Mae govannen, friends! Today I’m participating in a lovely celebration of the Inklings here on Substack hosted over at the International Inklings Day Substack, which is run by Jamie Lapeyrolerie. Jamie is an editor for Penguin Random House & writer. She is passionate about books, art history, the Inklings, and cats.
Here’s Jamie’s description of this year’s annual Inklings week:
It’s that time of year, where we celebrate all things Inklings for the annual Inklings Week and International Inklings Day on May 11th (the day C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien first met)! This year is extra special being the 100th Anniversary of their meeting. We have a great set of posts and contributors this year and a giveaway, so be sure to subscribe and not miss a post. You can find all the posts here. And don’t forget to enter this year’s giveaway!
My contribution to this celebration of the Inklings is another of my Tolkien vs. Lewis conversations! Enjoy, and don’t forget to check out the rest of the posts for this year’s annual Inkling Week and enter the giveaway of the deluxe edition of The Screwtape Letters and The Inklings Detective Agency!
J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Argue About Allegory
J.R.R. TOLKIEN: Can you believe this, Jack? Another letter asking if The Lord of the Rings is an allegory! Allegory? I hate it! If one more person suggests that Mordor is Nazi Germany or that Gandalf is Jesus it will give me a frightful conniption!
After all, as I’ve said before *begins to wave his pipe around, jabbing the air at various points for emphasis*: “Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‘real’ world.”1
C.S. LEWIS: Are you still upset that Aslan the Lion is Jesus?? LMAO
TOLKIEN: I just can’t help but wonder: do you do these things to personally spite me, Jack, or is it just an unintentional consequence that you do so?
LEWIS: Oh Tollers, you know you’re important to me, but not everything is about YOU, you know! Plus, at least I only have ONE Jesus in my story. You’ve got three!
TOLKIEN: Et tu, Jack? And three? I have no idea what you’re talking about.
LEWIS: Yes, THREE. 1) A suffering servant, dragging his burden up the mountain where he expects to die on behalf of his people while at the same time accomplishing their salvation? Check! 2) A king who is returning to heal his people and take up the throne of his ancestor? Check! And perhaps most blatant of all, 3) a being from heaven who dies to save his friends and is then resurrected and returns in a glorified glow up??2
TOLKIEN: That’s completely different!
LEWIS: Oh just admit that the difference between allegory and applicable isn’t quite as fine as you like to pretend, old friend. Why, just because I’m a tad more explicit with my symbolism hardly makes my work woodenly allegorical.
TOLKIEN: You really ARE insufferable sometimes, Jack.
LEWIS: Well it’s hardly my fault! Remember my first impression of you? “No harm in him: only needs a smack or so.” It’s really something of a miracle that we’ve become friends, old chap! After all, at my first coming into the world I was implicitly warned never to trust a Catholic, and at my first coming into the English Faculty explicitly never to trust a philologist. Sorry Tollers, but you’re both!
TOLKIEN: harumph!
LEWIS: BUT…you know as well as I do that these quips and quibbles come out of our great friendship! What could have been a rivalry or produced enmity has, surprisingly, become something of a fellowship!
TOLKIEN: Oh, I suppose you’re right. I’ll still never agree with you about this whole Lion business, though.
LEWIS: Tollers, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Letter #131
Interestingly, Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn’s parallels with Christ roughly correspond to the work of the offices of Prophet, Priest, King
Very insightful! I will pedantically point out that Lewis also denied his works were allegorical, but said they were rather supposal fiction. "SUPPOSE Jesus came to another world in another form. What would that look like?" In that sense it's pretty literal :)
Brilliant... my only friendly amendment is to move that we swap out Tolkien's "harumph" for a "hoom-hom"... 🌳🧔♂️