PWJ: S3E34 – TWHF – “Retrospective”
Matt and I sat down and looked back on our reading of “Till We Have Faces” this season.
S3E34: “Till We Have Faces” Retrospective (Download)
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Time Stamps
00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:12 – Welcome
01:24 – Drink-of-the-week
02:51 – Quote-of-the-week
03:36 – Toast
08:28 – Andrew Lazo News
12:52 – Reading TWHF
13:37 – Listener Feedback
32:30 – Theme: Longing
35:31 – Theme: Paganism & Christianity
37:54 – Theme: Distorted Love
43:47 – Theme: Seeing & Perceiving
45:11 – Theme: Having Faces
47:33 – Theme: Death & Transformation
50:39 – Theme: Co-inherence
52:17 – Theme: Relentless Love
53:31 – Theme: Humility
54:45 – Listener Poem
55:30 – “Last Call” Bell
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
After recording this episode, Matt and I chatted about humility (which we’re naturally great at!)….
Show Notes
• I was joined by Matt “The Cabin Fever Is Starting To Get To Me” Bush.
• For the drink-of-the-week, Matt was drinking Glenlivet 12 and I was enjoying some Auchentoshan from my friend Joe.
• The quote-of-the-week came from a letter which Lewis sent to the Kilmer family:
I am so glad you both like Till We Have Faces. I think it my best book but not many people agree. . . I think, Anne, the 3 sisters are not v[ery] like goddesses. They’re just human souls. Psyche has a vocation and becomes a saint. Orual lives the practical life and is, after many sins, saved. As for Redival – well, we’ll all hope the best for everyone
C.S. Lewis, Letter to Anne and Martin Kilmer, 7 August 1957
• We toasted top-tier supporters Kate & Rowdy with whom we had spoke earlier in the week:
“I hope that you will regularly take the opportunity to look back on how the Lord has moved in your life, raise a glass and give thanks”
Toast for Kate & Rowdy
When we were speaking with Rowdy, he told us about another podcast with which he is involved, be1 oilfield podcast. We also offered a correction on the pronunciation of a listener’s name, Ted Dougherty (DOK-HER-DEE):
Thanks fo rthe sout-out, and foir everything you guys do. David was actually closer on the pronunciation: “Dock-erty”…but yes, in my lazy American the “t” sounds like a “d”. Drinking a Coke Zero and smoking a cigar (COA Italia)…Cheers!
Message from Ted
• Andrew Lazo has started doing readings of Till We have Faces on Saturday mornings. I’ve started reading a book, “Bareface” by Doris T. Myers, which I’m currently reading. She comments Batta is the feminine form of Battus, who was a taddletale in a story about Hermes and ironically means “tongue-tied”!
Andrew will also be joining the PWJ team next Season!
• We thanked the listeners for supporting us on Patreon.
• Matt and I chatted about reading Till We Have Faces this season. We both agreed that reading the book slowly is the only way to go.
• We had lots of messages from people who were grateful for the help getting through this book. We read some of the messages from listeners:
Awesome idea, can’t wait. If you haven’t been following along Pints With Jack have been doing this book for their season and it’s been fantastic. It’s one of Lewis’ books I don’t think I would have tackled without them!
Peter Cavnar
Found this excellent podcast after hearing David’s interview with Trent Horn! TWHF is my and my teenage daughter’s personal favorite C.S. Lewis book, so the 2 of us are really enjoying listening to these episodes together. Thank you!
Susan Robinson
From my daughter Emma: “(Thematic spoilers.) A large part of what I like now about Till We Have Faces is the skill with which its themes are folded into the plot. Every time I reread it I find myself relishing anew how cleverly everything is set up: Orual’s possessiveness of her loved ones (underlying events in the very beginning, yet only clear for what it is in hindsight) and the natural fallout from it; the theme of self-delusion and rationalization of our worst impulses. My enjoyment is deepened by the fact that some of these themes are rather hard to find in most modern literature; it’s rare to see a book that’s complex enough to admit the flawed nature of human love while still pointing out opportunities for hope and redemption despite that fact.
Still, these things could probably be said for many of Lewis’s books. What makes Till We Have Faces my favorite of all is the very first thing that I noticed when I began reading it, before recognizing any of its themes or intellectual brilliance — the rich atmosphere of the story’s setting. Upon opening the book, the reader has an immediate sense of being in a new, strange place, one that may or may not be hospitable but is guaranteed, at least, to be different from anything he or she has ever experienced before. That atmosphere is what first drew me into the book, and has compelled me to reread it enough times to begin appreciating its themes.”
Emma Robinson
The scene with the peasant made me think of Matt. 11:25 I am grateful that you hid all this from wise and educated people and showed it to ordinary people. (A text that has been frustrating me btw).
The Greek Aphrodite seems to me to be a face that the rational, educated, men put onto the faceless Ungit thus hiding the mystery of the real Ungit from them. I feel like Arnom, when answering Oruals questions, is answering only from his Greek perspective. He says the stories are there to hide it from the vulgar, I suspect he just isn’t interested anymore in the gods themselves. He has masked them to be just this (beautiful) layer over the natural world and nothing more.Here, like usual, I can very much relate to Orual. She seems intrigued by the simple faith of the peasant but can’t really relate to it. The dead answers of the priest however aren’t a possibility for her either. If that were true she wouldn’t bother with the gods at all.
Tijn Pelgrim
I just wanted to clarify, in case anyone was confused, that “vulgar” in the book’s context means lowbrow or unsophisticated. It doesn’t indicate what modern people usually mean by the word.
Cody Quanbeck
It’s actually a cool coincidence that this book made you think of the movie, Beauty and the Beast because the literary story of Beauty and the Beast actually has a lot of parallels to the myth of Cupid and Psyche. (There are three sisters, the youngest of whom is way prettier and nicer than the others. This youngest is sacrificed for the greater good to a mysterious monster. Said monster turns out to be less beastly than supposed and the Psyche character ends up living in a magical palace. The older sisters are jealous and convince her to do something the Cupid character forbade her to do. Something bad happens as a result but it ultimately ends happily.)
Cody Quanbeck
My 10 year old daughter is having a bit of a fight with her two neighborhood friends. One of the friends wants my daughter to claim that she is her best friend, more than the other. My daughter keeps staring that she likes them equally and she doesn’t like being put in a situation to choose. But this one girl won’t let it go. She needs to be told she is my daughter’s favorite. When she was telling me this at dinner I think I was too excited about it because I started “oh…oh…it’s just like ‘Til we have faces! I’m reading it along with these podcast guys! You’re Psyche and your friend is Orual” As I tried to explain the plot to her I realized I was not doing well. With talk of sacrifice and marriage, and blackmail by dagger I believe I’ve made the situation worse. But I am proud of how she is handling the situation.
Peter Canvar
@pintswithjack just discovered your show! Love it! Taken in about 4 a day! As a pastor, secondary school Bible teacher & faculty rep for our Lewis House, fantasy author and Inklings enthusiast, your podcast is scratching an itch to be sure
@RemFellows
Is it really due to her father that she [Orual] is so broken? or was it lack of having a mother? or is it providence?
MO PEO
I’ve been following with pleasure your podcast on Til We have Faces. I wonder why you haven’t brought up the relationship of the story with the classic Cupid and Psyche myth (unless it’s too obvious to mention). And Psyche’s name translating to “Soul” seems very meaningful. If the Fox is “Intellect”, and Psyche is Soul, the King might represent the animal passions, I wonder if Orual represents the Will, which has to choose which way it will relate to Divinity.
…
Mary Konczyk
I have to admit that I’m out if my depth at this part of the story, but I suspect Lewis may be introducing one of Charles Williams favorite themes, that of substitutionary co-inherence, which seems to mean that persons metapysically united by bonds of love can really “bear one another’s burdens”, so that the suffering of one becomes redemptive for the other. Kind of like Catholics “offering it up” for someone else.
Psyche becomes a Christ figure in her suffering; she carries Orual with her every step of the way on her via dolorosa.
AS a Luddite Gen-Xer who’s coming late to the podcast game, THIS is the one that makes me wish I’d discovered them sooner. David and Matt are engaging and fun, and their love for the subject really comes through! I devoured Chronicles of Narnia one summer as a child, read it again to my children, and randomly picked up The Great Divorce a few years ago. I loved it so much I give copies away. When I discovered this podcast it was like an answered prayer. Of course I’ll eventually read Lewis’s whole oeuvre, but until then, I can listen to David and Matt dissect and discuss, laughing and learning all the way. (Went back and started at the beginning. I’m actually thankful the quarantine sent me online looking for entertainment, cause this is what I found).
iTunes Review by “AlabamaIrish”
• We then switched gears and started talking about the major themes of Till We Have Faces. We began by talking about longing…
“You made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts will wander restless until we rest in you”
St. Augustine, The Confessions
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace
St. Augustine, The Confessions
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
• I then spoke about the relationship between Paganism and Christianity, suggesting that people trip up over this book because they try and view it through a Christian lens too early.
• We then discussed the theme of distorted love.
I must now explain why I have found this distinction necessary to any treatment of our loves. St. John’s saying that God is love has long been balanced in my mind against the remark of a modern author (M. Denis de Rougemont) that “love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god”; which of course can be re-stated in the form “begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god”. This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 1)
I put it in terms of devouring love. I compared it to the “Loving Mother” in The Great Divorce. Matt quoted Lewis’ poem, As The Ruin Falls:
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
C.S. Lewis, As The Ruin Falls
Matt connected this to “Incurvatus In Se”, the Latin phrase which refers to a soul turned in on itself.
• Related to this, I spoke about our inability to see ourselves clearly, and the difference between seeing and perceiving:
“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
When we don’t understand and reveal ourself, we don’t have a face. I then quoted one of Lewis’ letters:
How can they (i.e. the gods) meet us face to face till we have faces? The idea was that a human being must become real before it can expect to receive any message from the superhuman; that is, it must be speaking with its own voice (not one of its borrowed voices), expressing its actual desires (not what it imagines that it desires), being for good or ill itself, not any mask, veil, or persona.
Letter to Dorothea Conybeare
• We then spoke about death and transformation. Matt quoted Lewis’ fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield:
“At a certain stage in his [Lewis’] life he deliberately ceased to take any interest in himself except as a kind of spiritual alumnus taking his moral finals…what began as deliberate choice became at length an ingrained and effortless habit of soul. Self-knowledge, for him, had come to mean recognition of his weakness and shortcomings and nothing more. Anything beyond that he sharply suspected, both in himself and in others, as a symptom of spiritual Megalomania.”
Owen Barfield, speaking about C.S. Lewis
Die before you die. There is no chance after.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Part II, Chapter 2)
• Next up we spoke about Charles Williams and “co-inherence”. We discussed whether or not Orual chose to carry Psyche’s burdens.
If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear.
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 9)
• We spoke about the gods’ relentless love and pursuit of Orual.
You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.
St. Augustine, The Confessions
• We ended by speaking about the theme of humility and how it is the solution to all our ills.
• I ended by quoting a poem by Nicolas Delcour which is about The Great Divorce, but is also an apt description of Orual:
We are shadow you and me
Poem by Nicolas Delcour
Not yet acclimated to eternity
We are not yet complete
The grass hurts our feet
How truly young is redeemed humanity.