S8E18 – Perelandra – Chapter 15: “Ad Alta!”

Ransom escapes his subterranean prison, and gets some much-needed R&R before ascending the mountain.

S8E18: Chapter 15 – “Ad Alta!” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-Week

It was a time to be remembered only in dreams as we remember infancy. Indeed it was a second infancy, in which he was breast-fed by the planet Venus herself; unweaned till he moved from that place.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

Chit-Chat

• Andrew is gone, so it’s David and Matt today. Just like old times!
• Matt tells a funny story about Valentine’s Day and his wife’s “expectations” for the day. He also shared another story about an encounter that he had with a listener of the show, who he has grown in friendship with.
• David read a transcript from the Valentine’s Day episode of The Christian History Almanac Podcast, which discussed a different Valentine (the Lutheran astronomer Valentine Naboth), the movement of the planets, and the nature of free will. The ties to “Perelandra” were very apparent!
• David has been having a busy week at work with the launch of a new feature at the company he works for. He also joined Matt Wheeler on the Mere C. S. Lewis Podcast to discuss “The Horse and His Boy”.

Toast

• David was drinking coffee.
• Matt, avoiding hot drinks after a trip to the dentist, had a Celsius.

• Today, we toast Matt’s bride, Mary Margarett Bush! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Discussion

Chapter Summary

Ransom awakes and walks through the cavern through a cathedral-like throne room with a procession of large beetle-like creatures. 

Ransom falls into a water channel, and is ejected into a pool on the mountainside. 

In a dream-like state, Perelandra nurses him back to health, although an ankle bite from the Un-man continues to bleed. 

Ransom etches an epitaph for Weston into the cliffs and then sets off into the mountains, encountering a singing creature along the way.

At the summit he comes to a red flower-filled valley with a white coffin, next to a pool with two eldila waiting there.

01. “Subterranean Wonders”

We left Ransom crawling through a cavern where he discovered a firelit cave where he finally ended the Un-man and threw his body into the fire. At the start of this chapter, he wakes hungry and tired, wondering whether it was worth trying to go on.

He does, of course, but Lewis (the author) tells us that Ransom’s memories of this section of his journey are quite disjointed. Incidentally, if you recall, I said in the previous episode that Ransom was going through a symbolic Dante’s “Inferno” and we have more evidence of a terrible place where clouds of steam went up for ever and ever that rather matches Revelation 14:10-11… If I’m right, then today’s chapter should be something more akin to Dante’s “Purgatorio”…

Q. He sees some odd things as he continues his travels. What do you make of them Matt?

• Matt equated it to Ransom experiencing dilerium after waking up from a surgery.
• Ransom sees a Cathedral-esque cavern complete with thrones.

It seemed to him also, though this may have been delirium, that he came through a vast cathedral space which was more like the work of art than that of Nature, with two great thrones at one end and chairs on either hand too large for human occupants. If the things were real, he never found any explanation of them.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• There was also a dark tunnel…

There was a dark tunnel in which a wind from Heaven knows where was blowing and drove sand in his face.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• And a…beetle parade? David lamented Andrew’s absence, as he’s a big Beetles fan.

[He] looked down through fathom below fathom of shafts and natural arches and winding gulfs on to a smooth floor lit with a cold green light. And as he stood and looked it seemed to him that four of the great earth-beetles, dwarfed by distance to the size of gnats, and crawling two by two, came slowly into sight. And they were drawing behind them a flat car, and on the car, upright, unshaken, stood a mantled form, huge and still and slender. And driving its strange team it passed on with insufferable majesty and went out of sight.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• Lewis is showing us that there is a bigger world beyond our imaginations, much like the mer-people living on different planes, in their own separate universe. There is more to the world than man, in other words. He’s very much putting his medieval ideology on display, the order of being. David connected this to “The Silver Chair”, where the children discover the world of the gnomes that they were entirely unaware of.

Assuredly the inside of this world was not for man. But it was for something. And it appeared to Ransom that there might, if a man could find it, be some way to renew the old Pagan practice of propitiating the local gods of unknown places in such fashion that it was no offence to God Himself but only a prudent and courteous apology for trespass. That thing, that swathed form in its chariot, was no doubt his fellow creature. It did not follow that they were equals or had an equal right in the under-land.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• While Ransom is exploring, he also hears drumming.

A long time after this came the drumming–the boom-ba-ba-ba-boom-boom out of pitch darkness, distant at first, then all around him, then dying away after endless prolongation of echoes in the black labyrinth.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• He also sees a column of light. Is this an eldila guiding him where he needs to go? Or a re-presentation of Exodus?

Then came the fountain of cold light–a column, as of water, shining with some radiance of its own, and pulsating, and never any nearer however long he travelled and at last suddenly eclipsed. He did not find what it was.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• Eventually, Ransom slips and finds himself in swift-flowing water. He’s afraid he’s going to be poured out into the pit of fire, but that does not happen.

 it seemed to him that he floated out of blackness into greyness and then into an inexplicable chaos of semi-transparent blues and greens and whites…. A moment later and he was rushed out into broad daylight and air and warmth, and rolled head over heels, and deposited, dazzled and breathless, in the shallows of a great pool.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

02. “Born Again”

Ransom realises that he’s on the side of a high mountain. Almost too weak to move, Ransom rolls out of the pool and sees that he was ejected through the mouth of a cave that looks like it was made of ice. The area is rich and inviting, and this is where Ransom’s recuperation begins:

There were rich dusters of a grape-like fruit glowing under the little pointed leaves, and he could reach them without getting up. Eating passed into sleeping by a transition he could never remember.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• This section reminded David of his single days of midnight snacking.

Q: How long does Ransom stay there?

• It’s difficult to determine. Though it felt like days to Ransom, it was likely 2-3 weeks, according to Lewis.

How long he lay beside the river at the cavern mouth eating and sleeping and waking only to eat and sleep again, he has no idea. He thinks it was only a day or two, but from the state of his body when this period of convalescence ended I should imagine it must have been more like a fortnight or three weeks.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• Like the beginning of the book, this chapter is like a recapitulation of infancy for Ransom.

It was a time to be remembered only in dreams as we remember infancy. Indeed it was a second infancy, in which he was breast-fed by the planet Venus herself: unweaned till he moved from that place.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• Matt described the recuperation as the praise God gives his servants, as described in one of Jesus’ parables. He also compared it to the moments would Jesus would depart to the mountains for prayer.

His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.’

Matthew 25:23

Q. We’re told that “Three impressions of this long Sabbath remain.” What are they?

One is the endless sound of rejoicing water. Another is the delicious life that he sucked from the clusters which almost seemed to bow themselves unasked into his upstretched hands. The third is the song. Now high in air above him, now welling up as if from glens and valleys far below, it floated through his sleep and was the first sound at every waking. It was formless as the song of a bird, yet it was not a bird’s voice. As a bird’s voice is to a flute, so this was to a cello: low and ripe and tender, full-bellied, rich and golden-brown: passionate too, but not with the passions of men.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• Again, this is “Purgatorio”, a healing and restoration from the fight, and the preparation for what is to come.

We’ll come back to this song later…So “when he was cured and his mind was clear again”, Ransom can see where he is. He discovers that what he thought was ice was a kind of translucent rock. There was a lawn of blue turf which dropped down into a series of cataracts. He sees flowers, a wooded valley, and mountain tops. He’s clearly up very high as, when he sees birds, they’re flying below his position. The only noise is the song. Not only that…

The whole place was subject to mists. It kept on vanishing in a veil of saffron or very pale gold and reappearing again–almost as if the golden sky-roof, which indeed looked only a few feet above the mountain-tops, were opening and pouring down riches upon the world.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

03. “You will strike his head, and he will bruise your heel”

Q. As the days pass, Ransom discovers the state of his own body. How’s he doing?

• He remains fragile, but he is quickly healing.

For a long time he was too stiff almost to move and even an incautious breath made him wince. It healed, however, surprisingly quickly.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• Matt points out the toll that the journey took on Lewis, comparing it to each Christian journey on earth. The spiritual journey is rough, and you will take on wounds!

But the king [David] said to Arau′nah, “No, but I will buy it of you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing.” 

2 Samuel 24:24

• Ransom’s most serious injury is on his heel.

But just as a man who has had a fall only discovers the real hurt when the minor bruises and cuts are less painful, so Ransom was nearly well before he detected his most serious injury. It was a wound in his heel. The shape made it quite clear that the wound had been inflicted by human teeth–the nasty, blunt teeth of our own species which crush and grind more than they cut. Oddly enough, he had no recollection of this particular bite in any of his innumerable tussles with the Un-man. It did not look unhealthy, but it was still bleeding. It was not bleeding at all fast, but nothing he could do would stop it.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• Very strong echos to Genesis.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Genesis 3:15

• However, we’re told that Ransom is not worried about this.

But he worried very little about this. Neither the future nor the past really concerned him at this period. Wishing and fearing were modes of consciousness for which he seemed to have lost the faculty.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• This line is almost identical to what Lucy says in “The Last Battle”.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Lucy. “Have you noticed one can’t feel afraid, even if one wants to? Try it.”

C. S. Lewis, Lucy, The Last Battle

• David read a section of St. Augustine’s commentary on John 20 in “City of God”.

We are…afflicted with such love for the blessed martyrs, that we would wish in that kingdom to see on their bodies the marks of those wounds which they have borne for Christ’s sake. And perhaps we shall see them; for they will not have deformity, but dignity, and, though on the body, shine forth not with bodily, but with spiritual beauty… For though all the blemishes of the body shall then be no more, yet the evidences of virtue are not to be called blemishes.

St. Augustine, City of God, Chapter Nineteen

• Was Ransom’s injury prophesied in “Out of the Silent Planet”?

Ransom found it impossible to get down from the wall. He remained sitting there, not frightened but rather uncomfortable because his right leg, which was on the outside, felt so dark and his left leg felt so light. ‘My leg will drop off if it gets much darker,’ he said.

C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

04. “Remembering Weston”

Q. Ransom does something next which we’re told “may appear rather foolish and yet at the time it seemed to him that he could hardly omit it.” What did he do and why do you think he did it?

• He writes an epitaph for Weston. It appears that Ransom is trying to separate Weston from the Un-man, exercising justice and giving Weston his due. It also gave him some much needed exercise.

Within these caves was Burned the body of a Edward Rolles Weston [The fact he knew his middle name is interesting]. A learned hnau of the world which those who inhabit it call Tellus but the Eldila Thulcandra 1896 about Arbol since the time when Maledil (blessed be he) was born as a hnau in Thulcandra. He studied the properties of bodies [He was a physicist] and first of the Tellurians travelled through deep heaven to Malacandra and Perelandra [Gives his achievements] where he gave up his will and reason to the bent eldil when Tellus was making the 1942 revolution after the birth of Maleldil (blessed be he).

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

05. “Going On an Adventure”

After a few more days, Ransom sets out of an adventure. He follows the water down the hill and he’s surprised to find that this does tire his knees (cf David’s hike at the Camino). He discovers a new kind of vegetation, a bluish tree about 2 ½ feet high with streamers out of the top of the trunk, which he named “ripple-trees”. 

 He was approaching a forest of little trees whose trunks were only about two and a half feet high; but from the top of each trunk there grew long streamers which did not rise in the air but flowed in the wind downhill and parallel to the ground. … The soft, almost impalpable, caresses of the long thin leaves on his flesh, the low, singing, rustling, whispering music, and the frolic movement all about him, began to set his heart beating with that almost formidable sense of delight which he had felt before in Perelandra. He realised that these dwarf forests–these ripple-trees as he now christened them–were the explanation of that water-like movement he had seen on the farther slopes.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

Ransom sits down among the trees, meaning that the streamers flowed above his head. He sees tiny tiny mammals, rather like the animals he saw on the Forbidden Island, but the size of a bumble bee. “Here were little miracles of grace which looked more like horses than anything he had yet seen on this world, though they resembled proto-hippos rather than his modern representative.” Ransom is worried about treading on them, but they soon move away.

06. “The Hidden Singer”

Q. Ransom carries on and comes to the wooded valley he had seen. Before he begins the ascent he tries to track down the source of the deep singing. What happens?

• The singer keeps avoiding him.

The noise was very loud now and the thicket very dense so that he could not see a yard ahead, when the music stopped suddenly. There was a sound of rustling and broken twigs and he made hastily in that direction, but found nothing. He had almost decided to give up the search when the song began again a little farther away. Once more he made after it; once more the creature stopped singing and evaded him. He must have played thus at hide-and-seek with it for the best part of an hour before his search was rewarded.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• Eventually, Ransom finds it.

It sat upright like a dog, black and sleek and shiny, but its shoulders were high above Ransom’s head, and the forelegs on which they were pillared were like young trees and the wide soft pads on which they rested were large as those of a camel. The enormous rounded belly was white, and far up above the shoulders the neck rose like that of a horse. The head was in profile from where Ransom stood–the mouth wide open as it sang of joy in thick-coming trills, and the music almost visibly rippled in its glossy throat.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• It appears to be the first Perelandrian creature to show a fear of man. But though the creature acts afraid of Ransom, he believes that in reality, it is just shy.

It was the first thing in Perelandra which seemed to show any fear of man. Yet it was not fear. When he called to it it came nearer. It put its velvet nose into his hand and endured his touch; but almost at once it darted back and, bending its long neck, buried its head in its paws. He could make no headway with it, and when at length it retreated out of sight he did not follow it. To do so would have seemed an injury to its fawn-like shyness, to the yielding softness of its expression, its evident wish to be for ever a sound and only a sound in the thickest centre of untravelled woods. He resumed his journey: a few seconds later the song broke out behind him, louder and lovelier than before, as if in a pæan of rejoicing at its recovered privacy.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• David commiserated with the creature, having his privacy imposed upon by his children.

07. “Ad Alta!”

Having now found the source of the singing, Ransom then turns to make his ascent of the great mountain. It’s steep, but he doesn’t seem to tire. He passes through ripple-trees which made me think that it would look like Ransom is climbing up a waterfall (interestingly, an image we see at the end of “The Last Battle”).

He went on unwearied, but always bleeding a little from his heel. He was not lonely nor afraid. He had no desires and did not even think about reaching the top nor why he should reach it. To be always climbing this was not, in his present mood, a process but a state, and in that state of life he was content. It did once cross his mind that he had died and felt no weariness because he had no body. The wound in his heel convinced him that this was not so; but if it had been so indeed, and these had been trans-mortal mountains, his journey could hardly have been more great and strange.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

Q: What do you make of this?

• Rather than saying that man would have no desires after death, Lewis is instead trying to communicate a sense of peace.
• This scene also reminded David of “The Great Divorce” and the journey from the plains of heaven to the mountain.

08. “On Holy Ground”

Q. Ransom sleeps beneath the ripple-trees that night and continues his journey the next day, climbing through dense mists. What’s the odd feeling that he has?

• He has the impression that he is entering a holy place.

And now he began to feel a strange mixture of sensations–a sense of perfect duty to enter that secret place which the peaks were guarding combined with an equal sense of trespass. He dared not go up that pass: he dared not do otherwise. He looked to see an angel with a flaming sword: he knew that Maleldil bade him go on. “This is the holiest and the most unholy thing I have ever done,” he thought; but he went on. And now he was right in the pass.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• Matt talks about the humility of Ransom, having a sense of undeservedness even though he has accomplished a great task. He compared it to Simon Peter falling to Christ’s feet.

 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

Luke 5:8

• He begins to walk through red flowers, which means that his bleeding ankle leaves no trace. He then sees the “top” of the mountain – a shallow cup. It seems like a place Orual might like to visit … There he finds many things.
• A rose-red valley with a pool at the center…

He saw a valley, a few acres in size, as secret as a valley in the top of a cloud: a valley pure rose-red, with ten or twelve of the glowing peaks about it, and in the centre a pool, married in pure unrippled clearness to the gold of the sky.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• … a white coffin …

This thing was own brother to the coffin-like chariot in which the strength of angels had brought him from Earth to Venus. It was prepared for his return. If he had said, “It is for my burial,” his feelings would not have been very different. 

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• … and angels!

And while he thought of this he became gradually aware that there was something odd about the flowers at two places in his immediate neighbourhood. Next, he perceived that the oddity was an oddity in the light; thirdly, that it was in the air as well as on the ground. Then, as the blood pricked his veins and a familiar, yet strange, sense of diminished being possessed him, he knew that he was in the presence of two eldila. He stood still. It was not for him to speak.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Fifteen

• David considered the implications of the blood-red flowers and water, and that Ransom was on a mountain summit… is this a reflection of Calvary?
• We were previously led to believe that Eldila were not on this planet. David and Matt discuss the potential implications of this.

Wrap Up

Concluding Thoughts

• This transitional chapter is about a good fight fought, won, and acknowledged, as the Lord will be with you all the way through, and will restore you.

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