I thought there would be a grave beauty, a sunset splendour
In being the last of one's kind: a topmost moment as one watched
The huge wave curving over Atlantis, the shrouded barge
Turning away with wounded Arthur, or Ilium burning.
Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity
Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the depths of time,
Who could pick up our signal, who could understand a story. There won't be.
Between the new Hominidae and us who are dying, already
There rises a barrier across which no voice can ever carry,
For devils are unmaking language. We must let that alone forever.
Uproot your loves, one by one, with care, from the future,
And trusting to no future, receive the massive thrust
And surge of the many-dimensional timeless rays converging
On this small, significant dew drop, the present that mirrors all.
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Comments
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C.S. Lewis was too pessimistic, and too narrow-minded. Did he really think no one in the future would love the things of the past, and no one would create new things that were any good? If so, he was wrong. He was a great scholar and a great prose writer, but his poetry was mediocre.
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i disagree. i think you are allowing your presuppositions to damper your review.
if he was too narrow-minded, how could he be a great scholar and prose writer?
this poem is brillaint and he nailed it; "for devil's are unmaking language". as people, we are bombarded with convenant options to avoid true communication through language. we are loosing the ability to communicate in person. see also: "sexting".
also, people no longer appreciate words like they used to. a majority of people do not have an interest in poetry anymore, and while of course there are still millions who do, it is quite plain to see that television and movies have replaced stories and poetry.
it is sad, probably why Lewis allowed his burden to be shared through the lost art he was speaking of.
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Knowledgeable literary hindsight allows for literary foresight.
Lewis senses there will be no literary advancement for mankind;
that its monumental achievements won't be torn down so much
as left to erode, becoming unrecognizable.
Maybe the communication breakthrough of the computer
will be the easy deterioration of communication.
The zeal with which businesses compete to distort wording in their commercial names: "Kwik Flo", "Kristal Water".
Lewis foresees the survival of literature, not as heroic achievement, but like Eliot:
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
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an error?
From guest Ali (contact)
I think the word here is supposed to Hominidae, not Hembidae (at least that is what is in the first edition of his book Poems and Hembidae doesn't apear to be a word).
MOD MESSAGE
That does appear to make more sense. We'll use Hominidae until proved wrong
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