The Pilgrim’s Regress: Notes on Quotations and Allusions
compiled by Arend Smilde, Utrecht, The Netherlands
www.solcon.nl/arendsmilde
Books by C. S. Lewis are usually full of quotations from and allusions to a great variety
of sources, often unspecified. The Pilgrim’s Regress, Lewis’s first work in prose,
probably beats all the others on this score. Lewis certainly wasn’t quite aware himself of
how often or how much or how literally or indeed whom he was quoting (cf. third note to
chapter V/4, below). Reading and writing appear to have have been, for him, much like
breathing in and breathing out.
Surely no list of references could ever be perfectly complete in these circumstances. But
the present list would have been much further from perfect without the results of two
earlier attempts, as published in
– Henry Noel, “A Guide to C. S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress”, Bulletin of the New
York C. S. Lewis Society Vol. 2 No. 4 (February 1971), pp. 4–13
– Kathryn Lindskoog, Finding the Landlord: A Guidebook to C. S. Lewis’s “Pilgrim’s
Regress” (Cornerstone Press, Chicago 1995).
I am also grateful for much help received from
– Dr. John Bremer, director of the Philosophical Insitute in Kensington, Maryland,
U.S.A. and a chief contributor to the C. S. Lewis Encylopedia (1998), who kindly sent
me his nearly finished but unpublished work on the epigraphs at the beginning of each of
the ten “Books” in the Regress.
– Mr. Paul Leopold in Stockholm, Sweden, who has kindly and generously helped me,
and continues to do so, by answering what must by now have run into hundreds of large
and small questions regarding C. S. Lewis, especially The Pilgrim’s Regress.
Passages where I still couldn’t obtain the information which I would have liked to give
are marked by a double question mark in bold type, ??. Additions, corrections and
suggestions for new entries are welcome.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dedication
Arthur Greeves: Lifelong friend of C. S. Lewis’s from his birthplace Belfast. Greeves
lived from 1895 till 1966. Their friendship began in 1914 on the basis of a shared delight
in Norse mythology. By that time Lewis was already mostly living in England. Their
correspondence, which in the early years was both copious and highly confidential, was
edited by Walter Hooper and published in 1979 as They Stand Together, and later
included in Lewis’s Collected Letters (3 volumes, 2000– ).
Lewis wrote The Pilgrim’s Regress in Arthur Greeves’s home in Belfast during a twoweek holiday which he spent there in September 1932. The poems included in the last
parts of the book had been written earlier.
Preface to Third Edition
Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet: Three English philosophers, Thomas H. Green (1836–
1882), Francis H. Bradley (1846–1924) and Bernard Bosanquet (1848–1923); major
figures in the neo-Hegelian, “Idealistic” school of philosophy that flourished during their
lifetime.
the word “Romanticism”: The semantic analysis following here gives a taste of one kind
of scholarship taught and practiced by Lewis in Oxford and Cambridge. In his book
Studies in Words (1960) a few handfuls of words were treated in a similar, if more
comprehensive manner. But no chapter is devoted in that book to Romanticism or
romantic. One reason for this might have been be the existence, ever since 1925, of a
long and excellent essay on “Four romantic words” by Logan Pearsall Smith.
Alexandre Dumas, etc.: The amount of names “dropped” here in the course of Lewis’s
items 1 through 7 may be too large for many details to be given with them. I have
confined myself to making an alphabetical list of these names, followed by years of birth
and death and, occasionally, one or two other details that could be found relevant in the
present context. – Ludovico Ariosto (1454–1533), Italian poet, author of Orlando
furioso. / Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), French poet, author of Les fleurs du mal. /
Matteo Boiardo (1434–1494), Italian poet, author of Orlando innamorato. / George
Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), English poet, author of Don Juan. / Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1772–1834), English poet and philosopher, author of Christabel and
Biographia Literaria. / Pierre Corneille (1606–1684), French dramatist, author of Le Cid.
/ Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), French novelist, author of Les Trois Mousquetaires. /
John Dryden (1631–1700), English poet and dramatist. / E. R. Eddison (1882–1945),
English fantasy writer, author of The Worm Ouroboros. / Jacob Epstein (1880–1959),
English sculptor who made the memorial stone for Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris. /
Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist, author of Madame Bovary. / Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German writer and poet, author of Die Leiden des
jungen Werther and Faust. / Maurice H. Hewlett (1861–1923), English novelist and poet.
/ Homer (c. 800 b.c.), ancient Greek poet, alleged author of Ilias and Odyssee. / John
Keats (1795–1821), English poet. / D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), English novelist and
poet, author of Sons and Lovers. / Thomas Malory (c. 1400–1470), English writer and
editor of a large collection of Arthurian legends called Morte d’Arthur. / Michelangelo
Buonarotti (1475–1564), Italian poet, painter, sculptor and architect. / William Morris
(1834–1896), English poet and painter. / Alfred de Musset (1810–1857), French poet and
dramatist. / Ossian, legendary Irish bard of the third century a.d., presented by James
Macpherson (1736–1796) as the author of Fingal and Temora, pseudo-Celtic poems
which Macpherson claimed to have translated from Celtic originals. / Edgar Allen Poe (c.
1809–1849), American short-story writer. / Mario Praz (1896–1982), Italian essayist and
literary critic, author of The Romantic Agony (La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella
literatura romantica, 1930). / Marcel Proust (1871–1922), French writer, author of À la
recherche du temps perdu. / Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), English writer of “Gothic”
novels, i.e. romantic thrillers fashionable in the late 18th century. / Edmond Rostand
(1868–1918), French poet and dramatist, author of Cyrano de Bergerac. / Denis de
Rougemont (1906–1985), Swiss Francophone writer, author of L’Amour et l’Occident. /
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), French writer and philosopher. / Percy Bysshe
Shelley (1792–1822), English poet, author of Prometheus Unbound and Ode to the West
Wind. / Sophocles (c. 496–406 b.c.), ancient Greek dramatist (tragedian). / Edmund
Spenser (c. 1552–1599), English poet, author of The Faerie Queene. / James Stephens
(1882–1952), Irish writer and poet, author of The Crock of Gold. / Torquato Tasso
(1544–1595), Italian poet, author of La Gerusalemme liberata. / Alfred de Vigny (1797–
1863), French poet, novelist and dramatist. / Richard Wagner (1813–1883), German
opera composer whose Tristan und Isolde was first performed in 1865. / The Werther:
German sentimental short novel (1774) by Goethe (see above). / Walter Whitman (1819–
1892), American poet.
perilous seas and faerie lands forlorn: John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819).
Maeterlinck: Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1959), Belgian Francophone poet and
dramatist of the “Symbolist” school in literature; author of Pelléas et Mélisande (which
served as the basis of an opera by the French composer Claude Debussy).
Yeats: William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Irish poet and dramatist.
false Florimels: In The Faerie Queene (1596), the unfinished long poem by Edmund
Spenser, Florimell is a modest and beautiful maiden who succeeds in keeping all men
with dishonourable intentions at a distance. The mother of one of these provides her son
with a “false Florimell” – an easy prey to him and others (see below, fourth epigraph for
Book Two). Later the real Florimell, now married to a worthy lover, is at last brought
face to face with the false Florimell who, as a result, “vanisht into nought” (F.Q. V.3, 24
ff.).
Arthur Conan Doyle: English writer (1959–1930), chiefly known for his detective stories
featuring Sherlock Holmes. After his son was killed in action during the First World War,
he got increasingly immersed in spiritualism. This resulted in books like A History of
Spiritualism (1926).
the Blue Flower: A symbol of romantic longing in the novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen
(1802) by the German writer Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772–1801).
our America, our New-found-land: John Donne (1572–1631), Elegy XX, “To His
Mistress Going to Bed”.
The Well at the World’s End: Fantasy story by William Morris, published posthumously
in 1896.
Kubla Khan: Unfinished poem by Coleridge, published in 1816 but allegedly written in
1797 after he composed it, as Coleridge said, in his sleep. Having written fifty-four lines
he was interrupted for some business, after which the rest of the poem had vanished from
his memory and never came back.
the Siege Perilous: A chair at King Arthur’s Round Table which was strictly reserved for
the man who found “the Grail”.
The Criterion: English literary journal (1922–1939) edited by T. S. Eliot.
Scaliger: Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), Italian humanist and doctor of medicine,
whose writings include Poetices libri VII (“Seven Books on Poetics”).
Maenad: i.e. through sensual pleasures. “Maenad” is another word for Bacchante, a
priestess of Bacchus (Greek: Dionysus), the god of vine, wine and mystic ecstasy.
Mystagogue: i.e. through arousing your curiosity about mysteries and your desire to be
initiated in them.
“Drive out the bondmaid’s son”: Genesis XXI.10, where Sarah suggests that Abraham
should chase away his Egyptian slave Hagar and her son.
“Quench not the smoking flax”: Isaiah XLII.3 and XLIII.17.
praeparatio evangelica: (Latin) “Preparation for the Gospel”; title of a book of Christian
apologetics by the early Christian author and church historian Eusebius of Caesarea (c.
265–339 a.d.). Eusebius tried in this book to show why the religion of the Jews was
preferable to that of the Greeks. In an unfinished work called Demonstratio evangelica he
went on to explain why Christianity had meanwhile supplanted the Jewish religion.
tearing each other to pieces on the Don: Lewis is referring to the battle of Stalingrad
(August 1942–February 1943) and its aftermath, when the advance of German armies in
southern Russia began to turn into their slow and devastating retreat. The Don is the great
Russian river which, on the latitude of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), is not very far to the
west of that city.
“the heresies that men leave are hated most”: Slightly misquoted from Shakespeare, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream II.2, 139–140, Lysander to Hermia: “...the heresies that men
do leave / Are hated most of those they did deceive”. In his later autobiographical book,
Surprised by Joy (1955), chapter XIV, Lewis used the same (mis)quotation, ascribing it
to John Donne.
Prohibition: The years 1920–1933 as a period in the history of the United States of
America, when there was an official ban on the production, transportation, sale and
consumption of alcoholic drinks.
hearken to the over-wise or to the over-foolish giant: John Keats (1795–1821), Hyperion
II, 309–310: “Or shall we listen to the over-wise, / Or to the over-foolish giant, God?”
at once rational and animal: A reference to the Latin phrase animal rationale – a wellknown definition of “a human” in some ancient and medieval philosophers including
Seneca and St Thomas Aquinas.
Jakob Boehme or Behmen: German mystical writer (1575–1624); variant spellings of his
name also include Böhm or (now usual) Böhme. In a letter of 5 January 1930, Lewis
mentioned what seemed to him at the time a momentous experience while reading
Böhme’s book The Signature of All Things (i.e. an English translation of De signatura
rerum, oder Von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen, published in 1621). His early
enthusiasm appears to have cooled down pretty soon: Lewis was hardly ever to mention
Böhme again in any of his later books or letters.
in Trine-land one feels “in tune with the infinite”: A reference to the American popular
mystical writer Ralph Waldo Trine (1866–1952) and his best-selling book In Tune with
the Infinite (1897).
Book One, THE DATA
Epigraphs
Plato: The Republic (Politeia) VI, 505e.
Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy (De consolatione philosophiae) III.2/p, by the
Roman philosopher and statesman Ancius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius (480–
526 a.d.)
Hooker: Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594) I (p. 205 in the Dent edition), by
English theologian Richard Hooker (1554–1600).
Chapter I/2, The Island
the other Law in his members: From the New Testament, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans
VII.23. “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and
bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”
Oreads: Generic name for mountain nymphs in ancient Greek popular belief.
Chapter I/4, Leah for Rachel
Leah for Rachel (cf. II/5): A reference to the Old Testament story of Jacob and his uncle
Laban, Genesis XXIX. Leah and Rachel are Laban’s two daughters; Rachel is the
younger one, and beautiful. Jacob loves her and he offers to “serve” Laban for seven
years in exchange for Rachel. After these seven years and after his first night with his
wife, Jacob finds that he has been given not Rachel but Leah.
brown girl: Roger Lancelyn Green, a friend and biographer of C. S. Lewis, has suggested
that the “brown girls” in this book might go back to a dream which Lewis recorded in his
diary on 26 April 1922 (C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and other reminiscences, ed.
James Como, new edition, p. 213). In the published selection from that diary, All My
Road Before Me (ed. Walter Hooper, 1991) this passage has not been included; nor did
Green give the correct date. The original entry for 26 August (not April) 1922 begins as
follows:
“I dreamed that W[arnie] and I were being entertained in a palace which I called
‘Malvern’ and some sort of old boy’s festival was in progress. At the point at which I
begin to remember things this had gone on already for a long time and we were being
ticked off for some misbehaviour by a very stately woman who forbade us henceforth to
speak to the boys. From her I turned alone and went down a flight of steps into a
bathroom – a beauti-ful place with innumerable basins whose marble floor, green veined
like the deep sea, could be seen spread out from the top of the stairs. This led out into a
place on the banks of the Thames near Iffley where a sort of regatta was going on. The
next thing I remember was coming back from this to ‘Malvern’. On the way up I met a
big cart, driven by a girl who had no clothes on. She had very light brown hair: but dark
skin, pink brown, like sand. I smiled at her in the confidential way you might smile at a
girl when you’d seen a hole in her stocking and she smiled back in just the same way, as
much as to say ‘Yes I know. Isn’t it a scream.’ Then I went up back to Malvern and woke
up – having seen the girl again, this time in the distance beyond the river, with other
people in the cart. W and I did most of our packing before breakfast...” (etc., as printed in
All My Road Before Me).
Chapter I/5, Ichabod
Ichabod (cf. II/6): (Hebrew) “The glory is departed’; from the Old Testament story in I
Samuel IV.21–22. The wife of Pinehas just turned widow calls her newborn child
“Ichabod” because the Ark of God – a portable sanctuary – has been taken by Israel’s
enemies and because her husband as well as her father in law have died.
Chapter I/6, Quem quaeritis in sepulchro? Non est hic
Quem quaeritis in sepulchro? Non est hic (cf. II/7): (Latin) “Whom do you seek in the
grave? He is not here.” From the Latin liturgy for Easter, based on Luke XXIV.5–6, Quid
quaeritis viventem cum mortuis? non est hic – “Why seek ye the living among the dead?
He is not here.”
Book Two, THRILL
Epigraphs
Exodus: The second of the Ten Commandments, Exodus XX.4.
Plato: Second Epistle, 312e–313a; a letter addressed to Dionysius, the ruler of Syracuse,
who was puzzled by what Plato called the Idea of the Good.
Dante: Purgatory (Purgatorio, second part of Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia)
XVIII, 38–39. Ma non ciascun segno / È buono, ancor che buona sia la cera, “But every
seal is not a good one, even if imprinted in good wax” (Robert Hollander’s translation).
Lewis’s version is probably his own, and in any case very free.
Spenser: The Faerie Queene III.8. For the background to this passage see the note on
“false Florimels” in the Preface, above.
Chapter II/1, Dixit insipiens
Dixit insipiens: (Latin) “The fool hath said...” Psalm XIV.1 and LIII.1. Dixit insipiens in
corde suo: Non est Deus, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”
Going West, perhaps, young man?: From a famous phrase – “go West, young man, go
West!” – in the writing of Horace Greeley (1811–1872). Greeley was an American
journalist and social reformer, and founder of the New York Tribune. He seems to have
borrowed the phrase from a fellow American journalist, John Soule (1815–1872) of the
Terre Haute Express (Indiana, 1851).
Mr. Enlightenment: The chapter headline calls him a personification of “Nineteenth
Century Rationalism” although the Enlightenment in a strictly historical sense is the
name of an eighteenth-century movement. Apparently Lewis was thinking of
“enlightenment” in a slightly broader sense which includes its direct spiritual heirs.
round as an orange: Probably borrowed from E. Nesbit’s Five Children – and It (1902),
chapter I: “Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things,
unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and
grown-ups know this. This is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange,
when you see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy.” Lewis quoted this in a letter to his
father of 30 October 1930 (Collected Letters I, p. 680) as he was complaining about
popular distortions of Darwin’s theory of evolution: “The infants seem to be taught that
‘in the beginning was the Ape’ from whom all other life developed...
Claptrap: A word coined in the eighteenth century to denote fashionable nonsense,
contrived to elicit applause (as distinguished from nonsense in general).
Chapter II/2, The Hill
Jehovah-Jirah: (Hebrew) “The Lord will provide”, Genesis XXII.14. Abraham was
“tempted” by God with a command to sacrifice his son Isaac. On their way to the
appointed place, Abraham tells Isaac that “God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt
offering.” Just in time “the angel of the Lord” intervenes and keeps Abraham from killing
Isaac. Abraham then finds “a ram caught in a thicket”, which he offers instead of his son;
“and Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh.”
Chapter II/3, A Little Southward
To travel hopefully is better than to arrive: Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus
Puerisque (1881), “El Dorado’; “...to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and
the true success is to labour.” Lewis criticized this assertion in several places, e.g. a letter
of 28 August 1930 to Arthur Greeves (Collected Letters I, p. 931).
Chapter II/5, Leah for Rachel
What is truth?: Gospel according to St John XVIII.38.
What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth: From a letter of John Keats dated
22 November 1817.
Chapter II/6, Ichabod
But O alas! so long our bodies, etc.: John Donne, “The Ecstasy”, 49–50 and 68. “But, o
alas! so long, so far, / Our bodies why do we forbear?”
Chapter II/7, Non est Hic
Eschropolis: (Greek) “City of filth and obscenity”.
Chapter II/8, Great Promises
Atalanta: A figure in ancient Greek mythology, daughter of a Boeotian king. She
excelled in foot races and would only marry the man who could outrun her.
Book Three, THROUGH DARKEST ZEITGEISTHEIM
Title
Through Darkest...: Titles, headings, captions etc. like this perhaps got their currency in
English after Sir Henry Stanley’s two African travel books, Through the Dark Continent
(1878) and In Darkest Africa (1890) and after William Booth, founder of the Salvation
Army, had been the first to respond to this with his own book called Through Darkest
England and How to Get Out (1890).
Epigraphs
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War (Historiae) III.82–83 by the Greek
historian Thucydides (c. 460–c. 395 b.c.) of Athens.
Anon.: ?? Source not found. These lines may be Lewis’s own translation of some
Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse poetry, of the same character as the Edda fragments in chapter
VI/6 or as the Guide’s directions at the beginning of chapter X/8. The most conspicuous
formal characteristic of this type of poetry is alliteration.
Shaw: “Apparent Anachronisms”, note to Caesar and Cleopatra (1901) by George
Bernard Shaw (1856-–1950), English dramatist.
Chapter III/1, Eschropolis
Silly Twenties (chapter headline): The tags in this and the next two chapter headlines –
Silly, Dirty and Lunatic Twenties – possibly had some currency when Lewis wrote this,
in the early 1930s; more likely they are inventions of his own. Still in use is another
phrase, Roaring Twenties; but this seems to have exclusively American connotations and
not to refer to artistic and cultural trends in Europe.
Victoriana: In a letter of 1945 (Collected Letters II, pp. 678–679) Lewis said this figure
was his parody of the English poet Edith Sitwell (1887–1964). He was probably thinking
primarily of Sitwell’s volume Façade (1922).
columbine: In traditional English “pantomime” (a kind of play performed at Christmas
time) Columbine is one of the stock figures. She is the sweetheart of Harlequin. Since we
know from Lewis that “Victoriana was Edith Sitwell”, the appearance of “a columbine”
may be taken as an allusion to Edith and Osbert Sitwell’s volume of poetry TwentiethCentury Harlequinade (1915). In his 1945 letter Lewis also wrote that he had later come
to have a higher regard for Edith Sitwell.
an aspidistra in a pot: The aspidistra became a very popular English houseplant in the
late nineteenth century because it was strong enough to survive the fumes from gas
lighting. The “cast-iron plant”, as it was called, became an almost invariable item of
lower middle and lower class English interiors and thus a symbol of the kind of life that
was supposed to be going on there.
Chapter III/8, Parrot Disease
There are two only generally necessary to damnation: Parody on a passage in the
Anglican Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer. “Question. How many Sacraments
hath Christ ordained in his Church? Answer. Two only, as generally necessary to
salvation; that is to say, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord.” (“Two only” implies a
rejection of the Roman Catholic list of seven Sacraments.)
Book Four, BACK TO THE ROAD
Epigraph
Bacon: Essays, “Of Truth”, by the English statesman, philosopher and essayist Francis
Bacon (1561–1626); pp. 4–5 in the edition by Richard Foster Jones: Essays,
Advancement Of Learning, New Atlantis And Other Pieces (Odyssey Press, New York
1937).
Chapter IV/1, Let Grill be Grill
Let Grill be Grill: Spenser, The Faerie Queene II.12.87 (conclusion of Book II). Sir
Guyon has destroyed the Bower of Bliss of the enchantress Acrasia and liberates her
captives, breaking the spell by which they had been turned into beasts. One of them
(called Grill) wants to remain a beast –
Saide Guyon: “See the mind of beastly man,
That hath so soon forgot the excellence
Of his creation, when his life began
That now he chooseth, with vile difference
To be a beast, and lacke intelligence:
Let Gryll be Gryll, and have his hoggish mind;
But let us hence depart, whilest wether serves and winde.”
psittacosis: Scientific name for parrot fever or parrot disease, an infectious disease of
parrots that can be transmitted to humans, in whom it may produce pneumonia.
Chapter IV/2, Archtype and Ectype
Archtype and Ectype (see also VIII/10): “Original and copy”; concepts presumably
borrowed here from John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) II.30
(“Of Real and Fantastical ideas”) and II.31 (“Of Adequate and Inadequate Ideas”). Greek
ectypon means an impress from a commemorative medal, seal or signet ring. For Lewis’s
orthography see a passage from his letter of 24 October 1940 to Sister Penelope: “On
archtypal or archetypal, note as the first principle of textual criticism in dealing with me
that all odd spellings [have no] more interesting explanation than ignorance – now I can’t
spell!” (Collected Letters II, p. 451).
riddle about the copy and the original: At the time of writing The Pilgrim’s Regress,
Lewis had been working for several years on what was to become The Allegory of Love
(1936), with a long chapter on the thirteenth-century French Roman de la Rose. As Lewis
points out in that chapter, the Roman’s inevitable “palinode” – denunciation of erotic
love after all that has been said in its favour – is put into the mouth of the lady Reason;
and Reason not only approaches the hero as a rival mistress but hints to an idea expressed
more fully in another part of the poem – “that courtly love is a mimesis or a parody of
which divine love is the archtype” (see The Allegory of Love III.5, pp. 147 and 151).
Chapter IV/3, Esse is percipi
Esse is percipi: (Latin) “To be = to be perceived”; statement by the Irish philosopher
Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753) in his Principles of Human Knowledge, §3. “For
as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to
their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percepi, nor is it
possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which
perceive them.”
Book Five, THE GRAND CANYON
Epigraphs
Pindar: Pythian Ode X, 29–30, by the ancient Greek lyric poet Pindar (c. 520–c. 440
b.c.). Cf. C. S. Lewis’s own poem of 1949, “Pindar Sang”, in Collected Poems (1994),
pp. 29–31.
Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (Prometheus desmotès), 546–551, by the ancient Greek
tragedian Aeschylus (524– 455 b.c.)
Milton: Paradise Regained (1671) IV, 309–311.
Chapter V/2, Mother Kirk’s Story
Peccatum Adae: (Latin) “The sin of Adam”; theological term derived from the New
Testament, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, cap. V.
Chapter V/3, The Self-Sufficiency of Vertue
I must be the captain of my soul and the master of my fate: From the last stanza of the
poem “Invictus” by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903).
Chapter V/4, Mr. Sensible
“the philosophy of all sensible men” (chapter headline): Perhaps adapted from the
American writer and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), who wrote “I see that
sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion” (Lectures
and Biographical Sketches: “the Preacher”). – Another possible source is the novel
Endymion, chapter LXXXI, by the British statesman Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881):
“‘As for that,’ said Waldenshare, ‘sensible men are all of the same religion.’ ‘Pray, what
is that?’ inquired the Prince. ‘Sensible men never tell.’”
Hippocrene: (Latin, from Greek) “Horse spring”; in ancient Greece, a spring on Mount
Helicon near the home of the Muses. Its water was thought to engender poetic inspiration
and to have gushed forth when the winged horse Pegasus touched his hoof there.
Regum aequabit opes animis: (Latin) “equal to a king in the riches of the spirit.” Virgil
(70–19 b.c., Roman poet), Georgics IV, 132. With regard not only to the following spate
Latin and Greek quotations coming from Mr. Sensible, but also to Lewis’s own writing
habits, it may be useful for the reader to be reminded of a passage in a letter from Lewis
to Arthur Greeves, this book’s dedicatee, written after Greeves had criticised the yet
unpublished manuscript. In that letter of 17 December 1932, Lewis began his reply as
follows:
“1. Quotations. I hadn’t realised that they were so numerous as you apparently found
them. Mr Sensible, as you rightly saw, is in a separate position; the shower of quotations
is part of the character and it wd. be a waste of time to translate them, since the dialogue
(I hope) makes it clear that his quotations were always silly and he always missed the
point of the authors he quoted. The other ones may be too numerous, and perhaps can be
reduced & translated. But not beyond a certain point: for one of the contentions of the
book is that the deacy of our old classical learning is a contributary cause of atheism (see
the chapter on Ignorantia). The quotations at the beginnings of the Books are of course
never looked at at all by most readers, so I don’t think they matter much.”
Thou little knowest that sentence is passed upon thee: ??
Omnes eodem cogimur: (Latin) “We are all being gathered to the same fold.” Horace
(65–8 b.c., Roman poet), Odes (Carmina) II.3, 25.
quo dives Tullus et Ancus: (Latin) “whither rich Tullus and Ancus” – i.e. the
underworld, the land of the dead. Horace, Odes (Carmina) IV.7, 15.
nullius addictus: (Latin) “In no way bound”, i.e. not taking sides. Horace, Epistles I.1,
14. Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri – “I am not bound to swear by the statement
of any authority.”
en déshabille: (French) “in undress”, i.e. informally.
J’aime le jeu, l’amour ... et la campagne – enfin, tout!: “I like games, love, books, music,
town and country – everything, in fact!” Jean de la Fontaine (1621–1695, French poet),
Les amours de Psyché et de Cupidon I.2. n.b. some Regress editions have champagne for
campagne.
haud equidem invideo: (Latin) “I am not envious at all.” Virgil, Eclogues (Bucolica,
“pastoral poems”) I, 11. Non equidem invideo, miror magis – “I am not envious but,
rather, surprised.”
You do not insist on my accompanying you? ... Why then I am very willing that your
should go!: Quoted almost literally from the opening paragraph of James Boswell’s
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785): “When I was at Ferney, in 1764, I mentioned
our design to Voltaire. He looked at me, as if I had talked of going to the North Pole, and
said, ‘You do not insist on my accompanying you?’ – ‘No, sir.’ – ‘Then I am very willing
that you should go.’”
Caelum non animum mutamus: (Latin) “[Crossing the sea] we change the scenery, not
ourselves.” After Horace, Epistles I.11, 27. Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare
currunt.
immortal longings: After Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra V.2, 283.
Et ego in Arcadia: (Latin) “I too [have been] in Arcadia.” Correctly phrased Et in
Arcadia Ego, this saying of uncertain provenance is found on numerous tombs and also
on paintings in which tombs are seen. Art historian Erwin Panovsky has traced its origins
back to a painting by Guercino (1591–1666) where it has the grammatically proper
meaning, “even in Arcadia am I [=Death]”, through its history of misunderstanding in art
and literature as “I too have been in Arcadia [a lovely place of fabled peace and
innocence; therefore I also am an idealist]”. Lewis has shuffled the word order so that it
can have properly the latter meaning, which is Mr Sensible’s.
monochronos hèdonè: (Greek) “fleeting pleasure”.
the proper study of mankind is man: Alexander Pope (1688–1744), An Essay on Man II,
2.
Eadem sunt omnia semper: (Latin) “Everything is always the same”. Lucretius (Roman
poet and philosopher, c. 95–55 b.c.), De rerum natura III, 949.
the unchanging heart beneath the shifting disguises: Cf. Lewis’s Preface to Paradise Lost
(1943) IX, “The Doctrine of the Unchanging Human Heart”, where he argues that in
reading the literature of other times and places, we will not grow in wisdom as long as we
are chiefly interested in what is the same everywhere in humanity.
the reasonableness which I commend: “Reasonableness” is a characteristic item in the
vocabulary of the English poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), especially in the
collocation “sweet reasonableness”.
le bon sens: (French) “common sense”.
bridewell: “jail” (from a London prison called Bridewell).
Auream quisquis: (Latin) A scrap from Horace, Odes (Carmina) II.10, 5. Auream
quisquis mediocritatem diligit – “The man who cherishes the golden mean.”
Do manus!: (Latin) “I give up!”
que sais-je?: (French) “What do I know?” Motto of the French writer Michel de
Montaigne (1533–1592), engraved on his personal seal.
brown charm: “brown” as in “brown study”; reverie, mood of deep absorption or
thoughtfulness.
Chapter V/5, Table Talk
“the religion of all sensible men” (chapter headline): See first note to previous chapter.
Dapibus mensas onerabit inemptis: (Latin) “He loaded his table with delicacies not
bought at the store.” Virgil, Georgics IV, 133 (this line immediately follows the one
quoted in the previous chapter, Regum aequabit etc.).
“His humble sauce a radish or an egg”: William Cowper (1731–1800), The Task IV,
168.
Athanatous men prota Theous nomoi hos diakeitai – Tima: (Greek) “The most important
thing is to honour the gods as is required by law.” First line of the Golden Verses,
ascribed to the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras (6th century b.c.).
Cras ingens iterabimus [aequor]: (Latin) “Tomorrow we will take up our course again
over the huge [sea]”. Horace, Odes (Carmina) I.7, 32. The full passage is Nunc vino
pellite curas; cras ingens iterabimus aequor, where the first half means “With wine now
drive away care...”
Pellite cras ingens tum-tum, nomoi hos diakeitai: A drunken mixture of the previous two
quotations; “Push off tomorrow on the huge... pom-pom, as is required.”
Chapter V/6, Drudge
Chorègia: (Greek) Defray of expenses; support; subsidy.
Chapter V/7, The Gaucherie of Vertue
autarkeia: (Greek) Economic self-sufficiency.
Vive la bagatelle: “Hurray for nonsense!” Laurence Sterne (1713–1768, English
novelist), A Sentimental Journey, “The Letter”.
Thelema: Greek word for “will” in the sense of volition. In the novel Gargantua by the
French author François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553), Thélème is the abbey of a highly
exceptional kind of religious order – in fact, an anti-order in an anti-abbey – led by Frère
Jean des Entommeurs; see Gargantua (= Book I in Gargantua et Pantagruel) LII et seq.
Do what you will: Supreme rule of the monastic life at Thélème: Fay ce que vouldras;
see Gargantua LVII.
Book Six, NORTHWARD ALONG THE CANYON
Epigraphs
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, 1124b
Milton: Paradise Regained VI, 313–314. The passage follows almost immediately on the
Milton epigraph for Book V, above.
Pascal: Pensées (1670), No. 353 in the Brunschvicg-edition of 1897 (section VI, “Les
philosophes”), by the French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal
(1623–1662). Je n’admire point l’excès d’une vertu, comme de la valeur, si je ne vois en
même temps l’excès de la vertu opposée...
I. A. Richards: Practical Criticism (1929), Poem III, by the English literary critic and
linguist Ivor Armstrong Richards (1893–1979).
Chapter VI/2, Three Pale Men
Neo-Angular, Neo-Classical, Humanist: According to Chad Walsh (1914–1991), an
American poet and critic and one of the earliest authoritative writers about C. S. Lewis,
the three types presented here are based on T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), Irving Babbitt
(1865–1933) and George Santayana (1863–1952) respectively; see Walsh, The Literary
Legacy of C. S. Lewis (1979), pp. 67–68.
Virtutes paganorum splendida vitia: (Latin) “The virtues of the pagans are splendid
vices.” ?? Source not found, but probably either in Augustine (as “virtutes gentium” etc.,
not “paganorum”) or in Tertullian, De carne Christi.
Epichaerecacia: (Greek) gloating, malicious pleasure, spiteful joy at another’s
misfortune.
Euphuia: (Greek) shapeliness; goodness of disposition; quickness of understanding.
Chapter VI/6, Furthest North
Marxomanni: In addition to the obvious reference to Marxists, there may be a word-play
here on Marcomanni, the name of a Germanic people in the first centuries of the
Christian era. The Marcomanni did not, however, live in Northern Europe but in
Bohemia, in the area of the present-day Czech Republic.
lots of sub-species besides the Marxomanni – Mussolimini, Swastici... Lewis was writing
this less than two months after the astonishing electoral success of both Nazis and
Communists in the German general elections of 31 July 1932. The two parties between
them won more than half of the seats in parliament.
Wind age, wolf age, etc.: Passages from “The Prophecy of the Volva” (Voluspá), which
is part of the Edda, a collection of mythological Old Norse poems made in the 12th
century a.d.
ploughing the sand: The expression might in the present context be a reference to the
poem “Hymn to the Earth”, published in 1929, by the American poet Elinor Wylie
(1885–1928): “Hail, element of earth, receive thy own / And cherish, at thy charitable
breast, / This man, this mongrel beast: / He plows the sand, and, at his hardest need, / He
sows himself for seed.”
Chapter VI/7, Fools’ Paradise
intelligence ... moves nothing: ?? Source not found, but doubtless Lewis was thinking of
something in Aristotle.
Book Seven, SOUTHWARD ALONG THE CANYON
Epigraphs
Virgil: Aeneid V, 626–635. Spoken by Iris, who, sent by Juno, is trying to talk the wives
of the Troyans into burning their ships and so putting an end to the Troyans’ quest for
Italy.
Dante: Inferno IV, 40–42. Per tai difetti, non per altro rio, / Semo perduti, e sol di tanto
offesi, / Che senza speme vivemo in disio.
Bunyan: The Pilgrim’s Progress II (1684), Mr Great-heart speaking to the heroine,
Christiana, during their passage through the Valley of Humiliation.
Chapter VII/1, Vertue is Sick
clouds and wind without rain: Proverbs XXV.14, “Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift
is like clouds and wind without rain.”
Chapter VII/2, John Leading
“Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, he yields up moral questions in despair” (chapter
headline): William Wordsworth (1770–1850), The Prelude XI, 304–305 (or X, 899–900
in the 1805 edition).
Chapter VII/5, Tea on the Lawn
wildflowers (chapter headline): Cf. the first lines of “Auguries of Innocence”, a poem of
William Blake (1757–1827). “To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a
Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.”
Martha: Cf. the figure of Martha in the Gospel of St Luke X.38–42. While Jesus visited
her home, Martha was “cumbered about much serving” and thought her sister Maria was
wrong to sit listening to Him and failing to come and help her.
the language of the heart: Perhaps after Alexander Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, or
Prologue to the Satires, 388. “Language of the heart” there is not opposed to orthodoxy
but to academic learning.
When I became a man, I put away childish things: I Corinthians XIII.11.
The heaven and the heaven of heavens, etc.: From the prayer of King Salomo at the
dedication of the Temple, I Kings VIII.27. “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?
Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much the less
this house that I have builded?”
Chapter 8, This Side by Sunlight
the Valley of Humiliation: An episode in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678),
the book that provided Lewis with the title and part of the general idea for The Pilgrim’s
Regress.
Chapter 9, Wisdom – Exoteric
the manna turned to worms: Exodus XVI.20.
as one of my sons has said, that leaves the world more glorious yet: A reference to a
passage in the Principles of Logic (1883) by the English Idealistic philosopher Francis
Bradley (mentioned before with Green and Bosanquet in the Preface, second paragraph).
“That the glory of this world (...) is appearance leaves the world more glorious, if we feel
it is a show of some fuller splendour; but the sensuous curtain is a deception (...) if it
hides some colourless movement of atoms, some (...) unearthly ballet of bloodless
categories.”
Chapter 10, Wisdom – Esoteric
hawthorn: A reference to the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) and
his short story “Young Goodman Brown”. The hero of this story goes into a wood by
night to attend a Black Mass and is shocked to meet various people there whom he knew
as respectable citizens. Hawthorne also wrote a story called “The Celestial Railroad”
which is a parody on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
Marx, Spencer, etc. (author’s footnotes): Karl Marx (1818–1883), German philosopher;
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), English philosopher who attempted to apply Darwin’s
theory of natural selection to all phenomena; Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), Jewish Dutch
philosopher; Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), Austrian social philosopher and founder of
Anthroposophy; Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), German philosopher; Bernard Bosanquet
(1848–1923), British Idealistic philosopher.
Chapter 12, More Wisdom
all this choir of heaven and furniture of earth are imaginations: From the Principles of
Human Knowledge, §6, by George Berkeley (1685–1753), the Irish bishop and
philosopher who became chiefly known for his “subjective-idealistic” theory of
knowledge. Cf. note to IV/3 above, on “Esse is percipi”.
I am the Imaginer: I am one of his imaginations: See note to VIII/1 on “I am the doubter
and the doubt”, below.
evangelium eternum: (Latin) “Eternal Gospel”, i.e. Pantheism.
Book Eight, AT BAY
Epigraphs
Hesiod: Works and Days (Erga kai hèmerai), 293–297, by the ancient Greek didactical
poet Hesiod (8th century b.c.).
Hazlitt: The Round Table (1817) I.26, “On Classical Education”, by the English critic
and essayist William Hazlitt (1778–1830).
Chapter VIII/1, Two Kinds of Monist
Monist: Monism is the doctrine that everything in the universe derives from a single
thing or principle, e.g. from spirit or from matter, so that no essential distinction can be
made between God and Nature. It is the philosophical counterpart of Pantheism.
The flesh is but a living corruption: After Genesis VI.12, “And God looked upon the
earth and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.”
I am the doubter and the doubt: From the sonnet “Brahma” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
(cf. note to V/4). “They reckon ill who leave me out; / When me they fly, I am the wings;
/ I am the doubter and the doubt, / I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.”
filthy rags: A reference to Isaiah LXIV.6, where a more literal reading would be “dirty
sanitary towels”. “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags...”
Chapter VIII/3, John Forgets Himself
sensuous curtain: See the quotation from Bradley in the second note to VII/9 above.
Chapter VIII/4, John Finds his Voice
Pheidian fancies: From Pheidias or Phidias, famous Greek sculptor of the 5th century
b.c.; no extant original can be surely ascribed to him.
Chapter VIII/7, The Hermit
Stoics, Manichees, Spartiates: Stoics in ancient Greece were members of the school of
philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium (c. 335–c. 265 b.c.), holding that virtue and
happiness can be attained only by submission to destiny and the natural law; hence the
wider meaning of “stoicism” as indifference or the attempt at indifference to pleasure and
pain. – Manichees were followers of the Persian prophet Mani (mid-third century a.d.),
who supposed good and evil to be equally original and equally strong powers in the
universe. – Spartiates are Spartans, the ruling class in the ancient Greek city state of
Sparta; they were famous for their discipline and military prowess and austere way of
life.
better bread than is made of wheat: A fixed expression for “the best as the enemy of the
good”; perhaps originating from the Spanish through a passage in Cervantes’s Don
Quixote, chapter VII, where the hero is asked by a niece why he won’t simply stay at
home rather than always going into the world in quest of “better bread than ever is made
of wheat.”
a fox without a tail: From one of the Fables ascribed to the semi-legendary Greek author
Aesop (6th century b.c.). A fox lost his tail in a poacher’s trap. When all the other
animals laughed at him he tried to persuade his fellow foxes that they had better all cut
off their tails since life was better that way.
Chapter VIII/8, History’s Words
if the feet have been put right the hands and the head will come right: Free interpretation
of an obscure or at least ambiguous passage in the Gospel of St John, XIII.10.
Chapter VIII/9, Matter of Fact
Medium Aevum: (Latin) Middle Ages.
Homer in Pagus ridiculing some of the story pictures...: ??
Clopinel / Jean de Meung: Jean de Meung (1250–c.1305), author of the second, by far
the largest part of the Roman de la Rose. He had a strong bent of cynical and satirical
remarks about women and erotic love. Cf. second note to IV/2 above and The Allegory of
Love, pp. 144ff. His nickname Clopinel or Chopinel means “cripple”.
Chapter VIII/10, Archtype and Ectypon
the perilous siege in which only One can sit: See note on Siege Perilous in the Preface,
above.
“out of the soul’s bliss,” he said, “there shall be a flowing over into the flesh”: ??. Source
not found; but in his essay “Transposition” – a sermon held in 1944 – Lewis while quoted
the same words referred to St Augustine.
Manna kept, is worms: See first note to VII/9 above.
Book Nine, ACROSS THE CANYON
Epigraphs
Langland: Piers the Plowman XIII, 181–185 (C text), a long allegorical poem ascribed to
William Langland (c. 1331–c. 1399).
George Macdonald: Lilith (1895) XL, “The House of Death”, by the Scottish poet,
novelist and preacher George MacDonald (1824–1905).
Chapter IX/3, This Side by Darkness
prophesied soft things: After Isaiah XXX.9–10, “This is a rebellious people (...) which
say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak
unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits.”
I am no negation: Personified Death is here denying a famous assertion by the Greek
philosopher Epicurus (341–270 b.c.), in his Letter to Menoeceus, explaining why he did
not fear death: “Where death is, I am not, and where I am, death is not.”
Chapter IX/4, Securus Te Projice
Securus te projice: (Latin) “Throw thyself without fear [onto Him; He will hold and will
cure thee].” St Augustine, Confessions VIII.11.27. Proice te securus! excipiet et sanabit
te.
you must dive into this water: “Must” as an inevitability, as appears from George
Macdonald: An Anthology, edited by C. S. Lewis (1946), No. 279: “That is the way ...
You must throw yourself in. There is no other way.”
Chapter IX/5, Across the Canyon
Semele: Greek mythological figure, a princess from Thebes. The supreme god Zeus in
the shape of a human begot Dionysius by Semele. She wished to see him also in his full
divine power and majesty. This was granted, but she did not survive it
Chapter IX/6, Nella sua Voluntade
Nella sua voluntade: (Italian) “In His will [is our peace].” Dante, Paradiso III, 85. E la
sua volontate è nostra pace – which in fact means “And His will is our peace.”
Slikisteinsauga: (Old Norse, or perhaps pseudo-Old Norse of Lewis’s invention)
“Sleekstone eyes”. When the now obsolete word “sleekstone” was still in use, it meant a
smooth stone used to make something else smooth (sleek) by rubbing or polishing it. The
name somehow seems intended here to suggest eyes that can see things very far off.
Book Ten, THE REGRESS
Epigraphs
Plato: The Republic (Politeia) VII, 516–517.
Bernardus Silvestris: Cosmographia, “Microcosmos” IV, 31ff, by the twelfth-century
philosophical poet Bernardus Silvestris, a medieval Platonist in the “school of Chartres”.
Lewis quoted these same lines in a different translation, with the Latin original in a
footnote, in The Allegory of Love (see notes to IV/2 above) III.6, p. 95.
Law: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728) XI, by the British Anglican
divine William Law (1686–1761).
Chapter X/1, The Same yet Different
You all know that security is mortals’ greatest enemy: Shakespeare, Macbeth III.5, 32–
33. “And you all know security / Is mortals’ chiefest enemy”.
tenth hierarch: The spirit coming after and being outside the nine celestial choirs of
angels.
Wormwood: Yet another synonym for Satan, borrowed from Revelation VIII.10–11.
“And there fell a great star from heaven ... and the name of the star is called Wormwood;
and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters,
because they were made bitter.”
Ahriman: The Persian prince of evil, who tempted Zoraster but was defeated by him;
Ahriman brought death to the world by slaying the prototypes of man and the animals.
Chapter X/2, The Synthetic Man
synthetic man: Cf. C. S. Lewis’s Collected Letters I, p. 909, letter of 22 June 1930 to
Arthur Greeves. “Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have
been quite different in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few
miles of country for six generations (...).We (...) who live on a standardised international
diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges,
& Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in
sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted.
a man of shreds and patches: Shakespeare, Hamlet III.4, 102. “A king of shreds and
patches”.
Rabelais, “Do what you will”, Thelemites: See note to V/7 above.
Habe caritatem et fac quod vis: (Latin) “Have charity and do what you will.” From St
Augustine’s seventh sermon on the First Epistle of John, cap. VIII: Dilige, et quod vis
fac. This saying is often ascribed to Augustine slightly modified, Ama et fac quod vis. In
this form its meaning is easily construed as “Fall in love and do what you will.” Lewis
modifies the original in a different way, which according to Walter Hooper was inspired
by a sermon of St Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes; cf. Lewis’s Collected Letters II, p.
194, note 50.
“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets”: Matthew XXII.40.
When asked by the Pharisees, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?”,
Jesus answers, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like
unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets.”
Chapter X/3, Limbo
in desire without hope: Dante, Inferno IV, 42. “Che senza speme vivemo in disio.” See
also second epigraph for Book VII above.
Men say that his love and his wrath are one thing: ?? Lewis may have been thinking of
George MacDonald in passages like the one in Unspoken Sermons II.3, quoted as No. 84
in Lewis’s MacDonald Anthology (see second note to IX/4): “The terror of God is but the
other side of His love.”
Chapter X/5, Superbia
Superbia: (Latin) “Pride”, one of the “seven deadly sins” as defined in medieval
theology. The others were Ira (Wrath), Gula (Gluttony), Avaritia (Avarice or
Covetousness), Invidia (Envy), Accidia (Sloth) and Superbia (Pride).
“When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man”: From Te Deum Laudamus, widely
known as the Ambrosian Hymn since it got wrongly attributed to St Ambrose. Tu ad
liberandum suscepturus hominem non horruisti virginis uterum.
when she said that He had regarded the lowliness of His hand-maiden: From the
Maginificat, the hymn of the Virgin Mary after Elisabeth has told her “blessed art thou
among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”, Luke I.48.
Chapter X/7, Luxuria
Luxuria: (Latin) “Lust”; cf. note to Superbia in X/5, above.
a fountain of writhing and reptilian life: The scene must have been inspired by Dante’s
Inferno, Book XXV.
Lilith: In Babylonian mythology, Lilith was a female spirit, childless and with poisonous
breasts with which she tried to kill babies. In the Bible there is a single mention of her in
Isaiah XXXIV.14, as “the satyr” (AV) or “night creatures” (NIV); in medieval Jewish
mythology she became the malicious “first wife of Adam”. For C. S. Lewis the figure of
Lilith personified what he regarded as a specifically feminine vice – the craving to be
desirable rather than beautiful. See also his novel That Hideous Strength III.3, where Jane
Studdock is reminded of the difference between Eve and Lilith. A different and probably
earlier version of this poem is to be found as a postscript of Lewis’s letter to Arthur
Greeves of 29 April 1930 (Collected Letters I, pp. 895–896).
Chapter X/8, The Northern Dragon
serpens nisi serpentem comederit: (Latin) “It isn’t a serpent if it doesn’t eat serpents.” ??
Source not found.
druery: Love-making.
Chapter X/9, The Southern Dragon
Behemoth: An animal mentioned in the Old Testament, Job XL.10, perhaps a
hippopotamus but certainly very large and strong.
Leviathan: A huge aquatic animal mentioned in several places of the Old Testament: Job
XLI.1, Psalms LXXIV.14 and CIV.26, and Isaiah XXVII.1.
resurgam: (Latin) “I shall rise again.”
Io Paean: Paean was the physician to the gods of ancient Greece, while Io was an
exclamation often expressing suffering and invoking help; it later came to be used as a
shout of praise or thankgsgiving, a cry of triumph or exultation, as Vertue uses it here.
Chapter X/10, The Brook
Osirian: From Osiris, Egyptian god of the lower world and judge of the dead.