“Telling the Truth Through Imaginative Fiction”

            Dr. Malcolm Guite was passionate and engaging.  He lacked the crisp, precise speech McGrath had presented, but his lecture was far more organic and personable.  At one point during the lecture, in his zeal, Guite knocked over his glass of water—but the mild distraction did not halt his speech once.  He made a joke about the “cup runneth over” and carried on. 

            Guite began his lecture by quoting a poem C.S. Lewis had written before his conversion.  His American clerk, Walter Hooper, had posthumously entitled the poem, “Reason”, and it was this poem that fluidly connected both McGrath and Guite’s lectures. 

Reason

Set on the soul’s acropolis the reason stands

A virgin, arm’d, commercing with celestial light,

And he who sins against her has defiled his own

Virginity: no cleansing makes his garment white;

So clear is reason. But how dark, imagining,

Warm, dark, obscure and infinite, daughter of Night:

Dark is her brow, the beauty of her eyes with sleep

Is loaded, and her pains are long, and her delight.

Tempt not Athene. Wound not in her fertile pains

Demeter, nor rebel against her mother-right.

Oh who will reconcile in me both maid and mother,

Who make in me a cocord of the depth and hight?

Who make imagination’s dim exploring touch

Ever report the same as intellectual sight?

Then could I truly say, and not deceive,

Then wholly say, that I believe.

            Athene is representative of Reason, the goddess Lewis could openly profess to venerate, while Demeter symbolized the allure and warmth of imagination.  In Guite’s words, “Basically, Lewis was saying, ‘My problem is that I can’t get my inner goddesses together!’” 

            Through a Christian lens, it seems an obvious and poignant foreshadowing of ‘who will reconcile in me both maid and mother’.  Guite agreed with McGrath, that Christianity fully accepted and even expected such paradoxes of ‘maid and mother’, ‘reason and imagination’.  Lewis was searching, as so many do, for the reconciliation of these paradoxes.  He sought not just a rationally plausible worldview, but a meaningful worldview. 

            Guite quoted the old phrase, “Happiness writes white”, meaning that writing goodness in creative fiction was strikingly difficult to do so.  And yet, Guite reminded us that after Lewis’ conversion, he became a master at just that.  The inherent goodness in his heroes of Narnia had the power to re-enchant and captivate us into the wardrobe and into magic.  Just as so many other fantasy worlds—Fairyland, Middle Earth, the wizarding world of Harry Potter, even Storybrooke, Maine—all of these are more invitations into beauty.  Just as Christianity is an invitation to truth reliant on imagination. 

            Guite cited a section of Voyage of the Dawntreader, where Lucy read a spell from the magician’s book called, “For Refreshment of the Spirit.”  It was not so much a spell, but a story, “the loveliest story I’ve ever read or shall read.”  Part of the enchantment meant that Lucy could not turn the pages of the book backwards to reread it, nor could she remember the story when she had finished.  When Lucy asked Aslan later if He would tell her the story, he told her, “Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years.” 

            There would be so many stories, so many enchantments and worlds that would invite our spirits and refresh our souls, an allegory of Christianity, whether intentional or unintentional.  Guite quoted from Dawntreader, Aslan’s farewell to Edmund and Lucy, telling them, “That by knowing me here, you may know me better there.”  It is through imaginative fiction that we truly begin to understand and accept Christianity. 

            Guite ended his lecture with one of his own sonnets honoring C.S. Lewis, which can be found on his blog at http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/off-to-the-westminster-lewisfest/.