{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3777", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3777, "subject": "The proper quote to define Catholic Fabulation", "messages": 6, "voices": 3, "first": "2003-01-20T17:17:04+00:00", "last": "2003-01-20T18:49:44+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2003-01-20T17:17:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The proper quote to define Catholic Fabulation", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "C S Lewis, PERELANDRA, first chapter somewhere\n\n\n\n\nAs to my intense wish never to come into contact with the eldila myself, I\nam not sure whether I can make you understand it. It was something more than\na prudent desire to avoid creatures alien in kind, very powerful, and very\nintelligent. The truth was that all I heard about them served to connect two\nthings which one's mind tends to keep separate, and that connecting gave one\na sort of shock.\n\nWe tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct categories\nwhich we label \"scientific\" and \"supernatural\" respectively. We think, in\none mood, of Mr. (H. G.) Wells' Martians (very unlike the real\nMalacandrians, by the bye), or his Selenites.\n\nIn quite a different mood we let our minds loose on the possibility of\nangels, ghosts, fairies, and the like.\n\nBut the very moment we are compelled to recognize a creature in either class\nas real the distinction begins to get blurred: and when it is a creature\nlike an eldil the distinction vanishes altogether.\n\nThese things were not animals and to that extent one had to classify them\nwith the second group; but they had some kind of material vehicle whose\npresence could (in principle) be scientifically verified. To that extent\nthey belonged to the first group.\n\nThe distinction between natural and supernatural, in fact, broke down; and\nwhen it had done so, one realized how great a comfort it had been and how it\nhad eased the burden of intolerable strangeness which this universe imposes\non us by dividing it into two halves and encouraging the mind never to think\nof both in the same context.\n\nWhat a price we may have paid for this comfort in the way of false security\nand accepted confusion of thought is another matter." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2003-01-20T17:32:34+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) The proper quote to define Catholic Fabulation", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes: an excellent description of the method of the type of writing \nyou are using the term \"catholic fabulation\" to describe -- and, I \nthink, one of the earliest bits Lewis wrote under the clear influence \nof Williams, whose _basic_ method in fiction this seems to be; this\ninfluence would almost completely direct the growth of Lewis' last \ntwo novels for adults, THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH and TILL WE HAVE FACES \n-- for my money, his worst and best novels for grownups, respectively.\n\nIt still remains a puzzlement to me why the word \"catholic\" seems to\nhave such a grip on you for describing a body of work written at \nleast as much by non-Catholics, and which seems to _this_ Catholic,\nat least, to have no specifically-Catholic idea, method, or content.\nBut let that pass, because whatever label eventually fits this, it\nseems to me that you've got hold of a very real, if somewhat evasive,\nthread of literary-fantastic tradition here, one quite separate from\nthe one labelled \"magical realism\" -- a label which too often gets \napplied indiscriminately to any seriously intentioned work of fantasy \nset (more or less) in the \"real\" world. So to recognize this separate\nthread is far more important than what we call it." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2003-01-20T17:50:42+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) The proper quote to define Catholic Fabulation", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Only because I don't know a better one.\n\nI had resolved to call it \"Christian Mythopoeic Fabulation\" - but the fact\nis it could as well be done in, for example, an Islamic world, if that world\nhad any tradition of SF.\n\nBut of course it doesn't.\n\nCF requires a fusion of Science Fiction and the religious worldview into one\nthing.\n\nBut SF is a hypostatisation of the European tradition of voyaging and\ncolonisation, and that tradition does not exist in other cultures.\n\nNor, really, in Eastern Europe, so far from the sea -\n\nWhich is in fact why \"Catholic\" is not so bad a fit. But I'd still prefer\nanother name.\n\n\n\n----- Original Message -----\nFrom: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nIt still remains a puzzlement to me why the word \"catholic\" seems to\nhave such a grip on you for describing a body of work written at\nleast as much by non-Catholics, and which seems to _this_ Catholic,\nat least, to have no specifically-Catholic idea, method, or content.se" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2003-01-20T18:08:04+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) The proper quote to define Catholic Fabulation", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 11:50 AM 1/20/2003, you wrote:\nOnly because I don't know a better one.\n\nI had resolved to call it \"Christian Mythopoeic Fabulation\" - but the fact\nis it could as well be done in, for example, an Islamic world, if that world\nhad any tradition of SF.\n\nBut of course it doesn't.\n\nCF requires a fusion of Science Fiction and the religious worldview into one\nthing.\n\nBut SF is a hypostatisation of the European tradition of voyaging and\ncolonisation, and that tradition does not exist in other cultures.\n\nNor, really, in Eastern Europe, so far from the sea -\n\nWhich is in fact why \"Catholic\" is not so bad a fit. But I'd still prefer\nanother name." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Perhaps an example of Russian Orthodox SF Fabulation can be \nconsidered. I recently rewatched Tarkovsky's SOLARIS (\"SolYARis\" in \nRussian), which has been released on DVD by Criterion. The accompanying \ndiscussions were interesting, but I think missed something important. In \nRussian Orthodoxy, the Spirit of God empowers nature (that's really true in \nall Christian thought, but has been stressed in RO). The water and nature \nscenes in the film have to do with the Spirit. The watery planet Solaris \nalso has to do with God and the Spirit. Tarkovsky could not do everything \nhe wanted in the film, because Lem did not like the religious aspects, and \nTarkovsky had to fool the censors. But on the space station near Solaris, \nnear to the Spirit of God, men find themselves forced to confront their \nsins, and either repent or go mad. The Spirit is operating in this heavenly \nrealm. Descending (ascending fully) to Solaris at the end, the now penitent \nson is reconciled to a \"heavenly father\" generated by the planet, in the \npose of Rembrandt's \"Prodigal Son\" (which hangs in the Hermitage, and with \nwhich any Russian intellectual was very familiar). As the son begins to \nrepent on the space station, we see an icon in passing as the camera \nsurveys the room. In the last scene, on Solaris, the water of the lake is \nfrozen, iconic. It is the heavenly \"sea of glass\" before the throne of God. \nIn this way, Tarkovsky makes a religious allegory out of Lem's novel.\n FWIW.\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2003-01-20T18:35:39+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) The proper quote to define Catholic Fabulation", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This really is awfully good.\n\n\n----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"James Jordan\" \n Perhaps an example of Russian Orthodox SF Fabulation can be\nconsidered. I recently rewatched Tarkovsky's SOLARIS (\"SolYARis\" in\nRussian), which has been released on DVD by Criterion. The accompanying\ndiscussions were interesting, but I think missed something important. In\nRussian Orthodoxy, the Spirit of God empowers nature (that's really true\nin\nall Christian thought, but has been stressed in RO). The water and nature\nscenes in the film have to do with the Spirit. The watery planet Solaris\nalso has to do with God and the Spirit. Tarkovsky could not do everything\nhe wanted in the film, because Lem did not like the religious aspects, and\nTarkovsky had to fool the censors. But on the space station near Solaris,\nnear to the Spirit of God, men find themselves forced to confront their\nsins, and either repent or go mad. The Spirit is operating in this\nheavenly\nrealm." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2003-01-20T18:49:44+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) The proper quote to define Catholic Fabulation", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 12:35 PM 1/20/2003, you wrote:\nThis really is awfully good." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks. I had a more negative view of the Tarkovsky the first time I \nwatched it, since I did not know he was a \"secret believer\" (a point \nbrought out briefly in the Criterion edition discussions, but they don't \nmake much of it). Now that I've \"caught on\" to the film, I'm interested to \nsee the Soderberg again, and see what if anything he has done with this \naspect. But I'll have to wait for the video.\n\nNutria" } ] } ] }