S8E20 – Perelandra – Chapter 17): “Blessed Be He”

Ransom is swept up into The Great Dance…

S8E20: Chapter 17 – “Blessed Be He” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-Week

“Where Maleldil is, there is the center. He is in every place. Not some of Him in one place and some in another, but in each place the whole Maleldil, even in the smallness beyond thought. There is no way out of the center save into the Bent Will which casts itself into Nowhere. Blessed be He!”

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (Chapter 17)

Chit-Chat

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Email from Cosette:
I just listened to your newest episode released this week, and I wanted to say that I, for ones love the debate over Lewis’s best book, and I think it’s hilarious.

Also, I loved the references to the influences and Longaevi, as well. I just recently finished reading The Discarded Image and wrote about it on my blog, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole medieval model, and hearing it referred to helps me comprehend a little better.

Toast

Dave, Jody and Steven

Good Stories Podcast

Discussion

Chapter Summary

King Tor and Queen Tinidril arrive and Oyarsa confers on them the care of the planet. 

Tor describes his own adventures during Tinidril’s temptation, and outlines his plans for the future, which include the “retaking” of Thulcandra.

Ransom’s many questions lead to a dream-like poetic sequence in which Maleldil is identified as the center of the universe, and all repeatedly proclaim “Blessed Be He”.

Ransom awakes to discover a year has somehow passed. Tor washes Ransom’s bleeding ankle. They then say their farewells and pack him into the coffin with red flowers, after which Ransom finally departs Perelandra.

01: “Images and Likeness”

Q. How does Ransom respond to the arrival of the King and Queen?

• He falls down before them and then says “Do not move away, do not raise me up,” he said. “I have never before seen a man or a woman. I have lived all my life among shadows and broken images. Oh, my Father and my Mother, my Lord and my Lady, do not move, do not answer me yet. My own father and mother I have never seen. Take me for your son. We have been alone in my world for a great time.”

Q. What is it about the King’s appearance which makes such an impression on him?

• He looked like Christ:
  • It was that face which no man can say he does not know. You might ask how it was possible to look upon it and not to commit idolatry, not to mistake it for that of which it was the likeness. For the resemblance was, in its own fashion, infinite, so that almost you could wonder at finding no sorrows in his brow and no wounds in his hands and feet. 
• However, there was no rush towards forbidden reverence:
  • Plaster images of the Holy One may before now have drawn to themselves the adoration they were meant to arouse for the reality. But here, where His live image, like Him within and without, made by His own bare hands out of the depth of divine artistry, His masterpiece of self-portraiture coming forth from His workshop to delight all worlds, walked and spoke before Ransom’s eyes, it could never be taken for more than an image. Nay, the very beauty of it lay in the certainty that it was a copy, like and not the same, an echo, a rhyme, an exquisite reverberation of the uncreated music prolonged in a created medium.
• Jack and the Saints and disordered love
  • C. S. Lewis and Mary by Jason Lepojärvi
  • Maintain distinctions, but just love more!

01: “There’s a new Oyarsa in Town”

Q. Ransom is lost in wonder, but when he comes to himself again he finds that the Oyarsa of Perelandra is speaking. What does she then declare?

• She says that she is no longer in charge. 
• Maleldil now puts everything in Perelandra, including  the others of the waves whom yet you know not, into the hands of the King and Queen. She says:
  • your word is law unchangeable and the very daughter of the Voice. In all that circle which this world runs about Arbol, you are Oyarsa. Enjoy it well. Give names to all creatures, guide all natures to perfection. Strengthen the feebler, lighten the darker, love all. 
• She addresses them with a number of names:
  • man and woman
  • Oyarsa-Perelendr
  •  the Adam
  • the Crown
  • Tor and Tinidril
    • Tuor and Idril 
    • Blended with Tinuviel/Luthien
  • Baru and Baru’ah
    • Possibly a figure from ain ancient Assyro-Babylonian religion
  • Ask and Embla
    • The first two human beings in one of the old Norse creation myths
  • Yatsur and Yatsurah
    • Hebrew past-participle for kneaded or moulded

Q. How do the King and Queen respond to this?

• From their throne-like bank beside the pool, the King thanks Oyarsa
• He says that they only met her today, but they had often seen traces of her in nature
• He says that Perelandra is Maleldil’s gift, but also the Oyarsa’s:
  • our joy is the greater because we take it by your gift as well as by His
• He asks what she will do next and she says:
  • “It lies in your bidding, Tor-Oyarsa, …whether I now converse in Deep Heaven only or also in that part of Deep Heaven which is to you a World.”
• Tor says they’d very much like her to stay to help and to counsel them and she agrees:
  • “It is very much our will,” said the King, “that you remain with us, both for the love we bear you and also that you may strengthen us with counsel and even with your operations. Not till we have gone many times about Arbol shall we grow up to the full management of the dominion which Maleldil puts into our hands: nor are we yet ripe to steer the world through Heaven nor to make rain and fair weather upon us. If it seems good to you, remain.”
• As they converse, it strikes Ransom as odd that there isn’t a discord between the King and the Eldil:
  • While this dialogue proceeded, it was a wonder that the contrast between the Adam and the eldils was not a discord. On the one side, the crystal, bloodless voice, and the immutable expression of the snow-white face; on the other the blood coursing in the veins, the feeling trembling on the lips and sparkling in the eyes, the might of the man’s shoulders, the wonder of the woman’s breasts, a splendour of virility and richness of womanhood unknown on earth, a living torrent of perfect animality–yet when these met, the one did not seem rank nor the other spectral. Animal rationale–an animal, yet also a reasonable soul: such, he remembered, was the old definition of Man. But he had never till now seen the reality. For now he saw this living Paradise, the Lord and Lady, as the resolution of discords, the bridge that spans what would else be a chasm in creation, the keystone of the whole arch. By entering that mountain valley they had suddenly united the warm multitude of the brutes behind him with the transcorporeal intelligences at his side. They closed the circle, and with their coming all the separate notes of strength or beauty which that assembly had hitherto struck became one music.
    • Animal Rationale – used by ancient (Seneca) and medieval (Aquinas) philosophers

Q. Did something like this happen on Malacandra? It doesn’t seem so…

03: “A gift with many givers”

Q. To whom does Tor credit their rule?

• It’s like an Oscar’s acceptance speech – he thanks everyone! Oyarsa, Ransom, and even the animals!
  • “And as it is not Maleldil’s gift simply, …but also Maleldil’s gift through you, and thereby the richer, so it is not through you only, but through a third, and thereby the richer again. 
• As King he offers a declaration that Ransom will forever be praised on Perelandra:
  • And this is the first word I speak as Tor-Oyarsa-Perelendri; that in our world, as long as it is a world, neither shall morning come nor night but that we and all our children shall speak to Maleldil of Ransom the man of Thulcandra and praise him to one another. 
• He tells Ransom that he is, in some sense, their Lord:
  • And to you, Ransom, I say this, that you have called us Lord and Father, Lady and Mother. And rightly, for this is our name. But in another fashion we call you Lord and Father. For it seems to us that Maleldil sent you into our world at that day when the time of our being young drew to its end, and from it we must now go up or go down, into corruption or into perfection. Maleldil has taken us where He meant us to be: but of Maleldil’s instruments in this, you were the chief.”
• Ransom comes to them, tries to fall at their feet, but they rise to meet him and embrace him. They want to have him sit between them but this makes him uncomfortable so he sits down to their left.

Q. How does Tinidril now view her temptation?

• She says that as soon as she awoke after Ransom had chased off the Un-man her mind was cleared and she wonders how they could have been so ignorant:
  • The reason for not yet living on the Fixed Land is now so plain. How could I wish to live there except because it was Fixed? And why should I desire the Fixed except to make sure–to be able on one day to command where I should be the next and what should happen to me? It was to reject the wave–to draw my hands out of Maleldil’s, to say to Him, ‘Not thus, but thus’–to put in our own power what times should roll towards us . . . as if you gathered fruits together to-day for to-morrow’s eating instead of taking what came. That would have been cold love and feeble trust. And out of it how could we ever have climbed back into love and trust again?”

Q.  What does Ransom say to this?

• Ransom says he sees this too but that “…in my world it would pass for folly. We have been evil so long”
• He then stops, thinking that they’re not going to understand…
• …but then realizes that he’s used the Old Solar word evil which he had never heard before.

It seems that Maleldil is putting things directly into his mind too!

04: “Knowledge of Evil”

Q. The King says that Maleldil has put many things into their heads, including what happened at Earth’s fall (Interesting he says Maleldil has put into our mind as though he and his wife are literally of one mind!). He says that they’ve learned of evil, but not as the Evil One wishes them to learn and therefore have learned it better – why?

04: “The King’s Adventure”

Q. The Queen then explains that the King was on his on adventure while she was being tempted. What happened?

• She says “…Maleldil drove him far away into a green sea where forests grow up from the bottom through the waves”
  • The King names it “Lur”
• The King goes on to say…
  • “For many hours I learned the properties of shapes by drawing lines in the turf of a little island on which I rode. For many hours I learned new things about Maleldil and about His Father and the Third One. We knew little of this while we were young. But after that He showed me in a darkness what was happening to the Queen. And I knew it was possible for her to be undone. And then I saw what had happened in your world, and how your Mother fell and how your Father went with her, doing her no good thereby and bringing the darkness upon all their children. And then it was before me like a thing coming towards my hand . . . what I should do in like case. There I learned of evil and good, of anguish and joy.”
• The King has an interesting take on the Fall:
  • “Though a man were to be torn in two halves . . . though half of him turned into earth. . . . The living half must still follow Maleldil. For if it also lay down and became earth, what hope would there be for the whole? But while one half lived, through it He might send life back into the other.”

Q. The King then talks about the future. What does he say?

• They’re not always going to be bound to the planet
  • …already we feel that growing up within our bodies which our young wisdom can hardly overtake. They will not always be bodies bound to the low worlds
• They’re going to judge from the “throne” they’re sitting on
  • While this World goes about Arbol ten thousand times, we shall judge and hearten our people from this throne. Its name is Tai Harendrimar, The Hill of Life
• The Fixed Land is going to become a place of worship
  • “On the Fixed Land which once was forbidden,” said Tor the King, “we will make a great place to the splendour of Maleldil. Our sons shall bend the pillars of rock into arches…  And there our sons will make images.
• They’re going to fill the world with life and nurture it:
  • We will fill this world with our children. We will know this world to the centre. We will make the nobler of the beasts so wise that they will become hnau and speak: their lives shall awake to a new life in us as we awake in Maleldil. 
• They’ll head into Deep Heaven:
  • When the time is ripe for it and the ten thousand circlings are nearly at an end, we will tear the sky curtain and Deep Heaven shall become familiar to the eyes of our sons as the trees and the waves to ours.”
• …and then beyond:
  • “Then it is Maleldil’s purpose to make us free of Deep Heaven. Our bodies will be changed, but not all changed. We shall be as the eldila, but not all as the eldila. And so will all our sons and daughters be changed in the time of their ripeness, until the number is made up which Maleldil read in His Fa

05: “The End or a Beginning”

Q. In response to hearing Tor’s plan’s, Ransom asks if once all this happens it will be “the end of the world of Perelandra”. Tor is confused, saying that it’ll finally be the beginning of things! However, he says that one thing must be rectified first – what is it?

• Earth’s restoration must be completed
  • The siege of your world shall be raised, the black spot cleared away, before the real beginning. In those days Maleldil will go to war–in us, and in many who once were hnau on your world, and in many from far off and in many eldila, and, last of all, in Himself unveiled, He will go down to Thulcandra. Some of us will go before. It is in my mind, Malacandra, that thou and I will be among those. We shall fall upon your moon, wherein there is a secret evil, and which is as the shield of the Dark Lord of Thulcandra–scarred with many a blow. We shall break her. Her light shall be put out. Her fragments shall fall into your world and the seas and the smoke shall arise so that the dwellers in Thulcandra will no longer see the light of Arbol. And as Maleldil Himself draws near, the evil things in your world shall show themselves stripped of disguise so that plagues and horrors shall cover your lands and seas. But in the end all shall be cleansed, and even the memory of your Black Oyarsa blotted out, and your world shall be fair and sweet and reunited to the field of Arbol and its true name shall be heard again. 
• Tor expects that there is rumour of this on Thulcandra, but Ransom explains that most people have ceased to think about such things and those who do call it “the Last Things”.
• The King says it’s not so much a beginning, but the correction of a false start
  • “I do not call it the beginning,” said Tor the King. “It is but the wiping out of a false start in order that the world may then begin. As when a man lies down to sleep, if he finds a twisted root under his shoulder he will change his place–and after that his real sleep begins. Or as a man setting foot on an island, may make a false step. He steadies himself and after that his journey begins. You would not call that steadying of himself a last thing?”

Q. What is it about this which seems to unsettle Ransom?

• Humanity sounds so insignificant
  • “I am full of doubts and ignorance,” said Ransom. “In our world those who know Maleldil at all believe that His coming down to us and being a man is the central happening of all that happens. If you take that from me, Father, whither will you lead me? Surely not to the enemy’s talk which thrusts my world and my race into a remote corner and gives me a universe with no centre at all, but millions of worlds that lead nowhere or (what is worse) to more and more worlds for ever, and comes over me with numbers and empty spaces and repetitions and asks me to bow down before bigness. Or do you make your world the centre? But I am troubled. What of the people on Malacandra? Would they also think that their world was the centre? I do not even see how your world can rightly be called yours. You were made yesterday and it is from of old. The most of it is water where you cannot live. And what of the things beneath its crust? And of the great spaces with no world at all? Is the enemy easily answered when He says that all is without plan or meaning? As soon as we think we see one it melts away into nothing, or into some other plan that we never dreamed of, and what was the centre becomes the rim, till we doubt if any shape or plan or pattern was ever more than a trick of our own eyes, cheated with hope, or tired with too much looking. To what is all driving? What is the morning you speak of? What is it the beginning of?”

In response, Tor says it is “beginning of the Great Game, of the Great Dance, …I know little of it as yet. Let the eldila speak.”

07: “Blessed Be He”

Q. Honestly, I think we could have an entire episode on the “Blessed Be He” section, and I’m sure that this’ll be a subject of attention in the next episode with Dr. Junius Johnson… But what do you both make of it?

• This was rewritten by Lewis’ friend, Ruth Pitter as “irregular Spenserian stanzas”, an appropriate form given what Lewis wrote about Spenser in The Allergory of Love and Spenser’s Images of Life:
  • What Spenser has done is to make an image of the whole of life, a hymn to the universe that he and his con­tem­poraries believed themselves to inhabit. … For the universe, as they conceived it, is a great dance or ceremony or society. It is Chalcidius’ caelestis chorea and Alanus’ cosmic city of which Earth is a suburb..
    – Spenser’s Images of Life
• Maleldil is at the center of everything!
• A reference to the “morning star” (Revelation 2:28)
• We have other planets named: Jupiter (Glund), Saturn (Lurga) and Uranus (Neruval).
• We’ll also be looking at the poetic rending of this section by Lewis’ friend Ruth Pitter in a couple of episodes with Dr. Don W. King.

08: “One year later…”

Q. When Ransom comes to himself, what does he discover?

• Ransom is alone with Tor and Tinidril 
• The animals are gone
  • Echo of The Faire Queene:
    • Then was that whole assembly quite dismist,

And Natur’s selfe did vanish, whither no man wist.

“Two Cantos of Mutabilitie” (Faerie Queene, VII.7.59)

• Tinidril says that “They have gone to bring up their whelps and lay their eggs, to build their nests and spin their webs and dig their burrows, to sing and play and to eat and drink.”
• What does this mean?

• The light makes it seem like not much time has passed, but Tor says he now realizes that a year has passed since they arrived at the mountain.
  • He also suggests that  “I believe the waves of time will often change for us henceforward. We are coming to have it in our own choice whether we shall be above them and see many waves together or whether we shall reach them one by one as we used to.”
    • What does this mean?
• This section ends with Tinidril saying she thinks the eildila will now be taking Ransom back to Earth

09: “Foot-washing”

Q. Tor notices that Ransom’s heel is bleeding, describing it as a red dew coming up out of your foot. Rather touchingly, what does the King then do?

• He says “Sit down, friend,” and then kneels down and washes Ransom’s foot.
  • Strong echoes to John 13 when Jesus washes his disciples feet
  • Like Peter, Ransom initially resists.
• The King says he’s never seen blood (hrû) before and marvels that this is the substance wherewith Maleldil remade the worlds before any world was made.
• Ransom’s bleeding doesn’t stop – Tinidril is concerned that this means Ransom will die, but Tor says I think that any of his race who has breathed the air that he has breathed and drunk the waters that he has drunk since he came to the Holy Mountain will not find it easy to die.
  • He points to the lifespans of those generations closer to the Fall in genesis
    • Adam – 930 years
    • Seth, Adam’s son – 912 years
    • Noah – 950 years
    • Shem – 600 years
    • Abraham – 175 years;
    • Moses – 120 years
    • David – 70
  • Ransom says that most people take this as a story or poetry

10: “Parting is such sweet sorrow”

Q. What happens during Ransom’s final moments on Perelandra?

• They all feel an impulse to delay
  • Tinidril asks Tor what this is and he says he’ll give it a name another day!
• Tinidril describes it thus: “It is like a fruit with a very thick shell… The joy of our meeting when we meet again in the Great Dance is the sweet of it. But the rind is thick–more years thick than I can count.”
  • If the Un-man had succeeded they’d be trying to get at that sweet without biting through the shell… And so it would not be ‘That sweet’ at all
• Ransom lays down in the coffin.
• When Ransom says they must cover his eyes, Tor and Tinidril come back with arms full of the rose-red lilies which Lewis and Humphrey found packed into the coffin at the start of the book when Ransom returned to earth.

They both kiss him and the last thing Ransom sees is the King’s hand raised in blessing and they both say “Farewell, Friend and Saviour, farewell… Farewell till we three pass out of the dimensions of time. Speak of us always to Maleldil as we speak always of you. The splendour, the love, and the strength be upon you.”

Wrap Up

Concluding Thoughts

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