Listen | Presentation | Index
Front matter:
–The title
Originally published as a serial in the Anglican weekly periodical The Guardian, The Great Divorce was originally entitled Who Goes Home? A New Fantasy. The Great Divorce comes from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake (1757-1827).
–The frontispiece
The Great Divorce: A Dream
Quotation from George MacDonald
“No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it – no place to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.”
Influences on Lewis’s writing
During this wartime period, Lewis gives his lectures on Milton and Paradise Lost in Wales, and publishes A Preface to Paradise Lost, in addition to publishing The Screwtape Letters.
Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, and Lewis were in frequent dialog and writing about Dante’s The Divine Comedy throughout 1944, with Williams publishing The Figure of Beatrice, Lewis publishing The Great Divorce, and Sayers moving towards translating Dante’s work.
MAJOR THEMES IN THE PREFACE
1. You can’t have it all. “The attempt [to marry Heaven and Hell] is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable “either-or”; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain. This belief I take to be a disastrous error.”
—Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!—Isaiah 5:20
–They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.—Romans 1:32
2. Choices matter, and you may be called to renounce things on the journey. “You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind. We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a pool but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.”
–Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.—Phil. 3:12-14
–If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.—Matt. 5:29
–I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.—Phil. 3:8
–And Jesus summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.—Mk. 8:34
3. Repentance and a new start are prerequisites for the journey. “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot “develop” into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, “with backward mutters of dissevering power”-or else not. It is still “either-or.” If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.
—Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.– 2 Cor. 7:10
—I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.—Gal. 2:20
–Christ died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. –2 Cor. 5:16-17
4. Anything we leave behind will pale in the face of what God has in store. “I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in “the High Countries.”
–“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”—I Cor. 2:9
–For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. –Romans 8:18
–Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.—Matt. 5:12
5. This story is a fantasy and a supposal, not a factual description of the after-life. I beg readers to remember that this is a fantasy. It has of course — or I intended it to have- — a moral. But the transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal: they are not even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world.
–Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.—I Jn 3:2
–For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.—2 Cor. 4:17
WALK ON—U2
Written by Bono, lead singer of U2 (who is a Christian and a big Lewis fan)–note how it echos much of the language of the Preface to The Great Divorce and some of the Scripture from 2 Corinthians, which Bono said in an interview he was reading while writing this song.
From ”All That You Can’t Leave Behind”
And love is not the easy thing, the only baggage that you can bring
Is all that you can’t leave behind
You’re packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
Walk on, walk on–what you’ve got they can’t deny it
Can’t sell it, or buy it
Walk on, walk on–stay safe tonight
And I know it aches and your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much: Walk on
Home, hard to know what it is if you’ve never had one
Home, I can’t say where it is but I know I’m going home
Leave it behind–you’ve got to leave it all behind
All that you fashion, all that you make
All that you build, all that you break
All that you measure, all that you steal
All this you feel, all that you reason
All that you sense, all that you speak
All you dress up and all that you scheme
All you create and all that you wreck
All that you hate.
Link to song:
