Subject: (urth) The proper quote to define Catholic Fabulation

From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 17:17:04 +0000

C S Lewis, PERELANDRA,  first chapter somewhere

As to my intense wish never to come into contact with the eldila myself, I
am not sure whether I can make you understand it. It was something more than
a prudent desire to avoid creatures alien in kind, very powerful, and very
intelligent. The truth was that all I heard about them served to connect two
things which one's mind tends to keep separate, and that connecting gave one
a sort of shock.

We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct categories
which we label "scientific" and "supernatural" respectively. We think, in
one mood, of Mr. (H. G.) Wells' Martians (very unlike the real
Malacandrians, by the bye), or his Selenites.

In quite a different mood we let our minds loose on the possibility of
angels, ghosts, fairies, and the like.

But the very moment we are compelled to recognize a creature in either class
as real the distinction begins to get blurred: and when it is a creature
like an eldil the distinction vanishes altogether.

These things were not animals and to that extent one had to classify them
with the second group; but they had some kind of material vehicle whose
presence could (in principle) be scientifically verified. To that extent
they belonged to the first group.

The distinction between natural and supernatural, in fact, broke down; and
when it had done so, one realized how great a comfort it had been and how it
had eased the burden of intolerable strangeness which this universe imposes
on us by dividing it into two halves and encouraging the mind never to think
of both in the same context.

What a price we may have paid for this comfort in the way of false security
and accepted confusion of thought is another matter.

--

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 17:32:34 +0000

you are using the term "catholic fabulation" to describe -- and, I 
think, one of the earliest bits Lewis wrote under the clear influence 
of Williams, whose _basic_ method in fiction this seems to be; this
influence would almost completely direct the growth of Lewis' last 
two novels for adults, THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH and TILL WE HAVE FACES 
-- for my money, his worst and best novels for grownups, respectively.

It still remains a puzzlement to me why the word "catholic" seems to
have such a grip on you for describing a body of work written at 
least as much by non-Catholics, and which seems to _this_ Catholic,
at least, to have no specifically-Catholic idea, method, or content.
But let that pass, because whatever label eventually fits this, it
seems to me that you've got hold of a very real, if somewhat evasive,
thread of literary-fantastic tradition here, one quite separate from
the one labelled "magical realism" -- a label which too often gets 
applied indiscriminately to any seriously intentioned work of fantasy 
set (more or less) in the "real" world. So to recognize this separate
thread is far more important than what we call it.

--

---

From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 17:50:42 +0000

Only because I don't know a better one.

I had resolved to call it "Christian Mythopoeic Fabulation" - but the fact
is it could as well be done in, for example, an Islamic world, if that world
had any tradition of SF.

But of course it doesn't.

CF requires a fusion of Science Fiction and the religious worldview into one
thing.

But SF is a hypostatisation of the European tradition of voyaging and
colonisation, and that tradition does not exist in other cultures.

Nor, really, in Eastern Europe, so far from the sea -

Which is in fact why "Catholic" is not so bad a fit.  But I'd still prefer
another name.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
It still remains a puzzlement to me why the word "catholic" seems to
have such a grip on you for describing a body of work written at
least as much by non-Catholics, and which seems to _this_ Catholic,
at least, to have no specifically-Catholic idea, method, or content.se

--

---

From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 18:08:04 +0000

>Which is in fact why "Catholic" is not so bad a fit.  But I'd still prefer

         Perhaps an example of Russian Orthodox SF Fabulation can be 
considered. I recently rewatched Tarkovsky's SOLARIS ("SolYARis" in 
Russian), which has been released on DVD by Criterion. The accompanying 
discussions were interesting, but I think missed something important. In 
Russian Orthodoxy, the Spirit of God empowers nature (that's really true in 
all Christian thought, but has been stressed in RO). The water and nature 
scenes in the film have to do with the Spirit. The watery planet Solaris 
also has to do with God and the Spirit. Tarkovsky could not do everything 
he wanted in the film, because Lem did not like the religious aspects, and 
Tarkovsky had to fool the censors. But on the space station near Solaris, 
near to the Spirit of God, men find themselves forced to confront their 
sins, and either repent or go mad. The Spirit is operating in this heavenly 
realm. Descending (ascending fully) to Solaris at the end, the now penitent 
son is reconciled to a "heavenly father" generated by the planet, in the 
pose of Rembrandt's "Prodigal Son" (which hangs in the Hermitage, and with 
which any Russian intellectual was very familiar). As the son begins to 
repent on the space station, we see an icon in passing as the camera 
surveys the room. In the last scene, on Solaris, the water of the lake is 
frozen, iconic. It is the heavenly "sea of glass" before the throne of God. 
In this way, Tarkovsky makes a religious allegory out of Lem's novel.
         FWIW.

Nutria

--

---

From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 18:35:39 +0000

This really is awfully good.

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Jordan" <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
> realm.

--

---

From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 18:49:44 +0000

>This really is awfully good.

Thanks. I had a more negative view of the Tarkovsky the first time I 
watched it, since I did not know he was a "secret believer" (a point 
brought out briefly in the Criterion edition discussions, but they don't 
make much of it). Now that I've "caught on" to the film, I'm interested to 
see the Soderberg again, and see what if anything he has done with this 
aspect. But I'll have to wait for the video.

Nutria

--