Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. If you don't want me ruining the experience for you, put this post down and go read Perelandra now. I promise I won't be offended.
The story so far: The narrator (a fictional version of Lewis himself) was summoned by his friend Professor Ransom on "business," which he understood to mean business having to do with Ransom's trip to Malacandra (Mars), as narrated in the previous novel, Out of the Silent Planet. Walking along the darkened road from the train to Ransom's cottage, he experienced a heavy feeling of oppression. When Lewis arrived at the cottage, he found it deserted, but in Ransom's hallway was a translucent, coffin-like box, and a strange shaft of light he recognized as an eldil, one of the spiritual inhabitants of Malacandra, with whom Ransom still communicated.
At the very end, Ransom finally returns to his cottage. He is relieved to learn that Lewis was not hindered by the "barrage" along the way: the oppressive feelings were real, caused by the dark eldila of Earth. He tells Lewis that they have gotten wind of what he is doing. The Oyarsa of Mars is sending Ransom on a voyage to Perelandra (Venus)—conveying him personally—and the vehicle is the coffin in the cottage.
Ransom does not know how long his trip will last or if he will even return. Lewis is there to pack him into the box. Ransom also charges him with coming back to unpack him, if and when he returns, and with recruiting a trusted successor in case Lewis himself is no longer alive. Lewis also decides to confide in Humphrey, a mutual doctor friend.
Lewis and Ransom carry the box outside and Lewis helps him inside—naked, with nothing but a blindfold to protect his eyes from sunlight. Then Ransom is taken away. Lewis does not see how.
More than a year later, Oyarsa summons Lewis. He and Humphrey return to Ransom's cottage, where they see the coffin descend from the sky. While the two earthbound men are a bit worse for wear, thanks to the ongoing war, Ransom himself looks healthy and even younger. He has a wound on his heel, however, which will not heal. Ransom relates his story over breakfast.
Like Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra involves Ransom being taken on a space voyage, each time by a means unexplained to the reader: to Malacandra in an H. G. Wells-esque sphere designed by the scientist Weston with an unexamined propulsion system, and to Perelandra in a mere box, transported supernaturally, with Oyarsa himself the means of propulsion.
Lewis reminds us that Elwin Ransom is a philologist (established in Out of the Silent Planet). Philology is a branch of linguistics dealing with the historical development of language over time. Ransom's profession helped him learn the Malacandrian language, or Hressa-Hlab. He expresses some disappointment that it is actually the lingua franca of the solar system, Old Solar or Hlab-Eribolef-Cordi, and so he won't get to solve the same problem on Venus. C. S. Lewis was not a philologist, but his friend J. R. R. Tolkien was. As he wrote in his autobiography, "Friendship with [Tolkien] marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a Papist, and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both."1 Lewis's 1960 book Studies in Words is about how a handful of significant English words have changed meaning over the ages, and could be considered a work in philology.2
Ransom jokes, in a self-deprecating manner, about "setting out single-handed to combat powers and principalities." This is an allusion to Ephesians 6:12. This immediately precedes the famous passage about the "whole armour of God," the practice of spiritual warfare, which the Bible describes primarily as practical holiness and effective apologetics (see Eph. 6:13-20 and 2 Corinthians 10:3-6). But here, there's a sense that Ransom expects to do some literal battle; as he interprets that same Ephesians verse, "When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved hyper-somatic beings at great heights (our translation is very misleading at that point, by the way) it meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting." The phrase Ransom renders "depraved hyper-somatic beings" is usually translated "spiritual wickedness" or "wicked spirits," and I'm not sure he's right about it being a bad translation.
Paul does mean there's a spiritual reality behind the "flesh and blood" we strive against, but what Ransom has in mind is clearly going beyond the practice of prayer, faith, and righteousness that Paul says are the weapons of spiritual warfare. The dark eldil of Earth (aka Thulcandra) are in conflict with the eldil of the other planets, and it seems as though Ransom is the proxy for the Malacandrian Oyarsa, doing battle against an enemy on Venus that is yet to be revealed.
The actual voyage to Venus is a story-within-a-story; the first two chapters, at least, are a frame story to set the context. There's no concluding chapter in which narrator-Lewis and Humphrey react to the tale Ransom has told them. With the end of this chapter, Lewis and Humphrey disappear from the narrative. From here on, it's Ransom's own story. See you next Sunday.
Footnotes
1 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, Fadedpage, updated Sept. 7, 2023, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20150220/html.php.
2 Lewis, Studies in Words (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment