Two men and a hobbit....

C.S.Lewis was a good friend with Tolkien... and it is a bit of a story.

When they first met, as academics at Oxford, Lewis was a protestant atheist, Tolkien a catholic believer. However, their common interest in all things linguistic, legendary and Nordic brought them together. The bond was sealed when Lewis became a Christian. Lewis was one of the first people to whom Tolkien showed 'The Hobbit'.

Oh one night the two men argued...or "discussed" ...

On a warm September night in 1931, three men went for an after-dinner walk on the grounds of Magdalen College, part of Oxford University. They took a stroll on Addison's Walk, a beautiful tree-shaded path along the River Cherwell, and got into an argument that lasted into the wee hours of the morning -- and left a lasting mark on world literature.

At the time, only one of the men had any kind of reputation: Henry Victor Dyson, a bon vivant scholar who had shared tables and bandied words with the likes of T.E. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Bertrand Russell. His two companions were little-known Oxford academics with a shared taste for Icelandic sagas, Anglo-Saxon verse and the austere cultural mystique of "the North." Few people remember Dyson now, while millions celebrate the names of his companions: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Yet the works that made their reputations -- "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" for Tolkien, "The Chronicles of Narnia" for Lewis -- were profoundly shaped by that night-long argument and the bond it cemented. It's possible that Tolkien's Middle-earth would have remained entirely a private obsession, and quite likely that Lewis would never have found the gateway to Narnia.

"Lovers seek for privacy," Lewis wrote in "The Four Loves" (1960). "Friends find this solitude about them, this barrier between them and the herd, whether they want it or not." Lewis and Tolkien quickly found this cozy solitude after they met in 1926, during a gathering of the English faculty at Merton College. Both men had fought in World War I, and come back scarred by its industrial savagery. They had seen the worst the 20th century had to offer ...up to that point, anyway...and took paradoxical comfort in studying blood-soaked Viking Age stories of ambiguous heroes and gods battling monsters and the outer darkness, tales short on the milk of human kindness but long on sardonic humor. ("Broad spears are becoming fashionable nowadays," a character remarks in "Grettir's Saga," just after being pierced with one.)

On that fateful night in 1931, Lewis was in the midst of a fretful return to religious faith. Raised as an Irish Protestant, he had become an agnostic as a teenager. Though he came back to accepting the idea of a divine presence in 1929, he continued to resist Christianity. It remained for Dyson, a High Anglican, and Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, to push him over the threshold -- though it literally took them all night. As they marched back and forth along Addison's Walk, Tolkien argued for the literal and mythological truth of the Resurrection of Christ.

By all accounts, the key moment came when Lewis declared that myths are lies, albeit "lies breathed through silver." Tolkien replied, "No, they are not," and demanded to know why Lewis could accept Icelandic sagas as vehicles of truth while demanding that the Gospels meet some higher standard. Hours past midnight, Tolkien finally went home to bed, leaving Dyson to carry on the campaign. Tolkien's argument -- that the Resurrection was the truest of all stories, with God as its poet -- may not sound particularly convincing to nonbelievers (nor indeed to some Christians), but to a man committed to the idea of myth as the only way to express higher truths, it was irresistible. Two weeks later, Lewis told a friend he had once again fully embraced Christianity: "My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it."


"The Pilgrim's Regress," Lewis produced a torrent of books, essays, novels and radio talks, all works of Christian apologetics or stories with obvious spiritual preoccupations. Even as he churned out these works, Lewis prodded Tolkien to pull together and complete his stories of Middle-earth -- the private universe that had preoccupied him for most of his life. Thanks to that ceaseless, friendly prodding, Tolkien published "The Hobbit" to great acclaim in 1937. The prodding continued during the long, fitful gestation of its out sized sequel, "The Lord of the Rings," which finally saw the light of print in the mid-1950s. "The unpayable debt that I owe to [Lewis] was not 'influence' as it is ordinarily understood but sheer encouragement," Tolkien recalled. "He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby."


It seems that the collaboration between these two men began with an argument and ended with something transcendent...a kinship of encouragement. You see that is what to me friendship is. It isn't the mindless yes...or agreement that too often fellow travelers find...but rather the forcing to the surface the real parts of us...that make use move in the direction we must...or should. Friendships like theirs are not found in apathetic, dreary compliments, but rather the tugging, pulling, prodding...forcing of thought...and that to me is what sets apart true friendships. It is the outcome...it is our desire to reach the other persons...person. It is what makes us better.

And the proof is...both men offered themselves and the world better literature and the love of a hobbit and a lion...and a fateful night...became a literary marriage of friendship...encouragement...and transformation...through thoughtful argument.

I rather like that. If I were to examine my most dear friendships...it would be the ones that did not compliment me...but forced me to think...made me argue with my own position...in that way...changing...and altering my course, hopefully for the better.



A question...is sometimes the only thing that an honest friend can ask...

I hope that one day...I can ask such a question...for a friend...

oh...and Ramble On...I just love this tune...you should too...if you love a hobbit.


Love,
the Lass