewis’s other writing, Hell is Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal not a prison into which one is thrown, but Works of Britain, Europe, and . Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. mental and spiritual confinement entered America Print. voluntarily. As he writes in “The Trouble with X,” ”It’s not a question of God Hannay, Margaret. "A Preface to Perelandra." The Longing for a Form: Essays on the ‘sending’ us to Hell. In each of us there is Fiction of C. S. Lewis. Ed. Peter J. something growing up which will of itself Schakel. Kent: Kent State UP, 1977. be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud” 73-90. Print. (155). Choosing exit is possible, too, Hardy, Elizabeth Baird. Milton, Spenser and although not always easy. Sallowpad the The Chronicles of Narnia: Literary Raven says it of the Tisroc’s palace: Sources for the C.S. Lewis Novels. “Easily in, but not easily out, as the lobster Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland, 2007. said in the lobster pot” (67). Human Khaddam, Salwa. Mythopoeic Narnia: Memory, beings may so embed themselves, as Metaphor, and Metamorphoses in The Rilian has done, that they need aid to save Chronicles of Narnia. Hamden, CT: themselves. Or they might breathe too Winged Lion Press, 2011. deeply of enchantment, move too far from Lewis, C.S. C.S. Lewis’ Lost Aeneid: Arms and the bus-stop, retreat into too dark a the Exile. New Haven, London: Yale stable, or shrink their souls too small for UP, 2011. Print. any but the God’s help. As The Great ---. The Great Divorce. New York, Harper Divorce’s George MacDonald says, “Only Collins, 1973. Print. the Greatest of all can make Himself small ---. . New York: enough to enter Hell” (139). Our Narnian HarperCollins, 1982. Print. characters are, thankfully, not so small in ---. . New York: HarperCollins, soul as to forego their escape, and in that 1984. Print. lies the victory of their return. ---. Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves: 1913-1963. New York: Collier Books, 1996. Print. ---. A Preface to Paradise Lost. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1961. Print. ---. The Problem of Pain. New York: Macmillian, 1962. Print. ---. . New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Print. ---. The Silver Chair. New York: Colier, 1970. Print.

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---. “The Trouble with X.” : Essays on Theology and Ethics. Ed. by Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eeardmans Publishing, 1970. 151-155. Print. ---. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. New York: HarperCollins, 1980. Print. Martin, Richard P. Myths of the Ancient Greeks. New York, Penguin, 2003. Print. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. In John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. by Merritt Y. Hughes. New York: Macmillian, 1957. 173-469. Print. Muth, Benita Huffman. “Paradise Retold: Lewis’ Reimaginging of Milton.” C.S Lewis and Inklings Society Annual Meeting. Tulsa, Oklahoma. April 1, 2011. Presentation. Reyes, A.T. “Introduction.” C.S. Lewis’ Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile. New Haven, London: Yale UP, 2011. 1-34. Print. Wilson, Emily. Review. “The Narniad: C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile.” The New Republic 28 July 2011. Web. 16 May 2012.

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