Till We Have Faces...

Let me endorse the quality of Garence Franke-Ruta's judgment in her high praise for C.S. Lewis's brilliant version of Cupid and Psyche: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. It is, I think, the best thing Lewis ever wrote.

In one of the alternative branches of the multiverse in which I went to graduate school in English Literature rather than in Economics, I wrote an essay about the meaning of the big change Lewis made in the myth. In the myth, the works of the God Cupid are manifest and visible, and Psyche's sisters convince her that Cupid is a monster because they are evil and spiteful. In Lewis's book, Cupid is deus absconditus: his works are hidden, and invisible to Psyche's sisters. It makes a very big difference.

Comments

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"Till We Have Faces" is an amazing version of the myth. The interaction of the sisters is excellent and the mask issue is fascinating.

[Auros]

I see the post about Til We Have Faces came in response to some furor over Narnia.

What I find most hilarious is that, when *I* was in grade school, some right-wing Xians in my community got terribly upset about teachers recommending _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ in class, and having the Narnia books in the library, because they believed the book must promote witchcraft.

Ah, how times change...

[RT]

Till We Have Faces isn't the only worthwhile thing Lewis ever wrote, but it's certainly the one of the few things he wrote that went beyond Jack Lewis being clever. It's a book written by a man who finally realizes he doesn't have all the answers, and that is its strength.

[Randolph Fritz]

Deus absconditus makes *Till We Have Faces* a book about spiritual enlightenment. Me, I've always liked Lewis the visionary and mystic (connections with the Golden Dawn, people like Yeats and Waite) better than Lewis the christian apologist, but then I am undoubtedly damned.

[rachel]

I love that book; every time I read it, I find new layers to it. And it always gives me the sniffles.

I wonder if you've read anything by Charles Williams...

[Chip Poirot]

I still remember my college paper I wrote for my required English class on Till We Have Faces. We had to write from a Jungian point of view. I screwed up the paper by bringing in too much and garbling my points.

That said, I always felt Lewis was pulling a fast one on me in that book. Or perhaps I could just never get past Lewis the apologist.

So in Lewis' book we have the juxtaposition of the cold rationality of the Aristotelian tutor denying the reality of gods set off against the mystical/Jungian interpretation of Greek myth.

I recall at the time that Lewis was trying to slip one past me throug a bait and switch. Here, have a little Jungian interpretation of religion-but my real goal is to convince you gods are real and that reason is just a bunch of bull...

[Tad Brennan]

deus absconditus--the archetype of the unfalsifiable existence claim. brought to you by the supporters of intelligent design.

I'm very glad you went into econ. You would doubtless have been a fine lit prof. But as it turned out, what the world needs right now are people capable of telling the truth about economics, and willing to do so in the faces of the regime's lies.

[quartz]

Definitely my favorite Lewis work. Charles Williams also very good, especially Place of the Lion.

[enfant terrible]

I nominate Garance Franke-Ruta for the Bill O'Riley Award for Reckless Bludgeoning of Logic. First GFR notes:

"we have Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which opposes Florida's move to add The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to the public school curriculum"

but then turns that fact on its head in a classic straw man fallacy:

"If schools are to ban literature because it deals with morality and spiritual or religious themes, (...)"

Not putting a book on the state school curriculum (actually, "state-sponsored reading list" was the wording in the article GFR linked to) equals banning the book???

[Porlock Junior]

Times have perhaps not changed so much as Auros thinks. Until recently (at least) people have occasionally shown up on alt.books.cs-lewis with questions about why some religious schools were banning The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. Possibly that trend has been weakening, but I don't know who's keeping good statistics. I'm much interested to see how this will play out as the movie comes out. I suspect that the Ban the Lion movement, which has always been marginal (Christians who don't like C. S. Lewis are a special breed, or rather several incompatible special breeds), will drag on, but with many conservative types now feeling freer to treat them with scorn.

As to faith versus reason, there's an aspect of Till We Have Faces that everyone seems to have missed, though it struck me strongly because of my deeply ingrained rationalism.

(Alert: I am writing this without any regard for spoilers.) It's true that the god is invisible, and so is his palace and all. Psyche is obviously crazy and hallucinating. Her sister, who is telling the tale (and by the way is not malicious in this version, but loves Psyche more than anyone else does), is wrong about this, we know; but who is to say that she's wrong? She is following the evidence and reason; and yet, by the nature of the story, she must be wrong in more than a casual and accidental way--tragic flaws and all that, you know.

Is she to abandon all sense without even some mystical ecstatic experience to lead her to mystical conclusions? Just follow the superstitions of the priests? (Malicious priestesses in this case, who condemned Psyche to be abadoned to the Monster because they hated her.) Sure, if you believe that Lewis wanted all reason abandoned in favor of blind faith in priests' tales. But since he plainly did not, what's up?

Well, actually, Psyche, who is living in the wild with no food, no shelter, and next to no clothing on top of a mountain, is in extraordinary good health and more beautiful than ever.(*) Her sister notices this, but, Watson-like, fails to draw any conclusion, such as, Somehing is bloody well wrong here! The evidence that her neat logical story (Psyche's madness) does not explain everything is staring her in the face; reason demands trying another hypothesis; but she never sees it. It costs her, even more than it costs Psyche.

(*) About that pro-beauty bias; take it up with the evolutionists. Even the evolutionary psychology folks aren't wrong 100% of the time, and outside of 19th-century perversions about dying romantically of consumption, there have been strong correlations between health and beauty.

Sorry that's so long. I was going to scribble something last night about this, but got lazy. Then the comments thread got me going, and I couldn't stop.

Very remarkable book, anyway. The second time I read it, I was amazed at how much good stuff Lewis had put in since my first reading, considering he'd been dead for 20-30 years.

[Randolph Fritz]

Orual, of course, sees Psyche through the veil of illusion that hides her own face from the gods. Hence she does not see evidence of the presence of the god. We omniscient, godlike readers see past the veil--a thing not so easily accomplished in our own lives. That accomplishment, I believe, is called "enlightment" in East and South Asian philosophy; oddly, I do not know a name for it in Western, though Lewis was clearly aware of it--it is probably accurate to say he had something of the experience in his own life. And what is on the other side of the veil? Lewis, of course, believed it was the Christian god. But what lifts *Till We Have Faces* above his apologetics is exactly that he does not say; in the end, the reader is left with their own vision.

[Kullervo]

I just finished reading Till We Have Faces yesterday, and it completely blew me away.