Lewis and White

The Great Books selection for this week was Charlotte's Web by EB White.  I directed a production of it in college and have always been particularly fond of Templeton the rat. When I heard that White had been born in 1899, I noted that he was nearly an exact contemporary of Lewis, who also wrote books for adults that could be understood by children.  I think the best books for children tend to be those in which the author is crafting an adult story for younger sensibilities.

For Charlotte's Web is about the seasonality of time and how Father Time and Mother Nature are joined. Birth and death leapfrog each other eternally.  It is about friendship changing as we age - it is Avery who helps Charlotte at the fair.  Fern has gone off with some boy - also part of birth and death.  Wilbur loves Charlotte's new descendants every year, but none ever quite matches up to their ancestor.

There is a cheerful paganism all over it, which farmers may gravitate to naturally. Yet here is the difference between White and Lewis in this: Nature is not the deeper reality, with Christianity as one of its superficial and spiritual representations. Christianity is the deeper truth, with Nature as one of its representations. White got the association right (this from his other writings more than here), but he has the arrow of causality wrong. "Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time." Whether Time is an attribute of Nature or Nature of Time I cannot tell you, for they occur together in our experience.