Quotations
and Allusions in
C.
S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms
compiled by Arend Smilde (Utrecht, The
Netherlands)
C. S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms (1958), like most of his
books, contains many allusions to or quotations from unspecified sources. In
the present case there are, naturally, comparatively many quotations from the
Bible. It is perhaps never vitally important to locate (and check) all the
various sources; still it can be a rewarding enterprise. What follows is a
listing by chapter of many such words and phrases with brief references to what
I have found to be their sources and, occasionally, notes suggesting their
relevance to the context in which Lewis uses them. I have also included a few
other items where a short explanation may be of use to some readers. The list is based on notes I made for my Dutch translation of this book,
published in 2002 as Gedachten over de Psalmen.
Double question marks in bold type – ?? – follow
items where I have not found the required information. Corrections and additions including proposed new
entries are welcome.
Dedication
Austin and Katharine Farrer
Friends of C. S. Lewis. Austin Farrer (1904–1968)
was a philosopher, theologian and Bible scholar; Fellow of Trinity College,
Oxford from 1935 until 1960 and Warden of Keble College from 1960 until his
death. His wife Katharine Farrer-Newton (1911–1972)
was a writer of detective stories.
Chapter 1:
Introductory
para. 1 [the
psalms were written ...]
the ‘captivity’, which we should call the deportation to Babylon
» The period (c. 587/586–515 b.c.) when much of the population of Judah lived in exile in
Babylon until the Persian conqueror King Cyrus allowed them to go home.
para. 3 [what
must be said ...]
Burke
» Edmund Burke (1729–1797), English statesman, conservative political
theorist and orator; his works include Reflections on the Revolution in
France (1790).
the Aeneid
» Chief work of the Roman poet Vergil (70–19 b.c.), about Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome.
para. 6 [in
reality it is ...]
Marlowe
» Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), English poet and dramatist. The
quotation is from the epilogue of Doctor Faustus (published 1604).
the Cherry Tree Carol
» One of the many traditional English Christmas songs called Christmas
Carols.
para. 9 [i
think, too ...]
the Magnificat
» The hymn or poem spoken by the Virgin Mary (‘My soul doth magnify the
Lord’, Luke 1:46–55, one of the so-called ‘canticles’) when she had been told
she would bring forth the Son of God and after Elisabeth called her ‘blessed
among women’. The words quoted (‘That we should be saved from our enemies’
etc.) are taken not from the Magnificat but from the next canticle, Benedictus
(Luke 1:68–79), spoken by the old priest Zechariah when his child John the Baptist
is born.
para. 11 [i have
worked in the main ...]
Coverdale
» Miles Coverdale (1488–1568) produced the first complete Bible in English
(1535). His version of the Psalms was included in the Book of Common Prayer,
the service book of the Anglican Church for centuries. This translation thus
became better known to many people than the one included in the King James
Bible (or Authorized Version). Annoyingly, the two translations have many
slight differences in verse numbering.
St. Jerome
» Hieronymus (c. 347–420);,
one of the Latin Church Fathers; author of the Vulgate, i.e. the standard Latin translation of the Bible
used throughout the Middle Ages.
Dr. Moffatt
» James Moffatt (1870–1944), Scottish Church
historian and author of a widely used Bible translation.
para. 12 [finally,
as will soon ...]
not what is called an ‘apologetic’ work
» All of Lewis’s previous explicitly ‘Christian’ books were of a markedly
apologetic nature. Austin Farrer, the present book’s
dedicatee, wrote an excellent assessment of Lewis’s apologetics shortly after
his death in 1963: ‘The Christian Apologist’, in Light on C. S. Lewis,
ed. Jocelyn Gibb (1965), pp. 23–43.
Chapter 2:
‘Judgement’ in the Psalms
para. 1 [if
there is any thought ...]
‘that day of wrath, that dreadful day’
» From a Medieval Latin poem of Franciscan origin, usually attributed to
Thomas of Celano, and probably best known for its use
in the Latin Mass for the Dead (Requiem): Dies irae,
dies illa ...
‘in the hour of death and at the day of judgement’
» A phrase from ‘The Litany’, a prayer in the Anglican Book of Common
Prayer.
parable of the Sheep and the Goats
» Matthew 25:32–46.
para 3 [the
reason for this ...]
Judge Jeffreys
» George Jeffreys (1645?–1689) was an English
judge who imposed extremely severe punishments on the Duke of Monmouth and his
fellow conspirators against the King.
creatures
» i.e. puppets, straw men.
Chapter 3:
The Cursings
para. 4 [one
way of dealing with ...]
‘written for our learning’
» Romans 15:4.
para. 10 [there
is no use ...]
seventy times seven
» cf. Matthew 18:22.
para. 11 [it is
monstrously simple-minded ...]
Mr. Pilgrim
» A personage in the novel Miss Mole (1930) by Emily Hilda Young
(1880–1949).
para. 13 [the
first is that within ...]
St. Paul’s ‘If thine enemy hunger, give him
bread’, etc.
» Romans 12:20.
para. 17 [it
seems that there is ...]
The ‘average sensual man’
» A phrase usually quoted in its French form, l’homme
moyen sensuel, in which
form it has perhaps been given currency by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905–1980); however, it may also have been coined before the twentieth century
by an English speaker. Origin as yet unknown – ??
Committee of Public Safety
» i.e. the Comité du Salut Publique, the
state organization which under the leadership of Robespierre was responsible
for the French Revolution’s bloodiest episodes in the years 1793–1795.
the most honest and disinterested critic
» Lewis is probably referring – or at least alluding – to F. R. Leavis (1895–1978), a renowned and influential literary
critic of the mid-twentieth century. Leavis and Lewis
were colleagues in Cambridge from 1954 onwards. See also C. S. Lewis’s An
Experiment in Criticism (1961), pp. 124–129.
para. 20 [different,
certainly higher ...]
Carlyle
» Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), English historian; he presented the history
of the world as a history of Great Men.
Kipling
» Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), English writer and poet, renowned
champion of British imperialism.
some modern critics
» Again, Lewis is very probably thinking of F. R. Leavis,
now more especially of the latter’s view of ‘Culture’ as a kind of secular path
of salvation (Mass Civilization and Minority Culture, 1930; The Great
Tradition, 1948; The Common Pursuit, 1952). See Walter Hooper, C.
S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide (1996), pp. 73–74, and A. N. Wilson, C.
S. Lewis: A Biography (1990), pp. 287–288.
he ‘desireth not the the
death of a sinner’
» Ezekiel 33:11. The phrase is also used in the Book of Common Prayer,
in the ‘Absolution or Remission of sins’ which is a part of the services for
Morning Prayer and for Evening Prayer.
Chapter 4:
Death in the Psalms
para. 4 [again,
in 49, we ...]
there was no other ‘good enough to pay the price’
» From the hymn ‘There is a green hill far away’, No. 332 in Hymns
Ancient and Modern.
para. 14 [it is
surely, therefore ...]
to pant after Him ‘as pants the hart’
» Psalm 42:2; a hart is an adult male deer.
‘to enjoy Him forever’
» From the Scottish Catechism. The same phrase is quoted once more at the
end of chapter 9.
para. 16 [all
this is only ...]
I have said it in another book
» i.e. in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy (1955), at the
beginning of chapter 15.
para. 18 [but we
should be quite ...]
every man under his own vine and his own fig tree
» Micah 4:4 (see also I Kings 4:25).
Chapter 5:
‘The Fair Beauty of the Lord’
para. 1 [‘now
let us ...’]
‘Now let us stint all this and speak of mirth.’
» Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400), Canterbury Tales VII.3157; from The
Nun’s Priest’s Tale. In Nevill Coghill’s
modern English version: ‘And now, let’s talk of fun and stop all this.’
the old woman in Scott
» This is the blind Mrs. Maclure in Old
Mortality, vol. 2, chapter 21, where she says, ‘... mony
[=many] an hungry, starving creature, when he sits down on a Sunday forenoon to
get something that might warm him to the great work, has a dry clatter o’
morality driven about his lugs [=ears] ...’
para. 2 [david,
we know ...]
danced before the Ark
» II Samuel 6:14–16 and 20–23.
They have not rebuilt the Temple
» Reflections on the Psalms was written some ten years after the
foundation the state of Israel in 1948.
para. 10 [i am
not saying that this gusto ...]
what it ‘cost to redeem their souls’
» Psalm 49:8 in Coverdale’s version (cf. chapter 4, par. 4).
Chapter 6:
‘Sweeter than Honey’
para. 1 [in racine’s tragedy ...]
Racine’s tragedy of Athalie
» Jean Racine (1636–1699), French poet and dramatist.
para. 4 [a fine
christian and ...]
the ‘pleasures of a good conscience’
» Title of an English hymn by Isaac Watts (1674–1748).
the ‘smile’ on Duty’s face
» From the ‘Ode to Duty’ by William Wordsworth (1770–1850):
Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead’s most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face ...
para. 6 [the
danger of this second ...]
the ‘weightier matters of the Law’
» Matthew 23:23.
para. 7 [thus
the law ...]
Charles Williams wrote, ‘When the means are autonomous they are deadly.’
» from ‘Bors to Elaine: on the King’s Coins’, a
poem in Williams’s first cycle of
Arthurian poems, Taliessin Through Logres
(1938). Charles Williams (1886–1945), writer and poet, was a good friend of C.
S. Lewis.
para. 9 [now
this, in itself ...]
the ‘schoolmaster to bring him to Christ’
» Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, 3:24.
para. 12 [for
there were other roads ...]
We who not so long ago waited daily for invasion by enemies
» C. S. Lewis wrote this less than two decades after 1940, when Hitler was
planning to follow up his conquest of France by the conquest of Britain; the
ensuing ‘battle of Britain’ resulted in his abandoning this plan.
para. 14 [in so
far as ...]
‘sweet reasonableness’
» Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), Literature and Dogma XII.2.
‘thank God that we are not as other men’
» Luke 18:11.
Chapter VII: Connivance
para. 2 [now
obviously all this ...]
‘unco guid’
» Scottish for ‘extremely good’.
para. 6 [the
publicans were ...]
the Vichy or Collaborationist movement
» Vichy is the French town from where a collaborationist government under
Marshal Pétain governed the unoccupied South-Eastern
part of France while the rest was under German occupation, 1940–1944.
para. 8 [here
is the perfect ...]
for charity ‘believeth all things’
» I Corinthians 13:7.
para. 12 [what
is one to do? ...]
as if we ‘knew not the Man’
» cf. Matthew 26:27.
para. 16 [what
makes this contact ...]
avoiding ‘the seat of the scornful’
» Psalm 1:1 (Coverdale’s version).
‘eat of ... such things as please them’
» Psalm 141:4 (Coverdale’s version).
Chapter VIII:
Nature
para. 11 [all
this is of course ...]
As someone has said, ‘gods’ is not really the plural of God
» This ‘someone’ may well be C. S. Lewis himself as a scholar of Medieval
literature. Lewis was a long-time tutor in Oxford until 1954 and after that a
professor in Cambridge. Towards the end of his life he recast one of his most
successful courses of lectures as a little book, posthumously published as The
Discarded Image (1964). Chapter 4B is about the late Roman author Macrobius who was, as Lewis points out, not only late Roman
but ‘late Pagan’ and, thus, almost early Christian. ‘We have here [i.e. in the
thought of Macrobius] a chasm between the Divine and
all merely creaturely beings (however exalted), a sheer transcendence, which
earlier Paganism, and especially Roman paganism, had never dreamed of. The word
gods in this system is simply not the plural of God ... Paganism
here becomes, in the full sense, religious; mythology and philosophy have both
been transmuted into theology’ (The Discarded Image, p. 66).
para. 17 [unless
of course ...]
cretinous
» i.e. suffering from cretinism, a condition arising from a deficiency of
thyroid hormone, present from birth. A cretin is a mentally retarded dwarf with
wide-set eyes, a broad flat nose and protruding tongue.
‘not far from any one of us’
» Acts of the Apostles, 17:27.
‘the highest does not stand without the lowest’
» A maxim, often quoted by C. S. Lewis, from De imitatione
Christi (On the Imitation of Christ), a 15th-century religious tract
preaching the virtues of humility, self-denial and simple personal piety. The
book is ascribed to Thomas à Kempis (1380?–1471) and is the most important
legacy of the Devotio Moderna,
a religious and educational movement which sprang in the Eastern Netherlands in
the late 14th century.
Chapter IX:
A Word About Praising
para. 5 [but
the most obvious fact ...]
Hymns Ancient and Modern
» Anglican collection of religious songs for use in church services, first
published in 1861.
para. 6 [i
think we delight ...]
man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever’
» Cf. note to chapter 4, para. 14, above.
para. 7 [meanwhile
of course ...]
as Donne says, tuning our instruments
» John Donne (1572–1631), English poet. The line ‘I tune my instrument here
at the door’ is from his poem ‘Hymn to God my God in My sickness’. Lewis quotes
the same line – and in a very similar context – in chapter 21 of his last book,
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964).
Chapter X:
Second Meanings
para. 6 [now
let us take ...]
Virgil ... begins a poem thus
» viz. Eclogae (= Bucolica,
‘Pastorals’) IV.1.
the Sibylline Books
» A collection of prophecies and ritual precepts ascribed to the Sibyl (=a
kind of prophetess) of Cumae. The Senate of ancient Rome would order a consultation
of these books in times of distress.
para. 12 [in
other words ...]
‘many shall come from the east and the west and sit down in the kingdom’
» Matthew 8:11, Luke 13:29.
para. 13 [thus,
long before we ...]
‘Thoughts beyond their thoughts to these high bards were given’
» A line from ‘The Third Sunday in Lent’, a poem in The Christian Year
(1827) by John Keble (1792–1866), an English poet and divine. Keble was a
leader of the Oxford Movement, a catholicizing movement in the Church of
England.
Chapter XI:
Scripture
para. 2 [i. for
us these writings ...]
as St. Paul says, ‘the Oracles of God’
» Romans 3:2.
St. Jerome
» Author of the standard Latin translation of the Bible; see note to chapter
1, para. 11, above. The attribution to St. Jerome is
wrong.
Calvin
» John Calvin, or Jean Cauvin (1509–1564), French
theologian and leading church reformer. Lewis is referring to Calvin’s second
sermon on the first chapter of Job.
the universal negative proposition that miracles do not happen
» Lewis is almost certainly referring to the famous assertion – Miracles do
not happen’ – by Matthew Arnold (1822–1888). Lewis devoted a whole book to the
subject, Miracles: A preliminary study (1948, revised in 1960),
where he quotes the same words of Arnold in the epilogue.
para. 11 [but of
course these conjectures ...]
‘not by the conversion of the godhead into flesh...’
» Confession of Athanasius, Article 35.
para. 12 [of course, on almost...]
Cartesians
» Followers of French philosopher René Descartes, alias Cartesius
(1596–1650).
para. 15 [we do
not know...]
Mr. Dunne
» John William Dunne (1874–1949), Irish pioneer aviator and philosopher.
His book Experiment with Time, here referred to, was published in 1927.
Dunne developed a theory of ‘serialism’ in which he
conceived Time as a thing with infinitely many dimensions, each dimension
having its own chain or series of events; he dismissed as an illusion the idea
of time as something one-dimensional; occasional escapes from the illusion were
possible in special circumstances such as dreams.
Chapter 12:
Second Meanings in the Psalms
para. 5 [for a
jewish convert...]
Milton’s poem on the Nativity
‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ (1629), an early poem in 27 stanzas
by John Milton (1608–1674):
This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heaven’s eternal King,
Of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring ...
Especially relevant here is perhaps the 25th stanza, about the Egyptian god
Osiris considered as a devil to be chased away:
He feels from Juda’s
land
The dreaded Infant’s hand, ...
Nor all the gods beside,
Longer dare abide, ...
Our Babe, to show His Godhead true,
Can in His swaddling bands control the damned
crew.
para. 6 [that
psalm has led us ...]
If Christ ‘tasted death for all men’
» Epistle to the Hebrews, 2:9.
para. 9 [few
things once seemed ...]
‘the whole blessed company of faithful people’
» A phrase from the Book of Common Prayer, in the second
(alternative) prayer of thanksgiving after the Holy Communion.
King Cophetua
» A legendary African king who was uninterested in women until he fell in
love with a beggar girl. A ballad on the subject was included by Thomas Percy
in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
(1765), II.6. The theme was taken up by Alfred Tennyson in his poem ‘The Beggar
Maid’: ... Barefooted came the beggar maid / Before the king Cophetua. / In robe and crown the king stept
down, / To meet and greet her on her way ... So sweet a face, such angel grace,
/ In all that land had never been: / Cophetua sware a royal oath: / ‘This beggar maid shall be my queen!’
para. 10 [read
in this sense ...]
‘a god’s embraces never are in vain’
Coventry Patmore, The Unknown Eros and Other Odes (1877), XII.12,
‘Eros and Psyche’, 56. Also quoted in Lewis’s letter to Ruth Pitter of 20
August 1962 (Collected Letters III, 1364): ‘A fiend, my Psyche, comes
with barren bliss / A god’s embraces never are in vain.’ The line is
perhaps an echo from Neptune’s words to Tyro in Homer’s Odyssey, Book
XI. Lewis relates this story in chapter IV (on Homer) of his Preface
to Paradise Lost. Here is Samuel Butler’s translation, with the relevant
words italicized:
‘The first I
saw was Tyro. She was daughter of Salmoneus and wife
of Cretheus the son of Aeolus. She fell in love with
the river Enipeus who is much the most beautiful
river in the whole world. Once when she was taking a walk by his side as usual,
Neptune, disguised as her lover, lay with her at the mouth of the river, and a
huge blue wave arched itself like a mountain over them to hide both woman and
god, whereon he loosed her virgin girdle and laid her in a deep slumber. When
the god had accomplished the deed of love, he took her hand in his own and
said, “Tyro, rejoice in all good will; the embraces of the gods are not
fruitless, and you will have fine twins about this time twelve months. Take
great care of them. I am Neptune, so now go home, but hold your tongue and do
not tell any one.”’
The story is also mentioned by Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae III.16, 15.
para. 11 [the choice of psalm 8 ...]
a chorus in Sophocles
» The first Ode in his tragedy Antigone.
para. 15 [of the cursing psalms ...]
‘My heart showeth
me the wickedness of the ungodly’
» This translation of Psalm 36:1 is now
controversial or discredited; recent versions rather have it that the ungodly
can see their own wickedness when looking into their own hearts.
Thus Moffatt translates, ‘An impious spirit inspires
the ungodly man’. Nevertheless the old translation made sense to C. S. Lewis,
as appears from the way he used this same line from Psalm 36 in his preface to The
Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1961):
‘Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Screwtape
Letters were the ripe fruit of many years’ study in moral and ascetic
theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less
creditable, way of learning how temptation works. “My heart” – I need no
other’s – “showeth me the wickedness of the
ungodly.”’
para. 16 [sometimes with no prompting ...]
‘the wound
man was born for’
» Adapted from a poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins
(1844–1889), ‘Spring and Fall’ (addressing a girl called Margaret):
Nor mouth had, no nor
mind, expressed
What heart heard of,
ghost guessed,
It is the blight man
was born for,
It is Margaret you
morn for.
Last updated on 17 October 2007 (note on ʻa
god’s embraces’ in chapter 12)