Perelandra . . .

I've just read the first 2 chapters of Perelandra (actually I listened to them on my iPod--but I had the book with me to mark it up). I haven't read it in a year and a half; it's always such a delight to reenter these stories!

I love it that Lewis puts himself into the book as a character; it reminds me of very early novels where the author positions himself as an editor of a recently found manuscript or the letters of a recently deceased friend or something--in an effort to establish it as a factual work.

The first chapter recounts Lewis's approach to Ransom's cottage and his difficulty in continuing to go on. His account shows that his Reason compels him to go forward in opposition to his Emotions, but he intimates that it's a bit more than mere Reason; at one point he actually turns back, but then, he says, " . . . reason or conscience awoke and set me once more plodding forwards" (11). So his conscience is at work, which tells us it is a moral battle--not purely rational. And one emotion impels him forward as well--his friendship with Ransom; he doesn't want to let down his friend.

Ransom identifies the cause of Lewis's mental battles as the bent eldila of our planet; it has been, in fact, a spiritual battle all along. Lewis's strength of mind--his rationality--has really helped him do the right thing, but he hasn't recognized the true nature of the struggle. Ransom says,

"When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights . . . it meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting" (21).

And Lewis protests that surely this means a "moral conflict," by which I think he means a "mental" conflict which can be overcome through Reason. But Ransom thinks differently--there may be times when the moral conflict must be resolved through physical action--even physical combat as we see later in the story.

And this is setting the stage for my inquiries re: the physicality of faith. Maybe Ransom (or Lewis) will give me some language to use in describing this.

On another note, I did a little research and found out that the Schiaparelli Ransom mentions is Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer well known for creating the most detailed map of Mars of his time (1877)! And, while I didn't, in my very cursory investigation, find that he had theories about Venus, he did apparently have the very theory about planetary rotation that Ransom discounts--only about the planet Mercury.