A Road Less Travelled

It’s always a frightening thing to reread a book you haven’t read for a while. We change so much sometimes in just a few years that a book that was once the beginning and end of catharsis for our emotional state is just whiny and dumb. The character who’d once stood on the pedestal of all things heroic is revealed as the loser dork he truly was. The great love that once would stand the test of time and last longer than the sea is revealed in the cold light of years gone by as the teenage infatuation it truly was.

But then there are the gems. Those books that made just a bit of sense when you first read them. Those books that require too much experience of the reader to make any sense to the thirteen-year-old trying to figure them out. Read now it’s like a light coming on in a closet. You always knew there was something there, but just could never find any of it. Now the motives make more sense and the long, dragged out descriptions with no purpose fly by and suddenly become the foundation for half the story.

I am rereading C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy (yes, Seth, trilogy) and it is making so much more sense to me this time through. Last time I read it I was around fourteen years old. I got the basic premise of a man travels to Mars and then Venus. I understood that the third book is a modern fairy tale and thought that concept was very cool. But just about everything else went right over my head. All the symbolism, the internal conversations, the wonder, depth and splendor of Lewis’s worlds and stories blew right by me. I was expecting this time around to be better, but was completely unprepared for how much better it would be.

Book one of the trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, introduces our main character, a philologist named Ransom. He in kidnapped and taken to Mars where stuff happens and then he gets back home. It’s way more interesting than that, but that book isn’t what I want to talk about. In the second book, Perelandra, Ransom goes to Venus, know in Old Solar as Perelandra, on a mission for Maleldil, the Jesus figure of the story. He lands on the planet and finds himself in paradise.

Lewis’s descriptions are vivid. This is Venus, the planet of pleasure. But on Venus is pleasure without sin. There is nothing to pervert the enjoyment of the planet. There is food right at hand that nearly requires a new word to describe it. It is better than our food like a chocolate cake is better than mud. All is soft and easy and pleasant. It is a world of sensuality without lust or perversion. The colors can only be called blue, green or red because that’s the closest we who walk the silent planet have ever known. But they are brighter, more vibrant than our colors like the sun is brighter than a mine shaft. All is good on Perelandra, though ‘good’ is too simple of a word to describe what is depicted in the book.

Ransom meets a woman, the Green Lady, who is the Eve of Venus. She has been separated from the King, the Adam of story, though this only brings her joy as now she can look forward to being reunited with him. She and Ransom have many conversations about the world and about God. She is a very young woman with very simple thoughts and Ransom unconsciously goes about helping her to be wise. It is very pleasant for them both to sit among the animals and talk of great matters in the very presence of God. But then the Tempter comes.

It’s Eden all over again. There is a new Eve is all her splendor listening to the almost-lies of the Devil. He is patient and cunning and she has become used to contemplating what an outsider says about the world and doesn’t have any words in her language or world for ‘evil’, ‘lie’, ‘bad’. She hopes to be wise. All that stands in the way of Perelandra falling is Elwin Ransom, a middle-aged philologist from Cambridge.

It was like watching a horror movie in slow motion. In my mind I’m screaming at Ransom to do something as the Enemy twists the truth around and around until it is unrecognizable. Ransom is doing his all, he is holding the line as best he can, but he is only a man. He needs to eat and sleep, he needs to rest. The Enemy doesn’t. Everything hangs on Ransom and even he knows he will lose eventually.

From a writer’s perspective it was skillfully done. Lewis spent enough time on Perelandra before the Evil showed up that I’d come to love it. Actually, I’d come to long for it. It woke a hurting in me like being homesick for a place I’d never even visited. To walk along the floating islands in the warm ocean with the golden sky above. To ride on the mighty fish as they race through the waves. To sit with the Lady as she was delighted with everything around her. A delight that had never known anything else. Her joy was nothing like mine. My happiness is when something is good instead of bad. There is a bitterness in each smile because always there lurks the knowledge that it could have gone otherwise. And there is a fear behind each surprise joy because next time it will not go the same. Next time there will be sorrow instead of delight. So much of our happiness is based on the pain we have known.

But not so the Green Lady. Lewis talks about how sometimes Ransom couldn’t look her in the face because there was too much pure virtue in her face, too much pure joy unmingled with tears. She delighted in a thing because it was delightful and it made her happier than she had been a moment before. There was no doubt in her mind that the next thing would be just as wonderful.

Towards the end of reading the book I came down with an ear infection. Once again I was trying to find a way to explain the sensation of an infection in my head and once again I was overwhelmed by everyday sounds. My body died just a bit more. I was sick and hurting again. All because Mother Eve listened to the Deceiver.

So, I’m shouting still more for Ransom to do something. Perelandra must not fall. It must stay pure and unsoiled. There must not be a repeat of what happened here on the silent planet so long ago.

I’d read the book before and knew how it ended and still I’m figuratively jumping up and down and shouting. It is a powerful book and a very different read now than when I first read it. Though I’m afraid it’s ruined me for Earth. There’s a longing in me now for a place that doesn’t exist. If it did I’m not sure I’d go; I would just bring the darkness in with me. So I remind myself that even Perelandra is just a picture of a place that is real and will be. And when I walk on the floating islands or the streets of gold there will be no more darkness to carry. Then my ears will be healed with no possibility of infection and I will be able to rest under the golden sky.