For this post and the two to follow, I address the question posed earlier: “How thoroughly (and accurately) did Lewis “comprehend” the author’s meaning?”
I say this up front: It is my view that Lewis had near perfect comprehension of the subject material in most books he read over the course of his life. Of all the factors in assessing Lewis’ candidacy for “most erudite person in history” this factor–comprehension of the author’s intended meaning—is perhaps the single most important factor.
We all have read books that we do not really understand—even when we claim to. For we mere mortals, comprehension can be elusive. I have tried on several occasions to read books by Christian mystics from the early Renaissance period—Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, for example. It was painful. Then there is Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield. I want desperately to understand all that Barfield had to say, but I confess that I do not. Barfield’s ideas are extraordinary, but his writing can be difficult to process, at least for me.
Perhaps my limitations in comprehension resonate with some of you. Moreover, I think C.S. Lewis might have had books that he struggled to comprehend, but I think that was rare. To be sure, there were topics he avoided (math), and there were books that he disliked (Principles of Literary Criticism by I.A. Richards), and authors he could “make nothing of” (Soren Kierkegaard). But I think it is reasonable to believe that Lewis had near-perfect comprehension of most books he did read.
I recognize some “voracious” readers may claim to have 100% comprehension. Moreover, not a few university academics might actually have “near-perfect” comprehension, at least in their areas of expertise. But when we consider the full range of “comprehension” we come to the conclusion that 100% comprehension is exceedingly rare.
C.S. Lewis Had Talents that Greatly Enhanced His Comprehension
From childhood, C.S. Lewis showed evidence of an amazing aptitude for comprehension. His unique talents were enhanced and expanded as he approached adulthood. This included:
- Prodigious skills in many ancient languages.
- Precocious talent for decoding ancient texts.
- An ability to read ancient texts as a resident.
Prodigious Skills in Many Ancient Languages
C.S. Lewis was blessed by an extraordinary gift of language that was fully developed at a young age. He mastered nine ancient and four modern languages and could read most old books in the original language.
His ancient languages included:
- Classical Greek
- Latin
- Old English
- Middle English
- Middle French
- Middle High German
- Old Norse
- Old Icelandic
- Old Welsh
His modern languages included:
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
The accompanying graphic shows scanned images from several of Lewis’ personal copies of great books. This includes: (1) The Republic by Plato with text in the Classical Greek language (2) Siege of Thebes by John Lydgate with text in the original Middle English and (3) Confessions by St. Augustine with text in Latin. This is evidence that he read books in their original language. Most of his personal library was like this.
It is my view that if one seeks to be erudite, then one must read the “Great Books” by the “Great Thinkers”. As it turns out, many of these “Great Books” come from Antiquity or the Middle Era. These were periods when languages used were what we now consider archaic (Classical Greek, Latin, Old Norse, Old Iceland and Old Welsh) or early versions of modern languages (English, French and German, for example) that are unrecognizable from their modern counterparts.
C.S. Lewis was fluent in nearly all these old languages in which the “Great Books of Western Civilization” were originally penned. This is remarkable, and the advantage it provided Lewis in discerning the author’s meaning is immense.
However, familiarity with old languages is not everything.
Precocious Talent for Decoding Ancient Texts
Certainly, Lewis’ expertise in ancient languages enabled him to discern much, if not most, of the author’s original meaning. But reading great works in their original language may not be enough. How so?
It is one thing to be able to read old languages, to recognize the words, to process the sentences, but it is quite another thing to fully “decode” the meaning the author intended to convey. This difficulty springs from the vastly different historical, political, religious, and cultural context of the days when the original work was written.
Words we think we know today probably held different meanings centuries ago. Metaphors may now be obsolete. Linguistic techniques used by the author may reflect a historical, political, religious, and cultural context that is mostly forgotten today. Even their humor flies over our heads because we fail to understand the society of that time.
Everyone struggles with linguistic discernment, but I believe it is reasonable to say that C.S. Lewis struggled far less than any of his peers or predecessors. Why is that?
C.S. Lewis had a precocious talent for illuminating ancient text and was recognized as a prodigy. Lewis could do so much more than read the words, he could plug what he read into the historical, political, religious, and cultural context of ancient and medieval societies. He understood their writing styles, their vernacular, and their quirky semantics. His instructors recognized his rare talent.
Around the end of Jack’s first year at Great Bookham (April 1916), his tutor, William T. Kirkpatrick, wrote a series of letters to Albert Lewis in which he made the following comments about the 16-year-old Jack:
“He hardly realizes – how could he at his age – with what a liberal hand nature has bestowed her bounties on him.”
“It is the maturity and originality of his literary judgment which is so unusual and surprising.”
“He has read more classics than any boy I ever had–or indeed I might add than any I ever heard of, unless it be an Addison or Landor or Macaulay.”
[He is] “the most brilliant translator of Greek plays I have ever met.”
Lewis was blessed with unparalleled talents that enabled him to extract more clearly and more completely the author’s original meaning. This, perhaps more than any other reason, is why I speculate that C.S. Lewis had a greater level of comprehension that anyone who came before him, or after.
Lewis Advised Us to Read Works by the Original Author and in the Original Language
My son, Brandon, attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2013 through 2017. I visited him several times each year for a few days at a time. While he was attending classes, I would visit the Wilson Library, which is blessed to possess the Walter Hooper Collection of 120 books that were owned by C.S. Lewis and held in his personal library at the time of his passing in 1963.
Though the size of this collection is dwarfed by the collection at the Marion E. Wade Center (approximately 2,500 CSL-owned books) it is outstanding in terms of the importance of the CSL-owned books—many of which are extensively annotated.
Over the course of a dozen visits to the Wilson Library, I was able to inspect such important works as these:
- Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
- Plato, The Republic
- Aristotle, Poetics
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
- Aeschylus, Tragoediae
- Virgil, The Aeneid
- Augustine, Confessions
- Augustine, City of God
- Athanasius, de Incarnatione
- Boethius, Consolatione Philosophiae
- Dante, Divine Commedia
- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
- Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
- Thomas More, Utopia
- Jacob Boehme, The Signature of All Things
- Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
- William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
- Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy
What a joy it was to hold in my hands C.S. Lewis’ personal copy of The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. It was illuminating to page through books that had imparted a profound influence on Lewis’ thinking. By reading Lewis’ marginalia, I could see how his thinking progressed as he made his way through each book. I looked closely at as many as 50 books out of the collection of 120 books. My deeper research was on books such as:
- The Republic by Plato
- De Rarum Natura by Lucretius
- Confessions by St. Augustine
- On the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity by Richard Hooker
- A Serious Call to the Devout and Holy by William Law
What I learned from inspecting The Republic by Plato is relevant to this post. In his essay “On the Reading of Old Books” Lewis advised readers to follow certain practices when reading the great books of the great thinkers. First, he advised us to read one old book for each new book that we read (or at least one old for every four new).
Second, we should endeavor to read the original works, the books written by the original author, rather than settle for reading books “about” the author (or book) that were written by others. Why read what someone else thinks about Plato and The Republic when you can go directly to the original source. That makes sense.
Third, Lewis advised us to read the work in the language used by the original author. So, in the case of The Republic, we should read it in the original Classical Greek language used by Plato 2,600 years ago. This, too, make sense, but only if you can read Classical Greek. I cannot. Few of us can.
As I was inspecting Lewis’ copy of Plato’s The Republic, I noticed something that seemed odd to me. Every page in Plato’s book was printed in the Classical Greek language on the left side of two pages, and the same text was printed in modern English on the right side of the two pages.
By this I was able to confirm that Lewis was himself living up to his own counsel. How so? Because his annotations and marginalia were all on the left side, the Greek side. This indicates that Lewis was reading the work in the original language. I found this to be fascinating.
De Descriptione Temporum
In his inaugural lecture at Cambridge University, entitled “De Descriptione Temorum”, C.S. Lewis made comments that were most unusual for a new member of the Cambridge faculty.
This lecture, from the new Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, was delivered on November 29, 1954–his 56th birthday. It was a watershed moment when his public profile pivoted. With a chance to speak to the academic community at Cambridge and the listening world of the BBC, Lewis used this moment to reposition himself in an unusual way. How do I mean?
For one thing, he claimed not to believe that some “Great Divide” in human history fell between the Medieval Era and the Renaissance. He considered that notion a figment of Humanist propaganda. By contrast, he said if such a thing as the “Great Divide” had occurred at all, it fell between the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. This was provocative at the time.
If that was not enough to shake up his audience, he went further. He invited the audience to view him not merely as a guide to Medieval and Renaissance literature but as a “specimen” of that culture. What did that mean?
He told them: “I myself belong far more to that Old Western order than to yours” . . . thereby separating himself chronologically from them. That must have caused them to sit up!
Then he went on: “You don’t want to be lectured on Neanderthal Man by a Neanderthaler, still less on dinosaurs by a dinosaur. And yet . . . if a live dinosaur dragged its slow length into the laboratory, would we not all look back as we fled?”
How would his claiming to be a “dinosaur” play among his new faculty peers?
Then he revealed a key principle in his teaching: “It is my settled conviction that in order to read Old Western literature aright you must suspend most of the responses and unlearn most of the habits you have acquired in reading modem literature.”
Was that threatening to faculty members who used the “old paradigm” that Lewis was debunking?
He closed his inaugural lecture with this: “Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you somewhat as that Athenian might stand. I read as a native texts that you must read as foreigners.”
I doubt his peers, or the radio audience had ever heard anything like that before.
Reread again his words: “I read as a native texts that you must read as foreigners.”
That statement speaks volumes about Lewis’ philosophy of learning. And, as well, it is relevant to our question at hand: Is C.S. Lewis the most erudite person who ever lived?
Was he was not saying that he had the capacity to discern the author’s meaning in a way that you and I cannot? Was he not saying that his “level of comprehension” was vastly superior to his peers and predecessors? I think he was saying precisely that.
This is relevant because C.S. Lewis was confirming what some of us have since come to recognize: that he could discern the original author’s meaning far better than all others . . . if only because he had unparalleled powers of literary discernment that enabled him to “decode” writings from Antiquity, the Middle Era, and the Renaissance.
Because of these skills, C.S. Lewis comprehension was near perfect. Many people say they have 100% comprehension, but they don’t. They may be able to traverse the entirety of some old book by a long-forgotten author, they may even catch the key ideas, but they read with a limited skill set. To be candid, they do not know what it is that they cannot know from their modern linguistic perspective.
But C.S. Lewis could, and thus I believe his credentials to be considered the “most erudite person in history” are plausible.
Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18
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