Notes on Perelandra

Published in 1943, Perelandra is certainly based on the studies Lewis did between 1939 and 1941 for a series of lectures on Milton's Paradise Lost (these lectures were later published as A Preface to Paradise Lost). In PL Milton deals with a number of the same issues presented in Perelandra, most notably Book IX and the temptation of Eve. To a friend he writes: "I've got Ransom to Venus and through his first conversation with the "Eve" of that world; a difficult chapter. . . I may have embarked on the impossible. The woman has got to combine characteristics which the Fall has put poles apart--she's got to be in some ways like a Pagan goddess and in other ways like the Blessed Virgin. But, if one can get even a fraction of it into words, it is worth doing" (LL 195; Nov. 9, 1941). To Arthur Greeves he notes: "[In Perelandra] the idea is that Venus is at the Adam-and-Eve stage: i.e. the first two rational creatures have just appeared and are still innocent. My hero arrives in time to prevent their 'falling' as our first pair did" (TST 492; Dec. 23, 1941).

While Milton's professed theme was "to justify the ways of God to men," Lewis task was less grandiose. As we have noted, his interest was in retelling a familiar myth in such a fashion as to give it new life and to suggest what an earthly myth might look like on another planet. Other sources of inspiration came from vivid pictures of floating islands, the golden sky, the towering rocks on the fixed land, and recollections of childhood fears and dreams of gigantic insects in endless caves.

According to Green and Hooper, Perelandra "is Lewis's supreme imaginative triumph in the creation of another world so vivid that any other picture of Venus becomes preposterous" (170). Though some reviewers thought it too theological (one said, "he should read more Verne and less Aquinas"), others noticed Lewis' "rare power of inventive imagination" and the working of a "poetic imagination at full blast," noting "whole passages of prose poetry-that inevitably suggest the sweep of Dante and Milton."

Among the themes he focuses upon, the following are noteworthy:

• Continuing the idea from OSP, Perelandra voices Lewis' fears about the ways in which scientists like Weston would carry out a ruthless extermination of possible inhabitants of other planets so as to preserve the human race.
• The significance of free-will (choice) and its relationship to obedience; choices must be made and they have consequences; the consequences may be far-reaching.
• The re-telling of the Christian story of the temptation in a pre-lapsarian world-sinless, painless, without deceit.
• The speculation that myths and the mythological on earth may represent in corrupted forms spiritual realities found in purer forms in places or worlds not fallen.
• The role of Ransom as a Christ-figure, as "savior" of Perelandra; the role of human involvement in the fulfilling of God's will.

Arthur Clarke, a famous writer of science fiction and later chairman of the British Interplanetary Society wrote Lewis a long letter condemning his views on science fiction and interplanetary flight. Lewis' response is insightful:

I quite agree that most scientification is on the level of cowboy boys'stories. But I think the fundamental moral assumptions in popular fiction are a very important symptom. If you found that the most popular stories were those in which the cowboy always betrayed his pals to the crooks and deserted his girl for the vamp, I don't think it could be unimportant. I don't of course think at the moment many scientists are budding Westons: but I do think (hang it all, I live among scientists!) that a point of view not unlike Weston's is on the way. . . I agree Technology is per se neutral: but a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the Universe. Certainly, if he goes on his present course much further man can not be trusted with knowledge" (cited in G & H 173; Dec. 7, 1943).