Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. Unless you're the sort of person who likes skipping to the last page, go read the book first.
I'm late! Oh my ears and whiskers.
Narrator-C. S. Lewis was summoned to the country cottage of Elwin Ransom, who informs him he was commissioned by Oyarsa, the spiritual being that rules Malacandra (Mars), to go on a journey to Perelandra (Venus) for reasons as yet unknown. His transportation was a featureless casket, propelled there by Oyarsa himself. Lewis was charged with helping him into the casket, and helping him out again when he returns—if he returns.
Over a year later, Oyarsa summoned Lewis back to the cottage. He and Humphrey, a mutual doctor friend whom Lewis also recruited to help Ransom, witness the return of the casket and help Ransom out again. Ransom began telling the story of his trip to them.
Enclosed in the casket, with only a blindfold to protect him from sunlight in space, Ransom arrives on Venus. The casket dissolves around him, leaving him in open water. The entire surface of Venus is apparently an ocean, and the sky is golden, perpetually overcast. Ransom also discovers that while there is no land, there are a multitude of large floating mats of vegetation He swims for one and climbs on. Exploring, he finds a forest, where he finds some particularly delicious fruit. Then he falls asleep.
Little was known about Venus in 1943. Telescope observations had confirmed a dense cloud cover, but there was no way of knowing what was beneath. It was assumed to be warm, but there was speculation about what lay beneath the clouds: desert, ocean, or vegetation. In the previous chapter, Ransom says:
"Our astronomers don’t know anything about the surface of Perelandra at all. The outer layer of her atmosphere is too thick. The main problem, apparently, is whether she revolves on her own axis or not, and at what speed. There are two schools of thought. There’s a man called Schiaparelli who thinks she revolves once on herself in the same time it takes her to go once round Arbol—I mean, the Sun. The other people think she revolves on her own axis once in every twenty-three hours. That’s one of the things I shall find out."
Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) was an Italian astronomer best known for his seminal studies of Mars. It was Schiaparelli who first "discovered" the "channels" (translated as "canals" in English) on Mars. He actually made no assumptions about their origin; it was Percival Lowell who ran with the idea of Martian canals being the product of intelligent life. They were later proven to be optical illusions. Schiaparelli also observed Mercury and Venus, and calculated the day of Venus to be 224 Earth days, the same length as its year. He was almost right: Venus's day is actually 243 days long. Venus is also the only planet with a retrograde rotation, that is, clockwise as opposed to its counterclockwise orbit around the sun. Neither this nor Venus's inhospitable climate were known until the 1960s.
Lewis was creating a fictional Venus—one where Ransom could fight a cosmic battle with evil. But it's clear he was well aware of the scientific understanding of Venus of the time, and he blends this with his own imaginative speculation. The same is true of his portrayal of Mars in Out of the Silent Planet.
A significant moment in this chapter is when Ransom discovers yellow fruit in the floating forest. He finds eating the fruit to be indescribably pleasurable. Yet, as he reaches for another one, he realizes, against all reason, that it might be better not to repeat the pleasure. It seems to parallel another discussion—a flashback at the beginning of the chapter, in which narrator-Lewis recounts
a sceptical friend of ours called McPhee was arguing against the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the human body. I was his victim at the moment and he was pressing on me in his Scots way with such questions as “So you think you’re going to have guts and palate for ever in a world where there’ll be no eating, and genital organs in a world without copulation? Man, ye’ll have a grand time of it!” when Ransom suddenly burst out with great excitement, “Oh, don’t you see, you ass, that there’s a difference between a trans-sensuous life and a non-sensuous life?” That, of course, directed McPhee’s fire to him. What emerged was that in Ransom’s opinion the present functions and appetites of the body would disappear, not because they were atrophied but because they were, as he said “engulfed.” He used the word “trans-sexual” I remember and began to hunt about for some similar words to apply to eating (after rejecting “trans-gastronomic”), and since he was not the only philologist present, that diverted the conversation into different channels. But I am pretty sure he was thinking of something he had experienced on his voyage to Venus.
Of course, "trans-sexual" has a completely different connotation today. But Ransom's retort says that in the resurrection, humans (being both physical and spiritual) will will experience life on a level that transcends mere human appetites (gastronomical or sexual) or sensory experience. It feels to me that Ransom's experience with the fruit is along the same lines. Following one's gastronomic appetite, it would make sense to have another fruit. But the experience itself is a spiritual one, and hence it would be a "vulgarity" to merely repeat it: "like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day."
That Ransom thinks this way at all suggests that the spiritual environment of Venus is very different from Earth, where such transcendent experiences are nonexistent, and of course we indulge (and overindulge) in sensual experiences all the time.
Not much happens in this chapter; we're still in the introductory section of ''Perelandra''. But it will pick up soon. Stay tuned for chapter 4 on Sunday—hopefully on time this week.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment