The Laws of Undulation (Part 1)

Humans are amphibians — half spirit and half animal... This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation — the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. (The Screwtape Letters, Letter 8)

Lewis' Law of Undulation attempts to explain the changing attitude towards and desire for that which is eternal and holy. Humans are amphibious. Hence, their spiritual half is continuously desirable of God and constantly reaches towards spiritual heights. However, their animal half pulls the other way, seeking the gratification and pleasure of the physical causing the dryness and numbness towards the spiritual. It is difficult (impossible?) for humans to ignore one of the other, or even come to a constant medium between the two. Rather, a given human's attitude towards the spiritual will oscillate in a series of troughs and peaks. 

Lewis (as Screwtape) goes on to explain that the troughs, when a human does not perceive or even particularly desire God, is not an unfortunate corollary of humans. Actually, they are key in God's plan. God wants humans act independently, and to love Him and cling to Him on their own volition, even when His presence seems to have disappeared. Again, quoting Screwtape:

Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

In Lewis' Law of Undulation the pendulum swings between perceiving God in our lives, experiencing His presence, on the one hand, and not seeing Him, feeling forsaken on the other.  

R' Soloveitchik also formulates a Law of Undulation but one that relies on differently formulated extremum. As explained by R' Goldmintz:

On the one hand man craves to be close to Him and so he approaches God "at a rapid pace, where all his being, beset by the torment of fiery longing, is tensed toward the encounter with his divine lover." But precisely at the moment when he is so close to unification with God, he stops, indeed retreats, for he is filled with a sense of awe so great that coming close seems inconceivable. "He runs toward God but also recoils from Him, He runs toward God, for how can man distance himself from God and live?" But he then retreats from God, for how can man attach himself to God and live? Man is hurled back and forth "by the two colossal forces of love and awe" and this pendulum-like movement, rather than resulting in frustration or defeat, "embodies the most magnificent worship of God." (The Rav of Tefillah)

The pendulum swings between love of God and fear of God. On one extreme God is right in front of man ready to embrace, on the other God is concealed in His Heavenly abode, for the transcendent distance between the Infinite and finite cannot be bridged. It is not the animalistic side of man that drags him away from God, but the closeness itself forces man to reckon with his own physicality and finitude. 

We will compare and contrast these two Laws of Undulation in a later post. 

The Abdication of Queen Susan (Part 3)

Quick note: I updated Part 2 on February 11 so you should read the updated version before reading this. 

Building off of our last post, we are trying to understand why Lewis is unhappy with Susan striving to reach, and then freeze at, the age of about 21. Most likely the reason is already found in Lewis' first words about Narnia, the dedication to his goddaughter.

I wrote this story for you, but when I began it, I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result, you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

Here, Lewis makes the point that people at a certain age are (hopefully, temporarily) not interested in fairytales. What the consequences are for not reading fairytales is not stated, but we have some further evidence elsewhere in his writings:

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

OK, so here Lewis hints at the maturation of people. Humans are born as babies and become children. While sometimes children may be difficult to deal with, they are generally blessed with certain very positive characteristics. As discussed here, Lewis includes in that list simplicity, single-mindedness, affection, and teachable. R' Soloveitchik recognized similar characteristics including: simplicity, fiery enthusiasm, ingenuousness, gracefulness, tremors of fear, and devotion to their vivid experiences.

As humans mature, they tend to look down on their previous lack of maturity. However, doing so may include a dismissal of some of these very positive traits in an effort to prove to themselves and others that they are really "grown up." It is only the truly grown up who can reclaim the positive aspects of childhood. This process is almost Hegelian, the thesis of childhood, the antithesis expressed by those wanting to feel and be thought of as grown up, and, finally, the synthesis of the truly mature. 

There are of course, the rare few, like Lucy, who can keep the positive characteristics of children through the maturation process. But the rest of us may spend quite some time acting childish in our fear of being seen as children. There are also humans (in our times perhaps too many humans) who relinquish all aspects of childhood and never recover its positive aspects. Even worse, some do not even see the point in trying to recover those traits. This is (at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia) the current lot of Susan.

One characteristic noted by R' Soloveitchik stands out: a child's vivid experiences and their devotion to them. This is exactly Susan's failure. She, with her siblings, went through the most vivid of experiences when they were young. They were teleported to another world, set on a great quest, were victorious through bravery, kindness, and faith and were rewarded by royal crowns. 

Lucy and her brothers remained devoted to those experiences even as growing older. 

Susan dismissed her childhood as playing games.   

The Abdication of Queen Susan (Part 2)

In our last post we saw that, at the end of the Chronicles, Queen Susan was no longer a friend of Narnia. A priori, this means she stopped believing that her Narnian experience was real, instead coming to the belief that the adventures were simply games played as a child. We noted that in fact the situation was much worse. It is not simply that Susan denies the "historical" occurrence of the children's time in Narnia, but she exclaims, "Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children." Even if the visits to Narnia were not true, Susan could think about them, learn from, be guided by, and be inspired by the "fairytales" of her childhood. But she does not. 

All of us on this blog think of Narnia a great deal. Yet, none of us, I presume, have been to Narnia (though if you have been please let me know). In fact, I would suppose none of us even believe that there is or ever was such a place as Narnia. And, yet WE are inspired by Narnia, while Susan who was actually part of the fairytales is not. 

This is Susan's greatest fault. Not denying the existence of Narnia, but not being inspired by Narnia, not letting herself see the truths of our world through her experiences in Narnia. Not finding Aslan "by another name" in our world. Or perhaps we can say, paraphrasing Lewis' dedication of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," Susan's chief fault is not growing old enough to read fairytales again."

This takes us to the end of the exchange about Susan, at which point the Lady Polly declares, "Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."

What is the silliest time of one's life? Well, based on Polly's words (which we assume Lewis agreed with) it's clearly not childhood, because you have to get there. It must be somewhere around where Susan is in The Last Battle, which is about 21. Why that time? 

Interestingly, the Talmud (Kiddushin 30a) homes in on that same time period. As explained by (the second interpretation) of Rashi, the Talmud explores what is the time for parents to go full throttle on providing a child with ethical and moral teachings to include a system of reward and punishment. There are two opinions offered: from 16 - 22 or from 18 - 24. Rashi explains that younger than this a child is not ready to understand, and older the child may simply ignore, or even rebel against, the parents. Susan is right in the middle. 

I don't think Lewis is thinking along these lines. Nevertheless, I think the Talmud's perspective does weave its way into the story. Namely, I think we do see some failure in the Pevensie parents with respect to Susan. 

At the start of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Susan, though only 14 at the time, is described as, "Grown-ups thought her the pretty one of the family and she was no good at schoolwork (though otherwise very old for her age)..." That doesn't sound like a very good prognosis, and yet the Pevensie parents seem to think that's a good reason to take Susan to America. I don't quite understand that line of thinking. It seems to me she would be better off enrolled in tutoring over the summer.   

Still, I don't think that Lewis is looking at this age range from the Talmud's perspective. Rather, Lewis believes that Susan's age is lacking something fundamental that is found both in children and more mature adults. 

More on that in our next...