A version of this first appeared in Lamp-Post of the Southern
California C. S. Lewis Society 26, nos. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 2002): 6-18.
Before Lewis was
ten years old, he wrote in his diary: “I
read Paradise Lost, reflections there-on” (March 5, 1908).[1] While it is unclear how much of John Milton’s
masterpiece he actually read and understood at this young age, this entry
clearly marks Lewis’ early affection and admiration for
In short, it is no
exaggeration to say that the greatest influence on Lewis’ poetic maturation and
development was
The first
indications of
The sub-title “A cycle of lyrical poems” was not given without a reason: the reason is that the book is not a collection of really independent pieces, but the working out, loosely of course and with digressions, of a general idea . . . To call it a cycle is to prepare the reader for this plan and to induce him to follow the order of the poems as I have put them . . . Of course one could dispense with a sub-title altogether, but I rather approve of the old practice by which a book gives some account of itself—as Paradise Lost—a heroic poem in twelve books—The Pilgrim’s Progress—being an account of his journey from this world to the next (Lewis’ emphasis; September 18, 1918).[9]
So even in this conception of SB,
Lewis uses PL as an artistic point of departure..
An even clearer
indication of
Skipping ahead
more than twenty years, we learn that when Lewis writes his brother, Warren, on
July 20-21, 1940, about his initial conception of The Screwtape Letters
(hereafter SL), he refers to
I don’t know if I’m weaker than other people: but it is a positive revelation to me how while the speech lasts it is impossible not to waver just a little. I should be useless as a schoolmaster or a policeman. Statements which I know to be untrue all but convince me, at any rate for the moment, if only the man says them unflinchingly. The same weakness is why I am a slow examiner: if a candidate with a bold, mature handwriting attributed Paradise Lost to Wordsworth, I shd. feel a tendency to go and look it up for fear he might be right after all.[12]
When the letter continues, Lewis explains the genesis of SL; in addition, he offers an example of how one might fall under the sway of a powerful speaker:
I have been to Church for the first time for many weeks owing to the illness . . . Before the service was over—one cd. wish these things came more seasonably—I was struck by an idea for a book wh. I think might be both useful and entertaining. It wd. be called As one Devil to Another and would consist of letters from an elderly retired devil to a young devil who has just started work on his first “patient.” The idea wd. be to give all the psychology of temptation from the other point of view. e.g. “About undermining his faith in prayer, I don’t think you need have any difficulty with his intellect, provided you never say the wrong thing at the wrong moment. After all, the Enemy will either answer his prayers or not. If he does not, then that’s simple—it shows prayers are not good. If he does—I’ve always found that, oddly enough, this can be just as easily utilized. It needs only a word from you to make him believe that the very fact of feeling more patient after he’s prayed for patience will be taken as a proof that prayer is a kind of self hypnosis.[13]
This powerful voice eventually becomes Screwtape, and a reading of SL reveals that, if nothing else, Screwtape evolved into an unflinching, compelling speaker, capable of swaying toward evil even the sturdiest saint.
Moreover,
it is worth noting here that Screwtape is a direct literary descendant of
While the pervading war metaphor is one transparent link between PL and SL, a second one concerns the nature of the devils in each work. For example, in PL Satan argues that he is self-created. In Book V Satan is rebuked for his rebellion by the angel Abdiel; in part Abdiel chastises Satan for his lack of gratitude toward the God who condescended to create him and all things: “As by his Word the mighty Father made / All things, ev’n thee, and all the Spirits of Heav’n / By him created in thir bright degrees” (836-38). Satan scorns Abdiel’s argument and offers one worthy of an offended child:
That we were form’d then say’st thou? And the work
Of secondary hands, by task transferr’d
From Father to his Son? strange point and new!
Doctrine which we would know whence learnt: who saw
When this creation was? remember’st thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-rais’d
By our own quick’ning power (853-61)
In effect,
Now, of course, the property of a self-existent being is that it can understand its own existence; it is causa sui. The quality of a created being is that it just finds itself existing, it knows not how nor why. Yet at the same time, if a creature is silly enough to try to prove that is was not created, what is more natural than for it to say, “Well, I wasn’t there to see it being done”? Yet what more futile, since in thus admitting ignorance of its own beginnings it proves that those beginnings lay outside itself? Satan fall instantly into this trap . . . as indeed he cannot help doing—and produces as proof of his self-existence what is really its disproof.[14]
Another influence of PL upon SL with regard to the nature of the devils concerns the idea that the fallen angels fell through an abuse of their free wills and that, accordingly, their natures are depraved. While there are multiple examples of this in PL, perhaps the best place to see this is at the beginning of Book II where the fallen angels, banished to hell, hold a council at their newly created palace, Pandemonium. Called by Satan, the Council debates the issue of what they should do to oppose God now that they have been dispelled from Heaven. Four fallen angels speak. Moloch argues for open war. Belial argues for inactivity, suggesting if they stay quiet then perhaps God’s wrath against them will lessen. Mammon claims they can take the substance of hell and create an imitation of heaven—they can make a heaven of hell. Beelzebub, Satan’s mouthpiece, scorns all these plans and directs their focus on the newly created world inhabited by “some new Race call’d Man”; he argues they should:
Seduce them to our Party, that thir God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works. This would surpass
Common revenge, and interrupt his joy
In our Confusion, and our Joy upraise
In his disturbance; when his darling Sons
Hurl’d headlong to partake with us, shall curse
Thir frail Original, and faded bliss,
Faded so soon. Advise if this be worth
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here
Hatching vain Empires. (368-78)
Clearly Satan, via
Beelzebub, manipulates the council in such a way as to insure that his will is
followed; in effect, he abuses their already abused wills in pursuit of his
political agenda. Later, Milton’s God in
Book III comments on the different way in which he will treat the fallen angels
vs. fallen man: “[The fallen angels] by
thir own suggestion fell, / Self-tempted, self-depraved: Man falls deceiv’d / By th’ other first: Man therefore shall find grace, / The other
none” (129-32). That is,
In the Preface to SL Lewis considers the same point: “The proper question is whether I believe in devils. I do. That is to say, I believe in angels, and I believe that some of these, by the abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God and, as a corollary, to us. These we may call devils. They do not differ in nature from good angels, but their nature is depraved. Devil is the opposite of angel only as Bad Man is the opposite of Good Man” (vii). Throughout SL Lewis offers us numerous opportunities to see the results of the abuse of free will in Screwtape, and by allusion, to his colleagues Glubose, Scabtree, Triptweese, and Toadpipe. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the repeated difficulty of Screwtape and the forces of hell to understand what motivates God to “love” (a word he can hardly get out of his mouth) humans. At one point Screwtape even has to backtrack and apologize for using the word love:
The truth is, I slipped by mere carelessness into saying that the Enemy really loves the humans. That, of course, is an impossibility. He is one being; they are distinct from Him. Their good cannot be His. All His talk about Love must be a disguise for something else—He must have some real motive for creating them and taking so much trouble about them. The reason one comes to talk as if He really had this impossible Love is our utter failure to find out that real motive . . . Members of His faction have frequently admitted that if ever we came to understand what He means by Love, the war would be over and we should reenter Heaven. And there lies the great task. We know that He cannot really love: nobody can; it doesn’t make sense. If we could only find out what He is really up to! (86-87)
Screwtape’s refusal to comprehend God’s love is an abuse of his free will. That is, there actually is no intellectual barrier to Screwtape’s understanding the idea of God’s love; indeed, as this passage shows, he has already “slipped into” using such language. The real reason Screwtape and the other devils flatly reject the idea of God’s love is that to do so would violate their independence from God. To accept God’s love would mean bringing their wills in accordance with His. This they willfully choose not to do. As Luther put it, the opposite of belief is not unbelief; it is self-sufficiency. Screwtape and the other devils choose by an act of their wills to live independently from God; they want nothing to do with him, relying instead upon their own wits and stratagems. Although they would never admit this, they are cosmic orphans, intentionally separating themselves from God. Indeed, they are allergic to God. They willfully choose to live outside His grace, mercy, and love. They cannot understand what motivates God’s love because they choose by an act of their wills not to come under the covering of His loving concern.[15]
Before
leaving the matter of the devils in PL and SL, we should explore
the irony of Lewis’ argument in the Preface to SL when he
says that literature’s best devils are Dante’s, not Milton’s: “[Dante’s] devils . . . in their rage, spite,
and obscenity, are far more like what the reality must be than anything in
Milton.
Regardless,
and Lewis’ claim notwithstanding, I suggest Screwtape and his colleagues have
more affinities with
The best
example of this is revealed in the way that both Satan and Screwtape use poetry
as rhetoric; that is, both appropriate poetic language to advance their
political agendas. There can be little
debate that
Farewell happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than hee
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n. (I, 249-263)
Here Satan manages to convince himself that his fall from heaven into the noxious pit of hell is actually a good thing; he believes his own rhetoric. He is the political candidate who, after being soundly thrashed at the ballot box, still clings tenaciously to his platform; down but not out.[16] While Satan’s poetic rhetoric is directed against himself here, there are countless examples throughout PL wherein we see him exercise verse arguments to bring about his will.
On a smaller scale, Screwtape also has the gift. While it is true his letters in are not in verse, the rhetorical quality of his poetic prose appears in a number of passages. For instance, notice how the rhythmic cadence of thesis/antithesis pattern in the following passage functions much like the blank verse of PL: “We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, he wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over” (38). In another passage where Screwtape tells Wormwood that time works on hell’s side for two reasons, his prose approaches free verse (as I indicate by the printing below):
The routine of adversity,
the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes,
the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them,
the drabness which we create in their lives,
and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—
all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Prosperity knits a man to the World.
He feels that he is “finding his place in it,”
while actually it is finding its place in him.
His increasing reputation,
his widening circle of acquaintances,
his sense of importance,
the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work,
build up in him a sense of being really at home on Earth,
which is just what we want. (132)
Screwtape’s rhetorical
poetic prose, like Satan’s, is used on some occasions to convince himself of
the legitimacy of his cause, but more often than not it is used to direct
Wormwood toward an efficacious temptation of his patient. Given the grand scale of PL,
Another
parallel I want to draw between Milton’s Satan and Screwtape is that both are
master politicians. That is, whatever
his other considerable skills (and they are many), Screwtape is a master
politician cut from the same clothe as
Similarly, Lewis’ senior tempter is manipulative; he advises Wormwood on how to use prayer, the church, the “right” kind of friends, the world, pride, gluttony, habits, spiritual dryness, humility, war, fear, cowardice, party affiliation, boredom, humor, sex, time, and jargon to tempt the patient. Screwtape is clever, imaginative, witty, and perceptive. In addition, he has a keen intellect and can analyze with uncanny insight (for the most part) what kinds of things Hell can use to attack humans spiritually:
You will say that these are very small sins [flippancy, boredom, sloth]; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, with sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. (56)
Screwtape’s mastery as a manipulator becomes frightfully clear to Wormwood too late; his last letter begins “My dear, my very dear, Wormwood, my poppet, my pignie . . . I have always desired you, as you (pitiful fool) desired me. The difference is that I am the stronger. I think they will give you to me now; or a bit of you. Love you? Why, yes. As dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on” (145), and ends “Most truly do I sign myself Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle Screwtape” (149). The grimly humorous truth is that Screwtape has been manipulating Wormwood all the time into a pie, casserole, or fricassee.
The
final parallel I make between Milton’s Satan and Screwtape is the
uncontrollable ignominy each experiences.
In Book X Satan returns to hell anxious to announce his success against
Adam and Eve. However, at the moment
when he finishes boasting of his success, instead of hearing applause from the
fallen angels: “Contrary he hears / On all sides, from innumerable tongues / A dismal universal
hiss, the sound / Of public scorn” (506-09).
Before he realizes what is happening, he and the fallen angels are
transformed into monstrous serpents, thus explaining the hissing he hears. Further, they are compelled to climb a grove
of trees and bite into the same kind of fruit Eve had been tempted to eat;
however, instead of tasting sweetness, they “Chew’d bitter Ashes, which th’
offended taste / With spattering noise rejected: oft they assay’d, / Hunger and
thirst constraining, drugg’d as oft, / With hatefullest disrelish writh’d thir
jaws / With soot and cinders fill’d” (566-70).
It is this scene of highest irony in PL that Lewis echoes in letter 22 of SL. In the letter Screwtape is sharply critical of Wormwood’s failure to keep the patient from falling in love with a Christian girl: “I have looked up this girl’s dossier and am horrified at what I find. Not only a Christian but such a Christian—a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouselike, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss! The little brute! She makes me vomit” (101). As he rages on, the letter breaks off and we are told it is finished by another hand:
In the heat of composition I find that I have inadvertently allowed myself to assume the form of a large centipede. I am accordingly dictating the rest to my secretary. Now that the transformation is complete, I recognize it as a periodical phenomenon. Some rumour of it has reached the humans, and a distorted account of it appears in the poet Milton, with the ridiculous addition that such changes of shape are a “punishment” imposed on us by the Enemy. (103)
I think Lewis enjoys this
joke he pulls on Screwtape, and his debt to
Having made the lengthy argument that Screwtape is the
literary descendant of
In
conclusion, while we laugh at Screwtape, we also fear him, and rightly so. He is no Underwood Deviled Ham devil. Instead, Screwtape writes with a stiletto;
via his lucid, diabolical epistles he offers a disturbing insight into the
nature of temptation. As a result,
instead of glib, pre-packaged, spiritual truisms, SL offers us a
spiritual backhand, and the slaps are painful and a bit unnerving. At the same time, I argue Lewis’s fascinating
insights into the psychology of temptation are more nourishing than the
devotional pabulum mass-produced by some Christian publishers. SL is an anti-devotional demanding we
take serious stock of our spiritual lives.
Whether
Works Cited
Hooper, Walter. C. S. Lewis:
A Companion and Guide.
Lewis, C. S. A Preface to
-----------. C.
S. Lewis, Collected Letters, Vol. 1: Family Letters 1903-1931. Edited by Walter Hooper.
-----------. Letters of C. S. Lewis. Memoir and ed. Warren
Lewis. Rev. edition
edited by Walter Hooper.
-----------. The Screwtape Letters.
-----------. Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics.
Milton, John. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes:
[1] cited in Walter Hooper’s C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, 459
[2] In letter after letter to Greeves Lewis freely shares his latest poetic delight. For instance, in a letter dated June 5, 1914, he writes: “I have discovered an author exactly after my own heart, whom I am sure you would delight in Y. B. Yeats. He writes plays and poems of rare spirit and beauty about our old Irish mythology. . . His works have all got that strange, eerie feeling about them, of which we are both professed admirers” (C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters: Family Letters 1903-1931, 59; hereafter CL). About reading aloud in Greek the Iliad, Lewis writes to Greeves on September 26, 1914: “Those fine, simple, euphonious lines, as they roll on with a roar like that of the ocean, strike a chord in one’s mind that no modern literature approaches” (71). Hearing and reading poetry aloud is always an important principle as he writes to his brother eighteen years later: “By the way I most fully agree with you about ‘the lips being invited to share the banquet’ in poetry, and always ‘mouth’ it while I read . . . I look upon this ‘mouthing’ as an infallible mark of those who really likes poetry” (April 8, 1932, Warren Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis, 303; hereafter LL). Of the Morte D’Arthur he writes Greeves on January 26, 1915, “it has opened up a new world to me” (CL, 103). A month later he says “it is really the greatest thing I’ve ever read” (104). Many other letters also reveal that he especially enjoys reading the Iliad, Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Milton’s “Comus” and Paradise Lost, Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound”, Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”, and the poetry of Tennyson, Morris, Arnold, and Swinburne.
[3] CL, 225.
[4] 332.
[5] 274.
[6] 290.
[7] 504.
[8] Anecdotally, when I was compiling the index to my book, C. S.
Lewis, Poet: The Legacy of His Poetic Impulse, I was only mildly surprised
to note that the largest number of references to writers who specifically
influenced particular poems of Lewis was
[9] CL, 399-400.
[10] SB, 32.
[11] Lewis’
debt to
[12] LL, 355.
[13] 355.
[14] 97-98.
[15] Note as well this passage:
Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real center, what the Enemy calls the Heart). All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from Our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there. (31)
[16] While
it is beyond the scope of this paper, it should be noted that
[17] In PL Sin is Satan’s daughter and Death is his son.
[18] Screwtape’s rage here is one of the few times we see Dante’s influence upon Lewis’ conception of the devils.