The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams

So Williams terrifies me.īut what is it about? That is a good question. One of the main characters is a woman trying to be a scholar, and she has turned her studies into a kind of dry idolatry. Third, the spiritual lesson this book teaches is hard and painful every time I read it, because it is so perfectly relevant to some of my particular sins, but (perhaps therefore) also glorious. (OK, I also get kicks from the appearance of, say, Benedict Cumberbatch-but that’s a different story!) When a gigantic lion appeared in the sunset and turned out to be the Platonic form of strength, a shiver of heaven ran through me, lifting me into realms of glory. I know I’m wired strangely: I get my kicks from the appearance of Platonic forms. Second, the events of the book are shocking in a very particular spiritual way when I first read it, Williams kept smacking me upside the head with philosophical surprises.

There are descriptions of an enormous golden lion, a humongous multi-colored butterfly, a fire that burns in the shape of a phoenix yet does not consume, and a visionary mystic soaring like an eagle. How is this so?įirst, there are passages that are visually gorgeous. It is an “island of joy” for me: a work of art that evokes Sehnsucht and trumpets the heraldry of heavenin my soul’s hearing. It is weird, very, very weird, but it is also largely comprehensible and filled with startling beauty. The Place of the Lion is perhaps the work that most evenly balances CW’s oddity with his greatest appeal. I wrote about it once before on my old blog about the arts and faith, so some of the material below is recycled. But I’m attempting to go diligently through each of his works in chronological order, providing a summary of the plot, themes, and importance of each, and today we have reached The Place of the Lion, so I’m not going to skip over it! Besides, it may be my favorite of all CW’s works, and it’s the first I ever read, so it occupies a special place in my memory. After all, I had that 8-post series of guest writers on this novel, and it features heavily in my Readers’ Guide for Beginners.

I have already posted so much about The Place of the Lion here on this blog that you may wonder why I am writing on it again.

The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams