by Stanley Anderson » September 22nd, 2008, 10:11 pm
Ah, one of my favorite sections of the book! Lot's to say about this section, and also lots I don't know what to say about this section -- ie, it is sort of like Till We Have Faces one of Lewis' best, but what I've described as a "hard diamond" in that it (TWHF) is such an "integrated" jewel, it is hard to take apart and find particular things to discuss about it. And this section of THS has a bit of that quality too. But not enough to hold me off!:-)
The first thing I note about it -- and one of the things I so love about it -- is how "out of place" it is. Lewis writes in the first person (though he does momentarily in other places too, but here the whole section is Lewis talking directly to the reader), and the whole other-worldly quality gives the reader the best hint thus far that the book might not be as "mundane" as it might seem for the first few chapters (in comparison to the fantasy-laden imagery of OotSP and Perelandra anyway). And curiously enough, like the description of the wood as a walled garden, this section, because of that odd "out of place" quality is very much like a walled garden itself, in the context of the structure of the book. As Lewis writes of the wood, "I suppose the mere fact of being walled in gave the Wood part of its peculiar quality, for when a thing is enclosed, the mind does not willingly regard it as common." This is indeed how this section, being "enclosed" from the rest of the book, strikes me.
K talks about the description of the journey into the garden and the various transitions one makes in getting there. I've mentioned in the (sadly incomplete) study of The Discarded Image that THS is, to me, very like a fictional version of TDI. And in this passage into the wood, I think, Lewis intentionally brings in, as mentioned in TDI, the four "contraries" -- hot, cold, moist, and dry ("raw" components which we find on earth only in combinations that comprise the well-known four elements -- ie, hot +dry = fire, hot + moist = air, cold + moist = water, cold + dry = earth). Thus we enter the Newton quadrangle as "dry", then the tunnel as "cool", then the Republic quantdragle as "moist", and finally to the Lady Alice quadrangle as "warm" (ie, "full daylight").
Perhaps this is a bit of a doubtful and fanciful supposition on my part. After all, the journey continues with the bridge and the Fellows bowling green, but I think the first parts before that do correspond nicely enough to the four contraries that one might say they are the raw portions that combine to create, or lead into, the "world" of the Wood. By the way in TDI Lewis does note that there were originally six contraries, "light" and "heavy" being the other two, and normally condensed to the four above, but light and heavy don't seem to fit in conveniently here (at least not in a cursory first-glance sort of way -- any thoughts about that though?).
This section has always evaded, for me, "classification" into the chessboard view as either part of the NICE/Belbury or St Annes "sides". I have said that except for the king-piece-like aspects of Ransom and Alcasan, the image of a chessboard was rather arbitrary -- that I could have used any "opposing images" game or situation to describe this view of the book. But here there is a bit more, I suppose, of specific chessboard imagery. Bragdon Wood is, if you will, really the "center" of the book, a place that both sides are interested in and striving for "control of". And as such, one might think of it much like the center portion of the chessboard that it is always of strategic advantage for either side to "occupy" or get control of.
And though this jumps ahead in the story a bit, we find that it is "surrounded" by the "lesser" parts of the two sides. What I mean by this is that neither Edgestow nor Bracton College seem to be "fully" part of either Belbury or St Annes. And yet, if we think of them sort of as the "pawns" in the game -- ie the lesser and less powerful, and yet not totally non-influential pieces of chess, they each provide their "play" into the struggle between Belbury and St. Annes. And indeed, we see, even in the chapter sections that "surround" the Wood section 3, that section 2 shows a bit of Edgestow -- the "pawns" of St. Annes if you will, and on the other side, section 4 (that we haven't gotten to yet), shows a bit of Bracton College, of which the fellows there can be thought of as "pawns" of the NICE/Belbury crowd.
Well, there's so much more I'd like to say about this section -- every sentence -- or even every phrase -- is like a sparkling jewel that one can gaze at. But I'd probably better end this post here. Perhaps more later.
--Stanley
…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.