Lenten Booknote 2: Reflections on the Psalms, "Introductory"

I have read very little of C. S. Lewis's apologetics. I should perhaps say that I have read none of his apologetics, since I doubt that The Great Divorce and The Four Loves count as apologetics. My interest in Lewis has been in his fiction, primarily because I don't often enjoy reading apologetics, having come to Lewis as an innocent and rejected him when I was quasi-agnostic, and having come to Catholicism after becoming disillusioned with Lewis (but that's another story). Lewis gets preachy enough in his fiction. I didn't particularly want to delve into his apologetics, which after all are used in very touchy-feely and Protestant contexts, and the touchy-feely Protestants drove me to quasi-agnosticism in the first place. Sort of. I'm representing my younger self here, but I still have limited interest in apologetics--particularly by Lewis. Sometimes his way of expressing things just nettles me. Other times, of course, it's quite lovely.

I'm enjoying Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms, though I wish he had included more of the actual psalm in the text when he's making general or particular observations. I need to have them by my side for quick reference, and yet I chose his reflections exactly because I didn't have a handy little volume of psalms, and didn't quite know where to find one. I also read on Kindle when I'm not researching, and while I do have a Bible on my Kindle, it is cumbersome to switch back and forth to search for a particular poem. These things aside, I am enjoying the read, and from the beginning I have made notes on what interests me.

#1 - "For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible."

Here, the context is helpful. In a two-paragraph sequence in which he discusses the parallelism which is, he contends, the psalms' most obvious poetic feature, one that is easily translated between languages and can therefore be seen as functioning purely didactically, Lewis chooses to stop and imagine the place of poetry in Creation:

"It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own delight and for the delight of men and angels and (in their proper mode) of beasts, had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech, that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible." (p. 24)

Not only is the Word an incarnation (the Incarnation), Lewis says. Poetry is an incarnation. The manner of speech/communication is more or less embodied, tangible. The medium is, in fact, the message, and I'm feeling an undercurrent here of spoken vs. written language. And then we have the idea that the great Imagination is at work in the creation of poetry as a medium, and in the selection of poetry to be a part of the Word of God. A fascinating idea to think of God choosing a genre, and sometimes choosing poetry.

And then there's a sense in which that all of the explanation feels destructive, and I look back and revel a little in the beauty of the expression--"For poetry too is a little incarnation..." In this I hear almost an echo of Auden: "For poetry makes nothing happen..." I'm not entirely sure that the two are incompatible.

#2 - "A man can't always be defending truth; there must be a time to feed on it."

I admit that I was a little relieved to read, in Lewis's own words, that "this is not what is called an 'apologetic' work." I wonder, here, about his use of "apologetic," which seems to suggest "apologizing for," making an "apologetic" a "defense." That was certainly my first assumption about the meaning of the word, but as it was explained to me, "explanation" is a better approximation than "defense" or "apology." That's not the reason that this quote stood out to me, however.  Rather, I like the idea of having time to feed on it. Not even unpacking, which truly, is what Lewis is doing throughout the book. But feeding. Seeking nourishment, and also perhaps savoring. Though that's not in the quote, per se, I can't think of a man like Lewis eating without some kind of appreciation--not with what he's said about peas. Not "chewing on," either. "A time to feed on it." And that sounds particularly Lenten to me.