A friend mentioned this section at the end of The Great Divorce. It seemed so unfamiliar to me that I wondered whether it was really in the text, but he assured me it was. Even attentive readers can only see what the are looking for, or at least, understand, perhaps.
AND SUDDENLY all was changed. I saw a great assembly of gigantic forms all motionless, all in deepest silence, standing forever about a little silver table and looking upon it. And on the table there were little figures like chessmen who went to and fro doing this and that. And I knew that each chessman was the idolum or puppet representative of some one of the great presences that stood by. And the acts and motions of each chessman were a moving portrait, a mimicry or pantomime, which delineated the inmost nature of his giant master. And these chessmen are men and women as they appear to themselves and to one another in this world. And the silver table is Time. And those who stand and watch are the immortal souls of those same men and women. Then vertigo and terror seized me and, clutching at my Teacher, I said, "Is that the truth? Then is all that I have been seeing in this country false? These conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts- were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago?"
"Or might ye not as well say, anticipations of a choice to be made at the end of all things? But ye'd do better to say neither. Ye saw the choices a bit more clearly than ye could see them on earth: the lens was clearer. But it was still seen through the lens. Do not ask of a vision in a dream more than a vision in a dream can give."
I remember that passage at the end quite clearly; it's always upset my digestion.
ReplyDeleteSo it's working. I think you're invited to have the same reaction as Lewis's self-insert.
ReplyDelete