After a couple of weeks off, we return to Glome and Till We Have Faces. Orual ascends the mountain to bury what remains of Psyche, and she is met with quite a surprise…
S3E7: “Up to the Mountain” (Download)
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Time Stamps
01:12 – Drink-of-the-week
02:05 – Quote-of-the-week
09:38 – Chapter 8 Summary
41:26 – Win pint glasses!
42:37 – Chapter 9 Summary
57:13 – Closing remarks
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
This Season, after each episode, Matt and I will be recording a ten-minute Skype conversation:
Show Notes
• Matt’s nickname was “Captain Crunch”
• Matt was drinking Yogi “Sleepy Time” Tea. I was drinking Lime-flavoured Kirkland sparkling water.
• The quote-of-the-week was:
…flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice — no words — but if you made it into words it would be, “Why should your heart not dance?” It’s the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered, “Why not?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
• Matt told us about his Christmas and New Year. At Christmas he spent time with his sister’s family. He went to a house-warming at New Year. This past weekend he went quail-hunting in Georgia. I was in Wisconsin for Christmas and New Year. I was happy because I could eat meat again. We went to watch the new version of Little Women at the cinema and there was one exchange which reminded me of distorted love in Till We Have Faces:
Marmee March: What is it?
Little Women (2019)
Jo March: Perhaps… perhaps I was too quick in turning him down.
Marmee March: Do you love him?
Jo March: If he asked me again, I think I would say yes… Do you think he’ll ask me again?
Marmee March: But do you love him?
Jo March: [Tearing up] I know that I care more to be loved. I want to be loved.
Marmee March: That is not the same as loving.
Jo March: Women, they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty, and I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it! But… I am so lonely.
I also got to have dinner with Holly Ordway, author of Not God’s Type. I got to hear about her new book on Tolkien, but since I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about it, I’ll just say that it sounds really great! We bonded over C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and red wine:
“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!*”
Hilaire Belloc
* Latin for “Let us bless the Lord”.
• I offered my summary for Chapter 8:
Orual is determined to go to the Great Offering the following day, possibly with a hope of rescuing Psyche. She eats some food and her servants put her to bed. They wake her soon afterwards, but her body aches considerably from the King’s beating. She gets to the stairwell and sees Psyche dressed up like a temple girl. Orual tries to descend the stairs but falls. She then spends several days in bed, during which she is terrorized by fevered dreams of Psyche. Orual awakes to find the Fox at her bedside. Over the period of her convalescence, she learns of what took place on the Mountain and finds that the plague and the drought are now gone and that the land is starting to return to prosperity. Orual resolves that, once she is fully recovered, that she will go up to the mountain to collect Psyche’s body.
Summary of Chapter 8 of Till We Have Faces
• Orual says that she’d rather kill Psyche herself than leave her to the Brute:
“…if there is a real Shadowbrute,” I thought, “and I cannot save her from it, I’ll kill her with my own hand before I’ll leave her to its clutches.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
• I was confused as to Orual’s reference to fasting. If anyone has any insights on this, please contact us.
• Orual is not a fan of Batta:
One asked if she should bring Batta to me. I told that one, with bitter words, to hold her tongue, and if I had had the strength I would have hit her; which would have been ill done, for she was a good girl. (I have always been fortunate with my women since first I had them to myself and out of the reach of Batta’s meddling.)
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
• Orual sees Psyche, but her face is caked in makeup:
The reason I had not known her was that they had painted and gilded and be-wigged her like a temple girl. I could not even tell whether she saw me or not. Her eyes, peering out of the heavy, lifeless mask which they had made of her face, were utterly strange; you couldn’t even see in what direction she was looking.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
She sees this as the cruelty of the gods:
It was not enough to take her from me, they must take her from me three times over, tear out my heart three times. First her sentence; then her strange, cold talk last night; and now this painted and gilded horror to poison my last sight of her. Ungit had taken the most beautiful thing that was ever born and made it into an ugly doll.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
• Matt and I discussed the place of ritual in Till We Have Faces.
• Orual enters a delirium:
For many days after that I was sick, and most of them I do not remember. I was not in my right mind, and slept (they tell me) not at all. My ravings — what I can recall of them — were a ceaseless torture of tangled diversity, yet also of sameness. Everything changed into something else before you could understand it, yet the new thing always stabbed you in the very same place. The nearest thing we have to a defence against them (but there is no real defence) is to be very wide awake and sober and hard at work, to hear no music, never to look at earth or sky, and (above all) to love no one. One thread ran through all the delusions. Now mark yet again the cruelty of the gods. There is no escape from them into sleep or madness, for they can pursue you into them with dreams. Indeed you are then most at their mercy… , they made it the common burden of all my fantasies that Psyche was my greatest enemy.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
…the visions ceased and left behind them only a settled sense of some great injury that Psyche had done me, though I could not gather my wits to think what it was. They say I lay for hours saying, “Cruel girl. Cruel Psyche. Her heart is of stone.” And soon I was in my right mind again and knew how I loved her and that she had never willingly done me any wrong, though it hurt me somewhat that she should have found time, at our last meeting of all, talking so little of me, to talk so much about the god of the Mountain, and the King, and the Fox, and Redival, and even Bardia.
Matt spoke about Brene Brown, a writer who writes a lot about vulnerability. He then referenced The Four Loves:
There is no escape along the lines St. Augustine suggests. Nor along any other lines. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket–safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
The Four Loves
• I commented on the Fox’s slip-of-the-tongue, where he speaks of Zeus as though he’s real:
“Give thanks to Zeus for [the rain] and for your own recovery”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
• We see throughout this episode that Orual is, in fact, greatly loved:
The Fox was very loving and tender…and so were my women. I was loved; more than I had thought.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
• Orual outlines several comforts which the gods can’t touch, two which are “weakness” and “work”:
Weakness, and work, are two comforts the gods have not taken from us.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
• We find out that the King is now a darling of the people of Glome:
…he had been much pitied and praised at the Great Offering. Up there at the holy Tree he had wailed and wept and torn his robes and embraced Psyche countless times (he had never done it before) but said again and again that he would not withhold his heart’s dearest when the good of the people called for her death.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
Orual calls the King a “mounteback” (a scammer), but the Fox offers some insight:
“Not wholly that, child,” said the Fox. “He believed it while he did it. His tears are no falser — or truer — than Redival’s.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
• Orual asks the Fox if he still thinks that the gods are lies of poets. After all, everything the Offering was meant to achieve has come to past. The Fox says it was just dumb luck:
“Cursed chance, cursed chance… It is these chances that nourish the beliefs of barbarians.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
Orual quickly points out that the Fox had previously said that there’s no such thing as luck. He explains that it was another slip-of-the-tongue and that everything was predetermined:
I meant that all these things had no more to do with that murder than with anything else. They and it are all part of the same web, which is called Nature, or the Whole. That southwest wind came over a thousand miles of sea and land. The weather of the whole world would have to have been different from the beginning if that wind was not to blow. It’s all one web; you can’t pick threads out nor put them in.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
• The Fox says that they should find comfort in that the evil belonged to others, whereas virtue belonged to Psyche. Unfortunately, he breaks down as “his love got the better of his philosophy”:
This is our comfort, that the evil was theirs, not hers. They say there was not a tear in her eye, nor did so much as her hand shake, when they put her to the Tree. Not even when they turned away and left her did she cry out. She died full of all things that are really good; courage, and patience, and — and — Aiai! Aiai — oh, Psyche, oh, my little one — ” Then his love got the better of his philosophy, and he pulled his mantle over his head and at last, still weeping, left me
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
Matt said it reminded him of the following line from Joy Davidman:
“Life is too intense to be endured with logic alone”
Joy Davidman, The Longest Way Round
The following day he returns and continue expounding on the virtues of Psyche:
Chastity, temperance, prudence, meekness, clemency, valour — and, though fame is froth, yet, if we should reckon it at all, a name that stands with Iphigenia’s and Antigone’s.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
Iphigenia was the daughter of Agamemnon. Her father had angered the gods and is told that he must offer his daughter in sacrifice. He lies to his wife and daughter and tell them that she will marry Achilles. Iphigenia eventually realiSes what is going to happen and offers herself. I suggested that this was the story the Fox told in Chapter 6. In one version of the story, Iphigenia is secretly rescued by Artemis, which is significant given what happens in the following chapter of this book.
Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus, king of Thebes, the guy who unknowingly married his own mother. After the death of Oedipus, his two sons fight and both die in battle. Antigone pleads with the new king to allow her to bury one of her brothers, but he refuses. Antigone buried him herself, which results in her being arrested and incarcerated in a tomb. The king later changes his mind and goes to the tomb to release her, only to find that she had hanged herself. The King’s son also commits suicide, since he loved Antigone. The King’s wife does the same.
• Orual decides that she wants to go up the Mountain and bury the remains of Psyche:
“Grandfather, I have missed being Iphigenia. I can be Antigone.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 8)
• Matt is inviting listeners to write a review for us on iTunes and then send us an email. Several listeners will receive Pints With Jack glasses.
• I then read my summary for Chapter 9:
Orual is gripped by a numbness following her sister’s death. In response, Bardia begins teaching her to fence and over the coming days this helps the numbness subside. Bardia accompanies Orual up the mountain and the two leave early in the morning, passing the egg-shaped House of Ungit, after which they begin their climb. As they ascend the Mountain, Orual battles a rising feeling of joy, and repeatedly has to remind herself that they are on a sad errand. They arrive at the holy tree in the black valley, but find no body. A little way off, they discover a ruby previously worn by Psyche. They continue in that direction and leave the black valley behind. They enter a luscious area hidden just beyond, which Bardia refers to as “the secret valley of the god”. There, on the other side of an amber stream, they see a familiar figure…
Summary of Chapter 9 of Till We Have Faces
• Orual feels growing numbness:
I was like water put into a bottle and left in a cellar: utterly motionless, never to be drunk, poured out, spilled or shaken. The days were endless. The very shadows seemed nailed to the ground as if the sun no longer moved.
In response to this, Bardia distracts her by teaching her how to use a sword:
He kept me at it for a full half-hour. It was the hardest work I’d ever done, and, while it lasted, one could think of nothing else. I said not long before that work and weakness are comforters. But sweat is the kindest creature of the three — far better than philosophy, as a cure for ill thoughts.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
… I had my lesson with Bardia every day after that. And I knew soon that he had been a good doctor to me. My grief remained, but the numbness was gone and time moved at its right pace again.
• Orual overhears Bardia’s comments about her:
“Why, yes, it’s a pity about her face. But she’s a brave girl and honest. If a man was blind and she weren’t the King’s daughter, she’d make him a good wife.” And that is the nearest thing to a love-speech that was ever made me.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
• Bardia’s opinion of the King is rather different from Orual and he gives us some insight into his behaviour:
He chuckled. “Oh, I’ll spin the King a story easily enough. He isn’t with us as he is with you, Lady. For all his hard words he’s no bad master to soldiers, shepherds, huntsmen, and the like. He understands them and they him. You see him at his worst with women and priests and politic men. The truth is, he’s half afraid of them.” This was very strange to me.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
• As they go up the mountain, Orual struggles with joy:
You may well believe that I had set out sad enough; I came on a sad errand. Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice — no words — but if you made it into words it would be, “Why should your heart not dance?” It’s the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered, “Why not?” I had to tell myself over like a lesson the infinite reasons it had not to dance. My heart to dance? Mine whose love was taken from me, I, the ugly princess who must never look for other love, the drudge of the King, the jailer of hateful Redival, perhaps to be murdered or turned out as a beggar when my father died — for who knew what Glome would do then? And yet, it was a lesson I could hardly keep in my mind. The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other to the world’s end. The freshness and wetness all about me (I had seen nothing but drought and withered things for many months before my sickness) made me feel that I had misjudged the world; it seemed kind, and laughing, as if its heart also danced. Even my ugliness I could not quite believe in. Who can feel ugly when the heart meets delight? It is as if, somewhere inside, within the hideous face and bony limbs, one is soft, fresh, lissom and desirable.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
…Was I not right to struggle against this fool-happy mood? Mere seemliness, if nothing else, called for it… I would not go laughing to Psyche’s burial. If I did, how should I ever again believe that I had loved her? … I knew the world too well to believe this sudden smiling… I was not a fool. I did not know then, however, as I do now, the strongest reason for distrust. The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us big before they prick us.
This reminded me of the end of The Great Divorce:
I DO not know that I ever saw anything more terrible than the struggle of that Dwarf Ghost against joy. For he had almost been overcome… But the light that reached him, reached him against his will. This was not the meeting he had pictured; he would not accept it
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
• They arrive at the Holy Tree in the black valley:
At our feet, between us and the Mountain, lay a cursed black valley: dark moss, dark peat-bogs, shingle, great boulders… Here the gods ceased trying to make me glad. There was nothing here that even the merriest heart could dance for… There the Mountain fell away in a smooth sweep to a saddle somewhat lower than the ground we stood on, but still with nothing behind it but the sky. Against the sky, on the saddle, stood a single leafless tree… And now we were there. The iron girdle, and the chain that went from it about the gaunt trunk (there was no bark on the Tree) hung there and made a dull noise from time to time as they moved with the wind. There were no bones, nor rags of clothing, nor marks of blood, nor anything else.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
• They continue on and discover a very different kind of valley:
Then suddenly we found we were on the brow of a steep slope; and at the same moment the sun — which had been overcast ever since we went down into the black valley — leaped out. It was like looking down into a new world. At our fee…lay a small valley bright as a gem, but opening southward on our right. Through that opening there was a glimpse of warm, blue lands, hills and forests, far below us… I never saw greener turf. There was gorse in bloom, and wild vines, and many groves of flourishing trees, and great plenty of bright water — pools, streams, and little cataracts… we began descending, the air came up to us warmer and sweeter every minute. We were out of the wind now and could hear ourselves speak; soon we could hear the very chattering of the streams and the sound of bees.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
• Orual goes to take a drink from the stream:
Now we were at the bottom, and so warm that I had half a mind to dip my hands and face in the swift, amber water of the stream which still divided us from the main of the valley. I had already lifted my hand to put aside my veil when I heard two voices cry out — one, Bardia’s. I looked. A quivering shock of feeling that has no name (but is nearest terror) stabbed through me from head to foot. There, not six feet away, on the far side of the river, stood Psyche.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
This stream reminded me again of The Great Divorce:
“It is up there in the mountains,” said the Spirit. “Very cold and clear, between two green hills. A little like Lethe. When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else’s: without pride and without modesty.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
• In discovering Psyche, they appear to have shown that Psyche was right about the other Greek masters:
[There were Greek] masters who have taught that death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that’s all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Chapter 9)
• I ended the episode by reading a poem from Kahlil Gibran:
Upon a day Beauty and Ugliness met on the shore of a sea. And they said to one another, “Let us bathe in the sea.” Then they disrobed and swam in the waters. And after a while Ugliness came back to shore and garmented himself with the garments of Beauty and walked away. And Beauty too came out of the sea, and found not her raiment, and she was too shy to be naked, therefore she dressed herself with the raiment of Ugliness. And Beauty walked her way. And to this very day men and women mistake the one for the other. Yet some there are who have beheld the face of Beauty, and they know her notwithstanding her garments. And some there be who know the face of Ugliness, and the cloth conceals him not from their eyes.
Khalil Gibran, Garments
