Out of the Silent Planet
C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet. These are a few topics I found interesting that we didn't have time to discuss at a ladies book club. Several of us had different versions of the book, but the pages seemed very close (even hardcover). I figured I'd post them here just in case anyone reads the book and wanted to add some comments about some of this.
Pleasure - Chapter 12
Chapter 12 is probably the one that has stuck with me the most since reading the book a few years ago. Here's how part of it goes:
"But the pleasure he must be content only to remember?"
"That is like saying 'My food I must be content to eat.' "
"I do not understand."
"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.... When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it."
and later...
"And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back - if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?"
Danger - Also, later in the same chapter (page 76): If response to Ransom questioning him about the hnakra, Hyoi says "I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes."
Unity - On pages 81-82, after killing the hnakra: "They had stood shoulder to shoulder in the face of an enemy, and the shapes of their heads no longer mattered." I just think there's something interesting here about the unity found from fighting a common enemy.
Ruling ourselves - On page 102, Ransom talking with the learned sorns: "They cannot help it. There must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves? Beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau by eldila and eldila by Maleldil. These creatures have no eldila. They are like one trying to lift himself by his own hair - or one trying to see over a whole country when he is level with it - like a female trying to beget young on herself." Later Oyarsa established that there were eldila on earth, but without the acknowledgment they have on Malacandra.
Pleasure - Chapter 12
Chapter 12 is probably the one that has stuck with me the most since reading the book a few years ago. Here's how part of it goes:
"But the pleasure he must be content only to remember?"
"That is like saying 'My food I must be content to eat.' "
"I do not understand."
"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.... When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it."
and later...
"And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back - if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?"
Danger - Also, later in the same chapter (page 76): If response to Ransom questioning him about the hnakra, Hyoi says "I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes."
Unity - On pages 81-82, after killing the hnakra: "They had stood shoulder to shoulder in the face of an enemy, and the shapes of their heads no longer mattered." I just think there's something interesting here about the unity found from fighting a common enemy.
Ruling ourselves - On page 102, Ransom talking with the learned sorns: "They cannot help it. There must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves? Beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau by eldila and eldila by Maleldil. These creatures have no eldila. They are like one trying to lift himself by his own hair - or one trying to see over a whole country when he is level with it - like a female trying to beget young on herself." Later Oyarsa established that there were eldila on earth, but without the acknowledgment they have on Malacandra.
Labels: Neat or Funny
posted by kathryn at 9:28 PM
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