Wild! Sent from my iPhone
> On Dec 11, 2015, at 11:55, BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical > Centrist Community <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Christianity Today > C.S. Lewis Was a Secret Government Agent > > A recent discovery unveils an unknown chapter in the life the famous Oxford > Don. > Harry Lee Poe/ December 10, 2015 > > > As I browsed eBay not long ago, I came across a 78 rpm recording of a lecture > by C. S. Lewis. I assumed that it was a mistake or that the seller was trying > to defraud an unwitting public. I knew Lewis well enough to know that he had > never made a 78 rpm recording for general distribution, much less one > produced by something called the Joint Broadcasting Committee. I also knew > that Lewis never delivered a lecture on the subject “The Norse Spirit in > English Literature.” At least, I knew we had no evidence of such a lecture. > Fortunately, curiosity got the better of me, and I bought the record from the > dealer in Iceland. > Over the years, I have assembled a significant collection of items related to > C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and their literary friends. I regularly mount > exhibitions for universities and major municipal libraries to spur interest > in the Inklings, especially when the secular market is all abuzz when a new > Lewis or Tolkien movie is released. At one time, collecting letters, > manuscripts, first editions, and other artifacts and ephemera was a slow > process that depended upon visiting faraway places with strange sounding > names. But all of that changed with e-commerce, which led to this unusual > recording being in my possession. > > And what an unusual find it turned out to be. I discovered some things about > a secret episode in Lewis’s life that few, if any, people knew about. > > In His Majesty’s Secret Service > > How Lewis came to be recruited and by whom remains a secret. The records of > the Secret Intelligence Service, known popularly as MI6, remain closed. > Perhaps one of his former pupils at Oxford recommended him for his mission. > It was an unusual mission for which few people were suited. J. R. R. Tolkien > had the knowledge base for the job, even beyond that of Lewis, but Tolkien > lacked other skills that Lewis possessed. Perhaps someone had heard Lewis > lecture on his favorite subject in one of the two great lecture halls in the > Examination Schools building of Oxford University. At a time when Oxford > fellows were notorious for the poor quality of their public lectures, Lewis > packed the hall with an audience of students who were not required to attend > lectures. In the 1930s, Lewis was the best show in town. Somehow Lewis had > developed the skill to speak to an audience and hold them in rapt attention, > in spite of his academic training rather than because of it. > > The first thing I discovered was that the Joint Broadcasting Committee was an > arm of British secret intelligence that served a propaganda purpose by > broadcasting to people in occupied enemy territory during World War II. Until > now, the general public and the world of scholarship had no idea that C. S. > Lewis began his wartime service by undertaking a mission for MI6. Long before > James Bond, Lewis rendered service to this clandestine branch of British > Intelligence, which was so secret for so long that few people knew of its > existence, and few of those knew its actual name. Alternatively known as > Military Intelligence, the Secret Service, and MI6, its actual name may be > the Secret Intelligence Service. Ian Fleming gave the head of this spy > network the code name of M, but in real life he is simply known as the Chief. > When Lewis came on board at the beginning of World War II, it was still a > fledgling group of amateurs desperately working to save their island home > from disaster. > > However Lewis came to the attention of MI6, it needed Lewis in the wake of > the German invasion of Norway and Denmark on April 9, 1940. Though the > British sent troops to Norway to counter the German invasion, it was too late > to intervene in Denmark, whose subjugation was accomplished in only one day. > One month later on May 10, 1940, German forces invaded the Netherlands, > Belgium, and France, and by June 22 the French government had capitulated, > leaving Britain to fight on alone. > > On that same morning in May, however, the British did the next best thing > they could do to help Denmark and the rest of Europe: They launched a > surprise invasion of Iceland, which was part of the Kingdom of Denmark. > Iceland’s strategic significance in the North Atlantic had been known since > the Viking voyages a thousand years earlier. Iceland sits along the arc of > islands that include Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. > Each island became a staging ground for pushing farther westward. In the > Battle of the Atlantic, Iceland could have provided Germany with a strategic > naval and air base. Instead, thanks to the British invasion, Iceland provided > the ideal base for seaplanes to search for the German naval vessels that > prowled the Atlantic sinking the merchant fleet with its crucial supplies. > > Though British control of Iceland was critical, Britain could not afford to > deploy its troops to hold the island when greater battles loomed elsewhere, > beginning with the struggle for North Africa. Holding Iceland depended upon > the goodwill of the people of Iceland who never had asked to be invaded by > the British. If Britain retained Icelandic goodwill, then Churchill could > occupy the island with reserve troops rather than his best fighting forces. > > This was the strategic situation in which C. S. Lewis was recruited. And his > mission was simple: To help win the hearts of the Icelandic people. > > The Work of a Literary Secret Agent > > The Joint Broadcasting Committee recruited C. S. Lewis to record a message to > the people of Iceland to be broadcast by radio within Iceland. Lewis made no > record of his assignment, nor does he appear to have mentioned it to anyone. > Without disclosing his involvement with military intelligence, however, Lewis > did make an indiscreet disclosure to his friend Arthur Greeves in a letter > dated May 25, 1941. Lewis remarked that three weeks earlier he had made a > gramophone record which he heard played afterwards. He wrote that it had been > a shock to hear his own voice for the first time. It did not sound at all the > way his voice sounded to himself, and he realized that people who imitated > him had actually gotten it right! > > Until now, Lewis scholars have assumed that this gramophone recording by > Lewis in early May 1941, which they had only read about in this letter, must > have been a recorded voice test for his BBC broadcasts. It was the only > logical explanation. The famous broadcast talks, however, did not come until > August, and they were not recorded. Lewis was already famous for his voice, > which would not have required a recording to test. > > Furthermore, Lewis delivered his broadcasts live, so why would the BBC have > bothered to record a voice test? In all likelihood, the recording of early > May was his radio talk to Iceland. > > And what did an Oxford don have to say that might help turn the tide of war > in Britain’s darkest hour? He spoke on the subject “The Norse Spirit in > English Literature.” Lewis provided a touchstone between the Norse people and > the English, which Lewis made clear in his first recorded statement. He said > that he did not know why he had been asked to address the people of Iceland, > but that he agreed to do it in order to repay a great debt. He explained that > his imaginative life had been awakened by Norse mythology when he was 14. He > went on to explain how his love of Norse mythology only deepened when he > began to learn the Icelandic language at Oxford. > > This beginning may surprise people familiar with Lewis, because Lewis was not > prone to publicly share information about his personal life. His introduction > anticipates his spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy by almost 15 years. > He first fell in love with Norse mythology when he came across some of Arthur > Rackham’s illustrations for Wagner’s Ring published in 1911. He began to > learn Old Icelandic in 1926 when J. R. R. Tolkien started a small group > called the Coalbiters to read the old sagas together in the original tongue. > > After this introduction, Lewis proceeded to praise the Icelandic tongue as > one of the most poetic on earth. Rather than a private view of his own, Lewis > argued that successive generations of English writers have felt this affinity > with the old Norse tales and that this influence has found its way into the > greatest of English literature. He cited Sir William Temple, William Morris, > Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Fielding, and Thomas Grey as examples of what > he meant. The literature of England, inspired by the Norse, views > self-important office holders as knaves and fools. By implication, the > English had come to Iceland to repay a great debt and help fend off the knave > and fool who ran Germany. > > Behind the literature itself, Lewis focused on a prevailing spirit found in > those Norse explorers who refused to be part of a mere medieval kingdom. > Instead, Lewis argued that the English and the Norse share a spirit of > independence which finds its origins in the Norse settlers of Iceland and > animates English literature. > > Lewis claimed that this common spirit is different from what one finds in > Europe. He did not want to identify it as democracy, because this spirit > rejects the interference of democracy as much as dictatorship. Nor does he > regard it as a revolutionary spirit or individualism. This spirit is often > marked by great loyalty that individualism does not possess. This loyalty, > however, is based on choice rooted in worthy values—a chief who deserves > loyalty. Just when it seems that Lewis had succeeded in avoiding jargon > altogether, he names this spirit personal realism! Fortunately, he explained > that personal realism involves loyalty between two people that is not based > on abstractions, but on what those two people really are. > > Sadly, Lewis’s first radio talk breaks off at that point. > > The original radio talk involved four parts on two records. The first record > contains part one and part three. The second record contained part two and > part four. The records were probably meant to be stacked on the turntable and > then flipped together. The second record with parts two and four is missing. > Perhaps it will turn up in a flea market someday. Stranger things have > happened. After all, this record turned up on eBay. > > For now, however, several questions remain. If Lewis felt so strongly about > the Norse influence on the development of English literature, why did he > never write on the subject later? We know that he felt strongly about the > subject in his personal development, but why the great silence in his major > critical works? Was the address only propaganda? Once the fragment is > available to the public, scholars will begin to explore such questions. > > In the meantime, I plan to have the first public playing of Lewis’s Icelandic > address in July 2016 at the Inklings Week in Oxford. Future exhibits will be > announced through the website of the Inklings Fellowship. > > Hal Poe is the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union > University in Tennessee. He is the author of a number of books, including The > Inklings of Oxford: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Their Friends > (Zondervan). > > -- > -- > Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community > <[email protected]> > Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism > Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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