Smith Alumnae Quarterly
C. S. Lewis Wasn't A Writer Of Fantasy. He Was A Teller Of Hard Truths.
Merry Christmas! A day late, I know. Happy "Boxing Day," then. 🥊
Movie buffs may have noticed a curious inclusion in this year's Christmas releases: "Freud's Last Session," an imagined meeting between Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis at the outbreak of World War II. Adapted from a 2009 play by Mark St. Germain, the dialogue-heavy movie wasn't doing well with critics as of press time (America's review is forthcoming!), though Anthony Hopkins is winning plaudits for his depiction of Freud (weird coincidence: Hopkins depicted Lewis in "Shadowlands" in 1993). On the other hand, noted an America coworker, "Freud got all the best lines."
Then again, so did Screwtape. The clever title character of Lewis's classic The Screwtape Letters was also an expert in psychology, as well as one of Satan's most promising demons. Screwtape isn't Freud, of course, and Freud isn't Screwtape, but one can see that even Lewis knew that talking about life's temptations is a little sexier for most readers than portraying the paths to holiness.
Indeed, Lewis is an acquired taste—sometimes a reacquired taste. I fell in love with his Narnia and Space Trilogy novels as a kid, but didn't much enjoy his apologetic works like Mere Christianity or God in the Dock that I read as an adult. Lewis can feel like an Anglican G. K. Chesterton in those books, and like most people of good will, I can't stand G. K. Chesterton.
In later years, however, encounters with Lewis's more autobiographical works like A Grief Observed and Surprised by Joy brought me back into the fold and reminded me why Lewis is such a beloved spiritual writer. In Mark Noll's new book C. S. Lewis in America, he suggests that Lewis became so popular on this side of the pond for particular reasons: "Americans saw Lewis as deeply learned, theologically focused, and unusually creative. Implicitly, they also recognized that his articulation of the faith was savvy and courageous." Those qualities are worth a thousand smug Chestertonianisms.
Born in Belfast in 1898, Clive Staples Lewis ("Jack" to family and friends, as viewers of "Freud's Last Session" will be reminded) was primarily a scholar of English literature by trade. Wounded in the trenches of France during World War I, he studied at Oxford after the war and became a professor there in 1925, teaching at Oxford for almost 30 years and at Cambridge for nine more before he died in 1963.
Though raised in the Church of Ireland, Lewis became an atheist as a young man, returning to Christianity only in his 30s. Lewis was influenced in his return to the faith by his new friend J. R. R. Tolkien, a fellow Inkling (a distinguished group of Oxford storytellers and scholars) and professor at Oxford, as well as by, it seems, the aforementioned G. K. Chesterton. In 1956, Lewis married the American Joy Davidman. Her death in 1960 spurred Lewis to write A Grief Observed about his experience of loss and mourning. Lewis had published the book under a pseudonym and soon found friends unknowingly gifting him his own book as valuable spiritual reading to deal with his loss.
Though his Narnia books are his bestsellers by far (and have been adapted for radio, stage and screen), Lewis also wrote scholarly tomes, other novels like The Great Divorce and numerous books of nonfiction, including popular collections of essays and talks, including The Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity, as well as other apologetic works like Miracles and The Problem of Pain. The Screwtape Letters remains perhaps his funniest, most light-hearted and most clever work and has been imitated by more than a few writers, believers or not.
America contributors were fans of Lewis from the very start, even praising his early (and widely panned) 1936 novel Pilgrim's Regress for its "correctness of fact that is not lessened by fancy, epigrammatic bits of wisdom, an argument spicy and not insipid, subtle yet easily caught." In 1944, Charles Brady praised The Screwtape Letters in America as not just a work of theological brilliance but as an imaginative twin of Lewis Carroll's finest work. "Not since another Oxford don chose to divest himself of his academic robes and slip down a rabbit-hole with Alice and the White Rabbit has the reading world been given such a divertissement by a race of spectacled savants," Brady wrote.
Ironically, the turmoil following the Second Vatican Council also seemed to give Lewis a newfound popularity among Catholic writers, perhaps for his seeming implacability in the face of rapidly changing mores and practices, and America's reviews were no exception. "C. S. Lewis is as refreshing as a sea breeze. In a time when men are not always what their images project, to meet the blatantly honest and open C. S. Lewis is a delight," wrote Thomas M. Sheehan in 1970. "Lewis is a man willing to declare himself a believer in God; willing to state that any unanswerable questions about God will be resolved in heaven," he wrote. "For Lewis, God is real, and so, for that matter, is Satan; there is a heaven, and there is a hell."
Recent years have brought further appreciations of Lewis in sometimes unexpected terms. Earlier this year, Stephen McNulty offered a perhaps counterintuitive gloss on Lewis's novel The Great Divorce in "Reading C. S. Lewis during the climate crisis." Like Lewis's characters who live forever in Purgatory, because they cannot rid themselves of the idols and habits that keep them from Heaven, we do the same with our ecological responsibilities. "As Lewis demonstrates," McNulty writes, "we will never know until we let go of the cultural, political and economic attachments that keep us trapped in this hell and imagine something different."
In 2019, Jessica Mesman wrote of the profound ways in which Lewis's A Grief Observed not only helped her through a time of prolonged suffering but also reminded her of why she became a writer in the first place. In that book, she wrote, a newly-widowed Lewis is "disgusted by the platitudes of well-meaning religious friends and the sympathy cards—he calls them 'pitiable cant.'" Lewis will have none of it—if the joys of life are worth being cherished and celebrated, so too must the sufferings of life be reckoned with honestly:
A Grief Observed remains powerful precisely because Lewis does not come to lovely conclusions about his God or his religion or his suffering. He asks many more questions than he answers. He rants, questions, weeps and feels terrible, deservedly sorry for himself and for the woman he loved so much and has now lost. And in doing so, he renders in prose what it really feels like to grieve.
Fifty years after his death, C. S. Lewis was recognized at "Poet's Corner" in Westminster Abbey, where many famous English-language writers are buried or honored. His stepson Douglas Gresham read a passage from The Last Battle from Lewis's Narnia series at the service. The inscription on the stone floor of the church honoring Lewis is a quote from one of his talks:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.
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Our poetry selection for this week is "The Grail Quest," by Amit Majmudar. Readers can view all of America's published poems here.
Also, big news from the Catholic Book Club: This fall, we are reading Come Forth: The Promise of Jesus's Greatest Miracle, by James Martin, S.J. Click here to watch a livestream with Father Martin about the book or here to sign up for our Facebook discussion group.
In this space every week, America features reviews of and literary commentary on one particular writer or group of writers (both new and old; our archives span more than a century), as well as poetry and other offerings from America Media. We hope this will give us a chance to provide you with more in-depth coverage of our literary offerings. It also allows us to alert digital subscribers to some of our online content that doesn't make it into our newsletters.
Other Catholic Book Club columns:
The spiritual depths of Toni Morrison
What's all the fuss about Teilhard de Chardin?
Moira Walsh and the art of a brutal movie review
Leonard Feeney, America's only excommunicated literary editor (to date)
Happy reading (and Merry Christmas)!
James T. Keane
Previews: C. S. LEWIS: FURTHER UP AND FURTHER IN At B. B. Mann
The Fellowship for Performing Arts is presenting an unusual evening, C. S. Lewis On Stage: Further Up and Further In, at Barbara B. Mann PAH on January 31, 2024, at 7 pm. FPA is a not-for-profit New York City-based production company producing theatre and film from a Christian worldview to engage a diverse audience.
This production delves into the heart and mind of C.S. Lewis, offering audiences a unique opportunity to engage with his profound thoughts and insights. The play presents an exploration of Lewis's spiritual journey, his compelling intellectual inquiries, and his deeply personal experiences.
Award-winning actor and FPA founder Max McLean's captures C.S. Lewis' magnetic personality, astonishing eloquence and laugh-out-loud wit to create an onstage experience venturing deep into the soul of one of the most influential thinkers of the past century.
Using Lewis' own words, this multi-media theatrical event explores:
The performance is followed by a post-show discussion with Max McLean.
Further Up and Further In run time is 90 minutes with no intermission. It is recommended for ages 13 and older, and children under age 4 are not admitted. For tickets, call the box office at 239.481.4849. Prices range from $30 to $99."Freud's Last Session"- Analysis à Deux [MOVIE REVIEW]
Based on the original premise presented in an excellent play of the same name, playwright Mark St. Germain imagined a scenario in which a dying Sigmund Freud (83), now living in London, sees one last appointment, an Oxford English literature professor named C.S. Lewis (40). Not so much a psychoanalytic session but a meeting of the minds between a world famous atheist, Freud, and an Oxford don on the ascendency. Lewis a proponent of the existence of God or, as Freud would have it, an apologist. In the years to come, Lewis would embrace being a Christian apologist, the most famous of his era. Director and co-writer Matt Brown uses this meeting that may or may not have actually taken place to explore the history and ideology of both men.
Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode. Photo credit: Sabrina Lantos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
It is 1939. Sigmund Freud has cancer of the jaw and is in enormous pain; he will soon die. Relying solely on his daughter Anna, a highly regarded child psychoanalyst, he has her on a short leash, on call ministering to his pain. That Lewis is late for his appointment is a source of irritation to the master. (Note: this is an authorial liberty taken because no one would ever have been so rude as to be late to a meeting with one of the most famous men on the planet.) When he finally arrives, he explains that he was delayed by the trains, all of which are being used to evacuate children from London. Finally arriving at Freud's house on Finchley Road he takes in his surroundings. Freud and Lewis immediately engage in a somewhat testy argument about "The Pilgrim's Progress," a seventeenth century Christian allegory by John Bunyun, a book Freud much admires and one, ironically, Lewis detests, having written a treatise against it called "The Pilgrim's Regress," the only work of Lewis's Freud would have known. Essentially all of Lewis's literature on Christianity and the existence of God would not begin for at least a decade.
Freud had only recently escaped Nazi Vienna and arrived in London, helped enormously by the world scientific community. To ease his psychological discomfort, Anna had his office furniture and mementos moved from their Austrian house and recreated, down to the smallest detail, in his new home. Lewis is fascinated with these features, which include the statue of a Catholic saint. But he hasn't come to discuss Freud's escape or the memorabilia of a lifetime; he's there to talk about God and why Freud is so sure there isn't one. Freud was equally transfixed with hearing why Lewis is so certain there is one; after all, Lewis had been an atheist earlier in life. Loss of his mother at an early age, life in a boarding school and service on the front lines during World War I all contributed to his loss of faith. Why the change of mind?
Anthony Hopkins. Photo credit: Sabrina Lantos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Brown uses the premise of a discussion to flashback to various important incidents in their past. Freud, it turns out, was the son of a strict religious father and raised by a very Catholic nanny, a recipe for disaster and confusion as young Freud intermingled the iconography of each religion—his religious father's readings from the Torah and the nanny-taught sign of the cross. We learn less about Freud, besides the occasional referral to "mother figures," "father figures" and masturbation. He does make mention that his atheism is based on science and scientific evidence where there is no room for the idea of a god. Why, Lewis wonders, is it that religion can make room for science but science cannot make room for religion? One of the many unanswered questions in this film.
Lewis, on the other hand, having abandoned a belief in a higher being, returned to God and Christianity after the trauma of World War I. Although still struggling with the concept of God, he made an about face during his Oxford years when he joined a literary group called "The Inklings" but especially under the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien, a colleague and fellow member. Reading theological texts also had an effect and he soon found himself an Anglican scholar writing on the subject of sin in "The Great Divorce," "Letters to Malcolm" and "The Screwtape Letters," all of which were written long after Freud's death.
Freud is most interested in the salient incidents in Lewis's life that may or may not have contributed to his embrace of something illogical and irrational. Freud concedes that people turn to religion in times of stress or personal tragedy but it doesn't move him. A need for God is an excuse not to address the ills of the chaotic world. In essence they seem to be arguing the same point. For Freud, the belief in God is a substitute for refusing to address what is missing in one's life. This, however, would also be Lewis's argument. Neither will be moved by the other.
Matthew Goode. Photo credit Sabrina Lantos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Brown is less interested in the philosophical questions posed in the original play than he is in biographical portraits of both men, one at the end of life, the other with his greatest fame yet to come. The scales are tipped, however, in favor of Lewis with the preponderance of flashbacks of his earlier traumas shedding light on his present day situation. One in particular, his promise to a dying friend during the war that he would look after his mother, something he did and was still doing at the time of this visit, was of special psychological interest to Freud who saw in it so many of the "mother" and "Oedipal" issues he wrote about.
Freud's weaknesses are also explored, especially those surrounding his co-dependency with Anna and his need to keep her close. Hinted at strongly was his interference in her personal outside relationships.
Like so many adaptations, it was necessary for me to cast aside my expectations and appreciate what Brown decided to focus on, the troubled background of Lewis in his atheist years and the emergence of Lewis as a major proponent of Christian thought. From the standpoint of biography, Brown's approach is admirable because he has focused his story on September 3, 1939, specifically the day that England declared war on Germany and the future implications, and worked backwards to give us an idea of Lewis, the man of complex background and thought. Revelations about Freud and his background are much less illuminating.
Although I liked the film, I'm still uncertain of what Brown was trying to say. He was graced with two excellent actors. Here he has a formidable Anthony Hopkins as Freud with an almost imperceptible Germanic accent that doesn't dominate the character and Matthew Goode as Lewis, restrained and appropriately agonized. Liv Lisa Fries plays Anna Freud with contradictory grace—contradictory because she is constantly at her father's beck and call while trying to balance her own important career, and grace because as agonized as she is by their relationship and his impending death, she makes a valiant effort at maintaining her own career and relationships. Jodi Balfour as Dorothy Burlingham, is given little to do. She was Anna's life partner and professional colleague, hinted at but never fully explored.
Although one comes away with a better understanding of who Lewis was, the portrait of Freud provides no more information than is readily available elsewhere. You will find yourself fascinated by the film when watching it but with the same feeling of emptiness that one experiences an hour after consuming Chow Mein.
Opening Friday December 22 at the Laemmle Royal.
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