A very strange man indeed
One of C.S. Lewis'circle at Oxford was Charles Williams, poet, novelist, mystic, theological writer, and one-time member of, if I have recollected the name correctly, the Fellowship of the Golden Dawn, a group which dabbled in thaumaturgy and of which W.B. Yeats was also a member. I came across his writings through coming across a copy of his series of poems 'Taliessin through Logres' when browsing in the library at Kings, College London, where I was supposed to be studying law. He believed in the what he called the 'co-inherence' of Christians, a development of the idea that 'we are all one boy in Christ, and taught that we can, through prayer, 'bear one anothers' pain'. He wrote a number of supernatural novels, which I found almost unreadable.
He had a considerable influence on C.S. Lewis, as may be discerned by reading 'That Hideous Strength', an unstatisfactory book to my mind. Tolkien distrusted him, I understand. In his time he had a wide influence but now seems to be forgotten.
Have any shipmates come across him? Was his influence healthy or unhealthy?
He had a considerable influence on C.S. Lewis, as may be discerned by reading 'That Hideous Strength', an unstatisfactory book to my mind. Tolkien distrusted him, I understand. In his time he had a wide influence but now seems to be forgotten.
Have any shipmates come across him? Was his influence healthy or unhealthy?
Comments
I've read only one book by Charles Williams, Mr Weston's Good Wine. I only read it because of the connection with C S Lewis and Tolkein. It didn't leave enough of an impression for me to chase up any more.
I agree that "That Hideous Strength" seems like a Williams-influenced novel; although it's not one of my favourite Lewis books I'd take it over "Place of the Lion" any day...
Those villains must have been pretty dull then.
As he died quite young in 1945, almost everything by him is now out of copyright in the UK, but as Project Gutenberg is in the USA if you want to access anything by him try the Canadian or the Australian Gutenbergs.
An odd snippet is that from memory, he used to refer to his wife as Michal, which is a very strange nickname to choose. One wonders what private mystery this conceals.
To be fair he had a nickname for EVrybody, and for the office mate he fell in love with (purely platonic we are told over and over and over), he had two. Michal was of course Saul's younger daughter and the first wife of David. If the Zaleskis say why he chose that name, I was unable to find it using the index (see my above comment).
Don’t let @Zappa hear you saying that.
There are indications that Lewis believed, or at least hoped, it was possible during his wife's illness. There is also some evidence that his prayer was answered as he became ill as she experienced some respite.
There is a wonderful glimpse of his character in Humphrey Carpenter's 'The Inklings', and an excellent biography, 'Charles Williams, the Third Inkling' by Grevel Lindop. It's a long read, but rewarding.
BTW, I disagree about Lewis's 'That Hideous Strength'. It's worth seeking out an unabridged copy, which is, to my mind a cracking good read if you like that sort of thing. Dated, yes, but still with lots to enjoy. It is (as one wag remarked) William's best book!
As to Williams' own novels, 'Many Dimensions' is by far the best and most coherent. His 'Decent of the Dove', about the Holy Spirit and the Early Church is also excellent (if more than a little 'left field').
Thank you for starting this thread. The concept of 'coinherence' is much with me at the moment when shipmates (and my own daughter) are suffering and being prayed for. Williams would have approved.
Huia, Mr Weston's Good Wine isn't Charles Williams, it was written by another great eccentric, TF Powys.
Charles Williams as an Anglican theologian was a 'romantic sacramentalist' and I have a copy of his The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church. One of his oddest novels (wooden dialogue, sadly) is The Greater Trumps featuring the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck imagery. He liked to draw on occult themes and didn't associate the occult with the diabolical (he was a member of the esoteric Order of The Golden Dawn from 1917 until 1938).
At least, whilst he was an Inkling he saved the group from having to listen to the first drafts of 'Bored of the Rings' , which not all members appreciated!
I wasn't around in the 1930s, but tapping your secretary's backside with a small cane would have been regarded as a little bit odd even then.
On male headship, though, I think you may be criticising him for not having the 'right' views on something that virtually nobody had really thought of until long after he'd died. I can say from memory that even in the fifties and sixties people, particularly male people, made a lot of assumptions that it had never occurred to them to question. I don't know the context of "Our Lord the Holy Spirit" but it reads more like an assertion of the Holy Spirit's godhead than an assertion of male headship. Many of us are saying what is in essence the same thing every Sunday in the third response to the Kyrie.
Carpenter only mentions one member who didn't like Rings. He was given a veto, and it had nothing to do with Charles Williams.
Just trying to make the point that calling Williams 'The third Inkling' was not too unreasonable.
But please remember that Carpenter's splendid recreation of an Inkling evening is made up. Warnie Lewis's diary records that meetings could be very dull. Williams, I imagine, was never dull!
Back to the topic of this thread please!
Williams? That's who we were talking about, but okay.
And then there are the poems, the plays, the literary criticism and the theology. A wonderful, many faceted, man.
1 Samuel 6:20 Apparently in his enthusiastic dance, David inadvertently exposed himself.
There was an occasion when Williams' wife criticized him, not for physically,exposing himself, but for going very far in religious expression. I don't remember the specific details. Williams said his wife's criticism of him was like Michal's criticism of David. Hence the nickname.
Kind of kicks against the Magnificat.
Mr Weston's Good Wine is not Charles Williams but T F Powys. The title seems to come from Jane Austen's Emma of all places.
I read them many years ago. The line that stuck in my head was (speaking of money) "When the means [of exchange] are autonomous, they are deadly."
‘The War in Heaven’ about the discovery of the Holy Grail in an English country church is pretty good and has some excellent creepy occultist villains who want to acquire the Grail for their own nefarious purposes.
I also love ‘All Hallows Eve’. Its description of the world seen through the eyes of a character who has recently died in an air-raid is wonderful and surreal. It also has a terrifying villain in The Deacon (though some anti-semitic tropes in his depiction have always disturbed me).
‘The Descent of the Dove’ - which Auden said he re-read every year - is an amusing short history of the church, written with insight and wit.
I am very shocked by Eirenist’s disclosure that Williams used to spank his secretary. I’m sure T.S. Eliot never would have engaged in this sort of thing!
The abridged “That Hideous Strength” is certainly reminiscent of Charles Williams; the unabridged version slightly less so, with a little more humour, which greatly improves it. I had the impression he was rather too impressed by CW while writing it.
There are very definite echoes of Charles Williams in Narnia, but they’re less noticeable as CS Lewis had properly digested his influence by then and integrated it much more successfully into his own fiction. Charles died (quite suddenly) five years before the publication of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”.
Robert Armin - I’m not surprised to find out you are a fan of Charles Williams as I’d recognised your avatar from the cover of “The Greater Trumps”!
What I've learned so far is (a) the nonconformist churches, at least those that are self aware, are facing/have faced the same problems and are going through the same processes that the early church went through, with similar tensions and resolutions; (b) the thought process I went though in leaving an evangelical ('Fundy-Lite') church to end up in -sort of comfortably - in the COE mirror Williams' narrative, and (c) It has, unexpectedly, given me an inkling of how Trump supporters see the World and how many of them can still be (in my experience) normal decent folk.
What an academic historian would think of it I don't know, but for me, it's just great for Advent.
Well, yeah: sexual harassment.
Hmm. I've thought he was naked on purpose. Maybe deep into an ecstatic state, but on purpose. Whether that was inappropriate in his culture, and whether he would've done it if not in an ecstatic state, I don't know.
Michal obviously didn't like it. I suspect most wives wouldn't.
--There's a really good episode of "Inspector Lewis", called "Magnum Opus". Some of CW's ideas are at the heart of it. (Note: That's Robbie Lewis from "Morse", spun off into his own series.)
--Someone (possibly CS Lewis) said that CW didn't really like the idea of an afterlife, nor did he want one.
I've slightly wondered if there had been something similar in the Williams' life together that was behind that name.
1. The wise man thinks many things he would do well to keep to himself.
2.There is a difference between knowing and believing.
4. The conviction of wisdom is the plague of mankind.
5. St Augustine's predestination was safe with him; comprehensible in Calvin, tiresome in English puritans, intolerable in Scottish Presbyterians. The horrid imps of debased Calvinism.
6. Re Montaigne: In him all forms of dogmatism are discredited. The minds of his readers are not equal to his own, who could not maintain his poise.
7. Ignorance is so much recommended . . . as fitting an element of faith as obedience.
8. It is not possible for a man to rise above himself.
9. We are - I do not know how - double in ourselves.
10. A hypothesis translated into certitude by anger, obstinacy and egotism.
11. God has delivered me from a multitude of opinions.
12. There was a change in the style of belief in the Sixteenth Century . . . imposition of belief was no longer an option.
13. I maintain my opinions, I cannot choose them.
14. Do not believe in something more strongly after a violent argument than before.
15. The subtlety of Darwin vs. the bullishness of Huxley.
16. George Herbert: he renounced the World in a sedate Anglican manner.
17. When religion is in the hands of natural man, he, [and it] are the worse for it. It adds his own dark fire and helps inflame his four elements of selfishness and envy, pride and wrath.
18. The Middle Ages: questions that could not be answered theologically were held as negligible. The Enlightenment: questions answers that could not be answered scientifically were more and more held to be worthless.
18.The Ruling Class: within, witty and cultured; without, the heavyweight of self indulgent cruelty, luxury and tyranny.
Good stuff, I hope you agree!
I sense a strong anti-Trinitarian bias in his thinking.
Interesting stuff, thanks.