I just re-read That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis for the first time since I started studying the Inklings. It’s a completely different experience, now that I know the subtexts of what he’s talking about. Everyone gets the “Numinor” references, but for someone who’s read Owen Barfield and Charles Williams, the book turns out to be stuffed with easter eggs. 1 This line jumped out at me particularly: “… they had all, by various routes, come too far either to consider [Merlin’s] art mere legend and imposture, or to equate it exactly with what the Renaissance called Magic.” (p.200) It reminded me of Galadriel’s line, “this is what your folk would call magic. I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.” (LR2.07.080) That change in the meaning of the word “magic” is intriguing. Galadriel comes from an earlier Age than the hobbits. She’s from the Elder Days, whereas the Shire is post-medieval.2 Hobbits think and talk like we do. Therefore, they use the word “magic” in a way she doesn’t get. Galadriel’s line emphasizes her distance from them, as if it needed more emphasis.
Not here! by Olena Panasovska
Galadriel has a Ring that she uses “to preserve all things unstained”. That’s Elrond’s phrasing (LR2.02.240), but “on the land of Lorien there was no stain,” (LR2.06.160) so Galadriel and Elrond are of one mind on this. What kind of stain are they talking about? Lewis’s line gave me a new way to read that: the stain is Renaissance rationalism, the kind that gave us the twin children Science and Magic. Galadriel is preserving a pre-modern concept of Nature that doesn’t have a place for Early Modern concepts like those. She is using her Ring to make sure that there will be no Renaissance while she has the power to prevent it. She’s not alone: Elrond is called a “lore-master” by Denethor (who should know). A lore-master is a worthwhile person to have around, but he doesn’t create new knowledge like a scientist does. Rivendell has libraries, but I’d be surprised if it had a laboratory. And Gandalf, who held the third Ring, delivered a memorable warning against foolish scientism.3
I have learned, whenever I get an idea for one of these bloviations, to check what Tom Shippey has to say on the topic. (He’s always there before me.) He extracts from the Inklings’ writings an opposition of magia, goeteia, scientism, and religion.4 That Hideous Strength is about goeteia and scientism ganging up on religion, which defends itself successfully when it’s reinforced by Merlin’s magia. Shippey identifies a common theme among the Inklings, lamenting the loss of authority by religion as the new knowledge. That may be the stain Galadriel is talking about.
But why should she, in a world without religion as we think of it, care? Religion to her is completely irrelevant — she’s actually met most of the people a religion would be aimed at worshiping, though until Frodo’s visit, they’re not taking her calls. Why is she afraid of a Renaissance? Well, that one has already been figured out. Tolkien thought that the Renaissance (in its guise as the Age of Discovery) had put an end to Faërie by sending explorers around the globe and finding just more land and more people. He suggested that shrinking to Shakespearean proportions was their defense. Perhaps Galadriel was willing to diminish to an extent, but not all the way to flitting around an English garden on moth wings. And then, of course, will come the Enlightenment, and fairies are doomed.
Notes
- If they’re stuffed, they should be deviled eggs, but that doesn’t seem to be the mot juste.
- In early drafts, Lotho Pimple was even named “Cosimo”, for a nice Renaissance touch.
- In the linked post, I used the term “science”, but the comment thread convinced me that’s not quite right, so I’m saying “scientism” instead.
- Shippey, T. “Magia, Goeteia, and the Inklings”, Myth and Magic: Art According to the Inklings, ed. Eduardo Segura and Thomas Honegger. Walking Tree Press: Zurich and Berne, 2007. pp. 21-46
DS
My instinct is that Lewis put substantially more thought into this particular theme than Tolkien, who was much more interested in the concept of the ‘secondary world.’