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DAVID LINDSAY, C. S. LEWIS, AND THE DARK TOWER
Casey R. Law, J. D.
Though many of C. S. Lewis's Christian readers would find the "gnostic"
David Lindsay an improbable influence upon Lewis, Lindsay was in fact important
in inspiring Lewis to write two of his "interplanetary" novels, the famous
Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. The heavy influence of Voyage
is also (to this writer's thinking) discernible in The Dark Tower, an incomplete
novel published posthumously in 1977 as Lewis's work.
Voyage to Arcturus was first recommended to Lewis by his longtime friend Arthur Greeves in Dec. 1934. (Sayer, George, Jack:C. S.Lewis and His Times, San Francisco: Harper & Row [1988], p. 152) Since Voyage had however gone out of print shortly after it was published in 1920, Lewis did not succeed in finding a copy of the book and reading it until almost two years later.(Ibid.)
Lewis was extremely impressed by Voyage. He wrote to a friend that it was Lindsay that had discovered that the authentic use for other planets in fiction was as the site for "spiritual adventures." (Sayer, p. 153; emphasis in original.) Elsewhere, Lewis said that Lindsay's "real theme" was "a passionate spiritual journey." ("On Stories," in Lewis, C. S., Of Other Worlds, ed. Walter Hooper, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich [1967, 1975], p. 19)
Inspired by Voyage, Lewis challenged his friend J. R. R. Tolkien to
a kind of contest: Lewis would write a story of space travel, and Tolkien
one of time travel. (Sayer, p. 153)
The result on Tolkien's side was an apparently never-completed story;
but from Lewis the contest yielded Out of the Silent Planet, published
in 1938. (Ibid.) Silent Planet, which tells of a voyage to Mars, was of
course followed by Lewis's novel of a journey to Perelandra, our planet
Venus.
Throughout the remainder of his life, Lewis spoke of Voyage with great respect. In a 1955 lecture, "On Science Fiction," Lewis discussed that type of science fiction or fantasy that was "an actual addition to life" and "enlarge[d] our conception of the range of possible experience." Among the very few and select works of this type that Lewis mentioned was "that shattering, intolerable, and irresistible work, David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus." (In Of Other Worlds, p. 71)
In a taped conversation that took place between Lewis, Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss shortly before Lewis's retirement, Lewis again spoke of Voyage: "It's a remarkable thing, because scientifically it's nonsense, the style is appalling, and yet this ghastly vision comes through." ("Unreal Estates," in Of Other Worlds, p. 88) (Lewis had already repeatedly criticized Voyage's prose style as clumsy or worse.)
Though Lindsay thus inspired Lewis to begin his interplanetary novels
series, this writer at least discerns no detailed similarities between
any of the works Lewis himself published and Voyage. When one however turns
to The Dark Tower, a novel fragment published in 1977 as Lewis's work,
certain striking similarities to Voyage appear. (According to Walter
Hooper, Lewis's longtime editor, Dark Tower was probably begun by Lewis
in 1938, right after Silent Planet was finished. Lewis, C. S. The Dark
Tower and Other Stories, ed. Walter
Hooper, New York: Harcourt Brace and Co.[1977])
DARK TOWER, set in Cambridge, evidently in the late 1930s, is a story of time travel. Orfieu, one of a group of intellectual (and evidently academic) friends, invents the "chronoscope," a device that enables the viewer to see intothe past or future. As it happens, the chronoscope seems to provide a view of only one time and place: Cambridge, at some unknown, but evidently future, date. Society has there evolved into a totalitarian dystopia that is ruled by one or more "Stingingmen"; these are humans (evidently all males) that have grown a hideous stinging organ on their foreheads. The "Stingingman" uses this organ to transform his (evidently willing, or at least resigned) victims into something resembling automata, who seem to perform military or police functions in the future society being observed.
A character in "Othertime" (the term used for the future world) is seen
to bear a stunning physical resemblance to Scudamour, Orfieu's assistant.
Scudamour's double turns into a "Stingingman," who appears ready to sting
the double of Scudamour's present-day lover.
At this point, unhinged by indignation and rage, Scudamour somehow
leaps into "Othertime," where he finds himself in the "Stingingman's" body.
Scudamour discovers he, as a "Stingingman," is in a position of command,
and that he is expected to perform various acts he (since he is really
Scudamour) considers evil. He sets about protecting his lover's double
(who, having apparently been found unworthy of receiving the sting, will
be executed unless Scudamour intervenes) and learning what he can about
the nature of "Othertime." Meanwhile, Scudamour's present-day body
appears to have been occupied by an alien personality. (Readers may here
see resemblances to the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of the original STAR TREK
TV series.)
The world of "Othertime," seen through the "chronoscope," is strongly reminiscent of aspects of the seance that takes place in Ch. 1 of VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, of the journey to the strange planet Tormance, and of what happens to Maskull when he reaches Tormance:
1. Both "seances" (viewing of the otherworldly manifestations) take
place in essentially theatrical settings. The "materialization" in VOYAGE
is staged in "[a] replica . . .of the Drury Lane presentation of the temple
scene in the `Magic Flute'[.]" VOYAGE, p. 46. (All my VOYAGE references
are to the Citadel Press edition.) The "chronoscope" apparently projects
images onto a screen, as does a motion picture projector or an old-fashioned
camera obscura. Indeed, the view of "Othertime" is so theatrical that an
intruder thinks he is watching a performance of a "great . . . work of
art."
(DARK TOWER, p. 53)
2. In each case, the spectators view what is in essence a temple. This is, as noted, explicit in VOYAGE. In DARK TOWER, the "Stingingman" appears to be wearing priestly black robes; the victims enter silently in an attitude of apparent religious awe; the "Stingingman" also remains silent; an "idol" is present (this reminds one of the presence of the Pharaoh's statue mentioned in VOYAGE) and is evidently reverenced; and the victims approach the "Stingingman" by backing up to him, as though he were too holy to be looked upon.
3. In both VOYAGE and DARK TOWER, the "victims" killed or otherwise harmed during the seance are silent.
4. In each seance, there is a violent transformation of a handsome young person into something less than human, which smiles or grins hideously. This happens in VOYAGE, of course, when Krag breaks the neck of the materialized young man, who, in death, assumes a Satanic grim. After being stung, the victims in DARK TOWER assume a "fixed grin," become "automata," and begin to move in such a mechanical and abrupt way that the Cambridge friends adopt the term "Jerkies" to describe them. (DARK TOWER, pp.35, 39)
5. The most striking resemblance of all, of course, is the presence in both novels of new organs on the foreheads of the protagonists. Upon reaching Tormance, Maskull immediately finds a strange new organ upon his forehead. (VOYAGE, p. 44). When Scudamour enters "Othertime," he likewise immediately finds a strange new organ on his forehead, just as Maskull did. (DARK TOWER, pp. 62-63)
6. It is also interesting that in both novels the discovery of the strange new world is associated with a tower. In VOYAGE, of course, the interplanetary journey is launched from a tower's top. The friends in DARK TOWER discover that "Othertime" contains a replica of the library at Cambridge University (or the actual library building, much older), which has a tower. (DARK TOWER, p. 47)
I do not know what, if any, bearing these resemblances between VOYAGE and DARK TOWER may have upon the vexed question of DARK TOWER's authorship. But it seems unquestionable that the resemblances do exist.
Copyright 1998 by Casey R. Law