S6E13 – OSP 12 – “Jaws”

The philosophical discussions continue on Malacandra! Today Ransom learns about war, peace, passions, pleasure, children, longing, sin, as well as the mysterious shark-like creature called the Hnakra…

S6E13: “Jaws” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

We didn’t manage to get through two chapters in the previous episode, so since Matt had already prepared this chapter, he was once again leading the episode.

Drop-In

• Billy Baker

Quote-of-the-week

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered”

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

Matt very nearly chose this quotation instead:

“There I drank life because death was in the pool”

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

Episode Movie Title

• David put the episode title to a vote on our Slack channel. The other contenders were:
  • In Love and War (1996) with Sandra Bullock and Chris O’Donnell
  • Predator (1987) with Arnold Swartzenegger 

Chit-Chat

• Andrew
  • Dr. Diana Glyer lavished praise upon the podcast!

Toast

• Drinks
  • All co-hosts were drinking The Dalemore 12 (Sherry Cask Select).
• Foreign language “cheers”
  • “Şerefe” (Turkish)
• Patreon toast
  • Donavon Nagel

Story Recap

Ransom finds himself on an unexpected journey, transported against his will by Weston and Devine to a foreign planet, Malacandra, where he is intended for an offering or sacrifice. He was able to escape Weston and Devine and found himself among one of the local species, the Hrossa.

Last week, he found himself “being” with them and doing local life; additionally, we learned about the Malacandrian hierarchy (or at least a lot more). There are Hrossa, Seroni, Pfifltriggi. In addition, there is Oyarsa (a supreme being) and his son, Maleldil the Young. In addition, there are eldil that are like angel type creatures.

The story so far…

• Matt thought that Oyarsa was God, but he’s the archangel of the planet.

Discussion

1. “War and Peace”

It was difficult to explain. ‘If both wanted one thing and neither would give it,’ said Ransom, ‘would the other at last come with force? Would they say, give it or we kill you?’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘Well—food, perhaps.’

‘If the other hnau wanted food, why should we not give it to them? We often do.’

‘But how if we had not enough for ourselves?’

‘But Maleldil will not stop the plants growing.’

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

2. “Passions, pleasure and children”

‘Hyoi, if you had more and more young, would Maleldil broaden the handramit and make enough plants for them all?’

‘The séroni know that sort of thing. But why should we have more young?’

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

• You only need a replacement rate of 2.1 children to maintain a population.

Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply
bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 5)

• Are penguins monogamous?

‘But it [love] takes his whole life. When he is young he has to look for his mate; and then he has to court her; then he begets young; then he rears them; then he remembers all this, and boils it inside him and makes it into poems and wisdom.’
…

‘A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmān, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing… What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then—that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it…’

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

• Bright Shadow of Reality: Spiritual Longing in C. S. Lewis by Corbin Scott Carnel

The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 9)

• Ballet 5:8 performance of their adaptation of “Till We Have Faces”
• Malcolm Guite

3. “Longing”

Hyoi’s reply unfortunately turned on one of those points in their language which Ransom had not mastered. There were two verbs which both, as far as he could see, meant to long or yearn; but the hrossa drew a sharp distinction, even an opposition, between them. Hyoi seemed to him merely to be saying that every one would long for it (wondelone) but no one in his senses could long for it (hluntheline).

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 129

But what, in conclusion, of Joy? for that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about. To tell you the truth, the subject has lost nearly all interest for me since I became a Christian… It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer.

C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (Chapter 15)

4. “Bent creatures”

…it was not they, but his own species, that were the puzzle. That the hrossa should have such instincts was mildly surprising; but how came it that the instincts of the hrossa so closely resembled the unattained ideals of that far-divided species Man whose instincts were so deplorably different? What was the history of Man?

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

• Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity
Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the depths of time,
Who could pick up our signal, who could understand a story. There won’t be

C.S. Lewis, Re-Adjustment

5. “The Problem of Hnakra”

The hnakra is our enemy, but he is also our beloved… We hang images of him in our houses, and the sign of all the hrossa is a hnakra…

…it is not a few deaths roving the world around him that make a hnau miserable. It is a bent hnau that would blacken the world. And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

Because I have stood there alone, Maleldil and I, for even Oyarsa sent me no word, my heart has been higher, my song deeper, all my days. But do you think it would have been so unless I had known that in Balki hnéraki dwelled? There I drank life because death was in the pool. That was the best of drinks save one.’

‘What one?’ asked Ransom.

‘Death itself in the day I drink it and go to Maleldil.’

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

6. “Entertaining Angels”

‘Hyoi…who were you speaking to?’

‘To an eldil.’

‘What is that? I saw no one.’

‘Are there no eldila in your world, Hmān? That must be strange.’

‘But what are they?’

‘They come from Oyarsa—they are, I suppose, a kind of hnau.’

‘As we came out to-day I passed a child who said she was talking to an eldil, but I could see nothing.’

‘One can see by looking at your eyes, Hmān, that they are different from ours.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)

• An eldil is a being which come from Oyasa. Hyoi says that they are a kind of hnau. Eldila are angels, with the Oyasa being the archangel of the planet.
  • There’s obviously a common root between “Eldil” and “Maleldil”. The prefix possibly from the Hebrew word “Mal”… meaning “King” i.e. “King of Spirits” or the more Biblical title of “Lord of hosts”.
  • Having said that, in a letter, Jack said that he wanted words with “emotional, not intellectual suggestiveness”, so take that with a pinch of salt.
  • Listener Jocelyn Jaquiery had some excellent thoughts on this subject: