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122 c. s. lewis’s perelandra Myth, Pluralism, and Choice Perelandra and Lewis on Religious Truth Meriel Patrick In his essay “Myth Became Fact,” Lewis argues that there is a dichotomy between human thought and human experience: intellectually, we can grasp only the abstract, but we can experience only the concrete. If we attempt to examine the objects of our experience, we cease to experience them as themselves: they instantly become mere instances or examples of a particular abstract concept. “The more lucidly we think,” Lewis argues, “the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think. You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyse the nature of humour while roaring with laughter. But when else can you really know these things?”1 Myths, Lewis suggests, offer us a partial solution: “In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.”2 It is not simply that the elements of the myth represent abstract truths: if that were the case, says Lewis, it would be a mere allegory. Instead, the myth allows us to experience (or as Lewis puts it, to taste) rather than simply to have intellectual knowledge—but the thing that we are tasting turns out to be a universal principle. Lewis does not offer a definition of myth in this essay, but it seems plain that he understands a myth to be a story that embodies such universal principles: he describes myth as “the father of innumerable truths.”3 He goes on to argue in the rest of the essay that Christianity is a myth that – 122 – perelandra and lewis on religious truth 123 is also a fact. The story alone is one from which one can derive spiritual sustenance (regardless, Lewis thinks, of whether one believes it or not), but it also happens to describe events that really occurred. It seems clear that, in the history of Perelandra, the story of Ransom, Weston, and the Lady would fall into the same category of factual myth. Indeed, as he wrestles with the prospect of attempting to slay the Evil One and ponders the mythological character of what is apparently being asked of him, Ransom perceives that the very distinction between myth and fact will have no meaning on Perelandra: it is a purely terrestrial one. It is, he comes to see, “part and parcel of the unhappy division between soul and body which resulted from the Fall.”4 Taken in the context of Lewis’s argument in “Myth Became Fact,” this presumably means that Lewis sees the Perelandrans as beings who retain intact the ability to have that experience of universal principles for which fallen humans must now turn to myths. It seems that soul or mind is what does the abstract thinking, and that body is what experiences—although (as presumably neither Lewis nor Ransom would wish to claim that all experience is purely physical in nature) perhaps we should see body as being used in a partially figurative sense here. In the human story, the body itself becomes an object of shame—hence Adam’s and Eve’s post-Fall desire to hide their nakedness—and healing of the rift between body and soul begins with the Incarnation, when God, who is pure spirit, unites himself with a human body. In his apologetic work The Problem of Pain (published in 1940, three years before Perelandra appeared), Lewis devotes a chapter to the Fall of humanity. He spends some time speculating about the possible experience of Paradisal man,5 and he puts forward several ideas that resurface in his depiction of the Lady in Perelandra. Of particular relevance is his suggestion that unfallen man was fully conscious of and exercised complete control over the workings of his body: “His organic processes obeyed the law of his own will, not the law of nature. His organs sent up appetites to the judgement seat of will not because they had to, but because he chose. Sleep meant to him not the stupor which we undergo, but willed and conscious repose—he remained awake to enjoy the pleasure and duty of sleep” (PP, 65–66). Compare this to Ransom’s impressions when he sees the Lady sleeping: “Her face was full of expression and intelligence, and [3.137.171.121] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 01:58 GMT...

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