A Letter of Life, Longing, and Literature
By Sam Koenen
Dear Annie,
The term is finally over and I’m up to my elbows in freshman essays. Very few freshman these days have any original ideas; most of their imaginations are nothing more than shriveled-up beans. Not entirely their fault though; few of them had good parents like yours to teach them to read and delight in good books—books that are red beef and strong beer for the soul.
Your question about the forest in Midsummer Night’s Dream merits a bit of discussion because the answer gets at something close to the heart of life and literature. You’ve always been good about humoring your talkative uncle. Perhaps you’ll indulge him once again?
You are certainly correct about how Shakespeare uses forests in his plays. Many interesting things happen there: disappointed lovers join good-natured outlaw bands, fairies cavort, witches prophesy, and Bottom both loses his head and becomes the beloved of the Fairy Queen. Anything can happen in the forests of Shakespeare’s plays, because the Bard is in a long line of British writers who inherited both the Anglo-Saxon suspicion toward nature and the Middle English romantic delight in a life lived in the woods (remember Robin Hood?). So, for Shakespeare and other writers, the forest (or nature in general) is a place where odd things can be expected to occur. The forest holds both great danger and great delight, often together in the same objects.
Many writers (usually British) explain these odd, unusual happenings by saying that one has somehow wandered into Faery. I know you and I have talked about Faery before, but it won’t do you any harm to hear about it again (especially since it tends to make you very excited). As you know, Faery is a land all its own; its inhabitants are unique (elves, fairies, trolls, talking trees and animals, etc.); and above all, it is a place of intensely powerful desire that nearly overwhelms the one who experiences it. C. S. Lewis explained this desire as a type of longing that he called sehnsucht. For Lewis, sehnsucht is caused by well-known objects like a flower, a mountain, or a meal with friends; but the longing itself is for something far greater than the object that motivated it. In fact, the longing is so intense we fear that nothing in our experience would possibly be able to satisfy it. This leads to something very interesting—and very important: the longing itself becomes pleasant. Lewis explains by saying that the quality of the experience “is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.”
Do you see the problem here? A common flower can produce a type of longing that is more desirable than any other satisfaction in Creation. But how? How can a simple flower cause something that is greater than not only itself but greater than anything in Creation?
Quite the conundrum. But before I answer these questions, I want you to think about when you’ve experienced this sehnsucht that Lewis is talking about. I know you’ve felt it in Narnia, as your parents and your aunt did. Also in Hobbiton and Lothlorien? Something about the agrarian simplicity of the hobbits causes in me an ache of longing, the same longing I feel after reading about beautiful and dangerous Galadriel. I suspect you’ve felt sehnsucht when reading Wind in the Willows, especially the chapter about the Dawn Piper. In fact, most places that I’ve experienced sehnsucht is through literature. But because I’ve experienced it so intensely there, I’ve felt it in ordinary life as well: a holiday meal, your baby cousin’s smiling face, picnics on warm summer evenings, talking with a favorite niece about books and stories over deep cups of cocoa. Can you think of other experiences with sehnsucht?
Other writers have discussed this very concept. Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton’s famous friend, says we feel sehnsucht when we have a glimpse of the “Unknown Country.” In books and in landscapes Belloc often sees things that create an intense longing for something very familiar but perhaps never really experienced. His Unknown Country is Spenser’s Faery, Lewis’s Perelandra, Tolkien’s Lothlorien, Tennysons’s “horns of Elfland,” and Hamlet’s “Undiscovered Country.” All of these authors have tried to describe the same place, a land of great beauty and loveliness—a land that can satisfy the most possessing sehnsucht.
This brings us to the answer of our question: how can a flower, a book, or a meal create a longing so much more intense than itself. Our mutual friend, C. S. Lewis, answered it this way: “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our past—are good images of what we really desire; but…they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” To be more explicit, my dear Annie, these things that cause such an intense longing in us are quite simply—quite gloriously—signs of Christ and His kingdom breaking through into this present age. They are evidence that the King is on the move, that the Curse is losing its grip on the world. Every day the Lord of Glory pierces a million holes into the smothering fabric of the Curse—it cannot hold. Glory is inevitably, unmistakably breaking through to His victorious enthronement on this earth.
So what does this mean for you and me? I think there are two lessons for us. First, we should delight in the good things the Lord has given us. Although fallen, both Creation and man can point toward the age to come. This means, of course, that both man and Creation have value, and the work of the Church (and therefore of every Christian, including you) is to work alongside Christ to lift the Curse from Creation and man—to see the Father’s will done on earth just as it is in heaven.
This first lesson teaches us not to despise any man or any part of Creation. As your father has taught you, Christ Jesus will not only save man from his sin; He will also complete man’s work to rule and subdue the earth by lifting the Curse that enslaves it. Both of these glorious tasks He will accomplish on that glorious day when the coming age fully breaks through—when we see Christ as He really is.
The second lesson is equally important. In Lewis’s quote above, he also gives a warning about loving books and music in the wrong way: they “are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.” The things of this middle earth are good indeed, but they are gifts. We are to delight in them as gifts, but not to the point that we forget about the One who gave them. He gave books and music and many other sehnsucht-evoking things so that we would learn what joy and delight are, and so that we would learn Who is most joyous and most delightful. Even when a book doesn’t cause the ultimate desire of sehnsucht, we still learn about the Lord of life, who is so gracious that He gives us pleasant things simply to give us joy.
Well, niece Annie, I’ve gone on long enough and have more than answered your question. Thank you once again for humoring your wordy old uncle. If you want to read more about sehnsucht, try Lewis’s “Weight of Glory” and the first part of his Surprised by Joy. Give your parents my love, and take your brothers and sisters to Faery Land every once in a while.
With great affection,
Your loving uncle
Dear Annie,
The term is finally over and I’m up to my elbows in freshman essays. Very few freshman these days have any original ideas; most of their imaginations are nothing more than shriveled-up beans. Not entirely their fault though; few of them had good parents like yours to teach them to read and delight in good books—books that are red beef and strong beer for the soul.
Your question about the forest in Midsummer Night’s Dream merits a bit of discussion because the answer gets at something close to the heart of life and literature. You’ve always been good about humoring your talkative uncle. Perhaps you’ll indulge him once again?
You are certainly correct about how Shakespeare uses forests in his plays. Many interesting things happen there: disappointed lovers join good-natured outlaw bands, fairies cavort, witches prophesy, and Bottom both loses his head and becomes the beloved of the Fairy Queen. Anything can happen in the forests of Shakespeare’s plays, because the Bard is in a long line of British writers who inherited both the Anglo-Saxon suspicion toward nature and the Middle English romantic delight in a life lived in the woods (remember Robin Hood?). So, for Shakespeare and other writers, the forest (or nature in general) is a place where odd things can be expected to occur. The forest holds both great danger and great delight, often together in the same objects.
Many writers (usually British) explain these odd, unusual happenings by saying that one has somehow wandered into Faery. I know you and I have talked about Faery before, but it won’t do you any harm to hear about it again (especially since it tends to make you very excited). As you know, Faery is a land all its own; its inhabitants are unique (elves, fairies, trolls, talking trees and animals, etc.); and above all, it is a place of intensely powerful desire that nearly overwhelms the one who experiences it. C. S. Lewis explained this desire as a type of longing that he called sehnsucht. For Lewis, sehnsucht is caused by well-known objects like a flower, a mountain, or a meal with friends; but the longing itself is for something far greater than the object that motivated it. In fact, the longing is so intense we fear that nothing in our experience would possibly be able to satisfy it. This leads to something very interesting—and very important: the longing itself becomes pleasant. Lewis explains by saying that the quality of the experience “is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.”
Do you see the problem here? A common flower can produce a type of longing that is more desirable than any other satisfaction in Creation. But how? How can a simple flower cause something that is greater than not only itself but greater than anything in Creation?
Quite the conundrum. But before I answer these questions, I want you to think about when you’ve experienced this sehnsucht that Lewis is talking about. I know you’ve felt it in Narnia, as your parents and your aunt did. Also in Hobbiton and Lothlorien? Something about the agrarian simplicity of the hobbits causes in me an ache of longing, the same longing I feel after reading about beautiful and dangerous Galadriel. I suspect you’ve felt sehnsucht when reading Wind in the Willows, especially the chapter about the Dawn Piper. In fact, most places that I’ve experienced sehnsucht is through literature. But because I’ve experienced it so intensely there, I’ve felt it in ordinary life as well: a holiday meal, your baby cousin’s smiling face, picnics on warm summer evenings, talking with a favorite niece about books and stories over deep cups of cocoa. Can you think of other experiences with sehnsucht?
Other writers have discussed this very concept. Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton’s famous friend, says we feel sehnsucht when we have a glimpse of the “Unknown Country.” In books and in landscapes Belloc often sees things that create an intense longing for something very familiar but perhaps never really experienced. His Unknown Country is Spenser’s Faery, Lewis’s Perelandra, Tolkien’s Lothlorien, Tennysons’s “horns of Elfland,” and Hamlet’s “Undiscovered Country.” All of these authors have tried to describe the same place, a land of great beauty and loveliness—a land that can satisfy the most possessing sehnsucht.
This brings us to the answer of our question: how can a flower, a book, or a meal create a longing so much more intense than itself. Our mutual friend, C. S. Lewis, answered it this way: “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our past—are good images of what we really desire; but…they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” To be more explicit, my dear Annie, these things that cause such an intense longing in us are quite simply—quite gloriously—signs of Christ and His kingdom breaking through into this present age. They are evidence that the King is on the move, that the Curse is losing its grip on the world. Every day the Lord of Glory pierces a million holes into the smothering fabric of the Curse—it cannot hold. Glory is inevitably, unmistakably breaking through to His victorious enthronement on this earth.
So what does this mean for you and me? I think there are two lessons for us. First, we should delight in the good things the Lord has given us. Although fallen, both Creation and man can point toward the age to come. This means, of course, that both man and Creation have value, and the work of the Church (and therefore of every Christian, including you) is to work alongside Christ to lift the Curse from Creation and man—to see the Father’s will done on earth just as it is in heaven.
This first lesson teaches us not to despise any man or any part of Creation. As your father has taught you, Christ Jesus will not only save man from his sin; He will also complete man’s work to rule and subdue the earth by lifting the Curse that enslaves it. Both of these glorious tasks He will accomplish on that glorious day when the coming age fully breaks through—when we see Christ as He really is.
The second lesson is equally important. In Lewis’s quote above, he also gives a warning about loving books and music in the wrong way: they “are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.” The things of this middle earth are good indeed, but they are gifts. We are to delight in them as gifts, but not to the point that we forget about the One who gave them. He gave books and music and many other sehnsucht-evoking things so that we would learn what joy and delight are, and so that we would learn Who is most joyous and most delightful. Even when a book doesn’t cause the ultimate desire of sehnsucht, we still learn about the Lord of life, who is so gracious that He gives us pleasant things simply to give us joy.
Well, niece Annie, I’ve gone on long enough and have more than answered your question. Thank you once again for humoring your wordy old uncle. If you want to read more about sehnsucht, try Lewis’s “Weight of Glory” and the first part of his Surprised by Joy. Give your parents my love, and take your brothers and sisters to Faery Land every once in a while.
With great affection,
Your loving uncle
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