Imagination Returns Through the North

This thread traces Lewis's return to imaginative intensity through Norse material and the gradual discovery that literary excitement can point beyond itself.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Northern Image

The Northern Image A Sudden Encounter A picture and headline about Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods struck Lewis with an immediate sense of Northernness. The remote, severe atmosphere recalled the earlier sensation he had known through Balder. Memory Rekindled The encounter restored the memory of Joy after years in which both the experience and its longing had faded. Distance, loss, and imaginative vision converged in a renewed desire.

A Poem Begins

A Poem Begins From Fascination to Making Lewis read summaries of the Ring story and began a long poem of his own. At first he concentrated on rhyme, meter, and narrative; later he struggled to suggest the intensity he felt. Learning to Write That failure marked a change from merely telling a story to seeking language that could evoke experience. Lewis remembered it as an early lesson in what poetic writing demands.

Music and Image Together

Music and Image Together A New Sound Hearing a recording of the Ride of the Valkyries gave Lewis a powerful sense of heroic drama. The music enlarged the world already opened by myth and illustration. Shared Imaginative Medium Records and pictures became sustaining sources of imaginative excitement. Lewis's interest did not depend on believing the myths were literally true.

Nature Joins the Vision

Nature Joins the Vision Reading into Landscape While cycling in the Wicklow Mountains, Lewis imagined scenes from the Norse stories in the countryside. Nature first served as a reminder of the literary world. A Broader Medium Gradually, nature itself became another bearer of Joy rather than merely a backdrop. Books and landscapes could both point beyond themselves without being identical to what they suggested.

The Shrine Loses Its God

The Shrine Loses Its God Knowledge Replaces First Wonder As Lewis accumulated scholarly detail about Norse mythology, his original intensity became rarer. He could explain the mythology while enjoying it less. A Mistaken Recovery Project He tried to reproduce the old thrill by returning to its former subject. Later he saw that the longing itself, including the memory of its loss, had already carried the deeper significance.

Early adolescence at Chartres

Soon after the schoolroom discovery

The holidays following his discovery of the Ring story

During a visit to Dundrum

Late in the Bookham period