140: Till [The Romantics] Have Faces

Hello and welcome to classical stuff. You should know a podcast about books and art and old things and stuff that happened a long time ago My name is Thomas Magby I'm joined as always by mr. Graham Donaldson hello and mr. AJ Hindenburg that is me and today we will be Discussing this is actually is itself plagiarism if you're quoting if you're standing from a paper you wrote what 20 years ago?

No, yeah, I'm just gonna read my gratities Things about that some professors will get mad if you reuse a paper that yours it's all the plagiarizing if you don't cite yourself That doesn't give us a self if it's from another paper This was a big thing you see I remember that's right because you you have given rights over to whoever your publisher is Yes, this is even if you're not published. It's just if you're using a paper the problem is that you're not doing original work That's what they would describe the problem as being Anyway, this is a tangent anyway. We were prepared to listen here 27 page. No, how long is your thesis?

I've 57 pages actually let's read your so you're gonna start reading your 57 pages. No, no, we're not gonna be my master's thesis But so we are gonna be discussing a book today by C.S. Lewis one of his last novels I think maybe his last novel called till we have faces and it is yeah Or book or or book it's about mirrors Wow, it's like the book that when people are like, oh, I love C.S. Lewis and then they talk about the books He's rather than like you ever be till we have faces like yeah, I don't really get that one That was a little weird for me.

That was that hideous strength. Yeah, his space. I've actually never finished his space trilogy I just actually first one was great. I actually read that history something.

I liked it way more second time Yeah, yeah, it's parallel and wrote the second parallander's number two the first one I think as a like a kid who just absolutely loves Star Wars and that was my whole firm of reference for sci-fi going It's like blah where the spaceships where the tithe fires and now that Star Wars has been absolutely crushed and destroyed What are you talking about in this world? Wait? We're talking about the greatest Star Wars. I don't understand.

I don't understand it. I didn't watch it. That's true I have not seen a lot of me. Can we do a live watching and then record it and put it on patreon?

classical stuff twitch graham watches the last three hours called the skywalker rises. I don't know that's yep, you know Yeah, we'll do that. Oh, yeah, I walkers ends up the skywalker. Anyway, so Till we have faces it is a weird book and it's one of those books where at the end of it you're like Something else is going on and I don't know what it was there's the story But it seems as if as a story moves forward There's something that if you haven't grabbed on to or there's almost like this little interpretive framework that if you don't have The story ends up becoming just kind of bizarre at the end So we're gonna give you a little overview of the plot and then I'm going to give my defense as to what I think Lewis is working out until we have faces My thesis for the podcast is that C.S.

Lewis is writing or he's trying to solve some philosophical questions the book is a story version a narrative working out of his own view of romanticism and And and actually his own view of natural theology. That's a better way to put it of how God speaks to us through Through natural means as opposed to revealed means like scripture. He said this is your thesis right now with us also the topic of your He was also the topic of my thesis. So Yeah, I wrote that C 2008 is not 20 years ago.

Oh years ago. Yeah, so that's you know Like kind of rounds depending on how you want to round down. Yeah, yeah Back in the day so I'm actually someone emailed me from the school saying like hey I remember you wrote this I'm doing a paper on till we have faces kind of read your thesis again It was professor something and I was like yeah sure I said to them and I had I reread it And I hadn't even looked at it since probably 2009 right and woof. It's embarrassing.

I don't know I wasn't suffered what do you mean? No, I see where this thing you're like oh I had like a Chesterton quote at the beginning. It was just cringy. He was probably a T.S.

Elliot X There is one point. I think I put it chapter break I read my college papers and I am just odd at the depth and gravity and like none of us have anything we were insightful Precising language and how how I never have two theses in one paper that are somehow at odds with each other and confused and all of my Evidence makes sense and the worst part about doing a podcast until he faces and I've listened to a couple of other podcasts until he faces Is hearing everybody try to pronounce the characters names because the Queen's name is spelled O R U A L Or I'll oral oral oral or wall or wall or wall or wall or wall or wall You can just go real barbarian I'm just gonna refer to as the queen because I don't want to go down. It's like saying rural juror from There's one queen and that's beyond so we're gonna call it Anyway, so I'm still refer to as a queen so I'm gonna give the story in brief So when the book starts off It isn't the queen is elderly and she is looking back on her life And she has is the queen of this little city-state kingdom called gloam and Real cheery place and so she's been the queen of this place and she is looking back on her life She's near death and she has had a complaint against the gods her whole life And the story ends up being a retelling of the Cupid psyche myth Actually, you know, do you know Cupid psyche myth as our resident like Greek I read it once what happens is one of the daughters is supposed to go and be married to Love it's Cupid and then she I don't think there's any confusion about actually being a real thing She is not allowed. I think what happened is Cupid knows that I think his mom hates this girl one of the goddesses This girl and so he's like you are not allowed to know that it's me It's just a god that you are with and then one of her jealous sisters convinces her to disobey his command about never turning On the lights in the bedroom and she's like how do you know that you're not sleeping with a monster?

He could be terrible and awful and you don't know what you're spending every night with it could be a total disaster thing And so you've got to figure this out so she goes she holds up a lamp And I think she like holds the candle too long and then the wax drips on him wakes him up and then in all his glory He freaks out and I he dissolves the marriage and I think she has to do a bunch of stuff to get back in this Great, right psyche goes off to and she is the god Yeah, psyche goes off and has to do these tasks like you got a hill of rice and sand and you got like separate the rice from the sand and I got climb some sort of mountain like all these sort of arduous tasks herculean esque tasks So stuff that no one can do it, but the ants all helper to the rises. She's so lovable that everybody helps her out Yeah, she sees and then gets to go it gets to be back with like it with a few But I think that's how it works something like that You know that's the Greek myth and you can read about that in I want them I forget where I read it. It's like it's one of the old. Yeah, I've looked up some ancient resource for you H.

Schillists or where his name is sure anyway, so I mean the guy the only have yeah, she lives in he can't worry I I heard about a a teacher that referred to him as a shelly's shelly's or a chilis like the guy on the little fortune That's really that's the first year problem. That's cool. That's cool. That's cool.

That's cool. Okay Wait, then there's a Lucius APU L E I So and then in this story it turns out so this is a retelling of that story So the queen when she was young was a princess and her father was a terrible person He was mean and he was cruel and he had two daughters and then his wife died and he went and he married another woman Who was quite sort of she was pretty but she was sort of weak and sickly and they had a daughter Who's named Istra, but everybody refers to a psyche and this daughter is Beautiful gorgeous and not just like beautiful like she's very pretty to look at but there's just something about her presence of just personified innocence and majesty and beauty and All of the things that would bring a tear to an old man's eye right like just a psyche is this sort of embodiment of youthful beauty and innocence Everybody who sees her is just put at ease and is brought back to happier times in their life and being in the presence of psyche is just It's just like a satisfying enjoyable time. She's just just she's a peach Anyway, sorry, this is in the original story or this is until we have this is the way I face this is the queen who Is not a queen does she get along with this? Yeah, so queen so she's quite a bit older and the queen loves her sister I love sir and it's quite protective of her and there's another sister We're not even gonna talk about I mean she in the novel she plays a role But it's sort of a minor one who's sort of more jealous and just cares about like dresses and boys and that kind of stuff But anyway, so the queen oral the princess at this time.

Yes, she loves her sister She's very protective of her because basically everybody kind of wants a piece of psyche right and not in any sort of malicious way It's just everybody wants her around she is has this sort of majestic presence that that everybody wants to be a part of anyway as it goes on psyches majestic presence begins to People begin to think that she actually can heal you from diseases and there's a plague that goes through Gloam and and the townspeople are like bring a psyche We want to see psyches like you can save us psyches and he'll listen psyches doesn't think that she can she's a little hesitant but she also wants to bring sort of peace and happiness to the villagers so she agrees to do it that I want my daughter praying around out with all his dirty you know rabble and And and then the oral is doesn't want psyche out there because like she's just worried that Sort of the desire for psyche could also turn into you know like like sort of a consumptive desire and psyche could be in danger Anyways, he's protective There are disputes as to whether or not psyche actually does heal people people feel like they are healed just being psyches presence But she's not like magic or anything But anyway, this begins to tick off the priest of the town and he the they worship the goddess unjit Who is a fertility goddess? She's kind of like where does things come from? Unjitter unget and she is a fertility goddess and she is similar to an Aphrodite except like a of cruel Vincen cruel and vindictive one actually like Aphrodite Yeah, that's that's pretty and so in the temple they do they bring sacrifices to Aphrodite for her favor And there's some sort of great descriptions of you know the smoky bloody temple Dedicated to the goddess of love but being kind of like dark place where things are killed anyway So the priest decides you know what unget is mad because all the people are worshiping psyche and that's why we have the plague We got a sacrifice her and so the priest goes to the king and he convinces the king Yeah, you got to do this and Unget demands it the goddess demands it things like Mac a fine and the princess or I was like no absolutely not like why you're gonna Kill your daughter. This is doesn't make any sense and so the Kings like alright how we're gonna sacrifice her and the priest says we're gonna take her up to the mountain and we're just gonna tire to a tree and We're gonna let the the god of the man.

We're gonna let sort of you know nature consumer We're gonna let the goddess take her we're gonna sacrifice we're gonna leave her there and then and that's it and so this was This a new ritual or had this has been a thing that that they did but it hadn't been done in a long time I actually don't really remember if it's new they came up with it or if it's just like the ancient ways Regardless but they're doing it. I'm gonna do demands it right? I'm gonna demand it according to the priest right so or I was like fine I'll just like go up to the mountain the next day and like freer But then she falls sick in and a pretty deep pretty deep sickness and is in bed for weeks And then when she is healthy enough she goes up beside herself She goes up to the mountain to either tend to her dying sister who's tied to a tree or to bring back her remains When she gets to the top of the mountain she finds a psyche in good spirits and good health and just chilling out and psychies Are happy to see her she's like oh or welcome and the prince oral is Like you what's going on who's been taking care of you and psyche says I was rescued by the god of the mountain And we are married and I'm married to the god of the mountain and he has brought me into his beautiful into his palace And to his home and he's taking care of me and and the princess oral is like no what okay fine Where are they why is she incredulous about the palace and the guy look at the outside and she's like okay We'll take me to the palace right now right and or psyche says what do you mean? And I was like let's go to this palace like show me your husband Let's see this place and she's like but oral you're sitting in the palace right now You're in the you're in the foyer of the palace and oral looks around she's like uh, I'm in the forest Who are you married to like?

She gets concerned that how you been drinking water exactly? Sun like in some other things and mushrooms everywhere and so oral gets concerned and and psyche insists that they are in the palace and oral doesn't believe they're in the palace and And she refuses to go back down to Goes back down to glum with her oral leaves and sort of frustrated and she decides that she's gonna come back and try to convince Psyche to go home and this time she is going to you know no matter what she's going to do it And so oh yeah one thing I've forgotten similar to the the story Psyche has said I have not seen the face of my beloved He comes in the night and he's forbidden me to look at him and or I was like yeah red flag girl Maybe it's a bandit or maybe some sort of monster or maybe you're crazy You're living in a cave and you think it's a palace and psyche but psyche seems pretty adamant that that's not the case She's like can't you see the palace and I was like no I see a forest so oral is like okay She's gone crazy. I need to rescue her and somebody's taking advantage of her So she goes back home and she gets a lantern and a knife and she goes back to Psyche on the mountain and she says You're not living in a palace. You need to come home with me right now.

So I refuse I'm not leaving my husband and she says fine Use this lantern show me his face. So look at him So you know who you're with I'm worried that you're with a monster abandoned It's like I'm not doing that he told me not to and then or real takes out a knife and stabs yourself in the arm And she's basically and says how can you be so selfish? How can you love this bandit or whoever this is more than you love your family? Why she coming back and be with your family if you don't do this I will kill myself and she to prove it she stabs herself in the arm and psyche freaks out and it's like fine fine fine Give me the lantern.

I will look at my husband. Just don't hurt yourself and then as this conversation is going on For a moment just a little glimpse The oral looks around and she sees that she's in a palace a beautiful palace and Everything that psyche has described is there and she sees with her own eyes And then the palace disappears and she's back in the forest and she was like what is happening But she doesn't want to believe it wasn't a storm like I wasn't it storming it was there's a thunder flash and she Yeah, she thought she sawed or something. Yeah, so there is she doesn't you know, she's like on my eyes playing sure Saw me am I going crazy? It's my time and she also doesn't want to believe that this is true because psyche is now with someone that she loves and is not coming home right?

yeah, and so oral sort of sits by the water and waits and Psyche goes off with a lantern and then she hears a terrible cry Some sort of there's some commotion and a cry and she hears what sounds like sobby or so be psyche sobbing and crying and crying and then Orole has a vision the god of the mountain appears to her and says that Psyche has been banished and she is sort of doomed to walk the earth and She is going to be set upon by powers greater than me says the god of the mountain And that's assuming to be the god of the mountains mother who is And then or else like what crap holy crap And then the god of the mountain continues to speak and he says something very cryptic to orole and he says you two shall be psyche not like like you two shall be psyche is what he says and oral takes this to be a Curse that she to is going to walk the earth and have no home and the gods will be against her and she is going to be a cursed and Like love has fled her just as love has no fled psyche and or it was you know She has the gods of kerster and so she builds that she can you sort of builds up this little hatred for the gods in her heart Why have they been why did they first demand psyche for her death? Why did then they take psyche for themselves as a wife and then why have they now banished psyche from their presence? That was pretty easy. It's like they've been a psyche from your presence because because of the Queen's actions Whatever well, and they couldn't say goodbye right psyche just sort of wandered off Yes, there's no there's no goodbye moment It was just gonna flash happen voice came and then she saw psyche wandering off by herself crying sobbing And then so or yes, and or else it has some hard hardness towards like he's saying like why did she okay fine?

You got actually the gods will screw them come live with me and we'll like you know film and Louise this thing right like we don't need anybody You know I mean I do okay. Yeah, so but that doesn't happen to our students are like what are you talking about? Google it all right So and then the Queen goes back and then the story just goes to the Queen's a oral's life Her father dies and she becomes Queen like he's gone psyche is gone and wanders off and When she becomes Queen she like sends out messengers and people looking for can never find her Queen oral is also incredibly ugly and her whole life her dad's has been telling her that she's like you know super ugly And she's never gonna marry anybody and so he basically gave her great education It's like you're gonna be in charge because no one's marrying you so and you're the eldest I don't have any son So I'm gonna like they teach out fight and ride and do all these sorts of things and he hires her a tutor who is a little Greek stoic Name the Fox Anyway, so she has been bred to be a queen and she ends up becoming a queen and she is a fantastic queen She is an architect. She's a diplomat.

She is a warrior when her father dies a rival city Sort of comes sniffing around thinking that they're gonna take over and she defeats their champion in single hand to hand combat And everyone was and she's wearing some mask because she was training all her young life exactly this Wasn't it her dad is like well you're never gonna get a husband as well train you sword Yeah, and and so the champion was like I kill a girl And then they fight and then the queen oral kills him and everyone's like dang she's awesome And she vows to wear a mask for the rest of her life because she is so she's been told her whole life that she's ugly and she actually finds out That by wearing a mask she actually can create an incredible amount of power Everybody wonders what's behind there and rumors begin to abound that she must be beautiful If she's wearing a mask and no man can marry her she must be an absolute beauty She's just so alone fights over her. She's doing so known fights over her and she realizes that she gets married She kind of won't be in charge and and she feels like she's competent enough to rule the kingdom And she is she brings peace and prosperity and happiness to this kid the men that are interested in her now because of this Yes, it's all these like people that come they're trying to marry her and she brushes them off and she must be so beautiful wearing this mask and everyone thinks she's beautiful because she is good right anyway, so she is great at running this kingdom and But she always harbors this little hatred towards the gods and she also makes sure that priests loses his job And I'm there a new priest or sacrifice my sister exactly I can't remember this new breath She like puts in some sort of patsy as a priest and you know, he's like a yes, man Whatever But she sort of lives her whole life with this little hard-heartedness towards the gods and she herself never sort of finds love She falls in love with her chief of the guards But he is a beautiful family man and he does everything the Queen asks of him He is a beautiful servant Bardia, but at the end of the day He goes home and he's married and the Queen has loved him just because of his of his goodness But she's never done anything inappropriate or untoward And as her life goes on she realizes that this bond that she has with Bardia is not actually friendship It's a duty and then when it's done he goes home and he lives his real life and his beautiful life is with her and she's like Oh, well, he doesn't love me. He's he obeys me and that's different and she she wants the love from Bardia, but he is just obeying her She says but she's also like that's just the way it is anyway as life goes on she becomes elderly and Bardia is on his deathbed and and She decides that she's gonna travel She's never been outside her kingdom She travels and she's traveling outside and she comes across this little like roadside shrine and in there's a little hermit Telling a story to a bunch of parishioners and it's the story of Cuban psyche the story of her sister and he's telling it all wrong He sort of inherited the story of this beautiful girl who married the husband and a wicked sister was jealous and was like And she's like I'm not a good sister. No, psyche was you know tricked by the gods and the gods are cruel and And so she decides she's gonna write down the what actually happened That's until we have faces and so she sort of concludes the till we have faces with sort of the gods are jerks and And they see if I can even find the passage I didn't mark up this book, but I'm sure I won't be able to find it in a good Yeah So at the end of her story she says I Say therefore that there is no creature toad scorpion or serpent so noxious to man as the gods Let them answer my charge if they can it may well be that instead of answering they'll strike me mad or leprous or turn me into a beast Bird of tree, but will not all the world then know and the gods will know it knows that this is because they have no answer And her charge is basically like why are you such a jerk?

Why are you so cruel? Why do you make life for us miserable? and So then she decides to end her story there and then the last half of the book and remember she'd been haunted her whole life with this phrase you two will be psyche and and Then towards the end of her life She starts having these dreams about her having to do these monumentous tasks like the the sand and the rice and the climbing the mountain And she does all these things and she can't do them by herself She throws herself into her work and she can't do it and she curses the gods because they've given her this monumentous task Just like her sort of life She's thrown herself into making her kingdom a little jewel because she's just so angry And she's wants to not think about psyche and the sort of the sisterly love that the gods took from her Anyway, then the book ends with her She has had some visions and there's this scene where she has brought two or two the gods into the council room and the gods have said We hear you have something against us Please go ahead and read your complaint and in her hand She thought she was carrying her story which is her complaint against the gods But really what she has is a list of much more primitive complaints of like I loved psyche and I wanted her for myself and you took her she was mine and you took what was mine That's basically what her complaint ends up to yeah, she does she start thinking she's saying these wonderful eloquent things over time She realizes she just she's realizing she's just saying psyche was mine. She was mine.

She was mine I wanted her I should have her you took her from me and as she so she thinks yeah She's saying these eloquent things and really she's saying what truly is in her heart And what truly is in her heart was that psyche was for me and my love and you gods took her from me and then she gives her complaint and the gods say Basically are you satisfied and she says yes, and then she says you have so you have your answer and then They she sees a vision of psyche doing the same tasks that she did But being helped with the tasks So she actually does separate the rice and the grains and she actually does climb the unscalable scalable mountain And she actually does go down to the depth and brings up a box of beauty and Oral sees psyche come she's near death It's all fuzzy and weird and psyche comes and gives this box of beauty to oral and the queen realizes that the phrase you to Shall be psyche was not a curse of being someone who is going to wander the world cursed by the gods But you two will be psyched means that she ends up becoming She's becoming that beauty she ends up becoming beautiful in the end with the gods And in the book ends and you go what the heck was that? So you get this sort of like you get this sense that there's something going on that it's not that's not there's the book on the story Level so you have the story of what's happening, but then you're like, okay, see us Lewis is he's working out something here And I don't really get it right and this so I love this book when I read it before that reason I was like there's something going on I never really understood it I think I read it for the first time in high school and I was like, oh weird And then so I remember a professor at the University of Toronto my poetry professor her name was dr. Rabbit hands whoa sorry not rabbit hands, but rabbit hands. You're saying the same way No, as I think we're batons, but not but pronounced rabbit hands Yes, sure.

So rabbit hands anyway professor rabbit hands. Um, but listen, she's lucky. Hmm. Maybe no, but she was a great professor and She I remember she gave me some advice or gave the class advice and I should give you advice I gave the class advice of how to read a poem is you're looking for like a little hole in the armor of a story So you can understand the poem from the inside I know I've talked about this on the podcast before So you're looking for some little fissure that will get you on the inside and then you can understand the story from the inside And oftentimes those little fissures or those little holes are metaphors or the author themselves give interpret framework to understanding the story And we sort of talked about this when we were talking about um Can we interpret like the sword of Beowulf as human technology?

And we said no because the author doesn't give you license to do that correct I truly believe that the author does give you license to interpret the story with I'm just thinking about that argument. Yeah, swords as new technology to the Vikings I'm like a laptop don't worry about that So the question is what's going on? Okay, and so my Thought on this is that C. S.

Lewis is talking about the humans relationship to the divine in nature Okay, and so to kind of um sort of spoil the ending on this on this talk so Psyche so the queen or else like us the queen or else a person who lives in the world and experiences a regular ordinary life Yeah, Psyche is this experience of beauty that exists in this world that when you encounter it you say yes That is what my heart is wanted if only I could be with Psyche for the rest of my days I would be happy and Then Psyche is taken away from you that feeling or that person that thing flees away and you are left aching and longing for that thing And then see us Lewis says and that and sort of make a decision you can curse the fact that Psyche was taken or you can say What is it about Psyche that I wanted? Oh? So so see us Lewis talks about this I so this is his view of romanticism and this is the criticism he has a romanticism when he calls romanticism a spilled religion And I talk a little bit about this on an old old old old podcast on I can't read it's called romanticism It's called deep joy whatever the podcast is so we talked about this but his philosophy on this is that human beings in their life have moments of Transcendental beauty and they just hit you you have a moment where time seems to stop and you have this sort of deep profound moment of beauty and This is what the romantic poets are writing about And Lewis talks about this in surprise by joy in his autobiography. He talks about these moments of beauty and how they sort of shaped his career Getting a little toy garden read it hearing some poetry read all of a sudden having a little window open up in his heart that He's like that I want to live there.

I want to be there There's this longing and hunger in the human soul and then Lewis says and the person who has had that once they start following that Once they say this is what I want and they start going after it it it it flees it is gone It's like a little animal that runs into the woods that you can't have and Then and Lewis says you know so while the romantic's do is a lot of them spend their life chasing that feeling coal Ridge ends up becoming an obiomatic words worth ends up becoming like a crotchety old conservative member of parliament All these poets end up sort of having this ache trying to get it back and never quite getting it and then talking about how sad they are Yeah, and so Lewis is saying like what is that ache? What is that thing that seems to be so that we are so in love with when we are young? But we can't have and we then become melancholy because we can't have it. What is that and his?

Philosophy on this is that that feeling is a natural Sort of our natural sense of the divine that God has actually built human beings Or is it there's a couple ways you can take it. It's not like a memory of heaven or like or the for a moment Beauty Disgusting phrase it Milton has his phrase where when Satan sees the Garden of Eden he says that He was sort of separated from his sin and was quote stupidly good There's this moment where like the beauty of Eden makes him good just for a moment Remember and makes him remember his goodness And so Lewis is maybe that's what's going on that when you encounter a moment of beauty all of the fallen nature of your heart Kind of gets put in the back burner just for a second and you remember what it was like to be The way God intended you to be created and you're like yeah That's how I want to live and then your and then sort of fallen nature comes running back and you're like living in the regular fallen world again Yeah Or that God has created nature in such a way that he gives these little moments Almost as little little moments to ignite your heart so that you will remember I am longing for something and it will set you off on the path to looking for it and see as Lewis says like the honest heart if They experience beauty and say this is what my heart wants and they follow that honestly both with their feelings and with their intellect We'll come to the throne of God and so I think Lewis's criticism was romanticism Lewis's criticism of romanticism is that they follow their hearts, but they didn't follow their intellect and so when they follow their hearts They just sort of like tried to create The feeling out of poetry or out of experiences and this is why I'll like as romanticism went on you have all these like Well, it's almost like you got the Dorian Gray stuff right Hanenburg Number how Dorian Gray is trying to like fill his life with beautiful things. Yeah that kind of thing as sort of This romantic pursuit separate from the intellect goes on You try to fill it with beauty and that doesn't work and you actually end up becoming sort of quite vicious because of it or you Don't follow your heart and you stay locked in your head and you sort of like say I was just youthful fancy and then you get lost in the business of the world But Lewis says that the honest man intellectually and emotionally when he realizes that his heart has this longing in him If he follows it It will bring him to the throne of God because God that is how human beings are set up These little moments of beauty are like these little reminders of heaven or these little homing beacons for heaven And the problem is that if you fall in love with the with psyche as opposed to the God of the mountain Psyche go you can't have psyche and not have the God of the mountain. They are married You need to accept the God of the mountain to have psyche So this I think this is what Lewis is working out until we have faces So it's like an analogy for a man.

It is when it's in reality for like how romanticism should be and so but I guess even Trippier as we get to the end so you can't just have so let's say that you were a young man and you Went you went for a walk in beautiful Texas. No, that's not working That is a good fact gorgeous outside So you go for a walk and then all of a sudden you have this sort of moment of peace and serenity and beauty in the The brushy landscape of Texas if that could ever happen Texas is beautiful. I don't know what you're talking about um and You're like oh my goodness. I love Texas and that's what you have because you've had this moment and you love Texas And you're like I'm gonna move here.

I'm gonna live here I'm gonna build a house here. This is where this is what I was made for. I can't believe anybody would want to live anywhere else Lewis's argument is that you don't actually want to Texas that moment Has reminded you that you were built for a beautiful existence and it's not the scrubby brushland of Texas It's that the scrubby brushland of Texas in that moment reminded you of your true home of heaven and maybe it could be no not your true home of heaven your true your true love which is to be unified with God and This moment of Texas was almost like a portal to reminding you of that Shout out air once I Don't think also loyal listener. Yes, there's no way That's great podcast though And so these little moments of beauty are almost portals to remind you that what you're made for if you fall in love with the portal Or fall in love with the thing it won't sustain itself.

It wasn't designed to fulfill you It was designed to kick you in the butt to get you back to God So when or real says I want psyche she can't have psyche what what she wants is what psyche? Ultimately at the end of the book points or two, which is the gods and when at the end of the book when oral realizes that that the gods have been working in the background to teach her this lesson and And at the end she when it says you two shall be psyche What Lewis is saying I think sort of working out with this book is that in the end when we become when we come to God When we have the be at be at tiffic vision or whatever when we are united with with God We end up becoming that beauty that we experienced when we are on earth So that moment that we that beautiful landscape of Texas We don't just long for it to have it and to keep it and to hold on to it and to have it in our little grubby hands I because it's mine my precious So Lewis is saying that you don't just get that in heaven or with God you become that beautiful thing or Queen or will becomes a psyche at the end of the story She doesn't get to live with psyche She becomes psyche at the end of the story that that Feeling that everybody had who wanted to be with psyche she gets and then in that sense She is also married to the god of the mountain like psyche is so this is sort of my thesis is that what Lewis is doing He is giving this narrative Version of what he thinks of how of his answer to the romantic problem and the romantic problem is there are these feelings of deep moving Beauty in the world that don't seem to fulfill us now. I'm sad. That's the romantic problem That's all romanticism is you have sort of melancholy romantic who once felt it now they don't anymore and Lewis has an answer to you Yes, and Lewis is answered what you're supposed to do instead is well You can't just follow your heart and you can't just follow your head You actually have to be honest and follow both of them and say okay If there's nothing on this earth that satisfies me But I have a hunger that I must be made for something beyond this earth And that's that's a very sort of famous Lewis quote right and he says and what you know What we were made for is to be in communion with God in the divine and there are moments on earth that remind us of this and kind of like Light the fire in our hearts So if you know if hearing the gospel didn't get you on the path to searching for God well Then maybe this natural experience this phenomenological experience of beauty will get you on the path But just like how you can misunderstand the gospel and be the seed in the rocky ground you can misunderstand the feeling and get spun off into feeling land and Anyway, so this is sort of the defense that I have of the book thoughts It's interesting so in your Texas in your Texas example just to make sure I'm understanding person That's I fall in love with the beauty of Texas you would say to that person Let's say that they you know Let's say it's you Graham you experience this love of Texas tomorrow You go back to Canada and you're there for the rest of your life.

Mm-hmm. You can choose to despair Mm-hmm. I'll never have that beautiful Texas I'm only happy when I'm in Texas or to see the thing I love with beauty beauty is not only in Texas Yeah, here in Canada beauty is not even just the physical location, right? There's more there's beautiful in the world than just the outdoors or whatever your thing is Yeah, so I'll give you the example So the moment of beauty that I had as a young man was I was working at camp and I had this moment where I was by myself And I've talked about this in an older podcast a moment where I was by myself and I was camp No one was at camp I was alone that weekend and it was a gorgeous night with it had just rain so you got that wet smell of rain And I just had this moment of like peace and tranquility and I remember thinking like man I just want to stay at camp forever, right?

And that's the thought and Now looking back I realized what's absurd like I don't want to live a camp in fact That would be a terrible thing if I lived a camp and it would be probably pretty I would probably end up destroying camp If I placed all of my longing and hunger in this life for some for having camp to deliver that to me Sure, and and this is the problem like or well would have destroyed psyche with all of her desire for fulfillment That's like you could not meet if we want to talk about like mnemonic desire again, right? Let's do it We don't want to and so and then this sort of translates to other people right like Romeo and Juliet I'm teaching that in 10th grade like they can't fulfill each other's deep desires by being love Another human being cannot fill up all of that like existential desire that we have for unification with God They can't and when we try to do that we end up destroying people This is also thing. This is what adrenaline junkies are doing or people that just love music festivals because like you have this moment You're at the music because frankly they're awful You have that moment where the crowd is there and everybody's like jumping up and down and you have this moment I don't want to be anywhere else This is what humans are made for right people have that moment in like an ecstatic crowd And then they say this is what I want and then you have these people who literally like dedicate their life Just to go into music festivals chasing that feeling and a lot of the chasing of the feeling is something that was beautiful and good in childhood and you've it's now become Preverted wicked in adulthood because we've placed all of our life's hope on it and when it doesn't fulfill we get we get mad We get angry we get destructive and this is what the gods save psyche from the queen would have destroyed her with all of her longings She would have kept her locked to herself in a little tower psyche's all mine. No one can have her I'm never gonna let any all the ref ref ref ref ruin.

You know destroy my sister again And and so then the whole book ends up in this weird metaphor that We end up in being embodied by or embodying that desire that we had we will be psyche Yeah, we end the thing that we longed for we get and we become and we're married to the god of the mountain So it's anyway That was a thesis that was one of my growth This was so the queen's original problem wasn't just that psyche was out in the field It's that she was not married to the god of the mountain. Yeah, like there's a there's a jealousy The queen's problem was that her she thought her love show you know, she's love psyche and she said well My love for my sister is the strongest thing in my life, right? what is stronger than so than your love for family and Someone's trying to take my sister away and they succeed. I am Justified in my rage against God who took away my sister Lewis has the same interaction with in the great divorce where there's a mother who is So angry that God took away her son and she has such a possessive love for her son And she's like well, I'm a mother.

This is what mothers do my son is everything to me And she has such a like smothering protective love of the son That has brought her to hell because she refuses to love anything else except her child and later on the angel Dr. McDonald says to the CS Lewis like God actually killed her son to get her to get the son away from that mother to save him Well now whether or not God does that I have no idea But his Lewis's point is that there there is something that feels like ultimate love that isn't that can go real bad And that is the possessive love that one can have for family or for your beloved your lover Thinking that this person is the fulfillment of your heart when they're not And so the great mercy for Oro at the end is not that she spins off into bitter anger and madness and rage at the gods But she gets to give her petition to the gods the gods do not answer her She's but there she's satisfied and then she's given the gift of becoming psyche that very thing that she longed for she is Once she's with you know when she dies and he's united with the gods anyway, so it's very It's a little bit is um, I remember first I'm going through this having literally no idea what's happening in the entire It's because it's split part one part. Yes, I can part it it's ends off the reals really quick Yes, and also because she's she's near death and so it's sort of in them its vision and it's sort of fever dreamy and That is my best attempt at giving some sort of interpretive structural framework for till you have faces that that's anyway So you took notes which is terrible. Oh, I was actually just taking things.

I wanted to address when my episode Well then no, it was just like this is actually a really funny segue into what I'm gonna talk about next episode absurdism because absurdism takes like the opposite tack on a lot of these questions I was wondering which will be the episode after is it is another tact I I'll be very related to each other. Yeah, I was wondering if you had any comment on I always saw this story as about more about self-deception than Misplace loves like we as soon as she loses her sister or shortly thereafter She puts on a mask that she wears her entire life and that mask is that lie that the gods have wronged her when really She has wronged her sister, right? She she made her sister do something silly because she wanted her sister for herself And so the rest of the time she has this vendetta out against the gods and she wants all these loves and she there's this really touching moment where she thinks that Remember Bart. What's the name?

Barto? Bartia? Bartia? Bartia?

She goes and visits him and she actually talks to his wife And his wife says are you kidding me that you think I've had the best of him? You've had the best of him. He spends he spends everything good in him for you and then I get what's left when he comes home You suck and dries, yes You you have sucked his love out of him And I guess it makes sense that she's trying to get love somewhere else But there's this self-deception where she thinks she has been wronged and she thinks she's been abandoned and she thinks all these things are going against her When in truth she has wronged all these people and then so what the title of the book till we have faces is that we cannot we cannot come face to the face with The gods until we actually have our own face and truth truthfully see what is in our own hearts And at the very last moment where she has this long list of grievances that she's gonna read to the gods and then turns out to just be like Your own petty desire. Your own petty desire.

You took yeah my sister from me This is my you punks you punks you punks and then they're like are you satisfied now? Like it's it's your problem not our problem and so I always thought it was a self-deception thing can you comment on that? No, I think that's good. I think I don't think those are incompatible I think yeah, and that's I'm saying it might be a sub a sub theme Yeah, but or it's that maybe this is Lewis's point when he says this is the air of the romantic so the Romantics are not honest with themselves when they when they go off chasing other pleasures or the The world has stole something that was broken.

Yes, that's right. That's the dishonesty that's the world hasn't actually stolen anything the world has installed from it is like God is doing everything he can to try to get you to realize that you are for him Not only in revealed theology and the work of the church But also in these moments of beauty and in the world like so you know how much more do you need kids right like? And so I think that yeah definitely that that her the queen's own self-deception. She doesn't under she doesn't realize what she wants She doesn't realize that she yeah that she hasn't realized that her desires are Driving her to do destructive things to other people that she's sucking bar you dry and he's a good man And he is doing his duty she's very she's burying herself in her work that kind of thing You brought up the tragedy and write the tragedy and from like so great divorce.

What are you talking about? What's on her son? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, is that is that definitely tragedy? I thought it was a tragedy.

I don't know what tragedy means It's it's a woman She's like yelling at her son and she has this this young thing chained up next to her that is speaking for her all this Traged up. Yeah, yeah, and then as it speaks it grows larger and she shrinks. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah Consumes are is that the same encounter and an angel says like I can take you to your son He's in heaven with God and you need and you can come see him, but and she's like well good cuz I'm gonna take him I'm gonna go back home. I can't do that. Yeah, I think that's that's seeing she is blaming him like why would you like? Why would you leave me?

Yes, I've done everything for you. We should do great divorces. Yeah, we should I just it's she is the tragedy Like she has made her life a tragedy. Yeah, and and it's it's her and she's lying She's lying to yourself and that's what the Queen is doing.

She's lying to her own pain She's deceiving she's deceptive in thinking that the gods have been cruel to her when in fact the gods have been merciful to say he Think the tragedy might be different because there's Frank and Sarah Frank would take advantage of her Sarah by pretending that she'd hurt his feelings Oh, it's a husband and wife just again. It's a Google search But I think those just to save the emails that might come in But you want to read the part about do we have faces like where that phrase is used is that relevant to I mean a J? J quoted I think I was worth a word is that how can we understand how can we come face to face with the gods and faces and See like that. Yeah.

Yeah Yeah, I don't I didn't mark it up, but then the The romantic then have to be disappointed there so in that story that there's no getting passed Yeah, and so it's sort of a little hard to like you know pick a romantic and sell right what was worth problem? Where did he go wrong? All right, where did Coleridge go wrong? We can do that, but it is much more profitable to say okay wherein am I in danger of of Turning my relationship to beauty and God into some sort of like sticky sweet woe is me everything is so tragic Kind of a thing where you're putting where you're lying to yourself Because there is something incredibly seductive about wallowing in this romantic sadness Yeah, is that the takeaway then to be wary of that walling?

I think the takeaway is and this will be very classical Is like a like almost a socratic know that self like the takeaway is to say like we're probably you are not as sophisticated And you are not as primitive as you think you are like at the end of it orals claim against the gods were basic I wanted this for myself almost like a child and you took it from me and the gods took it from her because if the gods left Psyche in her care She would have destroyed psyche with her you know her consumptive love And so I think the takeaway is to say is to really look at yourself and say Human beings are bundle we are a we are desiring people We love this is sort of the Jamie Smith you are what you love book idea that we we are things that desire things that love And that is a powerful force that can be that can be very destructive And in fact many of the miseries that we may have in our lives are because we think we are either wronged or grieved or or search or just like doing our best to search after the good but in reality like We're just hoping that we're just we're mad because God doesn't give us what we want Yes, so my takeaway what I've enjoyed what I liked about till we have faces is that almost That sort of almost painful act of self in inner self reflection to say like What do I blame God for? Yeah, do you guys want to hear I pulled up the quote the control F function on a PDF is handy So she makes her complaint and then the gods say are you answered and she goes yes New chapter the complaint was the answer to have heard myself making it was to be answered lightly men talk of saying what they mean Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox who was her to her tutor tutor would say child to say the very thing You really mean the whole of it nothing more or less or other than what you really mean That's the whole art and joy of words a glib saying when the time comes to you at which you'll be forced at last To utter the speech which has lean in the center of your soul for years which you have all that time idiot Like been saying over and over you'll not talk about joy of words I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly nor let us answer till that word can be dug out of us Why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces this reminds me of so in the book of Revelation when you are given a stone With your name your new name on it That that happens at the end of history the end of everything the unveiling the apocalypse the revealing of what is actually true This kind of reminds me of that It's like we all have this complaint or we all have this true face that we can put but we can mask up in our lives and The necessary step of not only spiritual growth but maybe even of conversion is to realize the truth about yourself and And then it's but it doesn't just leave you there like it doesn't just be like all right now You know that you you were not a man that you were a worm and that you know Does you love the good you love the sin you love the bad things you want what's wrong? That doesn't end there God gives you this new name or you become psyche you end up by the act of of realizing who you are Submitting to God heat doesn't just just you often say I will get back there and try better try to do better You were transformed into being psyche And that's the so to me that's sort of the that or else sort of converts that that's what this book ends up being anyway So that's now I would like so people would like oh man.

I want to read that thesis You know I read that thesis do not email me asking before I will not send it it is it is embarrassingly bad I'm no no, but I read it. You cannot no one can this let's just have this be Like my attempt at the first making a little bit better the first thing we stream on Twitch I will comment For our take down perfect So this was referenced earlier, but it ties in well with what Graham is talking about the episode He mentioned about deep joy and romanticism is literally called the deep joy of romanticism episode 32 So please check that out in call of something funny for fart fart fart the flavor My system ha ha ha lol and then episode 32 Someone else can be in charge Whatever I don't have to be in charge of the story you know with the internet is very funny to me. Oh, pretty sure you Oh pretty sure you up pretty sure it's a pun. Yeah, okay fine Sure, cool.

That's a 32 is the deep joy romanticism if you want to hear more about this when students are asked like their favorite You know thing they learned a favorite lecture a gram stock I'm sorry mr. Donson the weird gram stock on deep joy comes up very often So it's because it's because they're young but if you want to hear that episode 32 is a place for that one of my favorite experiences Was a I was playing the stag dance which we do every year and it's usually an electronic dance like lots of techno And we did it in some art space and I finished with I think it was during this song It was strobe a version of strobe by dead mouse and I remember seeing her standing in front of the speakers Just sort of staring at the floor her arms wide and an open embrace of the music coming out of my my speakers And she came out later And she was she was like I think I experienced deep joy. Thank you mr. That was amazing.

Oh, whatever rings your bell Awesome, but yeah, this has been classical stuff. You should know you can find us online at classical stuff that You can find us on Twitter at classical stuff. It's felt funny But if you search classical stuff it will show up you can email us at the guys at classical stuff net You can find us on patreon where we have in between episodes if you patreon only episodes a chance for asking us questions Which we answer every month all kinds of fun stuff there check it out patreon.com classical stuff and One last note if you are waiting for YouTube episodes I've been working on getting them up but every time I try to render my video card commit suicide It just decides it doesn't exist anymore and it sends all of the stuff to the processor which then overheats shut down my computer So I'm working on working out some tech issues with rendering. I will get up those episodes as soon as I can I'm sorry for the delay, but hey at least we're getting the audio out there Oh, so every Tuesday, so you got that cool, but that is it from us.

So for Graham aj and Thomas is us saying goodbye. Bye. Bye