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.
