Bennett Bauer
In 1956, C. S. Lewis published The Last Battle—his final entry of the Narnia series. The “Narniad,” written out of chronological order, is comprised of seven books, each with its own tone and occasionally even style. Despite their critical and popular success, the novels that make up the Narnia series remain somewhat disconnected from each other. Yet this apparent disjointedness and lack of cohesive structure is not a flaw in the Narniad. Rather, each of the seven books draws on a separate pool of ancient and Christian mythology, chief among which is the planetary system of the traditional heavenly bodies. In his final book of the Narnia series, The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis relies heavily on Dante’s Paradiso for inspiration, imagery, and even the main theme of his story, focusing on the contemplative character of Dante’s seventh sphere of Saturn.
The possibility of a unifying principle, or hermeneutical key of sorts, for the Narnia septet is seriously considered by critics of C. S. Lewis’s work. Attempts have been made to conform the series to the seven deadly sins, the seven sacraments, and the seven cardinal virtues.[1] All have failed. The Narniad, meticulously crafted by one of the greatest Christian writers of modernity, retains a disconnectedness between the books inconsistent with Lewis’s corpus of work. While Lewis valued secrecy in the thematic thrust of his literature, the character of the Narnia series seems random rather than secret. Lewis scorned those literary critics who tried to “discover inner meaning in his works,” but it is very possible that “his view of them was low because they missed their target, not because there was no target to aim for.”[2] Michael Ward, in his groundbreaking book Planet Narnia, argues that he has “stumbled upon the secret imaginative key to the series.”[3] Each novel conforms to an “ancient archetype in a manner that is artistically and theologically suggestive.”[4] The scheme of Lewis’s Narniad follows a planetary system, with each book drawing from one of the seven traditional heavenly bodies for theme and imagery.
Ward’s insight was sparked by two lines taken from Lewis’s poem “The Planets,” in which he says of the planet Jupiter, “winter passed / and guilt forgiven.”[5] Ward writes, “the passing of winter and the forgiveness of guilt… formed the centerpiece of [Lewis’s] first Narnia tale.”[6] From this starting point, Ward links each of the traditional heavenly bodies to entries in Lewis’s Narniad—the moon with The Silver Chair, Mercury with The Horse and His Boy, Venus with The Magician’s Nephew, the Sun with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Mars with Prince Caspian, Jupiter with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Saturn with The Last Battle. There are thousands of individual proofs to be found in the Narnia texts in support of Ward’s thesis, creating “formidable evidence” that makes it “difficult to deny that Ward is right.”[7]
In Lewis’s final entry of the Narnia series, The Last Battle, saturnine imagery is nearly overwhelming; in fact, Saturn himself closes the doors on the world of old Narnia, albeit under the guise of Father Time. An early typescript of The Silver Chairidentifies the “sleeping giant” who will “wake at the end of the world” as “the god Saturn.”[8] The name of this character was changed before publication to Father Time by Lewis, perhaps to “keep his planetary theme more carefully hidden.”[9] This same Father Time appears at the end of The Last Battle as “the greatest of all giants” and blackens the sky, forcing the stars to rain down and extinguishing the conjoined sun and moon.[10] Saturn, revealed by Aslan to only have the name of Father Time temporarily—“Now that he is awake he will have a new one”—quite literally is the completion and end of Lewis’s planetary series.[11] To the eyes of the earthbound, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are “stars,” all of which Saturn gathers in, and his own hand plucks the sun-moon from the sky. As a literary reflection of Saturn, The Last Battle gathers in all the characters, stories, and themes from the Narniad and brings them to fulfillment.
Besides the obvious involvement of Saturn himself, C. S. Lewis carefully packs The Last Battle with traditional saturnine imagery and themes. In his last book, The Discarded Image, Lewis details the medieval and ancient mythological qualities attributed to Saturn:
In the earth his influence produces lead; in men, the melancholy complexion; in history, disastrous events. In Dante his sphere is the Heaven of contemplatives. He is connected with sickness and old age. Our traditional picture of Father Time with the scythe is derived from earlier pictures of Saturn. A good account of his activities in promoting fatal accidents, pestilence, treacheries, and ill luck in general, occurs in The Knight’s Tale … He is the most terrible of the seven and is sometimes called The Greater Infortune, Infortuna Major.[12]
Each of these saturnine elements appears in The Last Battle. The book contains a host of melancholy characters, including Puzzle the donkey and Roonwit the centaur, and the most disastrous event possible: the end of history. The Narnia series is marked by a heavy emphasis on child protagonists, but in The Last Battle, all of Lewis’s characters have grown old. The link between Father Time and Saturn has already been explained, and the very substance of the book hinges upon treachery, bad luck, ill omens, dark imagery, suffering, and extreme human loneliness. As The Last Battle is inherently contemplative, Lewis’s Dante connection is of supreme importance; this quality determines the primary theme of the book and relates to the purpose of the entire Narniad.
C. S. Lewis’s familiarity with Dante cannot be overstated. Lewis’s academic focus was medieval and Renaissance literature, and he grew to be enchanted by Dante’s Divine Comedy, writing that Paradiso felt “more important than any poetry I have ever read” and represented “the highest point that poetry has ever reached.”[13] In light of Lewis’s heavy emphasis on Dante throughout his scholarly work, Michael Ward traces two “debts” that Lewis owes in his own literary writing to the greatest of Christian poets:
One debt is secrecy, for Dante thought of poetry as something to be “adorned as much as possible,” to have its “true sense” hidden beneath a rich vesture of “rhetorical colouring.” Another debt is the Christianization of that cosmos, for Dante was the only poet, in Lewis’s view, to have infused the medieval model of the heavens with high religious ardour.[14]
It appears that the “secrecy” of the Narniad’s planetary structure and the Christianization of the seven traditional heavenly bodies are both inspired and modeled by Dante, the source of which is most especially found in Paradiso. It is the logical next step to argue that Dante’s influence on Lewis’s literature is not limited to generalities but, instead, is also found in particulars.
For Lewis, Dante’s epic poetry—unlike Milton’s focus on the story of the universe—was concerned with “telling the story of a spiritual pilgrimage—how one soul fared in its passage through the universe and how all may fear and hope to fare.”[15] Rather than constructing a Tolkien-like universe, Lewis uses his Narniad to focus on specific human souls as they journey through a clearly spiritual world. In this respect, the scope of the Narniad emulates Dante and his Divine Comedy. Virgil, arguably the most important character after Dante himself, has an interesting connection to The Last Battle. Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, famous for its apparent prophecy of the coming of Christ, states, “The great procession of the ages begins anew. / Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns, / and the new child is sent down from high heaven.”[16] This reign of Saturn, made possible by the coming of the Christ child, will coincide with Christ’s second coming at the end of time. Lewis, engaging with ancient mythological imagery, illustrates this saturnine participation in Christ’s return through The Last Battle. Saturn’s reign and dominion over Narnia is the end of that world, acting as the instrument of Aslan’s return and institution of the new Narnia.
Dante’s Saturn, the seventh sphere of his Paradiso, is the realm of the contemplatives. These sanctified souls are characterized by a deep caritas and a profound mode of reflective worship, namely contemplation, that is enabled by their love of God. After having passed through this sphere, Dante tells Beatrice, “Sacred lamp, well do I see / how in this court free acts of love suffice / for following the eternal destiny.”[17] The free act of the will in loving and worshiping God comprises contemplation, and the Christian life is, to a substantial degree, a contemplative life. Dante also presents, through the words of St. Benedict, an illustration of corrupted worship: “That mountain with Cassino on its spur / was thronged with worshipers in pagan time, / people disposed to evil and deceived / By cheating gods.”[18] This situation is quite similar to the false worship of “Tashlan” in The Last Battle. The “clearing” which is the site of the twisted worship is “the highest point of the hill.”[19] The Narnian and Calormene worshipers crowd the clearing and are deceived by the wiles of first the Ape, then the cat Ginger, and finally the god Tash himself.
The imagery Dante employs to describe the realm of Saturn is also remarkably parallel to important elements of Lewis’s The Last Battle. Dante writes, “All these other flames were bound / in contemplation, kindled by the heat / engendering the flowers and holy fruit.”[20] In The Last Battle, flowers and luscious, almost supernatural, fruit are the two most obvious aspects of the “New Narnia” found through the doorway of the stable. Yet only those characters who desire to see the face of Aslan can taste or smell these physical gifts, which delight the senses. In Narnia, sight is linked to belief and the purity of worship. Dante the pilgrim undergoes several transformations of his faculty of sight in the seventh sphere, and Dante the poet makes evident that the contemplative faculty of the soul is tied to the eyes. Upon fixing his gaze on the reflection of the Divine in Beatrice’s face, Dante’s soul is directed towards the Divine, “and every other thought was swept aside.”[21] In both Dante and Lewis’s heavenly realms, the physical plays a large role, and it is through contemplation that the desire to look upon the face of the Divine is cultivated.
Lewis also draws on other elements of the imagery and metaphor found in Dante’s seventh sphere, including the tie between Aslan and Saturn, the fatal justice of the final judgment, Puzzle’s disguise, the abundance of gold, and the ascent deeper into the heavenly realm. Dante’s Saturn “sends its rays commingled with the bold / fire of the Lion’s heart to earth below.”[22] Lewis appears to embody this precise imagery in Aslan’s use of Saturn to end the world of Narnia. In a brief description of corruption and trickery in the church, Dante describes “modern shepherds” as “two beasts that go under a single hide.”[23] Lewis’s team of the Ape and Puzzle is just this. The Ape is nothing more than a corrupt churchman, becoming “Aslan’s mouthpiece” in order to gain recognition and comfort. Dante’s seventh sphere, like Lewis’s descriptions of Aslan in the “New Narnia,” drips with golden imagery, chief among which is the ladder that leads through the body of the contemplatives into the center of paradise. Paradiso is structured so that the constant ascent to the Empyrean is always further in. The Last Battle’s recurring “further up and further in” perfectly mirrors this aspect of Dante’s paradise.
The Last Battle also emphasizes the thematic, philosophical, and theological elements of Dante’s sphere of Saturn. Tirian, the last king of Narnia, is essentially contemplative. In a sharp departure from Lewis’s use of child protagonists, Tirian is an adult. Yet Tirian must be an adult if he is to fulfill his role as a contemplative, worshiping Aslan through caritas and self-abandonment. Throughout The Last Battle, he suffers, and it is his cry of contemplative prayer, echoing Christ’s cry from the cross, that brings about the return of Aslan:
And he called out, ‘Aslan! Aslan! Aslan! Come and help us now.’ But the darkness and the cold and the quietness went on just the same… ‘Let me be killed, cried the King. I ask nothing for myself. But come and save all Narnia.’ And still there was no change in the night or the wood, but there began to be a kind of change inside Tirian. Without knowing why, he began to feel a faint hope. And he felt somehow stronger.[24]
Tirian’s prayer comes out of his moment of most intense suffering, and it is through the total abandonment of his will to God’s that he awakens “the contemplative faculty.”[25] Caritas is the love that proceeds from conforming one’s will to God; it is this perfection of the will that marks the entire spiritual journey of the Divine Comedy and is the ultimate goal of the Christian contemplative life.
A second character in The Last Battle who is markedly contemplative is the Calormene Emeth. He has no higher desire than to properly honor and worship his god and resolves to “look upon the face of Tash, though he should slay me.”[26] Emeth also has a “great desire for wisdom and understanding.”[27] When confronted by the great and terrible Aslan, the Calormene says, “I have been seeking Tash all my days.”[28] Aslan, the “Glorious One,” answers, “Beloved… unless your desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and truly.”[29] Because of his self-abnegation and driving desire to see the Divine face-to-face, Emeth is a contemplative and worshiper of the one true God. As illustrated in Dante’s seventh sphere, the eyes and soul are linked, and the holy longing to rest one’s eyes upon the face of God is mirrored in the soul. Emeth’s contemplative character and properly ordered desire for worship allow him to immediately recognize Aslan as the true God he has sought his entire life.
Lewis’s use of the seven traditional heavenly bodies organizes the ages of Narnia into a careful schematic, and each entry in the Narniad participates in this. However, The Last Battle contains both the end of Narnia and, in addition to the saturnine era, the creation of the “New Narnia.” The last two chapters of the book take place entirely inside “New Narnia,” extending the scope of Lewis’s Dante-inspired planetary system. The clear connection between Dante’s upward and inward progress in Paradiso and the “further up and further in” of The Last Battle suggests the continuation of the Narnian journey past the sphere of the contemplatives. Beatrice allows Dante to view a veiled version of the Divine through her face, and the figure of Aslan serves a similar function. When the Beatific Vision is revealed, so “great and beautiful” that He cannot be described,[30] both Lewis and Dante’s “powers of… high fantasy [cease].”[31] The clear connection between The Last Battle and Dante’s Saturn reveals the hermeneutical key through which the final entry in Lewis’s Narniad can be best understood. Lewis clearly mirrors the end of The Divine Comedy, presenting his “New Narnia” as a reflection of the final spheres of Dante’s paradise: the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile, and the Empyrean. In these spheres, “further up and further in,” God at last reveals himself in a full vision of Divine beauty, and the contemplatives of Narnia see Him face to face.
[1] Michael Ward, Planet Narnia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 4.
[2] Ibid., 5.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 4.
[5] Ibid., 89-90.
[6] Ibid., 451.
[7] Jon Vickery, “Review of Planet Narnia,” Religion & Literature 41, no. 1 (2009): 203.
[8] Ward, 200.
[9] Ibid.
[10] C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Harper Trophy, 1994), 149.
[11] Ibid.
[12] C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 105.
[13] Ward, 41; 263.
[14] Ibid., 41.
[15] Marsha Daigle, “Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ and C. S. Lewis’s ‘Narnia Chronicles,’” Christianity and Literature 34, no. 4 (1985): 132-33.
[16] Virgil, The Fourth Eclogue, qtd. in C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, (Collins, 1984), 85.
[17] Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, translated by Anthony M. Esolen (New York: Modern Library, 2004), XXI. 73.
[18] Ibid., XXII. 37-40
[19] Lewis, Last Battle 26.
[20] Dante, XXII. 46-47.
[21] Ibid., XXI. 3.
[22] Ibid., XXI. 14-15.
[23] Ibid., XXI. 135.
[24] Lewis, Last Battle 41.
[25] Ward, 204.
[26] Lewis, Last Battle 163.
[27] Ibid., 164.
[28] Ibid., 165.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Lewis, Last Battle 183.
[31] Dante, XXXIII. 142.