© Don W. King
A version of this first appeared in Christianity and Literature 49 (Spring 2000): 331-356.
The Poetry of Prose: C. S.
Lewis, Ruth Pitter, and Perelandra
An examination of the correspondence from C. S. Lewis to Ruth Pitter (1897-1992) and her journal recollections of the same (with one exception her letters to Lewis have not survived) reveals the two shared a deep love for poetry. Pitter, a poet of no small stature, received copious notes from Lewis about her poetry. In turn, Lewis often asked Pitter’s advice about his own verse, admiring her native ability and appreciating her critical insights. In effect, Pitter became Lewis’ mentor as a poet. While Pitter was the better poet, she found much to admire in Lewis’ verse; ironically, however, it was in the prose of Perelandra, the second book of the Ransom trilogy, that she discovered Lewis’ most effective poetry. Accordingly, this essay has a threefold purpose. First, it will survey the correspondence and journals, noting the lively discussions Pitter and Lewis had about poetry. Second, it will explore the poetic prose of Perelandra. Third, it will reveal for the first time Pitter’s request to transcribe into verse portions of the end of Perelandra, culminating with the entire transcription.
While most readers of Lewis are familiar with his Narnia stories, Ransom trilogy, prose apologetics, and fictional spiritual fantasies The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters, fewer know he began his writing career with two volumes of poetry published under the name Clive Hamilton, Spirits in Bondage (1919) and Dymer (1926).[1] In fact, as a young man Lewis longed to achieve acclaim as a poet.[2] Owen Barfield remembers Lewis when he first met him in the early 1920s as one “whose ruling ambition was to become a great poet. At that time if you thought of Lewis you automatically thought of poetry” (Barfield address). In addition to the two early volumes of poetry, Lewis wrote poems throughout his life that were later collected by Walter Hooper and published as Poems (1964). Hooper also published Narrative Poems in 1969, a volume that reprints Dymer as well as three other narrative poems.[3] In spite of this activity, scholars have remained cool to Lewis’ poetry.[4]
Pitter,
on the other hand, has extensive poetic credentials.[5] In total she produced eighteen volumes of
verse.[6] Her A
Trophy of Arms (1936) won the Hawthornden Prize
for Poetry in 1937. In 1955 she became
the first woman to receive the William Heinemann Award, the Queen’s Gold Medal
for Poetry, and she appeared regularly on the BBC program The Brain Trust. The Royal
Society of Literature elected her to its highest honor in 1974, a Companion of
Literature, and she was appointed Commander of the
All was as it had ever been—
The worn familiar book,
The oak beyond the hawthorn seen,
The misty woodland’s look:
The starling perched upon the tree
With his long tress of straw—
When suddenly heaven blazed on me,
And suddenly I saw:
Saw all as it would ever be,
In bliss too great to tell;
For ever safe, for ever free,
All bright with miracle:
Saw as in heaven the thorn arrayed,
The tree beside the door;
And I must die—but O my shade
Shall dwell there evermore.[8]
“Sudden Heaven” is filled with rich natural images, including “misty woodland’s look,” “starling perched upon the tree,” and “long tress of straw.” Yet its real power comes through Pitter’s subtle infusion of biblical images, motifs, and allusions such as “suddenly heaven blazed on me,” “bliss too great to tell,” “bright with miracle,” and “the thorn arrayed.” Most impressive is her deft use of the tree as an image both of nature, where the starling perches, and the divine, where we envision Christ and his crown of thorns.
However, while she was brought up in a religious family, her own faith became energized only after listening to Lewis’ radio broadcast talks (later published as Mere Christianity) near the end of WWII. Depressed after a hard work day in a wartime crucible factory, she wondered if she could go on: “I stopped in the middle of Battersea Bridge one dreadful March night, when it was cold and the wind was howling over the bridge, and it was dark as the pit; and I leaned over the parapet and thought: Like this I cannot go on. I must find somebody or something. Like this I cannot go on” (cited by Russell in Homage, 28). She claimed the broadcast talks did much to deliver her from the despair she felt about to consume her as the war was coming to an end.[9] Consequently, out of a sense of gratitude she began to write Lewis shortly after the war was over.
Journal entries show Pitter first wrote Lewis early in July 1946 asking to meet him. In his response to her letter, he expressed surprise that she was hesitant in asking for the meeting: “But what you should be ‘trepidant’ about in calling on a middle aged don I can’t imagine” (13 July 1946; CSL /L-Pitter/ 001). The connection between them was poetry since she recalled that her friend, Herbert Palmer, “at that time was determined to ‘bring out’ Lewis as a poet” (13 July 1946; Pitter’s Journal Recollections, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 18).[10] A visit to Lewis followed on July 16, 1946.[11] Afterwards as her letter to Lewis recalling the visit indicates:
I have hunted these out [her The Spirit Watches (1939), A Mad Lady’s Garland (1934), and The Bridge (1945)] wishing you to see something more recent than the “Trophy” [A Trophy of Arms (1936)], and particularly that you should see “A Mad Lady’s Garland”, which though only grotesque & satirical . . . I think is my best & most original . . . My visit to you has discountenanced all the gypsy’s warnings of people who say “never meet your favourite authors. They are so disappointing.” (17 July 1946; CSL /L-Pitter/ 1a)
Pitter’s delight in their meeting is evidenced by her closing remark, but even though they had gotten on so well in their visit,[12] she could not have been prepared for Lewis’ high praise in his next letter: “Trophy of Arms is enough for one letter for it has most deeply delighted me. I was prepared for the more definitely mystical poems, but not for this cool, classical quality. You do it time after time—create a silence and vacancy and awe all round the poem. If the Lady in Comus had written poetry one imagines it wd. have been rather like this.” About two poems Lewis is especially ecstatic: “‘Cadaverous in Storm’ is marvellous and ‘then alleluia all my gashes cry’ [from “Solemn Meditations”] just takes one up into regions poetry hasn’t visited for nearly a hundred years.” Her poetry is so good, Lewis is dissuaded from sharing his with her: “I meant to send you something of mine but I shan’t. It all sounds like a brass band after yours. . . Why wasn’t I told you were as good as this?” (19 July 1946; CSL /L-Pitter/ 002-003).
The high praise of this letter set the tone of Lewis’ subsequent correspondence to Pitter. Time and again he was powerfully affected by her poetry, and he lavished praise on her verse. At the same time, however, he was critical as well. For instance, about one of her longer poems, he says: “As a rule, the bigger a thing is physically the less it works in literature. One ghost is always more disquieting than ten; no good fight in a story can have more than a dozen or so combatants: the death of a million men is less tragic than that of one.” Also, he cautions her against coming under the influence of modern poetry: “‘Funeral Wreaths’ [from The Bridge]. No, no, no. The Moderns have got at you. Don’t you of all people, be taken in by the silly idea that by simply mentioning dull or sordid facts in sub-poetical rhythms you can make a poem. The effect is certain, but it’s not worth getting. You know far better than that” (24 July 1946; CSL /L-Pitter/ 005). More often than not, however, Lewis can only offer compliments, sometimes spiced with characteristic humor. Upon receiving a copy of Pitter’s The Rude Potato (1941), he writes: “Thanks for the book. I look forward to finding out how rude a potato can be. All the ones I meet are civil enough.” (21 July 1947; CSL /L-Pitter/ 030). And after re-reading The Bridge he writes: “A lot of it is stunning good, you know” (24 August 1949; CSL /L-Pitter/ 041).
His greatest praise comes in a letter after he has read The Ermine: Poems 1942-1952:
Dear Miss Pitter, or (to speak more accurately) Bright Angel! I’m in a sea of glory! Of course I haven’t had time to read it [The Ermine] properly, and there’ll be another, more sober, letter presently. This is just a line to be going on with, and to assure you at once that the new volume is an absolute CORKER. I had feared that you might be one of those who, like Wordsworth, leave their talent behind at conversion: and now—oh glory—you come up shining out of the frost [a writer’s block she had endured] far better than you were before. ‘Man’s despair is like the Arabian sun’[a line from “The World is Hollow”]— I seriously doubt if there’s any religious lyric between that one and [George] Herbert on the same level. And then my eye strays to the opposite page and get the “dying-dolphin green” [a phrase from “The Captive Bird of Paradise”]. And “What we merit—A silence like a sword” [a line from “The Other”]. I wonder have you yourself any notion how good some of these are? But, as you see, I’m drunk on them at this present. Glory be! Blessings on you! As sweet as sin and as innocent as milk. Thanks forever, Yours in great excitement, C. S. Lewis. (12 May 1953; CSL /L-Pitter/ 060-061)
Several days later he still is overwhelmed by The Ermine: “The brightness does not fade: appealing from Lewis drunk to Lewis sober, I still find this an exquisite collection. When I start picking out my favourites, I find I am picking out nearly all . . . I do congratulate you again and again. I hope you are as happy about the poems as you ought to be”(15 May 1953; CSL /L-Pitter/ 062-063).
Given Lewis’ deep affection for Pitter’s poetry, it is not surprising that he sought her advice about his own poetry. In her he found one who shared similar poetic sensibilities, so he felt comfortable asking her to critique his verse. In fact, he asked her to be straightforward in her criticisms: “Now remember . . . you won’t wound a sick man by unfavourable comment . . . I know (or think) that some of these contain important thoughts and v. great metrical ingenuity. That isn’t what I’m worrying about. But are they real poems or do the content and the form remain separable—fitted together only by force?” (24 July 1946; CSL /L-Pitter/ 005). After she offers comments on several of his poems, Lewis writes back: “In most of these poems I am enamoured of metrical subtleties—not as a game: the truth is I often lust after a metre as a man might lust after a woman. The effect I want, even if attained, wd. not be of the elusive kind—more like heraldry or enamel—a blaze” (10 August 1946; CSL /L-Pitter/ 009). At one point he asks her to judge between two versions of his poem “Two Kinds of Memory”:
I want some advice. I have written two different versions of a poem and all my friends disagree, some violently championing A and some B, and some neither. Will you give a vote? Firstly, is either any good? Secondly, if so, which is the good one? Don’t be in the least afraid of answering NO to the first question: kindness wd. only be an encouragement to waste more time. . . I could almost make myself hope for your sake—and lest you spend more time and attention on them than is reasonable for me to exact—that both are bad! (2 February 1947; CSL /L-Pitter/ 017 and 019)
In her recollection of this letter, Pitter writes:
Both versions are very fine, of course: the skill in form alone is enough to drive a small poet to despair: and then the melody, so strong and so unforced, and the solemn images and the contrasting moods. Strange how memory is here polarised, as though he could not have encompassed the paradisal without retaining a hellish pain in recollection, an ever-fresh wound. (NB. These poems should be read aloud, but only by a strong male voice). And see how he deprecates giving trouble, when one was of course only too eager: I have sometimes thought he would devise little jobs because he knew very well what pleasure it would give. (2 February 1947; MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 38; Bodleian Library ).
In another instance, she recalls being flattered Lewis would think her view on his poems important: “‘Donkey’s Delight,’ ‘Young King Cole,’ ‘Vitraea Circe,’ [are] magnificient poems to my mind, the technique staggering, vocabulary so wide, learned, & choice, discrimination (moral or spiritual) so lofty. As well might a lion request a mouse to criticise his roaring: and yet I can imagine a lion doing so” (6 July 1947; MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 52; Bodleian Library ).
On a different occasion, Lewis chides Pitter for waiting so long to send her remarks on poems he has sent her: “On a railway platform this morning (I am just back from Malvern) I made a resolution. I said ‘I will no longer be deterred by the fear of seeming to press for an opinion about my poems from writing to find out whether R. P. is dead, ill, in prison, emigrated, or simply never got my letter.’ So it was with great pleasure that I found yours awaiting me” (31 August 1948; CSL /L-Pitter/ 032). In her letter she apparently offered sharp criticism about the tone of Lewis’ poems, so a month later he writes her still musings on her remarks:
I was silent about yr. criticism because I was still chewing it and have been early taught not to speak with my mouth full. And I’m still chewing and can’t really quite eat it. a. Because of a deep suspicion that . . . [your criticism] is really only a rationalisation of a deep and inarticulate (and prob. correct) feeling that mine isn’t really poetry after all—a feeling repressed by your kindness and liking for my prose work and coming out in this form. b. By an understanding of the charge (supposing it not to be a rationalisation) wh. is still v. imperfect. But I’ll try some more on you anon, and we may hammer it out. (29 September 1948; CSL /L-Pitter/ 034)
Pitter’s journal recollection of this incident provides the most detailed account of her personal evaluation of Lewis as a poet:
Now, I wonder. Is
his poetry after all not? About how many
poets or poems would readers agree 100% or even 50%? ‘The peaks of poetry are shiftingly
veiled, and different readers catch different glimpses
of the transcendental.’ I should like to
know more about the actual process of conception in his case. Did his great learning, a really staggering
skill in verse inhibit the poetry? Did
he ever (like most of us) catch some floating bit of emotional thistledown
& go on from that, or did he plan on a subject like an architect? (Producing perhaps short epics?) He had a great stock of the makings of a
poet: strong visual memory, strong
recollections of childhood: desperately
strong yearnings for lost
While clearly sympathetic to Lewis’ poetry, Pitter believed it was in prose where he made “magic,” an assessment shared by many. Specifically, she found his most powerful poetry in the prose ending of Perelandra.[13]
Before turning to the transcriptions, a brief examination of Perelandra confirms that it contains some the most attractive passages of sustained poetic prose that Lewis ever wrote.[14] While the majority of the book is prose narrative, approximately one quarter of the novel may be deemed poetic. Thomas Peters claims “Perelandra reads like poetry” (47). In writing about the Ransom trilogy, Kath Filmer argues Lewis’ frequent use of metaphor in his poetry is readily transferred to his prose, noting his “fiction has that imaginative, ‘magical’ quality that he failed to express in his poetry” (74). In explaining what stimulated his writing the story, Lewis characteristically connects it with his poetic impulse of conceiving images: “The starting point for my second novel, Perelandra, was my mental pictures of floating islands. The whole of the rest of my labours in a sense consisted in building up a world in which floating islands could exist.”[15] Walter Hooper argues the novel may have had its genesis in poetic form, citing the only surviving fragment:
The floating islands, the flat golden sky
At noon, the peacock sunset: tepid waves
With the land sliding over them like a skin:
The alien Eve, green-bodied, stepping forth
To meet my hero from her forest home,
Proud, courteous, unafraid; no thought infirm
Alters her cheek. (220)[16]
In addition, in recalling all he saw on Perelandra, Ransom corrects Lewis (the character in the novel) for assuming “it’s all too vague for you to put in words”: “On the contrary, it is words that are vague. The reason why the thing can’t be expressed is that it’s too definite for language” (33). Indeed, Chapter 3 in its entirety and much of Chapter 4 can be cited as evidence of this as in them Lewis creates lavish verbal pictures of the idyllic, paradisal environment Ransom enjoys. What he writes is a lyrical shower unprecedented in his fiction and characterized by a cloudburst of figurative language, including effusive metaphors, similes, and symbols (Filmer, 61-76).
For
example, after Ransom realizes he is floating and then swimming in the
However, Ransom’s heightened taste buds may be the most memorable episode in this riot of the senses. As he moves through a forest “where great globes of yellow fruit hung from the trees—clustered as toy-balloons are clustered on the back of the balloon-man and about the same size,” he picks one. Inadvertently, he punctures a rind and places the opening to his lips:
He had meant to extract the smallest, experimental sip, but the first taste put his caution to flight. It was, of course, a taste, just as his thirst and hunger had been thirst and hunger. But then it was so different from every other taste that it seemed mere pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men, out of all reckoning, beyond all covenant. For one draught of this on earth wars would be fought and nations betrayed. It could not be classified. He could never tell us, when he came back to the world of men, whether it was sharp or sweet, savoury or voluptuous, creamy or piercing. (42)
As his first day comes to a close, Ransom looks across the ocean to the sunset: “The sea, far calmer now than he had yet seen it, smoked towards heaven in huge dolomites and elephants of blue and purple vapour, and a light wind, full of sweetness, lifted the hair on his forehead. The day was burning to death” (43). All these overwhelming sensuous experiences are linked by feelings of excessive pleasure untainted by guilt, as if old earthly prohibitions against enjoying oneself too much are foreign to this world: “The strange sense of excessive pleasure . . . seemed somehow to be communicated to him through all his senses at once . . . [and] there was an exuberance or prodigality of sweetness about the mere act of living which our race finds it difficult not to associate with forbidden and extravagant actions”(37). The next day Ransom’s sensuous feast continues as he encounters wonderfully soothing bubble trees that shower him with a refreshingly cool and intense aromatic liquid; yellow gourds with a flavor, while not as exotic as the fruit of the previous day, that hint at protein-like heartiness; and a small, friendly, dragon who becomes his first companion on Perelandra.
After this Ransom meets the Green Lady and the poetic prose, while never entirely absent, retires into the background. The rhetorical debates between Weston, the Green Lady, and Ransom dominate Chapters VII-XIV, culminating in the death of Weston and Ransom’s descent into Hell and subsequent emergence from the cave in Chapter XV. He recovers from his ordeal by being “breast-fed by the planet Venus herself,” enjoying sustenance from a grape-like fruit that always seemed to be hanging near his tired, battered body, the “endless sound of rejoicing water,” and a reviving 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” (185). Regaining his strength, he moves down the mountain and enjoys deep blue streamer bushes with “soft, almost impalpable, caresses of the long thin leaves on his flesh,” thickets of flowers that shower his head and cover his sides with pollen, and especially the song of a shy, horse-like creature (189-191).
When Ransom eventually meets Malacandra (Mars) and Perelandra (Venus), passages of poetic prose begin to cascade one upon the other. In describing their bodies, Lewis writes while they are white, “a flush of diverse colours began at about the shoulders and streamed up the necks and flickered over face and head and stood out around the head like plumage or a halo” (199). As the animals gather to witness the enthronement of the King and the Queen (the Green Lady), Ransom sees a wondrous menagerie: “They came mostly in pairs, male and female together, fawning upon one another, climbing over one another, diving under one another’s bellies, perching upon one another’s backs. Flaming plumage, gilded beaks, glossy flanks, liquid eyes, great red caverns of whinneying or of bleating mouths, and thickets of switching tails, surrounded him on every side” (203). However, the most compelling piece of poetic prose occurs as the King and Queen approach. Ransom notes how the entire atmosphere seems bathed in pure daylight coming from no apparent source, connects this light with holy things, and describes it as reaching perfection on the mountain top “like a lord upon a throne or like wine in a bowl.” The light then reveals “Paradise itself in its two Persons, Paradise walking hand in hand, its two bodies shining in the light like emeralds yet not themselves too bright to look at” (204).
Chapter XVII, the final chapter of the novel, provides the richest passages of poetic prose. Pitter’s transcription actually covers the dialogue in this chapter between several voices regarding the Great Dance—a celebration both of God’s loving majesty and the promise of his eventual reconciliation with fallen creation—and consists of twenty-three Spenserian stanzas. As early as April 1947 Pitter told Lewis she was so impressed with the poetic prose ending of Perelandra, she wanted to put some of it into Spenserian stanzas.[17] Lewis readily agreed although he was surprised she wanted to spend her time doing this: “I’m rather shocked your wasting your verse on my prose. But I hope it’ll only be the irritant to start your real activity [she had confided earlier that she was experiencing writer’s block]”( 16 April 1947; CSL /L-Pitter/ 023). A month later he asks: “When am I to see the Spenserians? They’ll do me good in a way you probably hadn’t thought of. In my job one is always ferreting out the ‘Sources’ of the great poets. Now (serve me right) I shall be a source myself” (25 May 1947; CSL /L-Pitter/ 024). Pitter reveals in her journal why she felt compelled to turn Lewis’ Perelandran prose into verse: “I had been transcribing the paean of praise towards the end of Perelandra into irregular Spenserian stanzas simply as a mnemonic: I wished so much to have these enormous transcendental ideas in a form I could memorise & use wherever I happened to be” (6 July 1947; MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 52; Bodleian Library ). Pitter’s transcriptions, faithful to the source, emphasize the underlying poetic nature of Lewis’ prose in Perelandra. [18] The complete transcription follows[19]:
A Passage from “Perelandra” by C. S. Lewis done into irregular Spenserian stanzas by Ruth Pitter
1st. Spirit. I
We do not wait till you are gathered in,
You of the little inward earths and low:
We speak not, we, of when it will begin.
Before forever and the long ago,
Before the stream of time began to flow,
We dance before His face rejoicingly.
We at the centre ever praise Him so:
For the great Dance have all things come to be,
And all was made that we might praise Him.
Blest be He!
2nd. Spirit. II
He who has never made two things the same,
He who has never uttered one word twice,
First made the earths, and after them there came
Not better earths but beasts: then there arise
Not nobler beasts but spirits: then He dies
Their death to save the fallen: but these shall be
Not mended, but clothed on in
With new creation fashioned gloriously:
So change itself is changed for ever.
Blest be He!
3rd. Spirit. III
Like a fair tree with bounteous fruit bowed down
All is filled full of justice and of right:
It is all righteousness: it is His own,
And no two things are equal in His sight,
For not as stones on ground, but bonded tight
Into the living arch, so crown and key
Are all things to each other: rule and might
Fulfilled by answering humility:
The heat descends, the life leaps up:
blessed be He!
Another Voice IV
Not in the tale of years, the length of days,
Not in the measured miles, uncounted spheres,
His greatness is. They do not sing His praise,
To approach His majesty shall not be theirs
That make account of them. No endless years,
And no eternity the sun shall see,
No, nor the heavens. Rather the small seed bears
Him in itself, and all eternity
Contained with Himself at ease.
Blessed be He!
V
Each thing is part of a most unlike thing,
To which it bears no semblance. Point to line,
And line to shape, and shape to body bring
Their lesser natures, and to one divine,
One Absolute, the unutterable Trine:
As the bare circle to the globe shall be
The unfallen to the world redeemed: in fine,
As point to line redeemed felicity
To the far fruit of its redeeming:
blest be He!
VI
Yet is the perfect circle not less round
Than the round sphere, which in itself doth hold
Circles uncounted, fatherland and ground
And home of circles infinite, untold:
Which if they spoke (so one, so manifold)
Would say, “For us, unnumbered as the sea,
Were spheres created,” nor be overbold:
Let no mouth open to gainsay them: free
Are they to speak in truth and beauty.
Blest be He!
VII
The sinless peoples who have seen no shame,
The peoples of the ancient world, are those
For whom those worlds were made: He never came
To them: for though the healing of the woes,
The bearing of the sins of all who rose
Against Him, makes new harmonies to be,
Changes the mode of glory, yet He knows
He made them to be whole unchangingly:
Good was not made to be corrupted. Blest be He!
VIII
All which is not in the great Dance was made
That he might there come down and enter in.
That world which fell, and its own light betrayed,
He visited embodied, so to win
The dust unto His glory: and the sin
That caused this is called Fortunate: and we
Know that this deed of entire love, wherein
Abides and is expressed all majesty,
Is end and cause of all creating. Blest be He!
IX
The Tree was planted in that world, but here
The ripened fruit hangs in the heaven high:
Both blood and life run from the Fountain there,
Here it runs Life alone. We have passed by
The first strong rapids: the deep waters ply
On a new course toward the distant sea.
Till now, all has but waited. In the sky
There hangs the promised star, and piercingly
The trumpet sounds: the army marches. Blest be He!
X
The worlds are for themselves, though men may rule
Or angels: desert seas, the fruit unknown,
The secret caves, the fire impassable,
Though, when you come, obedient as your own,
Are perfect in their nature all alone:
Times without number, long before your time,
Have I about the fields of Heaven gone,
And they were not a desert. The sublime
Was centred there, and I heard all those voices chime.
XI
Be comforted, immortal creatures small:
Be comforted, for you are not the voice
That all things utter, nor does silence fall
In regions where you weep not, nor rejoice:
No feet have walked upon the globe of ice,
No eyes looked up from where eyes cannot be,
Beneath the Ring: and chaste and empty lies
The plain of naked iron: yet ceaselessly
The gods still walk the fields of Heaven. Blest be He!
XII
That Dust itself, scattered so thin and rare
In heaven, of which the peopled worlds are made,
And bodies other than the worlds, is there,
There at the centre, needing not the aid
Of eyes to see it, hands upon it laid,
To be His strength and splendour. Of its all,
The least part of that Dust has ever paid
Service to any living thing, or shall:
Yet it still renders service, praise perpetual.
XIII
Before they came, and after they have gone,
And where they never come, the Dust still sings,
Uttering the heart of the most holy one,
Though furthest from him of created things,
And nearest, for from every grain he brings
The unmixed image of his energy,
So that each mote of wide Heaven’s winnowings
Might say “The whole was made only for me.”
Let no mouth open to gainsay
it. Blest be He!
XIV
Each grain is at the centre, and the Dust,
And all the worlds, and each created beast,
The ancient peoples, and the race that must
Be bought by death divine, within whose breast
Was Pride engendered against heaven’s behest:
And these the fair, the sinless creatures free,
And august spirits that for ever rest
In Him, yet move in Him unceasingly,
Pervading the great deep of Heaven. Blest be He!
XV
The centre is the place where He abides
And all of Him abides in every place:
Not here one part, and there another hides,
But everywhere the whole. No mind can trace
A path to any things hid from His face,
For smallness beyond thought, the atomy
Contains Him too: no refuge from that grace,
Save in the hellish will that seeks to be
Outside Him, and finds only Nothing.
Blest be He!
XVI
He is the Centre, and each thing was made
For Him, and in Him each for ever dwells:
Not, as in cities of the dark is said,
Each one for all: but utter love compels
All to the service of each one. So tells
The story of the wounded World: He came
For each man, not for men. His miracles
Of strongest mercy would have been the same
If but one living soul had dwelt there in that flame.
XVII
If each had been the only fallen soul,
One man mankind, He would have done no less.
Each thing is cause and purpose of the whole
Creation, and the grains of dust confess
His glory with the mighty ones who dress
Their rays in His: for both were made to be
Clear mirrors of bright everlastingness,
Receiving and reflecting faithfully;
Where His beam rests, and whence returns.
Blessed be He!
XVIII
Innumerable within the master-plan
Of the Great Dance the lesser plans are twined,
Each being in its season, for its span,
The flower for which the whole has been designed,
Thus all are at the centre, yet none find
Their equal; but in reciprocity
They give and take their places each in kind;
Thus, and thus only, small and great agree,
All linked in kneeling to their Love. Blessed be He!
XIX
As a strong river ever flowing full,
That fills each cranny and each little bay,
Brimming alike the channel and the pool,
All full, but all unequal, and when they
Must overflow, will take another way,
And makes[20] another outlet to the sea,
He has all use for all. Love me, I say,
All need and all delight bind you to me,
Made as we were for one another. Blest be He!
XX
And yet He has no need: strong angels are
Needful to Him no more than grains of sand:
The peopled star than the unpeopled star,
All the magnificence that He has planned
Needless, and all that springs at His command
Needless to us: all superfluity,
A bounty undeserved, as from His hand,
Shall be the love uniting you to me:
Like His own Love, a pure largesse. Blessed be He![21]
XXI
He made all things, and for Him all was made.
Himself He utters too for His delight,
And sees that it is good. Under the shade
Of His own branches does He sit, and bright
He shines upon Himself: by His own might
Begets Himself from all eternity,
And what proceeds from Him is His by right,
Himself eternally coming to be;
Surely He is His own begotten. Blest be He!
XXII
All that is made seems planless to the mind,
The darkened mind, for there is so much more
Plan than the mind can see: as when we find
So fine a turf upon some island shore
It looks all one, for eyes cannot explore
The weaving, nor the fine threads severally,
So with the Dance. Each figure seems the core,
And a true seeming: centre nor plan you see
Because it is all plan, all centre. Blessed be He!
XXIII
Yet seeming also is the cause and end
For which Time is so long, and Heaven deep:
Lest if we never met the roads that tend
Nowhere, nor darkness, where the answers sleep
To questions silence must for ever keep:
Nothing could image in our mind that Sea,
That Gulf and that Abyss, the Father. Leap
Into that depth, O thoughts: only to be
Sunk drowned and echoless for ever. Blest be He!
When Lewis receives her verses, he writes: “I like them—and you manage to be closer to the original in verse than some of my continental translators seem to get in prose. I think that XXI probably wd. be taken in a pantheistic sense by a reader who did not start with the doctrine of the Trinity in mind, but so wd. the original. I think XXIII has high eloquence—but of course it is hard for me to judge. IX is specially good”( 6 July 1947; CSL /L-Pitter/ 028). Somewhat later, apparently in response to her asking if he would object to her publishing her transcriptions, he writes: “I should be delighted if you used your Spenserians for that purpose, and don’t really see why you should need my permission” (17 November 1949; CSL /L-Pitter/ 043).
A comparison of Pitter’s transcriptions with the corresponding passages from Perelandra offers several insights. First, Pitter’s verse often sharpens and clarifies Lewis’ prose. For example, the second speech about the Great Dance in Perelandra is: “Never did He make two things the same; never did He utter one word twice. After earths, not better earths but beasts; after beasts, not better beasts, but spirits. After a failing, not a recovery but a new creation. Out of the new creation, not a third but the mode of change itself is changed for ever. Blessed is He!” (214). Pitter’s “II” closely follows this:
He who has never made two things the same,
He who has never uttered one word twice,
First made the earths, and after them there came
Not better earths but beasts: then there arise
Not nobler beasts but spirits: then He dies
Their death to save the fallen: but these shall be
Not mended, but clothed on in
With new creation fashioned gloriously:
So change itself is changed for ever. Blest be He!
Her last four lines, assuming they
reflect Lewis’ meaning—nowhere does he contradict her—clarify the meaning of
his original. For instance, Lewis’
somewhat vague “after a failing, not a recovery but a new creation” is made
more concrete by Pitter’s “then He dies / Their death
to save the fallen.” Similarly, his
“out of the new creation, not a third” is considerably sharpened by her
expansion: “But these shall be / Not mended, but clothed on in
In a like manner, Pitter’s “XVI” is powerful poetry communicating the boundless love, mercy and compassion of God while at the same time sharpening the meaning of Lewis’ original. The passage in Perelandra reads: “Each thing was made for Him. He is the centre. Because we are with Him, each of us is at the centre. It is not as in a city of the Darkened World where they say that each must live for all. In His city all things are made for each. When He died in the Wounded World He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less” (216-17). Pitter’s transcription is:
He is the Centre, and each thing was made
For Him, and in Him each for ever dwells:
Not, as in cities of the dark is said,
Each one for all: but utter love compels
All to the service of each one. So tells
The story of the wounded World: He came
For each man, not for men. His miracles
Of strongest mercy would have been the same
If but one living soul had dwelt there in that flame.
While Pitter’s version loses the power of Lewis’ line “because we are with Him, each of us is at the centre,” she considerably clarifies his “He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less” in her expansion: “He came for each man, not for men. His miracles / Of strongest mercy would have been the same / If but one living soul had dwelt there in that flame.”
Second, Pitter’s verse makes concrete some of Lewis’ more abstract imagery albeit with somewhat limited success. Lewis, as noted above, gives Pitter’s “IX” special praise:
The Tree was planted in that world, but here
The ripened fruit hangs in the heaven high:
Both blood and life run from the Fountain there,
Here it runs Life alone. We have passed by
The first strong rapids: the deep waters ply
On a new course toward the distant sea.
Till now, all has but waited. In the sky
There hangs the promised star, and piercingly
The trumpet sounds: the army marches. Blest be He!
The passage in the original reads: “The Tree was planted in that world but the fruit has ripened in this. The fountain that sprang with mingled blood and life in the Dark World, flows here with life only. We have passed the first cataracts, and from here onward the stream flows deep and turns in the direction of the sea. This is the Morning Star which He promised to those who conquer; this is the centre of worlds. Till now all has waited. But now the trumpet has sounded and the army is on the move. Blessed by He!” (215). Why Lewis thought this stanza merited special praise is problematic, although it may be he thought Pitter’s concrete transcription heightened his subtle allusions to both the Garden of Eden (the tree of life) and to Calvary by his use of the Tree.[22] On the other hand, her “till now, all has but waited. In the sky / There hangs the promised star, and piercingly / The trumpet sounds: the army marches” is perhaps too terse an alternative to Lewis’ “this is the Morning Star which He promised to those who conquer; this is the centre of worlds. Till now all has waited. But now the trumpet has sounded and the army is on the move.” In particular, her “the promised star” forfeits the specificity of “the Morning Star,” a clear reference to Venus; also, by dropping “conquer” Pitter loses Lewis’ allusion to Revelation 2:28: “And I will give him the morning star” (NAS). Finally, by omitting “this is the centre of worlds,” Pitter obscures an important parallelism that interconnects many of Lewis’ paragraphs.[23]
Third, Pitter’s transcriptions sometimes blur Lewis’ original meaning. For instance, Lewis was concerned her “XXI” “probably wd. be taken in a pantheistic sense by a reader who did not start with the doctrine of the Trinity in mind, but so wd. the original.” A comparison of Pitter’s transcription with Lewis’ original prose supports his concern. The passage in Perelandra is: “All things are by Him and for Him. He utters Himself also for His own delight and sees that He is good. He is His own begotten and what proceeds from Him is Himself. Blessed be He!” (217). Pitters’s transcription, adding the concrete image of a tree to powerful effect, is:
He made all things, and for Him all was made.
Himself He utters too for His delight,
And sees that it is good. Under the shade
Of His own branches does He sit, and bright
He shines upon Himself: by His own might
Begets Himself from all eternity,
And what proceeds from Him is His by right,
Himself eternally coming to be;
Surely He is His own begotten. Blest be He!
In Pitter’s line three (“and sees that it is good”) her substitution of “it” for “He” (Lewis’ “and sees that He is good”) tends to identify the Creator overmuch with the creation.[24] Furthermore, in line eight “Himself eternally coming to be” oddly suggests God continually evolves into what He will become. On the other hand, Pitter’s transcription effectively echoes the opening chapter of the book of Colossians where St. Paul emphasizes the “all” sufficiency of Christ: “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him” (Col. 1: 16).[25]
Finally, Pitter’s transcriptions re-configure Lewis’ prose into poetic language and cadence, at times making his original more eloquent. For instance, Pitter’s transcription of Lewis’ third paragraph offers several improvements. His “it is loaded with justice as a tree bows down with fruit” becomes “like a fair tree with bounteous fruit bowed down.” Pitter’s inclusion of fair and bounteous heightens the impact of Lewis’ line. In like fashion, his “as when stones support and are supported in an arch” is made more eloquent by Pitter’s “for not as stones on ground, but bonded tight / Into the living arch.” The impact of Lewis’ supported and arch are transformed by Pitter’s bonded tight and living arch. However, Lewis singled out Pitter’s “XXIII” for its “high eloquence”:
Yet seeming also is the cause and end
For which Time is so long, and Heaven deep:
Lest if we never met the roads that tend
Nowhere, nor darkness, where the answers sleep
To questions silence must for ever keep:
Nothing could image in our mind that Sea,
That Gulf and that Abyss, the Father. Leap
Into that depth, O thoughts: only to be
Sunk drowned and echoless for ever. Blest be He!
Lewis’ original is: “Yet this seeming also is the end and final cause for which He spreads out Time so long and Heaven so deep; lest, if we never met the dark, and the road that leads nowhither, and the question to which no answer is imaginable, we should have in our minds no likeness of the Abyss of the Father, into which if a creature drop down his thoughts for ever he shall hear no echo return to him. Blessed, blessed, blessed be He!” (218). At least part of Pitter’s success in making this passage more eloquent is her turning Lewis’ difficult “the question to which no answer is imaginable” into the memorable “where the answers sleep / To questions silence must for ever keep.” Furthermore, Lewis’ ambiguous “Abyss of the Father” is helped by the synonyms “Sea” and “Gulf.” While, as this brief analysis has shown, Lewis’ prose concerning the Great Dance was ore Pitter often transformed into gold, at times her transcriptions actually weakened the poetic prose of Perelandra.
Lest we think Pitter’s efforts were so much presumptuous self-indulgence, consider the criticism leveled at Lewis when the novel was first published: “Bravely as Mr. Lewis has assaulted the high and mighty symbols of human hope, serious and imaginative as is his purpose, the things he intends . . . cannot be done at the pace and within the structure of narrative prose. It is a subject for verse, and verse at its most immense.” The reviewer, Kate O’Brien, added later that “passages in this book which tremble near the absurd because they have to be so much explained, might well have been majestic and beyond question in the simple, inevitable dress of poetry” (458). Accordingly, Pitter’s transcriptions, while faithful to the source, suggest both the underlying poetic nature of Lewis’ prose in Perelandra and offer an imperfect attempt to turn it into verse.[26]
Ruth Pitter was a trusted confidant for Lewis the poet. In other letters to her he expounded at
length upon different kinds of poetry, the role of the individual poet, his
deep love of Milton, his “experiments” in verse, encouragement that she will
overcome her writer’s block, the novel experience of having in his “old age” a
poem rejected by the Spectator (“Very
tonic: I’d forgotten the taste of that
little printed slip”; 4 January 1947; CSL /L-Pitter/ 016), the “hard” subjects for poetry, and his
favorite meters. Undoubtedly Pitter was
grateful to be a sounding board, thankful she could in some small way repay
Lewis for the broadcast talks that had helped her avoid the “slough of despond”
she felt herself slipping into as WWII came to a close. Even after his death she paid him compliment by
alluding to Perelandra in her Still by Choice (1966). “Angels” speculates about the real character
of an angel (“terrible, tender, or severe?”), and she covertly refers to Lewis’
eldila: “Or likelier, now we dream of space, Lewis’s
dread sublime / Pillars of light, no limbs, no face, / Sickening our space and
time?” (24).[27] While some might wish to make more of the
personal relationship between these two poets than the evidence merits, all we
can say with certainty is that they did meet on a number of occasions, but
generally in the company of others and always in the context of discussing
books, writers, literature, and poetry in particular.[28] Lewis deeply valued the strength and beauty
of Pitter’s poetry while she found Lewis’ greatest poetry in the prose of Perelandra. In the end, a shared love of poetry and faith
in Christ connect the two writers, yet these links transcend both time and
death.
Bibliography of the Poetry of Ruth Pitter
Pitter,
Ruth. First Poems.
---------. First and Second Poems.
---------. Persephone in Hades. Privately printed, 1931.
---------. A Mad
Lady’s Garland.
---------. A
Trophy of Arms: Poems 1926-1935.
---------. The Spirit Watches.
---------. The Rude Potato.
---------. Poem.
---------. The
Bridge: Poems 1939-1944.
---------. Pitter on Cats.
---------. Urania (Selections from A Trophy of Arms, The Spirit
Watches, and The Bridge.
---------. The
Ermine: Poems 1942-1952.
---------. Still by Choice.
---------. Poems
1926-1966.
---------. End of the Drought.
---------. A Heaven to Find.
---------. Collected Poems: 1990. Petersfield: Enitharmon, 1990.
---------. Collected
Poems:
Works Cited
Barfield, Owen.
“C. S. Lewis.” An
address given at
---------. Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis. Ed. By G. B. Tennyson.
Filmer, Kath. “The Polemic Image: The Role of Metaphor and Symbol in the Fiction of C. S. Lewis.” SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review 7 (1986): 61-76.
Gilbert,
Rudolph. Four Living Poets.
Hart, Dabney. “Editor’s Note.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 22 (Fall 1989): 125-128.
Hooper, Walter. C. S. Lewis:
A Companion and Guide.
Howard, Thomas. “Poems: A Review.” Christianity Today 9 (June 18, 1965): 30.
Huttar, Charles. “A
Lifelong Love Affair with Language: C.
S. Lewis’s Poetry.” In
Word and Story in C. S. Lewis. Peter Schakel and
Charles Huttar, eds.
Lewis, C. S. Perelandra.
------------. “CSL /L-Pitter/ Unpublished
Letters to Ruth Pitter.” Miscellaneous Letters, Wade Collection.
O’Brien
Kate. “Review of Perelandra.” The Spectator 170 (May 14,
1943): 458.
Peters, Thomas. “The War of the Worldviews: H. G. Wells and Scientism and C. S. Lewis and
Christianity.”
Pitter, Ruth. “A Passage from Pereleandra”
(transcription). Bodleian MS.
Pitter Verse (uncatalogued),
--------------. Journal Recollections of
Correspondence with C. S. Lewis.
MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3; Bodleian Library.
--------------. Interview with Lyle
Dorsett. July 23, 1985. The