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A review by glendonrfrank
Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams
5.0
This was one of my favourite reads of my undergrad, and it was about time to return to it.
The Inklings are fascinating because they as an image and Lewis as a particular have been claimed by a lot of fundamentalist evangelicalism when more often than not, they were weird counter-cultural men who are difficult to put into clean boxes. None exemplify this more than Charles Williams, the bizarre mystic who is definitely hindered by the views of his time (see the unfortunate tangent he takes with Sodom before introducing his Gomorrah metaphor...) while still playing with radical ideas that shake the boundaries of the game. Descent into Hell is the centerpiece of this, one-part Passion Play, one-part manifesto, and one-part collapse of Dante and Milton into modernist stream-of-consciousness. There's almost an overwhelming number of things going on, as Williams flips through his central figures, building his metaphors, always mixing reality and hyperreality in a way that digs into the psychology of his cast.
Obviously, this is a book about two movements - one towards outward-facing love, and one towards inward-facing apathy. But it's the way Williams portrays it, the perfection in which he depicts inward tensions with such pinpoint accuracy. The intermingling of past, present, physical, and spiritual is used to get at the inner realities of human existence, the consuming circlings of anxiety, dread, self-doubt, etc. But while lesser writers like Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker use similar tropes to peddle their visions of "spiritual warfare," creating cultures of fear and separation, Willaims' primary interest is connection. In Williams' worldview, love is a potent force, tying all people together and ultimately bringing about transformation. This, I think, is the idea that most struck me and my classmates - while our protagonist Pauline is often terrified of the strange forces around her, she eventually comes to learn the inherent goodness in these forces and finding, in turn, inherent goodness in herself; they are, after all, fundamentally the same thing. Just like in Chesterton, the terrifying ultimately becomes the familiar. Our fear gives way to recognition, which gives way to love. It is only in failing to love that we damn ourselves into the abyss of self.
Coming back to it some four years later feels something like a homecoming. Hitting upon this year among a year of learning about literary and feminist theory and coming into new friendships and rekindling old friendships, this felt like a central spark. The vision of a communal fortress of love was transformative for me. Williams' vision of substituted love is not complicated, but feels like a radically fresh expression of an old truth. And this is why Descent Into Hell sits in such a primal part of my imagination. The evangelicals want to claim the Inklings, and Peretti and Dekker feel like half-hearted imitations of what Williams is doing - but in centering their vision on their fear of the other instead of on radical love, they miss the entire point. In fact, they fall down the well of Wentworth. To fear is to Other, and to Other someone else is to Other yourself. But to love is open all the doors, to carry each other arm-and-arm and walk towards a radical new world.
The Inklings are fascinating because they as an image and Lewis as a particular have been claimed by a lot of fundamentalist evangelicalism when more often than not, they were weird counter-cultural men who are difficult to put into clean boxes. None exemplify this more than Charles Williams, the bizarre mystic who is definitely hindered by the views of his time (see the unfortunate tangent he takes with Sodom before introducing his Gomorrah metaphor...) while still playing with radical ideas that shake the boundaries of the game. Descent into Hell is the centerpiece of this, one-part Passion Play, one-part manifesto, and one-part collapse of Dante and Milton into modernist stream-of-consciousness. There's almost an overwhelming number of things going on, as Williams flips through his central figures, building his metaphors, always mixing reality and hyperreality in a way that digs into the psychology of his cast.
Obviously, this is a book about two movements - one towards outward-facing love, and one towards inward-facing apathy. But it's the way Williams portrays it, the perfection in which he depicts inward tensions with such pinpoint accuracy. The intermingling of past, present, physical, and spiritual is used to get at the inner realities of human existence, the consuming circlings of anxiety, dread, self-doubt, etc. But while lesser writers like Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker use similar tropes to peddle their visions of "spiritual warfare," creating cultures of fear and separation, Willaims' primary interest is connection. In Williams' worldview, love is a potent force, tying all people together and ultimately bringing about transformation. This, I think, is the idea that most struck me and my classmates - while our protagonist Pauline is often terrified of the strange forces around her, she eventually comes to learn the inherent goodness in these forces and finding, in turn, inherent goodness in herself; they are, after all, fundamentally the same thing. Just like in Chesterton, the terrifying ultimately becomes the familiar. Our fear gives way to recognition, which gives way to love. It is only in failing to love that we damn ourselves into the abyss of self.
Coming back to it some four years later feels something like a homecoming. Hitting upon this year among a year of learning about literary and feminist theory and coming into new friendships and rekindling old friendships, this felt like a central spark. The vision of a communal fortress of love was transformative for me. Williams' vision of substituted love is not complicated, but feels like a radically fresh expression of an old truth. And this is why Descent Into Hell sits in such a primal part of my imagination. The evangelicals want to claim the Inklings, and Peretti and Dekker feel like half-hearted imitations of what Williams is doing - but in centering their vision on their fear of the other instead of on radical love, they miss the entire point. In fact, they fall down the well of Wentworth. To fear is to Other, and to Other someone else is to Other yourself. But to love is open all the doors, to carry each other arm-and-arm and walk towards a radical new world.