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A review by sorinahiggins
Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams
5.0
Follow my Charles Williams blog, The Oddest Inkling, for more context on this book and (later) a summary and other thoughts. William Blake once wrote: "For every thing that lives is Holy"; and yet, Christ made division between subjects of the kingdom vs. slaves to the darkness when He said: "He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left" (Matthew 25:33). In Descent into Hell, Charles Williams sees beyond that fundamental opposition, which is a byproduct of temporal reality, into the deeper truth where those contradictory ends of a rope join and are one.
As he usually does, Williams creates several threads and traces them throughout this story. The first thread is that of "The Play." A great poet, Peter Stanhope, has just finished his latest play, and his home community is about to begin its first rehearsals.
The second thread is that of a doppleganger: a ghostly or spiritual double. This is the double of a young lady named Pauline. It is her secret terror, the unbearable sickening agony that drives her into houses, into company, out of solitude, for fear she will meet it and have to look it in the face. But, Mercifully, her fear is taken from her so that she can face it. By means of The Doctrine of Substitution or The Way of Exchange, Stanhope offers to take her fear and carry it for her.
The third thread is a pretentious little actress named Adela and an historian named Wentworth. Wentworth has a crush on Adela and fantasizes about her, and gradually trains his spirit to feed itself on its fantasies to the exclusion of reality. Wentworth creates a succubus out of his own imagination and establishes an erotic relationship with it. He retreats more and more into his own lurid, sordid realm of bodily and mental perversion, climbing down down down a rope towards a Hell of his own making.
Similarly, an unnamed workman, worn out with a life of ill treatment, commits suicide by hanging himself with a rope very like the one down which Wentworth is climbing in his mind. It just so happens that the man hangs himself from Wentworth's house -- before it is built. The dead man, in the past, and Wentworth, in his sullied mind, stand elbow to elbow unaware of each other.
There is another character from the past occupying the same Hill. He is Pauline's ancestor, and he was burnt to death at the stake by Bloody Mary some 400 years earlier. Pauline hears about his martyrdom, and Stanhope suggests that she can carry her ancestor's fear for him.
Descent into Hell really is CW's best book. The pacing of the book is admirable, with cycles of intensity alternating with passages of vague visionary stasis and tranquil revelations unfolding. Run out & read it, now!
As he usually does, Williams creates several threads and traces them throughout this story. The first thread is that of "The Play." A great poet, Peter Stanhope, has just finished his latest play, and his home community is about to begin its first rehearsals.
The second thread is that of a doppleganger: a ghostly or spiritual double. This is the double of a young lady named Pauline. It is her secret terror, the unbearable sickening agony that drives her into houses, into company, out of solitude, for fear she will meet it and have to look it in the face. But, Mercifully, her fear is taken from her so that she can face it. By means of The Doctrine of Substitution or The Way of Exchange, Stanhope offers to take her fear and carry it for her.
The third thread is a pretentious little actress named Adela and an historian named Wentworth. Wentworth has a crush on Adela and fantasizes about her, and gradually trains his spirit to feed itself on its fantasies to the exclusion of reality. Wentworth creates a succubus out of his own imagination and establishes an erotic relationship with it. He retreats more and more into his own lurid, sordid realm of bodily and mental perversion, climbing down down down a rope towards a Hell of his own making.
Similarly, an unnamed workman, worn out with a life of ill treatment, commits suicide by hanging himself with a rope very like the one down which Wentworth is climbing in his mind. It just so happens that the man hangs himself from Wentworth's house -- before it is built. The dead man, in the past, and Wentworth, in his sullied mind, stand elbow to elbow unaware of each other.
There is another character from the past occupying the same Hill. He is Pauline's ancestor, and he was burnt to death at the stake by Bloody Mary some 400 years earlier. Pauline hears about his martyrdom, and Stanhope suggests that she can carry her ancestor's fear for him.
Descent into Hell really is CW's best book. The pacing of the book is admirable, with cycles of intensity alternating with passages of vague visionary stasis and tranquil revelations unfolding. Run out & read it, now!