'Pre-baptised'

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

So I was thinking. CS Lewis once said that his intention in the Narnia books was to 'pre-baptise' children's imaginations - they would first read the Narnia books, & when they later encountered Christianity they would be in some way prepared for what they would encounter in the Christian story. What he meant, I think, was that Jesus would remind them of Aslan & so he wouldn't seem so 'strange' & unfamiliar to them. Perhaps he also meant that the Narnia stories would create a 'longing' in them for a 'bigger' story.

Okay, so I'm going to have to admit up front that Lewis' Narnia is not as interesting to me as Tolkien's Middle-earth. That said, what intrigues me is this idea that a story has to prepare children's imaginations for another story. (I don't think I'm taking this topic off-topic, just wondering about a different tangant.)

Baptism in its most literal sense involves a washing or submersion in water, a purification marking entrance into witness or membership in the community. For the sake of the original quotations from Lewis, I'll limit my thoughts to Christian ideas about the ritual.

Now, traditionally baptism means the washing away or remission of sins in preparation for receiving Christ. What sins could Lewis imagine his story would be washing away? Or was he merely being allegorical (as was his wont) in suggesting some kind of precursive experience with purification which would enable children (in this case) to perceive the holy story? Or was he thinking of Catholic ideas of baptism, a desire to be part of the Church founded by Christ?

I guess what I am getting at is this idea that one needs to be cleansed of error and mistake, prepared to accept the greater meaning of a fulsome text, whether it is Lewis or Tolkien.

So, first of all, could there be texts which in fact prepare us not to understand and accept those of Lewis and Tolkien? Is our reading such that we have to be purged of some of our tastes and familiar favourites before we can appreciate Narnia or Middle-earth? What are these texts? Are there truly sins in reading that must be purified?

Secondly, what does it mean to hold secular texts as needing rituals before they are fully appreciated? Why can't the books themselves reach out to us? Why would they be dependent upon precursor texts?

Now, Lewis was not a Catholic, but Tolkien was. Catholic doctrine says that we must be cleansed of the taint of original sin before we can enter the Christian community. Is this a concept in keeping with Tolkien's Legendarium? Do readers really have to experience a rebirth or forgiveness of error in order to receive Tolkien's story?

Forgive me if I am being pedantic here, but I think that's a trait Tolkien himself would have allowed his readers.

Do you need to get washed up to take a bath?
Worse yet, do you need to clean the water afterwards?
Tolkiens morality is fundamentally different from Christianity in several key pionts, I am very interested in your pedantic enquiry, and would like to try to match your pedantry, but it deserves a topic unto itself. And it should be long indeed. Many pages and everyone should have now, or should begin presently, to form a thoughtful opinion about it.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Neithan Tol Turambar

Do you need to get washed up to take a bath?
Worse yet, do you need to clean the water afterwards?

Very funny, Neithan Tol Turambar. I've never been asked if I am part of the great unwashed before. Usually people just address the points of my posts and my discussion.



Oh, and, by the by, my pedantry pales before that of the illustrious Squatter and the highly English lettered davem and the astute Aiwendil, so perhaps you can set yourself a higher bar.

Wow! You have alot of Posts!

[Child of the 7th Age]

Davem -

This is an enjoyable thread, and I can definitely point to personal things that I felt "prepared me" to accept and love Tolkien.

The part of Middle-earth I first connected with was Tolkien's depiction of trees and the land, the Shire and Lorien especially. LotR became a crash course in appreciating the natural world. All the rest--characters, medieval texts, and the depths of the Legendarium-- only came later.

The reason I could see and appreciate that natural beauty was that I spent a chunk of my time in the sixties protesting environmental issues and rambling in the countryside through the Appalachian Mountains, along the shores of the Great Lakes, and then in south Wales and the West Country of England. When I read Tolkien, I could feel the grass poking up between my toes.

Yet, to be honest, when I first read this thread and saw the word "pre-baptism", part of me reacted the way Bethberry did.....

So, first of all, could there be texts which in fact prepare us not to understand and accept those of Lewis and Tolkien? Is our reading such that we have to be purged of some of our tastes and familiar favourites before we can appreciate Narnia or Middle-earth? What are these texts? Are there truly sins in reading that must be purified?

I've always had this problem with Lewis. It's not just a matter of one thing preparing us for something else. And it goes beyond Bethberry's question of texts (though that is definitely part of it). I've always felt that Lewis is asking us to strip off a chunk of who we are, in effect to purge some of our "modern" tastes in order to comply with his perceptions of what the ideal reader should be. I get less of that sense from Tolkien. He seems to paint with a wider and less dogmatic brush. But even with Tolkien I sometimes catch just a whiff of that.

I remember once reading a passage --- can't say specifically where it came from -- in which Tolkien and Lewis were talking about themselves as the final "true" remnents of "Western Civilization"....the fact that they were two grand old men who approached texts and ideas from a different vantage point than the readers who would come after them and that meant they had a very different way of looking at things. I'm not even talking about Christianity here, though that could be part of it. Rather they were talking about an acceptance and appreciation for "traditional" western culture and having a certain kind of education. At the time, the discussion rubbed me the wrong way a bit and I still have that image in my head when someone talks about somehow "cleansing " us to prepare for something else.

Probably a crazy reaction. I don't know if anyone else has had a response like that.

[davem]

Bethberry:

Lewis was not aiming to teach children Christianity with the Narnia books. He wanted to introduce similar ideas that would make it easier for children to accept Christianity: what he called "a sort of pre-baptism of the child's imagination." (George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C S Lewis)

Article here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religi...slewis_9.shtml

So Lewis seems to have meant something along the lines of 'preparation for baptism'. I'm reminded of something Tolkien said about his stories being aimed at those readers with a 'still undarkened heart' (or something along those lines). 'Purged of the gross' also seems to come into it. Tolkien is writing for those whose hearts are still undarkened, & I suppose those 'surviving' in that state will respond to any glimpse of light they see.

[Lalwendë]

It's not enough these days to just find something beautiful. It all has to have a purpose. It's so utilitarian and depressing.

That's the problem which makes so many people hate Tolkien and fail to appreciate what he created. They feel that what they must read must mean something, that their spare time was not wasted in merely enjoying an adventure. And that's what sticks in my throat about Lewis. His work has fallen prey to the modern need for utilitarianism as it has to have this 'higher purpose'. Ugh. I knew there was something iffy and stilted about his work when I was trying to read it and then I found out what it was and it was like a revelation - of the kind he would not have expected. Steeped in fairy tales as a child, I was well aware of what 'magic' looked and smelled like and it smelled a bit 'off' in Narnia.

But Neil Gaiman says it better:

Originally Posted by Neil Gaiman

For good or ill the religious allegory, such as it was, went entirely over my head, and it was not until I was about twelve that I found myself realising that there were Certain Parallels. Most people get it at the Stone Table; I got it when it suddenly occurred to me that the story of the events that occurred to Saint Paul on the road to Damascus was the dragoning of Eustace Scrubb all over again. I was personally offended: I felt that an author, whom I had trusted, had had a hidden agenda. I had nothing against religion, or religion in fiction -- I had bought (in the school bookshop) and loved The Screwtape Letters, and was already dedicated to G.K. Chesterton. My upset was, I think, that it made less of Narnia for me, it made it less interesting a thing, less interesting a place.

What Tolkien produced was a work of Art, comparable to Ulysses. It's a complex interplay of plot and structure and words, like one huge poem. It mystifies us modern folk who are used to purpose and meaning and definition and all those kinds of restrictive things. We can't just sit back and enjoy the trip. So we have to find some meaning to define it all by, when there isn't one. Even Tolkien himself struggled to assign some kind of 'meaning' to his texts (often I think, influenced by people like Lewis) but from all his contradictory statements its clear that there wasn't one beyond wanting to discover 'what really happened'. It's a story. That's it.

That's the essential joy of Tolkien. You open this book and enter this other world immediately. It doesn't exist to teach you anything, it is just there. Like Tom Bombadil, it just 'is'. That makes you feel as though when we close the book, that world goes on without us, regardless of us, in spite of us. It's real because it's not made for us, it's going to exist without us.

All you need to love Tolkien is an open mind, one that's open to magic and Art and adventure. One that doesn't expect any revelations or lessons. That's what a 'still undarkened heart' is.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

I've always had this problem with Lewis. It's not just a matter of one thing preparing us for something else. And it goes beyond Bethberry's question of texts (though that is definitely part of it). I've always felt that Lewis is asking us to strip off a chunk of who we are, in effect to purge some of our "modern" tastes in order to comply with his perceptions of what the ideal reader should be. I get less of that sense from Tolkien. He seems to paint with a wider and less dogmatic brush. But even with Tolkien I sometimes catch just a whiff of that.

Originally Posted by davem

Quote:
Lewis was not aiming to teach children Christianity with the Narnia books. He wanted to introduce similar ideas that would make it easier for children to accept Christianity: what he called "a sort of pre-baptism of the child's imagination." (George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C S Lewis)

. . . .

So Lewis seems to have meant something along the lines of 'preparation for baptism'. I'm reminded of something Tolkien said about his stories being aimed at those readers with a 'still undarkened heart' (or something along those lines). 'Purged of the gross' also seems to come into it. Tolkien is writing for those whose hearts are still undarkened, & I suppose those 'surviving' in that state will respond to any glimpse of light they see.

Okay, so what I am seeing here is a certain condition or predisposition. You know, this begins to sound suspiciously like predestination of a literary kind.

Augustine, Calvin, Lewis, Tolkien . . . brrrrrr!