I see now that the movie ‘Narvik,’ dramatizing the World War II battle, is coming to Netflix January 23. So I guess it’s okay for me to tell you that I worked on this project as a script translator. It was one of the very first I was involved in.
I look forward to ‘Narvik’ with great anticipation. Not only does it tell the story of a nearly-forgotten, epic moment in the story of the war, but it gives proper credit at last to the Norwegian General Fleischer, who had the honor of being the first commander to defeat the Germans on land in that conflict. And who’s story was tragically suppressed.
“You do realize that by limiting yourself thus you are depriving your family of comfort and riches?”
“Oh, you third-reachers!” laughed Siloán. “You have so much that your hearts have become small. You can live very well with very little. Sometimes, it is better this way.”
It isn’t immediately apparent that Nicholas Kotar’s The Song of the Sirin is not typical English-oriented fantasy. Somewhere after the hunt of the white stag, the interaction with the otherworldly wolf, and everything the Pilgrim says, I began to think I didn’t know the terms the writer used. Not knowing anything about Russian folklore, I had no knowledge base to foresee the possibilities in a name or type.
The kingdom of Vasyllia is in decline with an elderly monarch, called the Dar. Three castes of people stir up plenty of political tension, having little more to do than look out for themselves. The young man Voran and his teenaged sister Lebía are orphans of a wealthy family, but their opportunities are limited by the suspicious circumstances of their parents’ deaths; their father, Otchigen, may have betrayed the king to save himself when the people in a distant embassy were slaughtered.
Voran draws more suspicion to himself when he brings a Pilgrim into the city and professes to believe everything he says. The old stories about the divine Covenant and mythical beasts like sirin (an eagle with feathers like gems and the head and torso of a woman) were just a nice cultural basis. There was no living water dripping from a weeping tree. No Raven monster seeking that water along with the destruction of all mankind.
But, of course, the old stories are true, and Voran will be accused by the ignorant and deceived by wily spirits before he begins a long trial of endurance to set the kingdom right again.
Some dark moments in the story are handled carefully, which I appreciate. My main quibble with the writing is the sentences that push toward colorful language where sparse prose would fit the scene better.
The Song of the Sirinis book one of the five-book Raven Son series. While it ends satisfactorily, there’s still a lot of ongoing conflict. I don’t know what to expect in book two, which I picked up with the first one.
Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastic toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Big news in the literary world today – as this article from the Chicago Sun Times reports, Sherlock Holmes will finally be wholly in the public domain as of tomorrow, the last copyrights for his stories having run out. (If I understand correctly, most of the stories are already out of copyright, but Doyle was still cranking the things out – reluctantly – in 1927).
That was two years before he was filmed doing the interview above. It’s ten minutes divided into two halves. The first half – the interesting part – tells how he came to write Holmes, and discusses the character’s fame. In the second half, Doyle climbs up on his perpetual hobbyhorse, Spiritualism. You, like me, might want to give that part a miss.
I think Doyle underrates himself as a writer in this monologue. He suggests that the great appeal of Sherlock Holmes was the logical, “scientific” approach to problem solving. I think the great draw was always the inherent interest of the characters, especially the friendship between Holmes and Watson.
One of the little stock speeches I often employ to repel prospective acquaintances involves a comparison between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. If you watch very old Holmes movies (and I’ve viewed a few lately), you might be surprised to see that they’re always set in the years when the film is made. Thus we see him and Watson tootling around in automobiles and talking over phones. (In one strange film, The Speckled Band [1931], Raymond Massey plays a youngish Holmes employing a stable of secretaries to continually collate information for him, like a primitive database.)
I like to point out that people in the early 20th Century saw Holmes just the way we see James Bond today. The Bond stories were originally written in the 1950s and ‘60s, but the movies began in the ‘60s and have gone on from there. Thus we think of Bond as a contemporary. We assume he’s operating in 2022 (soon 2023), and that he carries a cell phone and uses a PC, among other things. The fact that this is a very different level of technology from what’s found in Ian Fleming’s original stories doesn’t bother us at all.
In exactly the same way, people in the 1920s thought of Holmes as a man of their time. They expected him to drive a car and use a phone (and in fact, in the later Doyle stories he actually does those things). The idea that Holmes should be stuck in the late 19th Century only came later. The Hound of the Baskervilles with Basil Rathbone (1939) was the first movie to put him back in period, and that was an innovation.
I’m still working away at That Hideous Strength. My slow progress shouldn’t be taken as a sign of disinterest; I’m enjoying it quite a lot. I just have things I’ve got to do, and I’m moving slow because of the fall I took. So I don’t anticipate a review until next week.
Above, a very short clip from 9 years ago, of the mathematician John Lennox reminiscing about listening to Lewis lecturing at Cambridge. This was actually the very last lecture series Lewis ever delivered, before ill health forced his retirement. His eccentric lecturing “style” is well documented from several sources, though others report that Lewis actually starting lecturing out in the hallway before even entering the classroom. His voice carried well.
“I feel sorry for her.” “Well, she’s much, much too young to die. We’ll come back as ghosts later and apologize to her.”
The 2004 anime series Paranoia Agent, by Satoshi Kon, is a good example of a story that can’t be told with words alone. It’s essentially a visual story. As such, viewers are led to believe things that may not be true and explanations are not always spoken.
The thirteen-episode series begins like a crime story. The young designer Tsukiko Sagi is under pressure to create a new character for toys and shows that’s just as cute and bound to be more famous than her current creation, Maromi, a pink, floppy eared dog. Walking home at night, Tsukiko begins to feel the shadows turn over on her. She runs, stumbles, and then a young boy in a baseball cap and inline street skates zips up out of nowhere and strikes her with a bent metal bat. At least, that’s what we see.
In the next few episodes, news of this “li’l slugger,” reportedly an elementary school-aged boy, is everywhere. The public and the two detectives looking into it are shocked something like this could happen. Several more people, who are being driven to the end of the wits by various dark circumstances, fall victim to this mysterious kid. A boy who fits the description perfectly is apprehended by the traffic cop he strikes with his bat. This kid tells the detectives he is a righteous warrior who can see the glow of a demon, who wants to overthrow the city, on select people has a skates up behind them. He strikes them with his bat, a spiritual sword in disguise, to wound the demon. He must continue to hunt this thing down until it can no longer hide.
Is this kid the source of the crime spree? No, because he dies in police custody and the officers believe they see the li’l slugger skating away through the halls.
Then the story shifts in tone. We get an episode of women sharing ridiculous rumors about li’l slugger assaults and murders. Another one is of an animation studio working on a Maromi cartoon and the li’l slugger cracking their skulls one by one. Another one is a comical tale of three people with Maromi backpacks who try to work out their death pact (the primary wrench in the works is that a little girl wants to kill herself too).
All of this works together to deliver a principle spelled out in the final episodes, one that doesn’t explain everything we see because we believe too much of what we see is real (within the story). That principle is the latest rave is killing us all. It’s even twisting our perceptions. The Next Hot Thing everyone must have creates fear and sucks our life away. We don’t need it, if it demands so much of us. Consider a quiet life that fulfills some useful service that puts food on your table, respects yourself and your family, and doesn’t feed the machine.
I’m not recommending watching this show. Half of it is dark and ugly, and the whole may be too trippy for most people. I’m sure someone could make a decent list of truths or propositions found in the show, but I think those would be minor principles to the main one I’ve given here.
Still reading That Hideous Strength, so what shall I blog about? Are you interested in the fact that I fell down the basement stairs the other day? Moving too fast for a man my age; I’d just come inside and my rubber shoe soles were wet. One of them slipped on a stair tread, because I took it too close to the edge, and I went down a few steps.
No major damage that I could tell. Nothing seems to be broken. I can’t even see any bruises; maybe they’re in back, out of my view in the mirror. But I assume there’s a muscle bruise in one of the stabilizing muscles on the left side of my trunk. Walking’s a little painful, but it’s getting up and sitting down that hurt most. Today I did some shopping, and I took my cane. It helped. Surprisingly, I’ve been feeling a little better each day (isn’t the third day supposed to be the worst?), so I expect I’ll be fairly mobile by the weekend.
I did some noodling on the internet and found the “trailer” above – a fake somebody mugged up. I like it, though I can’t endorse all the casting. Hopkins is way too old to play Ransom, and where’s the sweeping golden beard? Gielgud is dead, always an inconvenience. I used to dream of doing a film of the book myself – even had the first shots planned out. I wanted Orson Welles as Merlin – he’d have done it too, if we’d had the money; he’d take any role at the end. I’m glad other people feel the same way about THS; I’m always surprised when anybody likes the book – I’ve encountered so much hostility to it over the years.
Reader’s impressions: First of all, we’re told that Jane Studdock’s maiden name was Tudor. That’s significant for any Arthurian – the Tudors were the dynasty that really promoted the revival of the Arthurian legend in the late Middle Ages. As a Welsh family, and thus Celtic/British, they claimed through Arthur a prior right of sovereignty over the upstart Normans.
I expect it’s the character of Jane that offends people the most in our time – the idea that she’s missed her true vocation by refusing to bear children. But in the context of the book, Jane is far less in the wrong than her husband Mark. She’s merely petty; Mark runs the danger of genuine corruption, becoming part of something worse than the Nazis.
He picked one of [the fruits] and turned it over and over. The rind was smooth and firm and seemed impossible to tear open. Then by accident one of his fingers punctured it and went through into coldness. After a moment’s hesitation he put the little aperture to his lips. He had meant to extract the smallest, experimental sip, but the first taste put his caution all to flight. It was, of course, a taste, just as thirst and hunger had been thirst and hunger. But then it was so different from every other taste that it seemed mere pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men, out of all reckoning, beyond all covenant. For one draft of this on Earth wars would be fought and nations betrayed. It could not be classified…
I told you yesterday that I was reading C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra. As the taste of the fruit in the passage above surpassed the narrator’s powers of description, I have a hard time expressing the effect this wonderful book had on me. I’ve read it several times before – once aloud, in fact – but though the plot is familiar, the experience is always a surprise.
Perelandra was the first book of Lewis’ science fiction trilogy that I read, long ago. My preference is to read series in order, but this was the only one they had in the little church library from which I borrowed it. I was still just getting to know Lewis at the time, and I little imagined what I was letting myself in for.
The book opens with the only instance I recall in Lewis’ works where he inserts himself into one of his own stories (reminiscent of his theological argument comparing the Incarnation to Shakespeare writing himself into a play. Amusingly, a couple of Lewis’ real-life friends get mentions). He describes walking to Ransom’s cottage at night, in response to a pre-arranged summons. He finds the journey surprisingly difficult; he’s assailed by irrational fears and sudden resentment against Ransom. When he arrives, Ransom isn’t home – but Something is. After an encounter with a genuine angel (Eldil), Ransom shows up at last and Lewis helps him to prepare for a journey to Perelandra (the planet Venus) by supernatural means.
The choice of conveyance here is emblematic of the whole book. Out of the Silent Planet was perfectly adequate in its attempts at hard science fiction writing by a non-scientist, imagining some kind of theoretical higher physics propulsion system. But by this point Lewis had figured out that his strength wasn’t in the direction of hard SF. He was a fantasist at heart, and from here on the books would be science fantasy. Science fantasy can be a lazy shortcut, when a writer is doing something like Buck Rogers space opera. But for Lewis, this approach provided a springboard for a deep dive into metaphysics.
At the time Lewis was writing (mid-World War II), our knowledge of the planet Venus was negligible. This offered tremendous scope for the imagination. Lewis’s brain conceived the idea of an ocean planet where organic islands bearing paradisical fruits and fantastical animals floated constantly on a golden sea. And ruling the planet, a pair of naked, green-skinned human beings, the unfallen Adam and Eve of that world. The man and the woman have been separated. Ransom meets the woman. Then Ransom’s old enemy Dr Weston shows up (by “conventional” spacecraft), and it falls on Ransom to protect a second Paradise from a second Fall.
I told you about it yesterday – sometimes I had to just set this book down for a while, because it was too beautiful to bear. The authorial challenge Lewis takes on here is supremely audacious – to imagine a true state of innocence in a way that won’t be misinterpreted by dirty minds. To describe colors the reader has never seen and tastes he’ll never taste, without sounding precious. To provide a parable of the life of faith that even skeptics can appreciate – even if they don’t get the point.
But it works. It works in every line, every paragraph. This is Lewis at the height of his creative powers. This is the kind of work Tolkien dreamed “Jack” would do more of, when he arranged for him to get a chair at Cambridge – something which, in God’s economy, was never to be. That Hideous Strength is a worthy sequel, but Perelandra stands alone – not only in Lewis’ oeuvre, but in the science fiction genre as a whole. An amazing book.
Photo credit: Laura Nyhuis, lauraintacoma, under Unsplash license.
I want to tell you about my Christmas, and I worry that I’ll do it badly. I’m susceptible (as you may have noticed) to the temptation to play the martyr, but in fact the tale I have to tell you is quite a happy one. I had a blessed Christmas.
My church is one of those that only did Christmas Eve services this year, so I went to that, and then Christmas Sunday lay before me unscheduled (my family will gather next weekend). It’s something of a challenge for a Christmas-lover like me to spend the big day by himself, but I prayed earnestly for a good spirit as I went to bed.
I woke up remembering a strange dream (as if I’ve ever had a dream that wasn’t strange). I was kneeling, studying a doll house. I was certain, for some reason, that there were tiny people living in that doll house. But I’d never seen them. They were shy and they kept out of sight, frightened, no doubt, by my size.
And as I thought about that dream, lying in bed, it occurred to me that this was a parable of Christmas. God faced a similar problem when He came into the world, and He solved it by becoming small, by becoming a baby.
I thought that a rather jolly way to wake up Christmas morning. It put me in an unexpectedly festive mood. Then, as I got up, I noticed how cold it was. Our natural gas company, worried about the gas supply (Gee, I wonder how that came to be a problem), had asked us to turn our thermostats down to 65⁰, and I’d done so, like a loyal Comrade. I remembered that I’ve got a nice, hand-knitted pair of wool stockings somewhere, which I hadn’t worn in a while. Seemed like a good day for them. I poked around in some drawers, and in the bottom bureau drawer I found, not the socks (I found those somewhere else), but a pair of flannel pajamas. I hadn’t worn those pajamas in years. I’d forgotten I owned them. When I contemplate my old clothes, the question is always, of course, “From which geological era of my life do these come?” I’ve been thin and I’ve been fat, and I still haven’t lost enough weight to wear the older stuff. But I tried the pj’s on, and they fit very well. I’d been wearing ordinary cotton pajamas, but it seemed to me flannel was just the thing for current conditions. It was like getting a Christmas present, so I decided to consider them one.
Through the rest of the day I took a break from my diet, considering it a Feast. I listened to Christmas music by Sissel. And I continued reading the book I was working on, Lewis’ Perelandra(which I mean to review tomorrow).
Perelandra, it seems to me, stands alone among Lewis’ works in a particular way. I think it’s the most fully mythopoeic of his books, most closely bound to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, if only in spirit. Lewis was at the peak of his creative powers here, and he excelled at moving the heart by way of the intellect – I’ve read Perelandra several times, but this time was almost physically difficult for me. More than once I had to stop to regain my composure. Not because I didn’t like it, but because it pierced my heart again and again. So I was something of an emotional basket case on Christmas day.
But I wasn’t unhappy. In its peculiar way, this was one of the best Christmases I’ve ever spent.
The Christmas concert my church choir performed this year featured Vivaldi’s Gloria. The video above is the second movement, “Et in Terra Pax,” performed by the Oxford Schola Cantorum and Northern Chamber Orchestra.
“Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.” And in earth peace to men of good will.
Vivaldi set these words to rather unpeaceful music. It has a dreadful plodding to it, as if we fear the coming of terra pax. Its slow tension is a beautiful metaphor for knowing the Prince of Peace has come and yet feeling our lack of peace throughout our lives. We long for the peace that has come, Lord. How long?
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 6:7 ESV)
