© 1997 Don W. King

This unpublished essay is forthcoming in the book, C. S. Lewis: A Reader's Encyclopedia (1998) published by Zondervan. Only students taking English 401: C. S. Lewis: The Legacy of His Poetic Impulse at Montreat College have permission to use material from the essay.

The most complete description of the genesis of this volume, Lewis' first published book, can be found in Hooper's introduction to the 1984 edition. In brief, most of the poems were written between 1915-1918, primarily when Lewis was sixteen or seventeen. Some were undoubtedly written while he was studying under W. T. Kirkpatrick while others were written during vacations at Little Lea, after his matriculation and during OSS training at University College, Oxford, and still others during his time of service in the trenches of France. The book was initially turned down by Macmillian; less than a month later Lewis sent it to Heinemann where it was eventually accepted for publication.

According to Lewis the theme of SB is that nature is malevolent and that any God that exists is outside the cosmic system. In a letter to Arthur Greeves he says: "I believe in no God, least of all in one that would punish me for the 'lusts of the flesh': but I do believe that I have in me a spirit, a chip, shall we say, of universal spirit; and that, since all good & joyful things are spiritual & non-material, I must be careful not to let matter (=nature=Satan, remember) get too great a hold on me, & dull the one spark I have" (June 3, 1918; They Stand Together, 221). In a later letter he adds: "[My book] is going to be called 'Spirits in Prison' by Clive Staples & is mainly strung round the idea that I mentioned to you before--that nature is wholly diabolical & malevolent and that God, if he exists, is outside of and in opposition to the cosmic arrangements" (September 12, 1918; They Stand, 230). It may have been for such ideas that Warren Lewis found SB distasteful; he wrote his father:

While I am in complete agreement with you as to the excellence of part of IT's book, I am of the opinion it would have been better if it had never been published. Even at 23 [Warren's age when writing this letter] one realizes that the opinions of 20 are transient things. Jack's Atheism is I am sure purely academic, but, even so, no useful purpose is served by endeavouring to advertise oneself as an Atheist. Setting aside the higher problems involved, it is obvious that a profession of a Christian belief is as necessary a part of a man's mental make-up as a belief in the King, the Regular Army, and the Public Schools. (January 28, 1919; The Lewis Papers, 6:84)

To mollify his father, Lewis responded and wrote: "You know who the God I blaspheme is and that it is not the God that you or I worship, or any other Christian" (March 5, 1919; LP,6:96).

In spite of these reassurances, the tone of the poems in SB reflects an angry adolescent, shaking his fist at a God he denies, rejects, hates, fears, and yet admits to, longs for, seeks, respects. Thematically, though Lewis provides a structure through his notion of a cycle, the poems fall roughly into two groups. In the first grouping, the overall tone is pessimistic. Life, often as a result of war, is seen as demeaning, futile, and empty; also, there is a contrast between the beauty of nature and the past versus the horror of war and the present. "French Nocturne," almost certainly a battlefield poem, reviews the stark tragedy of wartime, and ends with this haunting stanza:

What call have I to dream of anything?
I am a wolf. Back to the world again,
And speech of fellow-brutes that once were men
Our throats can bark for slaughter: cannot sing. (4)

Other poems reflecting this include "Victory" (7), "Apology"(12), "In Prison" (19), "In Praise of Solid People" (42), "Oxford" (57), "Tu Ne Quaesieris" (68), and "Death in Battle" (74). Still other poems in this section comment upon a God who is hateful, cruel, and "red." He "kills us for His sport." The most shocking example of this is found in "De Profundis":

Our love, our hope, our thirsting for the right,
Our mercy and long seeking of the light,
Shall we change these for thy relentless might?
Laugh then and slay. Shatter all things of worth,
Heap torment still on torment for thy mirth-
Thou art not Lord while there are Men on earth. (21)

Addition poems reflecting this are "Satan Speaks I" (3), "Ode for New Year's Day" (13), "Satan Speaks XIII" (22), and "Alexandrines" (41).

Contrasting such pessimism, the second grouping of poems is more hopeful. Within this group, for instance, Lewis includes poems suggesting that nature is beautiful and benevolent in the lyricial and romantic tradition of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Yeats. In "Noon" this lyricism is best expressed:

And the honey-bee
Hums his drowsy melody
And wanders in his course a-straying
Through the sweet and tangled glade
With his golden mead oe'rladen,
Where beneath the pleasant shade
Of the darkling boughs a maiden
-Milky limbs and fiery tress,
All at sweetest random laid-
Slumbers, drunken with the excess
Of the noontide's loveliness. (31)

Other poems reflecting this include "The Satyr" (5), "The Autumn Morning" (34), "The Ass" (51), "How He Saw Angus the God" (61), and "The Roads" (63). In still other poems beauty is the evidence that there is "something" beyond the material world as illustrated in "Dungeon Grates":

So piteously the lonely soul of man
Shudders before this universal plan. . .
Only the strange power
Of unsought Beauty in some casual hour
Can build a bridge of light or sound or form
To lead you out of all this strife and storm. . .
We know we are not made of mortals stuff.
And we can bear all trials that come after,
The hate of men and the fool's loud bestial laughter
And Nature's rule and cruelties unclean,
For we have seen the Glory-we have seen. (25-26)

Other poems in this group are "The Philosopher" (27), "Milton Read Again" (32), "L'Apprenti Sorcier" (39), "Song of the Pilgrims" (47), "Song" (50), "Hymn" (58), "Our Daily Bread" (60), and "World's Desire" (72).

Critical opinion on SB has been scant; although Lewis' first published work, only twelve articles have been written focusing on these youthful poems. Chad Walsh's "The Almost Poet" from his The Literary Legacy of C. S. Lewis is the first serious attempt to consider Lewis as poet. About Spirits in Bondage Walsh acknowledges Lewis' poetic inspirations as Housman, Hardy, Yeats, and Keats. Perhaps the most ambitious essay on Spirits in Bondage is Stephen Thorson's effort to follow its thematic pattern as a cycle of lyrics. While he adds little to Walsh's general observations, Thorson attempts to give a reading of the volume as a whole by tracing the poems, one by one, in light of the tripartite thematic structure provided by Lewis. Peter Schakel in his Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have Faces devotes a thoughtful chapter to Lewis' poetry in Spirits in Bondage and Dymer. Arguing the poetry demonstates "a bifurcation and tension between the rationalism and the romantic"(93) aspects of Lewis' personality, Schakel says "in [Spirits in Bondage]its 'enlightened' rationalism on the one hand and deep sense of longing for a world of the spirit on the other, the collection provides an early and immature version of themes which would be treated much more satisfactorily in Till We Have Faces" (94).

Joe Christopher 1994 essay, "Is 'D' for Despoina?" is fascinating speculation about whether Mrs. Moore is the inspiration for the veiled Despoina in two poems from Spirits in Bondage, "Apology" and "Ode for New Year's Day." John Bremer's discussion of this same topic in his "From Despoina to Diotima: The Mistress of C. S. Lewis" is more thorough, perceptive, and, in the end he disagrees with Christopher's identification of Janie Moore with Despoina. This fine essay ends with an intelligent discussion that posits possible references to "D" in the letters and diaries as Despoina (symbolically linked to the idea of "mistress" but not connected with the figure who is mentioned in Spirits in Bondage), Demeter (the Earth-mother), and Diotima (the introducer to love in Greek literature). Bremer's essay is must reading.

Bremer, John. "From Despoina to Diotima: The Mistress of C. S. Lewis." The Lewis Legacy No.

61 (Summer 1994): 6-18.

Christopher, Joe. "C. S. Lewis Dances Among the Elves: A Dull and Scholarly Survey of Spirits

in Bondage and 'The Queen of Drum.'" Mythlore 9 (Spring 1982): 11-17, 47.

--------------------. "Is 'D' for Despoina?" The Canadian C. S Lewis Journal: The Inklings,

Their Friends, and Their Predecessors No. 85 (Spring 1994): 48-59.

Green, Rodger Lancelyn. "C. S. Lewis and Andrew Lang." Notes and Queries 22 (May

1975): 208-09.

Hooper, Walter. "Preface." In C. S. Lewis. Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics. New

York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.

Lewis, C. S. They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur

Greeves (1914-1963). Ed. Walter Hooper. New York: Macmillan, 1979.

Lewis, Warren. "The Lewis Paper: Memoirs of the Lewis Family, 1850-1930."

11 volumes. Wade Center.

Kirkpatrick, John. "Fresh Views of Humankind in Lewis's Poems." Bulletin of the

New York C. S. Lewis Society 10 (September 1979): 1-7.

Musacchio, George. "War Poet." The Lamp-Post of the Southern California

C. S. Lewis Society 2, no. 4 (October 1978): 7.

Sayer, George. Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988.

Shaw, Luci. "Looking Back to Eden: The Poetry of C. S. Lewis." Bulletin of the

New York C. S. Lewis Society. 23 (Feb. 1992): 1-7.

Schakel, Peter. Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have

Faces. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1984.

Thorson, Stephen. "Thematic Implications of C. S. Lewis' Spirits in Bondage."

Mythlore 8 (Summer 1981): 26-30.

Walsh, Chad. The Literary Legacy of C. S. Lewis. New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1979.