CS Lewis was a great admirer of Williams's work. I have known of Williams since college but have never gotten around to reading any of him. Tonight in a book about Lewis I found this intriguing quote from his fellow Inkling's essay "
He Came Down From Heaven." I had never thought anything like this, and it is remarkable evidence of Charles Williams's belief that Christianity was True Myth, Necessary Myth.
If, per impossibile, it could be divinely certain that the historical events upon which Christendom reposes had not yet happened, all that could be said would be that they had not yet happened.
"It wore no supernatural splendour of aureole, but its rich nature
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become what all lovers know it to be."
My first Williams novel was The Place of the Lion, and I still think that's a good one to start with.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to try his poetry, get the one-volume work combining Taliesin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars -- those are most of his poetry anyway -- with the commentary by C. S. Lewis, which you will need, because even Lewis, who loved his stuff and had Williams to explain it to him, admitted Williams was an obscure poet.
Or Terror of Light and The Three Temptations among his plays. Or The House of the Octopus, though the octopus doesn't usually have the same connotations he gives it.
ReplyDeleteOr another from Descent into Hell:
"We know all about Sodom nowadays, but perhaps we know
the other even better. Men can be in love with men, and women
with women, and still be in love and make sounds and speeches, but
don't you know how quiet the streets of Gomorrah are? haven't you
seen the pools that everlastingly reflect the faces of those who
walk with their own phantasms, but the phantasms aren't reflected,
and can't be. The lovers of Gomorrah are quite contented, Periel;
they don't have to put up with our difficulties."
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