cs lewis wrote a book called the great divorce. i think his views and beliefs come out in this work more than any other he has written that i have read so far. his anglicanism (i think that is a word.....maybe not....) shows up very clearly and much that he says about heaven and hell is obviously incorrect, but he has a passage about art.
the context is a man is on a bus trip from hell (or purgatory, i haven't figured out which yet.) to heaven or the outter limits of heaven. in heaven they show up as ghosts. the ghosts have the option of staying in heaven if they travel to the fountain that cleanses all in the mountains. there are angels there to guide them to the fountain. the main character witnesses all these interactions between different ghosts and angels that they knew down on earth. one interaction is between a famous artist ghost and an angel. here are several quotes from the book.
"when you painted on earth--at least in your earlier days--it was because you caught glimpses of heaven in the earthly landscape. the success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. but here (heaven) you are having the thing itself. it is from here that the messages came. there is no good telling us about this country, for we see it already. in fact we see it better than you do."
"'...if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you'll never learn to see the country.'
'but that's just how a real artist is interested in the country.'
'no. you're forgetting,' said the Spirit. 'that was not how you began. light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light.'"
and my personal favorite...
"ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about him. for it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. they sink lower--become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations."
CSL's THE GREAT DIVORCE was one of the primary motivations for my pursuit of a theology grad degree on top of the English/creative writing undergrad degree. It is, in my opinion, simultaneously the best and worst work he wrote.
Keep in mind that CSL was iffy re: purgatory, and his main doctrinal focus was not on hell. So yes, his anglicanism and RCC sympathies (as well as historical literary sypathies) come out in the book because his primary concern was not corrective theology. He used these concepts of one imagination's vision of heaven/hell/in-between as the platform for a story. It was the literary scenario (the milieu) for his arguments to take place upon. Thus:
1. there are serious moments when we orthodoxers are wondering is there blatant heresy in his choices (for instance the endless grey city depiction of "hell"),
2. there are obviously cartoonish caricatured moments where we're in no doubt that the choices are not meant to be taken as reality (for instance, the surreal and preposterousness of a yellow schoolbus field trip to a purgatorial setting that resembles none of Dante's spiraling trek by degrees up a mountain of obstacles),
3. and there are wonderful moments that smack of Narnia and the Back of the North Wind and all those I-wonder-if-other-worlds-exist glimpses into the unknown (for instance, the viewpoint of heaven as a mountainous region, the High Countries, rather than the vague cloudy gated untouchable spot we often envision).
The book has a dreamlike quality because it is indeed a DREAM. Literarily, it's meant to be taken so. Again, his intent with this particular book was not to teach the doctrines of heaven/hell/the afterlife at all. All the same, I do not say the poetic license should completely justify CSL for his choice of a purgatorial venue. There are certain lines that you do not cross, and I think CSL at least toed around on those lines in GD. In failing to acknowledge the controversial distinctions at all, he tends to come across as condoning and/or even promoting the idea (in some readers' minds at least) that a purgatorial 2nd chance scenario is indeed possible and that hell may not be the unquenchable eternal fire bondage it's biblically cracked up to be. He would probably say, "but it was all a dream. I wasn't trying to preach." And we would say (theologically anyway), "but you preach by omission or vague implications too, so you did preach."
But the point of the book is not to teach theology; the genre is not even that of an allegorical theology book (like Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress most certainly is). The genre of the book is dream fiction with both sociological and theological ramifications. A hypothetical stage upon which CSL's characters could act out the arguments that play over and over again throughout human history because humans are who they are and made of what they're made of. It's a theoretical divorce.
It's genius. It is a Cinderella. It's a rebellious book. But it makes its point. It reveals a deeper understanding of human nature than Dickens and Millay and Shakespeare combined and a better understanding of the divine solution than a host of orthodox theologians could provide in a lifetime of commentary-writing. You can look at it, as you said, as a piece of art. You can judge it by aesthetic absolutes and literary prowess. You can judge it from a philosophical and sociological standpoint. You can judge it from a theological standpoint. It would not stand against every aspect of each of those tests. It excels in many, and as a whole, I think it ranks as more-than-acceptable literature.
joy,
thanks so much for your in-depth response. it is very thought provoking.
when i posted my first blog on the GD i had not finished the book. so when i got to the point about the chessmen and the spirit telling him that it was all a dream it was like i had gotten punched in the stomach, i was so surprised!
based on the ending, your comments, and my love for CSL's books, i want to go back and read, reread, and devour it. ingest it. study it from every point of view. read reviews on it. if i were allowed i would get my masters in something crazy like reading books all day.
but there is no such thing. ah well.
more later.
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