C.S.LEWIS AND SUFFERING
Clive Staple Lewis, or C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) as he is more usually remembered, was at heart an Oxford Man. He studied at University College, then became a Fellow at Magdalen College : the beloved children’s author of The Chronicles of Narnia, had a deep connection with the historic university town for thirty years. He even paid homage to it in his 1919 poem ‘Oxford’.
But Lewis’s renown would eventually take him away from his “sweet city lulled by ancient streams”, to another cloistered environment: Cambridge. He became Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1954 and it was whilst in this role that he would take his final bow. This November marks the 57th anniversary of his death. Nearly sixty years later, C.S. Lewis remains a profound influence on English literature and thought. But what is the true legacy of his works? And are his writings still relevant today?
Very much so. Perhaps more than ever, C.S. Lewis’s philosophy of life – and loss belongs to us today. 2020 has been a year of distress, suffering, and emotional hardship, all familiar in Lewis’ life. He lived through the trauma of two world wars - and tragedies in his own very private life, .meant Lewis was on intimate terms with pain.
In his memoir, Surprised By Joy, Lewis confessed: “I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight”. A reluctant theologian, Lewis’s most profound work emerges from his non-fiction musings on the nature of pain. Whilst the image of a snow-covered lamppost will be entrenched into our cultural consciousness for centuries to come, and the Narnia stories live on for generations of children, Lewis’s exploration of human suffering is arguably where his genius lies. So, if this critic, poet and teller of fables had been here to live through the extraordinary times of COVID-19, what wisdom would he impart?
In The Problem of Pain, the author tackles some of life’s hardest questions.: how to remedy the concept of an all-loving God with the existence of pain. Lewis explores the transformative power of suffering. He writes: “Pain provides an opportunity for heroism; the opportunity is seized with surprising frequency”. If struggle is a learning opportunity, then only through hardships, can we confront our inner resilience. Lewis’s own confrontation came with “the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet” – an elusive and unsought God yet believers or atheists alike can draw wisdom from his allegory of transformation.
Lewis’s most profound confrontation with pain came with the death of his wife. A long time bachelor, C.S. Lewis would not experience romantic love until the age of 58 years old. It began as a pen pal friendship. More and more drawn to each other, Lewis would agree to a civil marriage contract with American Joy Davidman Gresham so that she could escape an abusive marriage and secure her citizenship in the UK. However, the intellectual companionship soon blossomed into a love Lewis would consider the greatest tragedy of his life.
Lewis’s love was one acknowledged and strengthened by the onset of terminal illness. When Joy was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, the couple sought a Christian marriage. But what doubtless appeared a miracle, after one of Lewis’s former pupils-turned Anglican priest, performed a blessing on the couple , Joy’s deteriorated hip bone regrew. This allowed the couple a further four years together., Lewis wrote of this married bliss: “I never expected to have in my 60s that happiness that passed me by in my 20s”.
Published in 1960, the same year of his wife’s death, A Grief Observed would go on to document Lewis’s struggle to come to terms with Joy’s loss. In this he describes his feelings of bereavement: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid”. In many ways, the deeply personal vent of A Grief Observed illustrates the experienced reality behind Lewis’s theorization of suffering explored in The Problem of Pain.
C.S. Lewis’s passionate love and the grief it brought, have since been memorialized into both film and literature. The most well-known is the 1993 motion picture Shadowlands, starring Sir Antony Hopkins and Debra Winger. Adapted from William Nicholson’s 1989 stage play of the same name, and directed by Richard Attenborough, Shadowlands tells their love story. The film won the Bafta Award for Best British Film and was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay. But accolades asides, the film’s most impressive detail is its moving portrayal of Lewis’s bravery in suffering.
This terrible loss tested his faith and made him question his very existence and yet Joy’s death deepened Lewis’s fascination with the human condition. Concluding in A Grief Observed that the trials of pain and loss provide a gateway to gratitude, the text offers a mature and at times extremely raw, account of how to overcome despair. Lewis’s ultimate resolution is the realization that the only antidote to fear is to believe that as Julian of Norwich said centuries ago, “all shall be well”.
This “total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark”, is something we can all embrace. Replacing the idea of a divine being with the goodness of, and belief in, the universe, one can translate Lewis’s theology reasoning into a secular mantra for trust and hope. After all, at the heart of all Lewis’s writings is the preoccupation with love. Love, for Lewis is kindness. And perhaps he would teach us to be kinder to each other and ourselves; embracing patience for the profound transformation of pain-induced strength.
Tia Byer
