Learning from Perelandra.

I just finished reading C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy; if you haven’t ever read it, I can highly recommend it! My favourite by far was the second book, ‘Perelandra’, partly because of the beautiful, almost poetic, prose throughout the book. Also, there were a number of passages that were very thought-provoking or illuminating.

I thought I’d share with you some of my favourite parts:

‘ “Don’t imagine I’ve been selected to go to Perelandra because I’m anyone in particular. One can never see, or not until long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as his chief qualifications…” ‘

 

‘Sleep came like a fruit which falls into the hand almost before you have touched the stem.’

 

‘But he was restrained by the same sort of feeling which had restrained him over-night from tasting a second gourd. He had always disliked the people who encored a favourite air in the opera – “That just spoils it” had been his comment. But this now appeared to him as a principle of far wider application and deeper moment. This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards… was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself – perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defence against chance, a security for being able to have things over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film.’

 

There is another longer section that challenged me, but it requires some explanation. There’ll have to be a Part II of this post!