© Don W. King

A version of this essay first appeared in The Lamp-Post of the Southern California C. S. Lewis Society 23, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 3-15.

C. S. Lewis’ The Quest of Bleheris as Prose Poetry

Notwithstanding C. S. Lewis’ early desire to achieve acclaim as a poet, a candid survey of his verse reveals he did not.[1] Indeed, while he consciously considered himself a poet when writing Spirits in Bondage, Dymer, he wrote his best “poetry” in prose.[2] That is, Lewis’ poetic legacy is seen most clearly in his prose where poetic qualities abound—rich lyrical passages, vivid description; striking similes, metaphors, and analogies; careful diction; and concern for the sound of words. In addition, the fact Lewis saw himself early in life primarily as a poet begs that we take a new approach in our understanding of his mature prose, both non‑fiction and fiction. In fact, Lewis’ prose needs to be explored from the perspective of his being an earnest if minor poet. Jerry Daniel points the way when he notes that Lewis has “the soul of a poet . . . [and] all works were ‘poetry’ to him in the sense that the ‘feel’ or ‘taste’ was primary.”[3] While prose works like Perelandra and A Grief Observed contain the most powerful examples of Lewis’ prose poetry, his unpublished prose romance, The Quest of Bleheris written between May and October, 1916,[4] abounds in poetic passages. In effect, it is his earliest effort at prose poetry. This essay reviews the genesis of The Quest of Bleheris, suggests influences on its composition, and notes the poetic quality of its prose.

The Quest of Bleheris, because unpublished, is known to few.[5] It is an incomplete story of seventeen chapters concerning the adventures of a young knight, Bleheris, as he moves from the relative safety of civilized society to the challenges and dangers of a wilderness experience.[6] Although prose, it is broadly in the poetic narrative tradition of medieval romances such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo and medieval dream visions such as Piers Plowman and the Pearl. Furthermore, we know Lewis wrote Bleheris while striving to produce excellent verse as he wrote Arthur Greeves: “I think Bleheris has killed my muse—always a rather sickly child. At any rate my verse, both in quality and quantity for the last three weeks is deplorable!” (June 6, 1916).[7] A month later Lewis suggests to Greeves the connection he makes at this time between poetry and prose:

[What] I meant when I talked about the importance of form was to carry a little further what you already feel in prose—that is how some phrases such as the Wall of the World, or at the Back of the North Wind affect you, partly by sound partly by association, more than the same meaning would if otherwise expressed. The only difference is that poetry makes use of that sort of feeling much more than prose and produces those effects by metre as well as by phrase. In fact, the metre and the magic of the words should be like the orchestration of a Wagnerian opera—should sort of fill the matter by expressing things that can’t be directly told—that is, it expresses feeling while the matter expresses thought. (July 11, 1916)[8]

The greatest influence at this time comes from the prose romances of William Morris. Lewis’ letters to Greeves make frequent reference to Morris and the delight he has reading Sigurd the Volsung, The Well at the World’s End, and The Wood Beyond the World. For instance, after re-reading the latter, Lewis tells Greeves “it has completely ravished me . . . [It] always brings to mind our lovely hill-walk in the frost and fog . . . The very names of the chapters and places make me happy: ‘Another adventure in the Wood Perilous,’ ‘Ralph rides the Downs to Higham-on-the-Way,’ ‘The Dry-Tree,’ [and] ‘Ralph reads a book concerning the Well at the World’s End’” (November 16, 1915).[9] Lewis imitates Morris with chapter titles such as “Of my Bleheris and of how he is betrothed,” “Of their journeying to the land of Yesterday,” and “Of Bleheris’ first fight.” Accordingly, though Bleheris is prose, it can be viewed in the tradition of Lewis’ efforts at narrative poetry, particularly for its lyricism, use of traditional figurative language and symbols, and emphasis upon sound and rhythm.

The first part of Bleheris comprises Chapters I-V which introduce the setting, the characters, and the quest.[10] The story opens with a passage worthy of medieval romance: “As I sate in the garden in summer time, when the sun had set and the first stars were trembling into light, and while the ghostly, little bats were bleating above me, it came to me in mind to write for you, Galahad, somewhat of the life and dealings of this Bleheris.”[11] The city of Nesses is described next as marked by “white stones, with five bridges over that stream, and good wharves for many ships of the merchants that lay by them, and towers and palaces and rich halls as fair as might be.”[12] In addition there is a powerful stream, Coldriver, plunging into the bay near the city, and in the distance, Cloudy Pass, the only gap between the Great Mountains. In this land lives an old, worthy knight, Sir Lionel, whose prize is his comely daughter, Lady Alice, also known as Alice the Saint because of her great learning and virtue. Alice is the stereotypical object of courtly love: “Now the fame of this lady was very great in the land, inasmuchas [sic] as all squires and knights, yea and barons and great kings wood [sic] her to wife: but she would have none of them. And every young man of that town, named her alone his good lady and sighed for her, and wrote bransles and ballades upon her.”[13] If Alice is the epitome of female beauty, Bleheris represents the pinnacle of male prowess.[14] Moreover, he also is pierced by Alice’s beauty, “so that he too wrought the favour of Alice the Saint, and wrote verses upon her and jousted for her, and sighed piteously and altogether deemed that he was no less sorely smitten in love than Launcelot or Plamides [sic] or any of the knights of old song.”[15]

Somewhat predictably, Bleheris’ mother, Dame Foltete, arranges with Sir Lionel for the two young people to be engaged. Bleheris, however, reacts unexpectedly to this good news: “He said within him that this was great joy and that now must all men envy him sore: but in his heart was there no great delight, and he felt dazed as though some evil were come to him.”[16] While Bleheris’ ambivalent feelings toward this match add psychological interest to his character, Lewis never exploits this so we are left wondering why Bleheris feels this way. When he goes to see Alice for the first time after their betrothal, he is “sick at heart, and must needs whisper to himself of his good fortune, as one that would learn a hard lesson.”[17] Just as interesting and equally unexplained is her cold response to his first kiss. Later that night Bleheris wanders the streets of Nesses, eventually casting his eyes toward the Great Mountains and trying to analyze his disinterest in Alice. Intrusively, Lewis offers a hints at Bleheris’ malady: “For we know well, [Galahad] and I, how easily they that have no sorrow can yet make themselves griefs from the fabrick of their own dreams.”[18] Still, Bleheris tries to force himself to feel passion for Alice, even attempting to write her new love ballads. When this too fails, he looks again toward the mountains, recalls wonderful, mysterious stories about them, and then remembers his own desire to journey there for adventure, to “do great things in the world, and fight and love as mightily as the heroes of old song.”[19] This leads him to realize that his unease is caused because he is untested and marriage will prevent his questing to discover his manhood: “[Should he] marry and live at ease, and beget sons to live also at ease, as others did before him, and at the latter end to wax old and die, with all his dreams yet hidden neath a soft jerkin that none might know him from another?”[20] He resolves instead to eschew marriage until after he has journeyed on a quest beyond Cloudy Pass, performed great deeds, and acquired fame for valor; only then, he believes, will he be worthy of Alice’s hand.

After Bleheris awakens the next morning, Lewis’ introduces the central symbol of the tale, though here, too, he never reveals its meaning. Bleheris sees a silk curtain embroidered with roses gently swaying in the breeze:

The flowers thereon seemed verily alive, and his eyes grew, as it were charmed with looking upon them till those roses shut out all else from his mind and soul and vision: moreover he whispered to himself many time that one word, joying in the sound of it—the rich roll of the R, the long deep O and the soft S falling like a kiss at the end—and in the thought of the pleasant flowers. For you must know that from his childhood roses had a strange power upon this Bleheris, and of nothing was he at all so fain: as hereafter you shall hear.[21]

Remembering his resolution of the night before, he leaps up and prepares for the day. With his mother he visits Sir Lionel where he reveals his intention. Although his mother is heart-sick, the old knight is delighted and fully supports the young man’s decision. When Alice is asked her thoughts on Bleheris’ decision, she replies disinterestedly. This causes Bleheris to be both angry at her coldness and impatient to leave for his quest. However, Sir Lionel manages to convince Bleheris of his need to prepare for his adventures, so the young knight spends three days giving care to practical and spiritual needs. Like Gawain who spends a great deal of time seeing to his armor, both for himself and his horse, Bleheris “looked to all his gear, both armour and steed and weapons.” Furthermore, he seeks spiritual counsel from Father Ulfin: “he made his confession devoutly . . . and was shriven of his sins, and took holy water in a little flask to bear with him for a defence, if he met any evil thing by the way.”[22] Once again the narrator intrudes and signals for the first time a distinctly anti-religious bias underlying the tale: “Poor boy!, that deemed in his folly that a priest’s bauble, a dream-thing woven out of the hopes of man’s self and then called ‘holy,’ might avail him aught against the great and terrible powers of the earth!”[23] The first part of the story concludes with Bleheris, about to set off on his quest, realizing that he has no clear quest in mind. Seeking counsel from Sir Lionel, he considers several before choosing somewhat arbitrarily to look for the shadowy figure known only as the STRIVER, according to some a monster or a fiend while others claim he is a saint or a god. Before he leaves court, he asks for and receives Alice’s gloves as token and remembrance to sustain him during the dark days ahead. This last act, like so much of what Bleheris does in the first five chapters of this tale, reveals that he is playing a part—occasionally he seems cognizant of this, but most often he does not. In effect he is a purposeless, shallow youth, unsure of himself and untested in battle, but determined to go off and have an adventure.

Chapters VI-VII make up the second part of the story and concern Bleheris’ first test. Leaving Nesses early the following morning, he rides out into a landscape Lewis describes using richly evocative poetic language:

Now as Bleheris rode out of that gate, the sun had not been risen above three hours, so that the world was still fresh and pleasant in the summer dawn: the cool breeze played in the bars of his helmet, there were beads of dew upon every growing thing, & the shadows were still long and faint across the meadows. Before him went a white, well traveled road making ever for the north, and to the right of this, so close that his beast’s hoof might almost brush the reeds and bulrushes, Coldriver went gurgling by, deep and green and swift . . . The pleasant country spread out on the right and the left hand—the golden fields of deep-standing corn, the homely cottages with their long columns of smoke rising in the morning air, the little clumps of woodland where he had wandered full often, and, far to East and West, the blueness of the heathery mountains. But ever before him he saw the dark, sullen heights beyond Cloudy Pass, and the road and river winding thitherward together & urging him onward.[24]

The further he rides, the fewer people he sees and the more isolated he feels. As he approaches Cloudy Pass, he becomes fearful, recognizing in part all he is forsaking by going off on his quest. However, he encounters a merchant from Nesses on the road and asks which road leads most quickly to the North. He learns it goes through the Sunken Wood, a place the merchant warns him against. Rather than heed the warning, Bleheris foolishly follows the road through the Sunken Wood: “As he went there was a sort of tingling in his blood and his fingers locked and unlocked upon the reins. For he knew in his heart that if he would play aright the part of an old hero that he had chosen for his own, and fulfill his dreams, he must now ride through the Sunken Wood.”[25] Summoning all his courage and giving out a short prayer, he starts to move down the dark road into the wood, but his fear overpowers him so that he cannot move forward even one pace. He curses his cowardice: “In all the sorrows of life there is none greater than this, when a young man who dreamed of mighty deeds beholds at last the likeness of his own being and knows it for a coward.”[26] Setting his teeth, he drives himself forward, but again he fails, this time in face of a shadow: “Something came suddenly from amid the trees—as it had been shadow, no bigger than a child, hobbling toward him. And in the twinkling of an eye, utter, animal fright seized on him, so that the thought no more of manhood or shame, but set spurs to horse and fled wildly on the other road to his right: nor did he dare to slacken rein nor look behind him until he was well up the mountain side, with the Sunken Wood upon his left hand.”[27] Bleheris flees, we surmise, from fear itself. Full of self-loathing, he is at his lowest point as part two ends.

The third part of the story covers Chapters VIII-XI where Bleheris, terribly ashamed of his failure, meets three other knights, eventually joining one of them on a quest that proves disastrous; in the process, however, Bleheris atones in part for his failure at the Sunken Wood. After fleeing the wood, he makes his way to a village hostel where he tries to avoid contact with others, convinced they will be able to see cowardice in his face. In a rare moment of honest self-assessment, he thinks: “If he were thus a blencher, it was little profit to travel any further; ‘for if I run scared like a babe, from a shadow among the trees, how shall I pass through all the perils of the Northern lands and come to the STRIVER?’”[28] Yet the thought of returning home so quickly and the embarrassment that would follow spurs him onward. At the hostel he meets three men. The first is tall and thin, though powerfully built; his voice is loud, his eyes piercing, and he often slams his fist on the table to make a point. The second is slimmer and slighter than Bleheris, richly dressed, and, except for a wisp of beard, so beautiful he might have been mistaken for a girl; his voice is muted and sweet, and his half-closed eyes “seemed to be ever dreaming on some age-old, pitiful memory.”[29] The third is middle-aged, strong, tall, and winsome, with a huge golden beard. When he looks at Bleheris, the young man senses his good-natured fellowship and feels his shame ebb away. This man, Hypertes, inexplicably tells Bleheris he knows of his quest to discover STRIVER, and then has his two friends introduce themselves. The tall, thin, loud man is Gerce the Desirous because he always seeks tomorrow. The younger, beautiful one is Wan Jadis who is always seeking yesterday. In the conversation that follows, Bleheris learns that Hypertes is a servant of STRIVER, and that he has been unwittingly drawn to this hostel in order to point Bleheris in the direction where he will find STRIVER. However, Wan Jadis invites Bleheris to join him upon his quest for yesterday:

It lies in the West, in the traces of the setting sun: and, as men say, it is not a great journey from these mountains. It is the home of things passed, and of all old, forgotten, unhappy memories: a vallied land, full of soft mists and trees that ever shed their leaves in the drowsy winds: there the queens of olden story abide, Helen and Agamemnon’s child, Isolde and Guenevere, deathless forever in their sorrows and loveliness as the ancient singers made them. In that country, a man can hide away from the care and moil of the world: nor is there any thing, so much worth as the quiet peace we shall find yonder, the quiet peace of noble sorrow softened by many years.[30]

When Bleheris hears this, he forgets his resolution to seek STRIVER and joins Wan Jadis instead.

The next morning the two young men leave the hostel with Hypertes’ words in mind that they seek him out when and if they return from their quest. In particular he asks Bleheris to be sure to let him know when he decides to quest for STRIVER. The two knights set off through a beautiful country with a strong, cool wind behind them. They enjoy good conversation as they ride, and the following day reach the crossroad that will take them to yesterday. Wan Jadis’ anticipation is great: “And his countenance, too, shewed how eager he was for the pale cheeks flushed, and his eyes waxed fright, nor could he forbear to prick onward more hastily, and urge Bleheris to do the like: yet, none the less, he said with a smile, as one that excuse himself ‘I have searched for it so long, sweet friend, so long!’”[31] As the day wears on well past noon, they enter a narrow valley with a strange beauty: “Also, whereas autumn was not yet come, yet the leaves of these trees were golden, and came showering continually to earth at every breath of a cold and mournful wind that echoed through that magic valley. The road still led downwards: straight before them, the dieing sun blinded their eyes with a blaze of scarlet . . . the shower of leaves grew thicker, and the wind louder, until it seemed that they were riding a cloud of soft, feathery elves that smote upon them all over: and a golden mist lay about them.”[32] As they come out of the narrow valley, Bleheris notices a large rose bush near the shore of a lake.

Wan Jadis, barely able to contain his excitement, urges Bleheris to board a small boat moored near the shore so that together they can sail to yesterday. Bleheris, however, hesitates: “[The boat] seemed to float upon a marish of mud and slime, with evil things swimming round it: but afterwards it seemed to be but water: for because of the mist and dense showers of leaves they could see nothing plainly.”[33] Wan Jadis boards the boat, still urging Bleheris to join him. Just as Bleheris is about to step into the water to wade out to the boat, however, in the distance he sees something that stops him:

But Bleheris cast one more glance before them, for still the water had some semblance of a fen about it, that troubled him: and when he looked, he could see faintly through the mist and the eddying leaves, how that beyond the lake there rose the dim shape of some vast and awful temple. For he might catch the outlines of long flights of steps, of fluted columns, of lowering domes high above sculptured terraces and galleries: among the which stood sad & solemn monuments, and monstrous images: and because of the mist it was all shadowy as a dream, and empty as some city of the dead. But close to the farther shore, on a manner of marble quay or platform there sate spinning an old woman: though how he wist she was old, in truth he knew not, for her whole body was clad in a flowing pall of grey, and a hood covered her face. Yet, somehow, when he beheld her he felt a sickness come over him.[34]

Speechless, Bleheris watches in horror as Wan Jadis climbs in the boat and it slowly drifts away from the shore. After he recovers his wits, Bleheris springs into the water and tries to grab Wan Jadis’ hand, but it is too late. The water turns to slime and thin mud, overflows the sides of the boat, and slimy eels and water spiders twine around Wan Jadis’ legs, all pulling him under. Even though he is terrified, Bleheris bravely attempts to save Wan Jadis. However, when he makes another step toward the boat, he himself is sucked down by the mud. He would have been lost except for the rose bush growing nearby, since “it cast all its thorny arms about the body of the knight, and held him as closely as lovers hold their loves.”[35] Intent on saving his friend, Bleheris fights against the rose bush, even breaking off its limbs. When he breaks one limb, however, two new ones grab him. His final vision of Wan Jadis is horrible: “Bleheris could see the beautiful, sad face strained and drawn with loathing and the agony of death: it seemed that he strove to speak, but in that moment the slime and mud rose to his white lips, and the evil creeping things crawled over the fair skin, more delicate than porcelain. His eyes cast one more look upon Bleheris: and then the marish closed over his head, and thus Wan Jadis died.”[36]

Broken-hearted, Bleheris cries out for his friend, and is answered only by the hollow laugh of the old spinner. He struggles free of the rose bush, collapses upon the ground, and experiences for the first time genuine sorrow. Although he probably does not consciously realize it, he has been tested and proved worthy, and he is no longer acting a part in a play. Looking more closely at the rose bush that saved him, he picks up broken leaves and petals and then buries his face in them, enjoying the sweet fragrance. As he starts to cherish the bush as a friend, he has an unexpected vision: “Then, for a moment, he thought that a madness had come to him: for the tree seemed to be vanished and in its stead he saw a lovely woman kneeling before him, naked but for her hair, half golden and half of a reddish-brown, that streamed over her whole body: her arms were stretched towards him, and he saw that there were manacles of steel upon her wrists—tight and grievous and biting into the soft white flesh. She seemed to be pleading with him.”[37] Just as quickly the vision fades away, and Bleheris, fearing what it all means, mounts his horse and rides away from the dead marsh. As the third part of the story ends, Lewis is on the verge of producing a significant literary work. While the first eleven chapters of Bleheris are far from perfect, he has managed to write a compelling story filled with passages of poetic beauty and populated with characters that, while not terribly complex, are more than cardboard figures. In addition, the allegorical nature of the story has promise and shows the influence of Lewis’ reading of The Romance of the Rose, especially in his use of the rose bush.[38] Unfortunately, the rest of the tale does not live up to this promise.

Chapters XII-XV concern how Bleheris is reunited with Hypertes and Gerce, and his discovery of an impending great evil. In shock and grief at Wan Jadis’ death, Bleheris rides forward intent on some day revenging his friend’s death, but still fearful of the old spinner. Along the way he picks a rose from another rose bush and has a second vision: “Straightway he saw in his heart an image of the kneeling woman, and thenceforth, as he rode, that picture departed not from him. For alway, whatever he thought on, there floated before him the milky curve of her throat, or of a breast or shoulder, and also the fetters of steel biting into her wrists. And whereas, when he had seen her on the eve, he had scarce marked whether she were fair or no, now her beauty laid hold on him, and every thing he saw lovely and sweet in the country about him, seemed but an image of her.”[39] Unsure what to make of this, Bleheris, fearing witchery is at work, says his “Pater Noster” and “Ave.” He returns to the hostel and receives a note from Father Ulfin telling him that the same day he rode away, Alice left to follow a vision of the cross that came to her in the night. Ulfin charges Bleheris to follow the road north to the city of Ralholt in search of Alice. At the hostel Bleheris is further befriended by a servant, Nut, who offers to be his squire and who warns him against the only other visitor at the hostel, Bethrelladoom. Although we never learn specifically why Bethrelladoom is to be avoided, both Bleheris and Nut sneak away from the hostel late that night and journey north until they reach Wandale where they are given provision by a group of roving dwarves.

Continuing their quest, they travel through desolate wilderness until they meet up with Hypertes and Gerce. While the former greets them warmly, Gerce picks a fight with Bleheris which ends with the two drawing swords and “ringing blow upon blow.” Hypertes soon intervenes and reconciles the two. When they sit down to eat, Bleheris tells them all that has happened to him since they last met, except he leaves out any reference to his vision of the rose bush. Hypertes is concerned over the appearance of Bethrelladoom and the flight of Alice. Gerce reminds him Bethrelladoom “holds the Rose yet,” and at this Bleheris confesses his vision of the rose bush. In a discussion of this between Gerce and Hypertes we learn of two different roses, their possible connection with Bethrelladoom, and whether Alice may also be involved. Sadly, this conversation is muddled and leaves us wondering what to make of it all. The next day they travel north, and the fourth part of the story ends when they reach the outskirts of Ralholt. The narrative failure here reduces the rest of the story to a shadow box, and Lewis fails to capitalize upon the dramatic power of the previous three parts of the story.

Consequently, the last part of the tale, Chapters XVI-XVII, is perfunctory. We journey with them into the city of Ralholt where Lewis expends a great deal of energy describing the houses, temples to Christ and Odin, and the castle of the King. Bleheris is impressed with the rich, lavish surroundings and momentarily forgets his search for Alice: “Bleheris was not over pleased . . . to call to mind that the cause of his coming to Ralholt was to seek out Father Ulfin, and through him the Lady Alice: for now, in such an hour and such a place, they seemed to him very irksome, but more specially that noble and vertuous lady.”[40] The king eventually invites them all to court where a rich feast is laid out before them. Bleheris ends just as the young knight is about to hold a conversation with the king’s daughter, and this promising story breaks off, never to be completed. Lewis writes Greeves several times about this. In part, Lewis is befuddled by the allegory he is attempting, but unable to conceptualize completely. He says, for instance, “the story and not the allegory is the important part” (July 25, 1916).[41] By September 27, 1916, he is writing: “I too am wondering whether I should not chuck Bleheris and start something else: partly I have so many ideas and also I think the old fashioned English is a fatal mistake. Any good things that are in it or would be later on, can be worked in elsewhere.”[42] By October 1916 he gives up on Bleheris.

In spite of the narrative failure of Bleheris, Lewis’ poetic sensibilities are evident. The story contains many rich lyrical passages. For example, in addition to many already cited, the description of his approach to the Cloudy Pass is indicative: “He [sees] the pleasant country spread out on the right and the left hand—the golden fields of deep-standing corn, the homely cottages with their long columns of smoke rising in the morning air, the little clumps of woodland where he had wandered full often, and, far to East and West, the blueness of the heathery mountains.”[43] In fact Lewis is at his best when describing landscapes, perhaps reflecting his own deeply held love for the hills of Down near Belfast and his growing appreciation for Surrey as he studied in the home of his great tutor, W. T. Kirkpatrick. Many of these passages reflect a kind of deliberate verbal pacing creating poetic rhythm:

It was now past the middle of summer and full hot in the low countries, yet here were they gotten to such an height—and moreover the freshness of dawn was still upon all things—that a cool, strong, wind was blowing across the heather and singing in their ears. On their left hand lay the sullen border of the sunken wood, and beneath that the height of Cloudy Pass: away to their right the mountain peaks rose higher and shut out their prospect: while that part of the mountains wherein they rode was a rough land of heath, sprinkled with many fair bushes of the prickly gorse, and pierced with masses of grey rock, that grew, as it were, through their covering of rank grass where the old earth had worn thin.[44]

The similes like describing Alice’s lips “as cold as might be the lips of the dead, and her beautiful eyes were calm as the untroubled eyes of an angel painted in the windows of the church” are particularly effective.[45] In addition, he shows a good ear with names like Dame Foltete, Ulfin, and Bethrelladoom.

While it is not justified to see too much poetry in Bleheris, it is valid to note the hand of Lewis the poet here. As he himself admits, there is much that does not work, especially the archaic English, the incomplete allegorical aspects, and the incomplete narrative. Yet he accomplished much, and this work was so important to him that he never destroyed it as he did with many others. Bleheris was a fertile training ground for the narrative poetry Lewis attempted in Dymer and “The Queen of Drum” and served as an incubator for the powerful prose poetry we see later in Perelandra and A Grief Observed.

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[1] For more on Lewis’ aspirations to achieve acclaim as a poet, see my “Making the Poor Best of Dull Things”: C. S. Lewis as Poet,” in SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review 12 (1995): 79-92, and my “C. S. Lewis’s Spirits in Bondage: World I Poet as Frustrated Dualist.” The Christian Scholars' Review 27 (Summer 1998): 454-474.

[2] Hooper published many of the topical poems Lewis wrote throughout his life as Poems (New York: Harcout Brace Jovanovich, 1964), and he published Narrative Poems (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969) which included Dymer and “Launcelot,” “The Nameless Isle,” and “The Queen of Drum.” He also published The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis (London: Fount, 1994) that includes Poems, Spirits in Bondage, and a “Miscellany” of seventeen previously unpublished poems.

[3] “The Taste of the Pineapple: A Basis for Literary Criticism,” in The Taste of the Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer. Bruce L. Edwards, ed. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988, p. 9 and 11.

[4] Lewis writes Arthur Greeves about its composition: “I write one chapter every Sunday afternoon, and having started before I came back [Lewis was on holiday at home from April 5 through May 11, 1916], am always two instalments [sic] ahead of the one you get: the general course of the story was mapped out from the start, but of course is changed pretty freely whenever I like” (July 25, 1916, They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves [1914‑1963]. Ed. by Walter Hooper. New York: Macmillan, 1979, p. 126; hereafter TST).

[5] The original manuscript is housed at the Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Lett. C. 220/5. Fols. 5-43, dated 1916. The Wade Center has a photocopy of the manuscript as well.

[6] This parallels the typical medieval romance where the hero accepts a quest that removes him from the safety of the court and takes him to the wilderness where he is tested. After he successfully completes the test, he returns to court a chastened by wiser man. The best known example of this is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In a recent essay on Bleheris, one of very few, “‘The Dungeon of his Soul’: Lewis’s Unfinished ‘Quest of Bleheris,’” SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review 15 (1998):37-54, David Downing offers a fine review of this fragment. He argues it is noteworthy “not only because it anticipates so much of Lewis’s later imaginative work, but also because it casts new light on the spiritual pilgrimage of a man who became one of the twentieth century’s most effective and influential Christian writers—only after spending his teens and twenties as a resolute agnostic” (37).

[7] TST, 107.

[8] 119.

[9] 87.

[10] The chapter titles are:

I: Of the city of Nesses and of certain that dwelt therein

II: Of my Bleheris and of how he is betrothed”

III: Wherein Bleheris wastes thy time and mine

IV: How Bleheris told those folks of what he would do

V: How Bleheris thinketh on what quest he shall go

VI: How Bleheris came through the Cloudy Pass

VII: How Bleheris came to the edge of the Sunken Wood

VIII: Of those three that were in the hostel

IX: How Bleheris hearkened to Wan Jadis

X: Of their journeying to the land of Yesterday

XI: How they fared at the Grey Marish

XII: How Bleheris had his first sight of a very evil one

XIII: How Bleheris got him a squire

XIV: Of Bleheris’ first fight

XV: How they came a stage further on their way

XVI: How Bleheris is held in great honour & of Gerce the Desirous

XVII: How Bleheris is met with two strangers

[11] Fol. 5a. Galahad is Lewis’ nickname for Greeves. He writes: “Before you get anymore into [Bleheris], let me warn you that when I said the first chapter, that Bleheris was like you, I hadn’t really thought of what I should make him. However I take that back, so that in future when my poor hero does anything mean you won’t think I am covertly preaching at you” (June 6, 1916). TST, 107. Three years later in Lewis first published book, the volume of poetry Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics. ([Clive Hamilton, pseud.]. London: Heinemann, 1919. Reprint, with an introduction by Walter Hooper, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), one of his poems, “Sonnet,” adapts the phrase from this passage “little bats were bleating above me” and we read: “The stars come out; the fragrant shadows fall / About a dreaming garden still and sweet, / I hear the unseen bats above me bleat, / Among the ghostly moths their hunting call” (33).

[12] Fol. 5b.

[13] Fol. 6b.

[14] Bleheris is not, strictly speaking, a courtly love story although it shares some affinities with such. For Lewis’ more mature views on courtly love, see his The Allegory of Love.

[15] Fol. 7a.

[16] Fol. 7b.

[17] Fol. 8a.

[18] Fol. 9b.

[19] Fol. 10a.

[20] Fol. 10a.

[21] Fol. 11a.

[22] Fol. 13a.

[23] Fols. 13a-13b. In letters to Greeves Lewis comments further upon this bias: “I am sorry you disapprove of my remarks in the romance. But you must remember that it is not Christianity itself I am sneering at, but Christianity as taught by a formal old priest like Ulfin, and accepted by a rather priggish young man like Bleheris” (July 18, 1916), TST, 124. Later he adds “the meaning of it all is somewhat anti-Christian” (July 25, 1916), TST, 126.

[24] Fols.15a, 15b.

[25] Fol. 17b.

[26] Fol. 18b.

[27] Fol. 18b. Lewis explains the shadow to Greeves: “You ought to know that the ‘little, hobbling shadow’ doesn’t live more in that wood than anywhere else. It follows nervous children upstairs to bed, when they daren’t look over their shoulders, and comes and sits on your grandfather’s summer seat beside two friends when they talk too much nonsense in the dark” (July 4, 1916), TST, 118. Later he adds: “I am quite as sorry as you that I can’t see my way to working Bleheris back into the Sunken Wood, for I think the idea might be worked a bit more: but don’t see how it is to be done without changing the whole plan of the story” (July 11, 1916), TST, 121.

[28] Fol. 19a.

[29] Fol. 20a.

[30] Fol. 22b.

[31] Fol. 24a.

[32] Fol. 24b.

[33] Fol. 24b.

[34] Fol. 25a. In a note on this page Lewis says: “I meant her to be like the picture of Hela, in the story of Balder.” This hooded woman almost certainly serves as the prototype of the old hag in Dymer, and reminds us yet again of the influence of Norse literature upon Lewis.

[35] Fol. 25b.

[36] Fol. 26a.

[37] Fol. 26b.

[38] Lewis’ mature views on allegory appear in The Allegory of Love. For instance, he says: “Do not let us be deceived by the allegorical form. That, as we have seen, does not mean that the author is talking about non-entities, but that he is talking about the inner world—talking, in fact, about the realities he knows best” (115).

[39] Fol. 27b.

[40] Fol. 39.

[41] TST, 126.

[42] 131.

[43] Fol. 15b.

[44] Fol. 23b.

[45] Fol. 8b.