The Place of the Lion

A man steps from a bedroom out to the landing and finds himself on a precipice. Looking down, he sees an endless chasm. Looking up, he sees a tiny circle of sky high above him, pouring down the sides of the chasm like a waterfall.

A house feels unusually warm. To the discerning eye, little tongues of flame briefly trace the edge of a doorframe, an umbrella stand, a bookcase — then disappear.

A woman studying at a table smells a witheringly bad stench. The light is blotted out by a dark shape in the window: corruption, in the form of a huge, foul bird.

Charles Williams’ The Place of the Lion is sprinkled with such emblematic scenes. I became curious about it when I read The Magician’s Book and learned that C.S. Lewis was deeply moved by this “strange” tale. Tolkien was uneasy with Lewis’ admiration for this author’s imagination. But from the lion of the title to the Platonic vision unfolded in the fictional town of Smetham, this book surely provides the inspiration for many of Lewis’ works, including the Chronicles of Narnia and the space trilogy.

The basic situation: a little philosophical study group has been meeting to discuss the notion, developed both in Plato and (in this story) in an ancient manuscript about the angels present in the creation, that the world was made of eternal energies and ideas bodied forth in material things. Mr. Foster, who ends up one of the story’s more unfortunate characters, gives this its clearest exposition when he explains that the leader of the group believes

that this world is created, and all men and women are created, by the entrance of certain great principles into aboriginal matter. We call them by cold names; wisdom and courage and beauty and strength and so on, but actually they are very great and mighty Powers. It may be they are the angels and archangels of which the Christian Church talks… And when That which is behind them intends to put a new soul into matter it disposes them as it will, and by a peculiar mingling of them a child is born; and this is their concern with us, but what is their concern and business among themselves we cannot know. And by this gentle introduction of them, every time in a new and just proportion, mankind is maintained…

What is humanity to do when angels and archangels respond to the summons and begin erupting into the finite world? What will become of them? Williams explores some possible answers through a cast of characters that includes a pair of young philosophers, a butterfly collector, a couple of club members who thirst for power, a bookshop clerk, and a young woman who aspires to earn her doctorate studying Abelard. How each character fares depends on their inner “ruling principle,” and how they meet it when it confronts them in the form of an animal: a great lion, a unicorn, a butterfly, a pterodactyl, a lamb. Ultimately it all swirls to a head in a mythic recapitulation of Adam’s naming of the animals, whereby the breach is closed, and the flaming sword — which until now I have seen only as a symbol of discipline and punishment, but which now I see more truly as an instrument of mercy — is reinstated at the gates of Eden.

I loved it, though not because I can explain every part of it. I loved it because its imaginative truth is very powerful, and it got under my skin. It has the multifacetedness of myth — you catch a shimmer of meaning here and there, and the shimmers are part of a harmonious whole, but the complete diamond is difficult to comprehend. I would agree with the descriptor “strange” which is often applied to this tale, but I would add “satisfyingly complex” because it forced me to slow down and ponder so many things. It raised my awareness of other dimensions of existence than world we touch and see, deepened my understanding of some aspects of my faith, and got me thinking about what my own “ruling principle” might be. Surely I’ll read this again one day — and in the meantime, I definitely want to read more Charles Williams.

Further reading:

I found this article about Charles Williams an interesting read. In it, Thomas Howard describes Williams’ writing this way:

Williams unfailingly leads us all on what George Eliot called “a severe mental scamper.” His mind was so packed with images, and so curious about every cranny of the universe, and so regaled by ideas—especially dogma—and so overcharged with what one can only call high-voltage restlessness, that it is a wonder his prose is accessible at all… Certainly he leads us all out into titanic vistas, and startles us over and over and over by pointing out features in that vista which to him are obvious, but which in a thousand years we might never have noticed.

Here is the Wikipedia entry that includes a list of Williams’ works and a biographical sketch.

Here is an e-version of The Place of the Lion.