“The one I enjoyed writing least was Screwtape: what I enjoyed most was Perelandra–but, you see, it all comes to nothing.” Despite the preface they all will take it as an ‘allegory’ and then blame me for not making it clear.” The book, it turns out, was one of Lewis’s favorites. “I am always like other cats glad to be stroked (I take it one shows even more pride by not liking praise than by liking it) but this was specially welcome because that is miles and away my own favourite among my books and has had a very bad reception from reviewers. kind of you to send me Mr Groom’s remarks on Perelandra,” Lewis wrote in a private letter. What might have happened, after all, if either Eve or Adam had resisted the temptations of the devil? What might have happened had there been an advocate for God’s position in the great cosmic struggle for the soul? Lewis’s brilliant Space Trilogy, Perelandra, our beloved Cambridge philologist and hero, Elwin Ransom, travels to Perelandra (Venus) and struggles to prevent a repetition of the Fall in the Garden of Eden as it had happened, tragically, in our world. In it, the author ably blends science fiction and theology, giving us a gripping thriller, steeped in thought, adventure, and myth. Lewis’s “Perelandra”-arguably the least read and least remembered part of his “Space Trilogy”-is nothing short of a masterpiece. It would be no exaggeration to claim that C.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |