{"id":7,"date":"2007-07-24T17:48:47","date_gmt":"2007-07-24T21:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cslewis.org\/journal\/?p=7"},"modified":"2011-10-11T19:58:04","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T23:58:04","slug":"a-terrible-beauty-true-and-false-visions-of-the-good-in-descent-into-hell-and-till-we-have-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cslewis.org\/journal\/a-terrible-beauty-true-and-false-visions-of-the-good-in-descent-into-hell-and-till-we-have-faces\/","title":{"rendered":"A Terrible Beauty: True and False Visions of the Good in Descent into Hell<\/em> and Till We Have Faces<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a memorable passage from Dostoevsky\u2019s The Brothers Karamazov<\/em>, beauty is described as being an \u201cawful thing…mysterious as well as terrible\u201d (97). This strikingly paradoxical view of the beautiful, especially as it relates to the numinous, resonates in the writings of the Inklings. Charles Williams, for instance, points out that while caritas<\/em> is often likened to \u201cour immediate emotional indulgence,\u201d it should be properly understood in the sense of the \u201cotherness and terror of God.\u201d Encountering the ultimate Other means, in effect, that \u201cChrist exists in the soul, in joy, in terror, in a miracle of newness. Ecce, omnia facio<\/em> [Behold I make all things new]\u201d (He Came Down<\/em>, 9-11). C.S. Lewis concurs that divine goodness implies \u201csomething more stern and splendid than mere kindness,\u201d since \u201ceven the love between the sexes is, as in Dante, \u2018a lord of terrible aspect\u2019\u201d (The Problem of Pain<\/em>, 27-9). This majestic Dante-esque figure, at once frightening and attractive, appears under various guises in Descent into Hell<\/em> and Till We Have Faces<\/em>. In their respective novels, Williams and Lewis depict the changing faces of beauty in order to highlight the great difference between true and false visions of the good.<\/p>\n

Through the infernal descent of his protagonist, Williams shows how the lure of deceptive beauty can become a fatal attraction. Hell awaits Lawrence Wentworth because he dares to \u201clook, in [the] Dantean phrase, on the head of the Gorgon in Dis\u201d (Descent<\/em>, 216); that is, on the sensual yet terrifying face of the Medusa whose gaze petrifies the beholder and fills him with despair. In Inferno<\/em> IX, Dante interprets the myth about \u201cthe beauty of the lady changed to ugliness, fascination turned to horror\u201d as a moral allegory of the inability of the hardened heart to repent (Freccero, 127). To avert this fate, Virgil shields Dante\u2019s eyes from direct contact with the female monster. Wentworth, on the other hand, refuses the aid of any such guide, and chooses, instead, to see the Medusa unveiled. Why is this the case?<\/p>\n

Wentworth\u2019s downward spiral begins when he registers his inveterate hatred of facts. Williams identified the temptation to heresy, or \u201cintellectual obstinacy,\u201d as the veritable \u201cMedusa\u2019s head.\u201d Wentworth is accordingly portrayed as the quintessential heretic whose \u201cintegrity of mind ha[s] disintegrated,\u201d and who \u201cjustifie[s] error and evil to himself\u201d (The Figure of Beatrice<\/em> 126). His flight from truth is especially evident in the professional sphere. Gripped by envy, Williams\u2019s academically concupiscent historian distorts evidence in a vain effort to discredit the research of his colleague, Aston Moffatt, who is \u201ca pure scholar…who would have sacrificed reputation, income, and life, if necessary, for the discovery of one fact\u201d (Descent<\/em> 38). Wentworth’s rejection of one \u201cinsignificant\u201d fact concerning a negligible military skirmish leads to another rejection (lying about the historical accuracy of uniforms being used for a play rehearsal), and then to another; until, at last, he professes, \u201cthen and for ever, for ever, for ever, that he would hate the fact, and therefore facts\u201d (81). This new historicist, who follows Nietzsche\u2019s claim that \u201ctruths are illusions,\u201d seals his fate (84). For, as Williams formulates it, \u201chell is always inaccurate\u201d while \u201cheaven is always exact\u201d (The Image of the City 30, Collected Plays<\/em> 298). In the end, Wentworth damns himself through the \u201csmall, steady falsifying\u201d of his expert knowledge when, as Dorothy L. Sayers observes, \u201cone touch of the scholar\u2019s truth would have saved him\u201d (Letters<\/em> 277, 143).<\/p>\n

In a parallel move, Wentworth also fails to acknowledge that human love exists. Hell for him is other people since \u201che had never had a friend or a lover, he had never, in any possible sense of the word, been \u2018in love\u2019\u201d (Descent<\/em> 36). The loner never entertains the possibility, as Plato does in the Symposium<\/em>, that falling in love with someone can be one way to affirm a person\u2019s beauty as an attractive good. When Williams defines romantic love plainly as \u201ca state of facts\u201d (cited in Ridler, xliii), he not only invokes the Platonic triad of the true, the good, and the beautiful, he also recalls how the beloved flourished in Dante\u2019s imagination:<\/p>\n

The image of Beatrice existed in his thought; it remained there and was deliberately renewed…the subjective recollection within him was of something objectively outside him; it was an image of an exterior fact and not of an interior desire. (The Figure<\/em>, 7)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reference here is to a key point in Virgil’s famous discourse on love in the Purgatorio<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Your apprehension draws from some real fact
\nAn inward image, which it shows to you,
\nAnd by that image doth the soul attract:
\nAnd if the soul attracted, yearns thereto,
\nThat yearning’s love. (XVIII.22-26)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The true lover beholds an actual person, not a phantasm generated by his perception and libido. But Dante succumbs precisely to this temptation in the next canto during his dream of the siren. Initially ugly in appearance, she becomes increasingly beautiful as Dante gazes on her (Purg.<\/em>XIX.7-15). Williams interprets the siren as a false image of Beatrice (The Figure<\/em> 165-6), and expands Dante’s theme in Descent into Hell<\/em>. (cf. Sayers, Further Papers <\/em>141).<\/p>\n

Like the medieval pilgrim, Wentworth strays from the true path when he pursues \u201cfalse phantoms of the good\u201d (Purg.<\/em>XXX.131). These idols\u2014imagini false<\/em>\u2014that bring \u201cfalse delight\u201d to the worshipper (Purg.<\/em>XXXI.34), are not only human artefacts such as the golden calf, but can also be images of feminine beauty formed in the mind (cf. Robertson 99). These \u201cimage[s] without incarnation,\u201d as Williams calls them, lead to \u201cidolatry of self\u201d (Descent<\/em> 127). A particularly brilliant dramatization of this process occurs in the pivotal chapter where Wentworth \u201creturn[s] to Eden.” While inside this archetypal \u201cgarden of satisfied dreams\u201d (Descent<\/em> 126), he re-enacts the fall of Adam in symbolic terms as an abuse of beauty. John Scotus\u2019s allegorical analysis of the biblical scene provides an illuminating gloss on Wentworth\u2019s predicament. The medieval philosopher interpreted the earthly paradise as a figure of human nature consisting of two regions, one spiritual and the other bodily. In the first, or interior, region dwells truth, and all good as recognized by reason. When one sees a fair sight or object, Scotus maintains, it enters as a fantasy into the exterior region. If this beautiful image is not referred immediately to the intellect for judgement, then the serpent of concupiscence beguiles the senses into accepting the forbidden fruit as an appealing good (267). \u201cAll error thus begins in the exterior or aesthetic region of the garden,\u201d D.W. Robertson, Jr. explains, \u201cand through its delight in the phantasy of a beauty which it falsifies, it may corrupt and pervert the inner region of the garden, just as Eve successfully tempted Adam\u201d (71). The \u201cmarriage\u201d contracted between the spirit and the flesh, or man and woman, is thereby adulterated since, as St. Augustine adds, a \u201chidden and secret kind of wedlock\u201d in the inner man takes place (On the Holy Trinity<\/em> 161). Wentworth meets the same subtle snares when he runs down \u201cthe path that coiled round the edge of Eden\u201d (Descent<\/em> 89), the objective correlative to his own circular reasoning about Adela, the woman he is infatuated with. Resentful of the fact that she is dating a man named Hugh instead of him, Wentworth compensates for the snub by manufacturing a simulacrum of Adela to gratify his lust. He heeds the seductive voice that tells him \u201cIt\u2019s good for man to be alone\u201d (Descent<\/em> 86), and celebrates his \u201cbetrothal\u201d to an imaginary Eve (Descent<\/em> 127). He accordingly expels the \u201cactual Adela\u201d from his \u201cclosed garden\u201d and replaces her with an erotic \u201cphantasm of Adela\u201d (Descent<\/em> 132, 144).1<\/sup>
\n
\nWentworth resists \u201cthe creation of fact…the making of things other than the self,\u201d that is, the whole idea of \u201cotherness\u201d (Descent<\/em> 89). Consequently, he misses the opportunity to experience the Beatrician vision, \u201cthe glory of truth that broke out of the very air itself upon the agonized Florentine in the Paradise of Eden: \u2018ben sem, ben sem, Beatrice\u2019\u201d(Descent<\/em> 89). Wentworth fails to translate the \u201csingular\u201d of his private dream (the \u201cI am\u201d of the Siren), into the \u201cplural\u201d of a common love story (the \u201cwe are\u201d of Beatrice).2<\/sup> For him, love is a supreme fiction, not the supreme fact.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Wentworth fails to understand the repeated warning about his impending doom contained in his recurring dream of a rope. His presumption shuts out the timor servilis<\/em> that fears above all the loss of eternal life, or the \u201cfilial\u201d fear that \u201csees sin as sin\u201d (Pieper, 134-5):<\/p>\n

He felt no fear; he climbed; if he climbed, securely, and all the infinite black void did not terrify him; he would not fall. Nor did he fear the end\u2014not fear<\/em>. No monstrosity awaited him. (Descent<\/em> 37)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No monstrosity awaits him except, tragically, the Gorgon\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

In sharp contrast, Pauline Anstruther\u2019s trepidation eventually turns, paradoxically, into \u201cjoy\u201d (Descent<\/em> 171). She initially recoils from confronting an image of her moral double she has seen in a vision. Pauline’s consternation grows on hearing an account of the martyrdom of her ancestor, John Struther, which took place in the sixteenth century. In the ensuing discussion, Margaret, her grandmother, gently insists that “salvation…is quite often a terrible thing\u2014a frightening good” (Descent<\/em> 56). The consoling truth of this saying slowly dawns on Pauline. As the playwright Peter Stanhope explains, \u201cthe substantive, of course, governs the adjective; not the other way round…Good…contains terror, not terror good\u201d (Descent<\/em> 65). The more she perceives her flight from fact, or self-knowledge, the more her fear dissipates. Peter Stanhope lifts her dread of encountering her true \u201cother self\u201d and bears it for her. Pauline, for her part, reaches back in time to endure vicariously the suffering of her ancestor (Descent<\/em> 169-170) in accordance with the pattern laid down in Christ’s Passion; that act of \u201cjust vengeance,\u201d as Dante puts it (Par.<\/em>VII.20), carried out in atonement for humanity\u2019s sins.<\/p>\n

Pauline’s own act of substituted love also bears fruit. On relieving her ancestor of his mental anguish, Pauline is again brought face to face with her glorified self. This time she is not afraid, rather she marvels at it:<\/p>\n

She opened her eyes…there, as a thousand times in her looking-glass\u2014there! The ruffled brown hair, the long nose, the firm compressed mouth, the tall body, the long arms, her dress, her gesture. It wore no super-natural splendour of aureole, but its rich nature burned and glowed before her, bright as if mortal flesh had indeed become what all lovers know it to be. (Descent<\/em> 170-171)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The epiphanic scene corresponds to the one in which Dante beholds the transfigured body of Beatrice in the Vita Nuova<\/em> (Sayers, Further Papers<\/em> 196). Intended by God to be \u201ccosa nova\u201d (\u201ca new thing\u201d), a miracle rooted in the very Love of the Trinity itself (Musa 35, 62), this marvelous creature who suddenly appears to her lover is someone real. She is not \u201crealer,\u201d as Williams says, than the actual Beatrice, who doubtless had many serious faults, but she is just as real: \u201cBoth Beatrices are aspects of one Beatrice\u201d (The Figure<\/em> 27). It can likewise be said that both Paulines are mirror images of one Pauline. The action of grace elevates her fallen nature, making it a new creation, a union of the spirit with the \u201choly and glorious flesh\u201d of the risen body (Par.<\/em>XIV.43). The recurring biblical phrase (Descent<\/em> 151, 173), Ecce, omnia nova facio<\/em> (\u201cBehold, I will make all things new,\u201d Rev 21:5) unfolds a \u201cnew vision of the world\u201d (Descent<\/em> 188) for Pauline as she, like Dante, delights in the miracle of newness. This is a reflection of the transcendent Beauty that is, in St. Augustine\u2019s phrase, \u201cat once so ancient and so new\u201d (Confessions<\/em>, 231): \u201ctam antiqua, tam nova, vita nova, nova creatura<\/em>, a new creature, no more in any sense but new, not opposed to the old, but in union with the old, new without any trick of undermeaning, new always and now new\u201d (Descent<\/em> 205).<\/p>\n

The heroine of Till We Have Faces<\/em> seems at first constitutionally incapable of experiencing a similar transformation. In a paradigmatic childhood scene, Orual also stands before a mirror but only to see reflected there a \u201cperfect image\u201d of her physical ugliness (Till<\/em> 69-70). The negative epiphany confirms her sense that an individual\u2019s psychosomatic makeup is determined arbitrarily at birth: \u201cWe bring our ugliness with us into the world, with it our destiny\u201d (Till<\/em> 293). This firm conviction prompts her to lodge an even greater complaint. The gods, in her view, treat men and women as mere playthings, inflicting pain upon them unjustly and indiscriminately. To satisfy their bloodlust, moreover, they demand human sacrifice, a barbaric practice that reveals what Orual calls the unspeakable \u201chorror of divine things\u201d (Till<\/em> 57).
\n
\nThe strategy of putting the gods in the dock backfires, however. In a visionary sequence, an adult Orual stands once again before a mirror in an infernal setting and is shocked to discover that she<\/em> is the goddess she abhors the most: \u201cThe vision…[w]ithout question…was true. It was I who was Ungit. That ruinous face was mine\u201d (Till<\/em> 287). The hideous specular image exposes not only her facial ugliness but also the base motives of her actions. Ironically, Orual treated all her loved ones\u2014including her beloved sister Psyche\u2014with the same selfishness and cruelty she previously attributed to the gods: \u201cTo say that I was Ungit meant that I was as ugly in soul as she; greedy, blood-gorged\u201d (Till<\/em> 292). Following this frank admission, the roles in the court proceeding are reversed: the accuser is really the accused. Spellbound by the picture of her moral corruption, Orual becomes a Medusa figure turning her own heart to stone.<\/p>\n

Orual\u2019s earlier decision to don a veil paved the way for this dramatic recognition scene. The veiled face symbolized an acute identity crisis, and fuelled much speculation among the citizens of Glome. Some said it was the face of a siren or an animal too terrible to be looked at directly, while others maintained it hid a beauty so dazzling that, if seen, would madden all the men of the world. And still others spread the rumour that their Queen had no face at all. All these guesses contained a grain of truth since they contributed unwittingly to sketching a portrait of a monarch who had turned into \u201csomething very mysterious and awful,\u201d a double of Ungit (Till<\/em> 237-8).<\/p>\n

Psyche\u2019s demeanour, on the other hand, reveals a benign aspect of the \u201cawful\u201d goddess. When she walks through the streets of Glome for the first time, the people are smitten with her stunning appearance: \u201cHer [Psyche\u2019s] beauty…worked on them as a terror might work\u201d (Till<\/em> 40). There is something mysterious yet fascinating about Psyche\u2019s \u201cterrible beauty\u201d that reminds people of Ungit. Orual herself feels this paradoxical sensation in a later scene when she spots her sister across a river in the region of the Grey Mountain: \u201cA quivering shock of feeling that has no name (but nearest terror) stabbed through me from head to foot\u201d (Till<\/em> 110). Orual\u2019s dark view of the gods and their activity prevents her from seeing \u201cthe place where all…beauty came from\u201d (Till<\/em> 83). She therefore describes the happy valley where Psyche resides with the so-called Shadowbrute as \u201ca terrible…indeed a dreadful place\u201d (Till<\/em> 126, 129). But \u201cthe contemplation of the horrid,\u201d to quote T.S. Eliot, \u201cis the necessary and negative aspect of the impulse toward the pursuit of beauty\u201d (169).<\/p>\n

The sense of the ominous, in fact, masks a hidden longing to experience the numinous.3<\/sup> Although she sets out to reclaim Psyche from the gods, Orual secretly pines to see the face of the one who gives her sister \u201cunspeakable joy\u201d (Till<\/em> 132): \u201cWe must face it child…What sort of god would he be who dares not show his face? … Nothing that\u2019s beautiful hides its face. Nothing that\u2019s honest hides its name…In your heart you must see the truth\u201d (Till<\/em> 168). The barrage of questions aimed at Psyche serves only to highlight Orual\u2019s disingenuousness. Intending \u201cat any cost to write what is wholly true\u201d in her memoir, Orual nevertheless denies seeing the \u201clabyrinthine beauty\u201d of the god\u2019s palace (Till<\/em> 126, 141). The moment of truth arrives, however, when Orual persuades Psyche to light a lamp so she could steal a fleeting glimpse of the sleeping god: \u201cA monster\u2014the shadowbrute that I and all Glome had imagined\u2014would have subdued me less than the beauty this face wore\u201d (Till<\/em> 181). This indelible image of the divine presence remains with Orual, and foreshadows the final epiphany of the face that will fill her with a \u201cnew terror, joy, overpowering sweetness\u201d (Till<\/em> 318).<\/p>\n

The first appearance of the god, then, forces Orual to recognize her willful blindness. Although proud to claim \u201cI was my own and Psyche was mine\u201d (Till<\/em> 303), Orual gradually renounces her possessiveness and retracts her declaration of independence: \u201cOh Psyche, never again will I call you mine, but all there is of me shall be yours…I never wished you well, never had one selfless thought of you. I was a craver\u201d (Till<\/em> 316-17). \u201cTrue love,\u201d in the words of St. Ambrose, \u201cprefers others to self, and seeks not its own, wherein lies the pre-eminence of justice\u201d (22). A contrite heart, moreover, allows Orual to dream of becoming a new creature, born from above: \u201cIf I practised true philosophy,.. I should change my ugly soul into a fair one. And this, the gods helping me, I would do\u201d (Till<\/em> 272-3). The love of beauty (philocalia<\/em>) and the love of wisdom (philosophia<\/em>), as St Augustine says (Against the Academics<\/em> 71), bear a family resemblance, and become, in fact, two sisters.<\/p>\n

If seeing the ruinous face of Ungit warned Orual of her spiritual death, then remembering Psyche\u2019s \u201cbrightface\u201d in the mountain valley marks the beginning of her new life (Till<\/em> 161). This happy memory serves to bring about their poignant reconciliation. When the god exiles Psyche and assigns various tasks to her for breaking his command not to bring light into their bedchamber, Orual bears the burdens (Till<\/em> 312). In an act of reciprocating love, Psyche fetches a casket of beauty from the Deadlands for Orual. The enigmatic prophecy of the god, \u201cYou also shall be Psyche\u201d (Till<\/em> 182), is accordingly fulfilled in the palace gardens as the two sisters stand beside each other at the edge of a pool. Looking down, Orual notices two reflections in the water: \u201cYes, both beautiful (if that mattered now) beyond all imagining, yet not exactly the same\u201d (Till<\/em> 319). Here Lewis invokes a famous myth to make a telling point. Narcissus revealed \u201cthe terror behind the mirror\u201d when he died in the attempt to possess the image of himself he beheld in a pond (Sugerman 24). Conversely, Psyche functions as a true mirror of the good by reflecting divine beauty. She inspires Orual to renounce her narcissistic ego in favour of a beautiful soul or \u201cpsyche\u201d reshaped by grace.<\/p>\n

Consequently, a new understanding of the true, the good, and the beautiful emerges. As Simone Weil puts it, \u201cwe love the beauty of the world, because we sense behind it the presence of something akin to that wisdom we should like to possess to slake our thirst for good\u201d (10). Orual\u2019s profound interior transformation sets the stage for her much-anticipated final encounter with the lord of terrible aspect: \u201cAnd he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is was coming\u201d (Till<\/em> 318-19). Orual experiences the fear that is both the beginning of wisdom and the source of blessedness (cf. Ps 34:11, Ps 112:1) as she contemplates, like Dante, the Love for whose sake the \u201cearth and stars and sun…existed\u201d (Till<\/em> 318).4<\/sup><\/p>\n

This paper was presented at the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s triennial Summer Institute, Oxbridge<\/a>, in the summer of 2005. <\/em><\/p>\n


\nEndnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/sup> The Medusa not only petrifies Wentworth\u2019s intellect but also the language in which he perverts the image of Adela. The character who triggers his abandonment of the \u201cright speech\u201d of heavenly discourse in favour of the \u201cmeaningless gabble\u201d of Dante\u2019s hell (Figure of Beatrice<\/em>, 199; Descent<\/em>, 207) is Lily Sammile. This demon of lies apparently speaks \u201ctrue words\u201d to Wentworth that convince him he should think more about himself. The gullible historian becomes, however, the dupe of her semantic incoherence:<\/p>\n

He didn’t understand the first phrase…Much difficulty in finding what? in finding it? the it that could be found if he thought of himself more; that was what he had said, or she had said, whichever had said that the thing was to be found, as if Adela had said it, Adela in her real self, by no means the self that went with Hugh; no, but the true, the true Adela who was the difficulty all the while, that she was truly his, and wouldn’t be, but if he thought more of her truly being, and not of her being untruly away, on whatever way, for the way that went away was not the way she truly went, but if they did away with the way she went away, then Hugh could be untrue and she true, then he would know themselves, two, true and two, on the way he was going, and the peace in himself, and the scent of her in him, and the her, meant for him, in him; that was the she he knew, and he must think the more of himself. (83)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like the inhabitants of Dante’s hell (Inf.<\/em> III.18), Wentworth has lost the good of the intellect, the capacity to seek truth, and he hopelessly entangles himself in the convoluted logic of unending self-reflection. The \u201cit\u201d in the above passage has no referential locus antecedent in his self-enclosed world.<\/p>\n

2<\/sup> Williams translates what he calls \u201calmost the greatest line in Dante and therefore in all poetry\u201d (He Came Down<\/em> 104) as follows: \u201cLook well: we are, indeed we are, Beatrice\u201d (Purg.<\/em> XXX.73). He also points out how the appearance of the siren and the words of her opening song, \u201cIo son…io son dolce Sirena\u2014I am, I am the sweet Siren\u201d (Purg.<\/em>XIX.19), are a deliberate echo and contrast to the words of Beatrice when she first appears in Purgatorio<\/em> XXX (The Figure of Beatrice<\/em> 165).<\/p>\n

3<\/sup> Rudolf Otto notes that he based his new word \u201cnuminous\u201d from the Latin numen<\/em> by analogy with \u201cominous,\u201d which we derive from omen. For the influence of Otto on Lewis, see Doris T. Myers, 168-174.<\/p>\n

4<\/sup> Orual\u2019s statement refers unmistakably to the climax of Dante\u2019s journey in Paradiso<\/em> when he contemplates the Love that moves the sun and the other stars (XXXIII.145). Her final vision also alludes to Dante\u2019s encounter with the Lord of terrifying aspect, \u201cfrightening to behold, yet apparently marvellously filled with joy\u201d in the Vita Nuova<\/em> (5). For a more detailed analysis of related themes, see the two articles on Till We Have Faces<\/em> by Dominic Manganiello.<\/p>\n


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Ridler, Anne. “Introduction” to Charles Williams, The Image of the City and Other Essays<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970. ix-lxxii.<\/p>\n

Robertson, Jr., D. W. A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives<\/em>. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962.<\/p>\n

Sayers, Dorothy L. Further Papers on Dante<\/em>. London: Methuen, 1957.<\/p>\n

______. The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, Volume Four, 1951-1957: In the Midst of Life<\/em>. Ed. Barbara Reynolds. Cambridge: Dorothy L. Sayers Society, 2000.<\/p>\n

Sugerman, Shirley. Sin and Madness: Studies in Narcissism<\/em>. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976.<\/p>\n

Weil, Simone. The Need for Roots<\/em>. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.<\/p>\n

Williams, Charles. Collected Plays<\/em>. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.<\/p>\n

______. Descent into Hell<\/em>. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980.<\/p>\n

______. The Figure of Beatrice<\/em>: A Study in Dante.London: Faber and Faber, 1943.<\/p>\n

______. He Came Down From Heaven<\/em>. London: Heineman, 1938.<\/p>\n

______. The Image of the City and Other Essays<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a memorable passage from Dostoevsky\u2019s The Brothers Karamazov, beauty is described as being an \u201cawful thing…mysterious as well as terrible\u201d (97). This strikingly paradoxical view of the beautiful, especially as it relates to the numinous, resonates in the writings of the Inklings. Charles Williams, for instance, points out that while caritas is often likened to \u201cour immediate emotional indulgence,\u201d it should be properly understood in the sense of the \u201cotherness and terror of God.\u201d Encountering the ultimate Other means, in effect, that \u201cChrist exists in the soul, in joy, in terror, in a miracle of newness. Ecce, omnia facio [Behold I make all things new]\u201d (He Came Down, 9-11). C.S. Lewis concurs that divine goodness implies \u201csomething more stern and splendid than mere kindness,\u201d since \u201ceven the love between the sexes is, as in Dante, \u2018a lord of terrible aspect\u2019\u201d (The Problem of Pain, 27-9). This majestic Dante-esque figure, at once frightening and attractive, appears under various guises in Descent into Hell and Till We Have Faces. In their respective novels, Williams and Lewis depict the changing faces of beauty in order to highlight the great difference between true and false visions of the good.<\/p>\n

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