“Forgotten” poem by C.S. Lewis revealed for the primary time

Famend British creator C.S. Lewis is greatest recognized for his Chronicles of Narnia, however Lewis’s prolific oeuvre additionally included a science-fiction trilogy, an allegorical novel, a marvelous retelling of the parable of Cupid and Psyche, varied nonfiction works of Christian apologetics, and literary criticism. Now, a literary scholar has found a beforehand unknown quick poem by Lewis amongst a cache of paperwork acquired by the College of Leeds 10 years in the past. Written in 1935, the poem has been revealed for the primary time, with an accompanying evaluation within the Journal of Inkling Research.

The journal’s title refers back to the so-called “Oxford Inklings,” a bunch of Oxford-based students and writers who met often to learn every others’ works aloud, most frequently at an Oxford pub known as The Eagle and Little one (aka the Hen and the Child). Along with Lewis, the group included J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. (All three have been the primary characters of James A. Owens’ fantasy sequence, The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica.) I as soon as known as the Inklings “arguably the literary mythmakers” of their technology.

Lewis and Tolkien shared a love of Norse mythology, and Lewis learn the primary early drafts of what would change into Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien later stated he owed his good friend “an unpayable debt” for convincing him the “stuff” might be greater than merely a “personal passion.” Tolkien, in flip, was the one who satisfied Lewis—an atheist in his youth—to transform to Christianity.

Normal readers are seemingly much less conversant in Lewis as a medieval scholar specializing within the late Center Ages. His fiction works are rife with symbolism and dominant themes from that literary epoch. However he was additionally a fan of the epic Anglo-Saxon masterpiece Beowulf, which he initially learn in translation (like virtually everybody else). By the point he started instructing at Oxford’s Magdalen School, he had change into sufficiently proficient with Previous English to host occasional “Beer and Beowulf” classes on the school, based on Andoni Cossio, a scholar on the College of Basque and the College of Glasgow.

It was Cossio who discovered the Lewis poem whereas searching by way of the Leeds Tolkien-Gordon Assortment, which features a first version of The Hobbit and an Previous English bridal music Tolkien wrote for Eric Valentine (E.V.) and Ida Gordon, a scholarly Oxford couple who have been shut pals of Tolkien’s.

It appears they have been additionally acquainted with Lewis, for the reason that newly found poem, titled “Mód Þrýþe Ne Wæg,” seems to have been written in thanks after Lewis stayed with them at their Manchester residence. The manuscript has an accompanying Publish-It observe from the doc’s earlier proprietor studying, “One other uncommon thanks from C.S. Lewis.” (The observe initially learn “from J.R.R.T., however these initials have been crossed out.) The textual content significantly praises the whisky, white blankets, and heat Lewis skilled throughout his keep.

“The second I first learn the manuscript, I used to be enraptured by its content material. It had the whole lot I might want for: biographical particulars, Previous English, alliterative meter, and Lewis’s writing at its greatest,” stated Cossio. “The factor I like most about this poem is that it opens a bit door to that world. It was quickly apparent that it had handed utterly unnoticed since its personal proprietor transferred it to the College of Leeds in 2014. To find the poem’s secrets and techniques, I must do the analysis myself.”

And so he did, beginning with verifying the date of the undated poem; no envelope survived. There is no such thing as a point out of a friendship with the Gordons in any of Lewis’s revealed biographies or correspondence, so Cossio concluded the connection was by way of a standard good friend, i.e., Tolkien. Someday in 1932–1933, each Lewis and Tolkien have been serving as examiners in Oxford’s English faculty together with E.V. Gordon, a professor of English language. Tolkien himself wrote a brief epistolary poem dated June 26, 1935, thanking the Gordons for his or her hospitality when he stayed at their residence, and that poem references an earlier keep by Lewis. Particularly, Tolkien wrote that he hoped Lewis’s thank-you verse had reached them, indicating that each poems have been written in 1935.

This was additionally the identical yr that Lewis revealed “a theoretical essay on adapting Previous English alliterative strains to fashionable English versification,” per Cossio. The brand new poem adopts an analogous alliterative meter, and its title (and pseudonymous pen identify, “Nat Whilk”) are playful Beowulf/Previous English references, most definitely for the advantage of Ida Gordon, who held a PhD in philology (the historical past of language). “Nat Whilk” is an indefinite pronoun roughly translating as an unknown individual, or “nameless,” per Cossio.

“Mód Þrýþe Ne Wæg” is harder to translate. It is a reference to a particular line (1931b) in Beowulf, however students have completely different opinions as to how this must be interpreted. Some assume it’s a correct identify “whose which means is distilled from the sum of its parts”; others disagree, together with Tolkien in his personal translation of Beowulf, based on Cossio. Cossio’s reasoning rests on the usage of the correct identify within the Lewis poem’s second line, describing his hostess as one whose “coronary heart is aware of not/The mood of Þrýþ.”

“Since Þrýþ was depraved and her temper was fierce, based on Tolkien’s interpretation and translation that Lewis appears to agree with, the damaging phrase within the title of the poem can solely be learn as a praise to Ida Gordon,” Cossio wrote. Taken along with Lewis’s adherence to the alliterative meter of Beowulf, Cossio concludes that the newly found poem was clearly written “from one medievalist to a different.”

Journal of Inkling Research, 2024. DOI: 10.3366/ink.2024.0216  (About DOIs).