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CS Lewis and Vladimir Propp

Comprising most of Lewis' writings.
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CS Lewis and Vladimir Propp

Postby boink1 » February 28th, 2008, 8:53 pm

Recently I reread the following quote by Lewis.


"Consider for a few moments the enormous aesthetic claim of its (Christian theology - PG) chief contemporary rival - what we may loosely call the Scientific Outlook, (…). Supposing this to be a myth, is it not one of the finest myths which human imagination has yet produced ? The play is preceded by the most austere of all preludes: the infinite void, and matter restlessly moving to bring forth it knows not what. Then, by the millionth millionth chance - what tragic irony - the conditions at one point of space and time bubble up into that tiny fermentation which is the beginning of life. Everthing seems to be against the infant hero of our drama - just as everthing seems against the youngest son or ill-used stepdaugther at the opening of a fairy-tale. But life somehow wins through. With infinite suffering, against all but insuperable obstacles, it spreads, it breeds, it complicates itself: from the amoeba up to the plant, up to the reptile, up to the mammal. We glance briefly at the age of monsters. Dragons prowl the earth, devour one another and die. Then comes the theme of the younger son and the ugly duckling once more. As the weak, tiny spark of life began amidst the huge hostilities of the inanimate, so now again, amidst the beasts that are far larger and stronger than he, there comes forth a little naked, shivering, cowering creature, shuffling, not yet erect, promising nothing: the product of another millionth millionth chance. Yet somehow he thrives. He becomes the Cave Man with his club and his flints, muttering and growling over his enemies' bones, dragging his screaming mate by her hair (I could never quite make out why), tearing his children to pieces in fierce jealousy till one of them is old enough to tear him, cowering before the terrible gods whom he has created in his own image. But these are only growing pains. Wait till the next Act. There he is becoming true Man. He learns to master nature. Science comes and dissipates the superstitions of his infancy. More and more he becomes the controller of his own fate. Passing hastily over the present (for it is a mere nothing by the time-scale we are using), you follow him on into the future. See him in the last Act, though not the last scene, of this great mystery. A race of demigods now rule the planet - and perhaps more than the planet - for eugenics have made certain that only demigods will be born, and psycho-analysis that none of them shall lose or smirch his divinity, and communism that all which divinity requires shall be ready to their hands. Man has ascended his throne. Henceforward he has nothing to do but to practise virtue, to grow in wisdom, to be happy. And now, mark the final stroke of genius. If the myth stopped at that point, it might be a little bathetic (or "pathetic" ? - PG). It would lack the highest grandeur of which human imagination is capable. The last scene reverses all. We have the Twilight of the Gods. All this time, silently, unceasingly, out of all reach of human power, Nature, the old enemy, has been steadily gnawing away. The sun will cool - all suns will cool - the whole universe will run down. Life (every form of life) will be banished, without hope of return, from every inch of infinite space. All ends in nothingness, and "universal darkness covers all". The pattern of myth thus becomes one of the noblest we can conceive. It is the pattern of many Elizabethan tragedies, where the protagonist's career can be represented by a slowly ascending and then rapidly falling curve, with its highest point in Act IV. You see him climbing up and up, then blazing in his bright meridian, then finally overwhelmed in ruin."
(pp. 154-156 from They Asked for a Paper. London, Geoffrey Bles 1962 211 p.)


I was struck by the number of references to folklore elements in this quote which are reminiscent of Vladimir Propp's well-known 1928 essay Morphology of a Folk-Tale.

I was just wondering if any here might know if this is more than an coincidence and that Lewis might well have read Propp or have been acquainted with his work by other means? The parallels seems a bit more than coincidental and the timeframe makes this a possibility, though it is possible that Lewis might have made his comments based on studies of other anglo folklorists.



Paul Gosselin
St-Augustin, Qc
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"Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream"
(Malcolm Muggeridge)
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check le site:
http://www.samizdat.qc.ca
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Postby Sven » February 28th, 2008, 9:51 pm

Bienvenue, Paul!

Considering the particular essay you quote from, 'Is Theology Poetry', was written in 1945, and my understanding is that Propp's 'Morphology of a Folk-Tale' wasn't translated into English until the '50s, my guess is that it's two men arriving at similar conclusions from the same data.

Regarding your parenthetical question, bathetic would be correct. To paraphrase Lewis' sentence, "If the myth stopped at that point, it might be only the commonplace exalted."
Rat! he found breath to whisper, shaking. Are you afraid?
Afraid? murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.
Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet -- and yet -- O, Mole, I am afraid!
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.
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