PWJ: S2E3 – TGD 2 – “The bus ride in the clouds”

When we last left Lewis, he had got on a bus in a grey town and was now flying through the sky towards an unknown destination. In today’s episode we learn more about the passengers on the bus.

S2E3: “The bus ride in the clouds” (Download)

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Time Stamps

In case your podcast application has the ability to jump to certain time codes, here are the timestamps for the different parts of the episode.

08:07 – Chapter 150-word Summary
09:17 – Chapter Discussion
37:38 – Haikus

Show Notes

• The drink-of-the-week was the Glenmorangie Lasanta. Matt was drinking tea because an AirBnB guest drank all his whisky!

• The quote-of-the-week were these complaining words put into the mouth of Napoleon:

“It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

• Matt encouraged everyone to go and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Matt broke the news to me that we have had two, yes TWO, dislikes on our videos!

• The episode where I tell the story of my visit to the Kilns was featured on the C.S. Lewis Foundation December newsletter.

• We received a first edition of The Great Divorce, sent to us from a listener, Darren Scott Jacobs:

At the back of the book there was this picture of Lewis which I had never seen before:

He included this note with the book:

“David & Matt, may your many conversations be as strong and robust as the single malt before you! Further up and further in! Darren”

Post-it from Darren

The first thing I did was sniff the book – it immediately took me back to my grandparents’ home, as well as Lewis’ home, The Kilns.

• One of Matt’s friends sent him this Lewis-related article concerning New Year’s Resolutions. I shared that at a recent New Year’s party I had multiple people inform me that there was whisky in the kitchen, even before I had a chance to take off my jacket!

• Last week, we spoke about the Seven Deadly Sins. During this past week, I came across this letter from Lewis on that very subject, where he contrasts pride and sloth:

I was thinking of the old classification of the seven deadly sins… [Sloth] is the kind of indolence which comes from indifference to the good—the mood in which, though it tries to play on us, we have no string to respond. Pride, on the other hand, is the mother of all sins, and the original sin of Lucifer—so you are rather better off than I am. You, at your worst, are an instrument unstrung: I am an instrument strung but preferring to play itself because it thinks it knows the tune better than the Musician.

Letter to Arthur Greeves, 10 February 1930

• I offered the 150-word summary of this chapter:

The Tousle-Headed Poet explains to Lewis how, on earth, everyone failed to recognize his genius. He is convinced that, at their destination, he will receive his deserved recognition.

Lewis meets an Intelligent Man in a bowler hat, who explains that the town is empty because quarreling residents keep moving further away from each other. He talks about a trip some made to Napoleon. The Intelligent Man shares his plan to bring back to the Grey Town “real commodities” and thereby build community life. He wants “safety in numbers” for when the dusk eventually turns to night… Upon hearing this, The Big Man shouts at him to shut up.

“A fat clean-shaven man” tells Lewis that “educated circles” have concluded that the twilight is, in fact, a precursor to the dawn.

The greyness outside begins to subside and the light reveals “distorted and faded” faces…and then Lewis sees his own reflection…

– 150 word summary of The Great Divorce, Chapter 2

• I summarized the life of the tousle-headed poet, which he describes as an unending parade of bad luck and unfairness. Everything was against him – his parents, the school system…

“…[the school had not] made any provision for a talent and temperament such as his. To make matters worse he had been exactly the sort of boy in whose case the examination system works out with the maximum unfairness and absurdity”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

…economics and he was also badly tried by a girl:

“a mass of bourgeois prejudices and monogamic instincts…[and] mean about money”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

The description of this poet reminded me of something said by the Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw:

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one… the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

– George Bernard Shaw

We talked about the poet’s suicide and whether or not this was the cause of him going to the grey town. We concluded that his trajectory had been set much earlier. However, Matt pointed out that there was hope! He was heading to Heaven on the bus. However, his reasons for going were not exactly admirable:

He felt quite certain that he was going where, at last, his finely critical spirit would no longer be outraged by an uncongenial environment-where he would find “Recognition” and “Appreciation.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

• Whereas in the previous chapter the poet had implied that he and Lewis were similar, he now suggests that Lewis won’t like Heaven either:

“…he assured me, that all the other passengers would be with me on the return journey”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

• Many scholars think that the tousle-headed poet is actually a young Lewis:

1. He had a hard Victorian father
2. He went to five schools
3. He didn’t fit in anywhere
4. He had dreams of becoming a famous poet
5. His father financed him for a considerable period of his life
6. He was also a prig when he was young (like Eustace in the Narnia stories)

I commented that when Lewis became a Christian, he became in some ways less introspective. This was because his gaze turned outward, towards God and neighbour, and possibly because he didn’t like what he found when he looked inward!

Matt recommended the App Hallow for the daily examination of conscience.

• I fight breaks out in the bus, but somehow nobody is hurt. Jack finds himself seated next to The Intelligent Man, who has a big nose and a bowler hat. We will later find out his name is “Ikey”. Lewis comments to him that it is a “deuce” of a town. Matt explained that this means it’s a “devil” of a town…an appropriate enough description given that it’s actually Hell!

• He explains to Jack how it is the grey town keeps expanding:

As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very like he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbours-and moved. So he settles in. If by any chance the street is full, he goes further. But even if he stays, it makes no odds. He’s sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he’ll move on again”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

What he’s describing here is a kind of suburbia where people are isolating themselves from each other. They are souls turned in on themselves, Incurvatus in se, as St. Augustine described it.

I referenced, No Exit, a book by Jean-Paul Satres, which tells the story of three damned souls who make each other’s lives miserable. He ends with the line, “Hell is other people”:

“L’enfer, c’est les autres”

Jean-Paul Satres, No Exit

• We find out that at the bus stop they are already a good distance away from the Civic Center which is where they first arrived in the grey town. Matt saw this in a positive light, that those at the bus stop had travelled in a positive direction. I opened up the question as to whether or not there were other bus stops in the town.

• We then talk about the residents of Hell which Lewis mentions:

Tamberlaine: The title character in a play by Christopher Marlowe, based on a 14th century military leader.

Genghis Khan: The founder and first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. He also went on some Excellent Adventures with Bill & Ted.

Julius Caesar: Roman Emperor

Henry the Fifth: English king from 14th/15th Century Napoleon

We also hear about a visit which some people in the grey town made to see Napoleon:

“He’d built himself a huge house all in the Empire style-rows of windows flaming with light… [He was] walking up and down-up and down all the time-left-right, left-right-never stopping for a moment. The two chaps watched him for about a year and he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time. ‘It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.’”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

• Lewis then speaks to a “fat, clean-shaven man” who doesn’t think it’s going to turn into night in the grey town and calls the idea a “primitive superstition”:

“There is not a shred of evidence that this twilight is ever going to turn into a night. There has been a revolution of opinion on that in educated circles”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

Here he seems to be denying that there will ever be a judgement. He also appears to be alluding to an idea which Lewis really liked in his youth but came to reject – the idea of inevitable progress.

This man (whom we will later come to know as The Episcopal Ghost) also seems to detest the material world to the point of Gnosticism:

And that passion for ‘real’ commodities which our friend speaks of is only materialism, you know. It’s retrogressive. Earth-bound! A hankering for matter.

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

This view is going to be contradicted when he arrives at a very “substantial” Heaven.

• As they fly higher, the bus is filled with light:

The greyness outside the windows turned from mud-colour to mother of pearl, then to faintest blue, then to a bright blueness that stung the eyes.

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

Lewis tries to open a window, but is immediately told to stop it. This reminded Matt of the passages in Scripture which speak about the light overcoming the darkness.

• Lewis can now see his fellow passengers clearly:

“I shrank from the faces and forms by which I was surrounded. They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but of impossibilities, some gaunt, some bloated, some glaring with idiotic ferocity, some drowned beyond recovery in dreams; but all, in one way or another, distorted and faded. One had a feeling that they might fall to pieces at any moment if the light grew much stronger”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 2)

• I shared the haikus I had written for this chapter:

I was a bright star

Unrecognized in my time

Soon I shall be praised…

Haiku for the Tousle-headed Poet

We fight with neighbours

Economics will save us

And make us better

Haiku for The Intelligent Man (Ikey)

In my great mansion

Alone, ranting and pacing

Haunted by the past

Haiku for Napoleon

No darkness will come

Educated circles know

that the sun will rise

Haiku and Fat, clean-shaven Man

• Giovanna wrote a haiku encouraging Matt to write some himself!

Matt needs to know how

to speak in prose and poems;

let thy tongue be free!

Giovanna’s haiku for Matt

I put up a survey on Twitter asking whether or not Matt should be forced to write some haikus, the results were overwhelmingly in favour (and that was with Matt trying to sway the vote):