Dear Friends, I am very pleased to share this talk with everyone: “The Long Defeat: C.S. Lewis’s Apocalypse of the Imagination.” For various reasons, I was unable to deliver my keynote live to the folks at Mythmoot X. Rather than pop into the conference on a giant Zoom screen, I decided to take advantage of the video format and pre-record my talk. This approach had a few bonuses, like having backup plans and a script for those with hearing issues. Taking the time to make a full video resulted in two other moments that are especially rewarding.
First, while I was giving the keynote lecture in the room, I was also able to moderate my own conversation live on Slack, in real time. You might not know this about digital-age nerds, but when we attend a live, online, or hybrid conference or event, there is almost always a group of chatty folks emoting in real time on Discord, Slack, or the Zoom chat. For this small subsection of lovers of imaginative literature and film–particularly in the Tolkien and Lewis vein–it was a real treat to be with them live, engaging in the Q&A, and explaining bits that didn’t land or swept by too quickly. It was a peculiar and lovely time-bending experience.
Second, as you will see, I played a lot with editing and design, including some pop culture references and the full text of the quotations. Truthfully, I quite love the background I designed, and our lighting and audio aren’t bad. I confess that I hesitated to share this video because I don’t want to pretend to have any real production chops. As I sat with the piece, though, I came to recognize that, as with anything we create, we are bound to see our own flaws first. Nevertheless, someone out there will be grateful to receive the gift of what we make.
I think the latter is true because–like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and T.S. Eliot–I am prone to mourn the apocalypse of our culture’s imagination. It feels like the poets have been banned from our republic at the same time that we are being entertained to death by content. This apocalypse is a slow fade, but that is how we give our lives away.
And as there are others who feel sadness about this leaky imaginative capacity, there are even more who know what Lewis and Tolkien felt on the frontline of WWI in their desperation to shape and share their craft. Like the many other artists who did (and did not) survive the war, we creative practitioners worry that our great work of art will never live in the world. You know what I mean–that sketchbook with its permanent place in our backpack, the folder of short stories in the cloud, the palette that is too often dry, the novel manuscript cycling through the New York submission-rejection rinse-and-repeat cycle, the spark of an idea that could change everything, the poems in the margins of that spreadsheet or student paper we are working on today.
This is why I begin with “The Quest of Bleheris” and other poetic projects that Lewis failed to finish during the WWI months. The stones that ford the river of Lewis’ success are visible to us from this point of view, a century later. For Lewis–and for most people who are trying to do something beautiful–each leap from a stone is into a rushing river of unknown depth.
Thus, for this piece, I start by mocking a fake C.S. Lewis quote, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” It is bumper-sticker wisdom with the spiritual depth of a late-night burrito. As I take on this idea with the hope of rooting our hope in something that is true, beautiful, and good, I decided to make some other fake C.S. Lewis memes, mostly for fun, but also to make a point.
Some things are worth mocking, but even things that might be mocked (like this YouTube video) are still worth sharing. The video is below, followed by a script. Be well.
Hi, Brenton. I will be thinking about all that you have said here for some time and eventually hope to write a longer reflection on it in the comments. But just now, having just listened to your thoughts for the first time, I want to offer my profound thanks.
Thanks much, Stephen, I appreciate the feedback
I have been thinking a lot about this since listening to you early yesterday morning. There is something unique about those occasions when the best of a preacher combines with the best of a scholar and I think you achieve this here. The heart and head come together as one.
As I thought about what you said it was the reference to fighting “the long defeat” that kept on coming back to me. Of course, that was in part because I have been thinking a lot about those words of Galadriel in my own Tolkien work, but it was also and most importantly because of the way you expressed it. If I remember correctly, the words you used concerning Galadriel’s words were “defeated but not subdued”. You won’t be surprised but your words took me straight to St Paul in 2 Corinthians 4. I don’t know if you were consciously referencing Paul but I am sure he was not far away.
2 Cor 4.8ff: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” (NRSV)
I know that Galadriel cannot speak explicitly in these terms because she lives in a time before the Incarnation but if I understood you correctly if we listen to her with care then the road we will take will lead us to Christ and to Paul’s encounter with the Living Christ that transformed him utterly. I am deeply moved by Tolkien’s restraint here and in his entire legendarium. I try to respect that in my own writing as much as I can but this morning I didn’t make it to church because I haven’t been very well for few days and spent a good part of the morning with my Interlinear Greek New Testament and NRSV translation reading and thinking about 2 Corinthians 4. What struck me is that Tolkien may have been restrained by choice and that Galadriel may have been restrained because she does not know the Incarnation even though she seems to catch glimpses of it, but St Paul has no restraint whatsoever! His Greek in the final verses piles hyperbole upon hyperbole in an effort to say what he is straining towards, that “this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” (4.17) And if the Greek can’t reach what he is trying to say then the English most certainly doesn’t. As I read those words in the Greek I felt as if I was drowning in glory and yet I could still swim. What a journey from the Long Defeat to St Paul!
I thought too, seeking to ground my response with your own deeply moving conclusion, of the letter that C.S Lewis wrote to Tolkien following the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring. In it, as you know, he says that his entire philosophy of history is shaped by words spoken by Gandalf to Frodo in the study at Bag End when Gandalf speaks of that same Long Defeat and of the Last Alliance of Men and Elves against Sauron, that “great deeds were done that were not wholly vain”. This brought me to your concluding thoughts about good reading and good writing. Here, the restraint is one of right humility. We do the work that is given to us to do as well as we can as an offering to God in the wasteland in which we live. May your work continue to be a blessing to many. I pray that it may be.
Yes, I see it: there is a lot there in the “and not all of it was vain” moment. That restraint you talk about is lovely and still ardent. Yes, St. Paul was on my mind, as he often is. He amazes me with this intensifying language that grows and grows and tries to burst off the page. I know that the Greek of Ephesians looks less like Paul, but that characteristic is there—twice in the first chapter. It’s hard for me not to make the link.
There is some of gospel life that in in the fabric of things and the patterns of thinking, so that a comment by Paul merely gives language to something deep and resonant. The creation is an echo, Lewis thought, of the externally self-giving God. Our deepest things aren’t merely cross-like because we are reflecting the cross; the cross is the pattern of God’s love in eternity and creation. So Galadriel can express it even though she doesn’t have the words that Tolkien can. And that Nordic Pagan backs-to-the-wall philosophy is reflecting the Grand Miracle even without the hope of resurrection it contains.
All the best as well to you, Stephen. Your weekly LOTR reflections continue to enrich me.