Dymer by C.S. Lewis - Canto 1

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Canto one of Dymer Dymer by C. S. Lewis, Nine Knights.
I hung upon the tree, wounded with the spear, as
an offering to odin myself, sacrificed to myself havemal canto one,

(00:22):
you stranger, Long before your glance can light upon these words,
time will have washed away the moment when I first
took penn to write, with all my road before me.
Yet to day here, if at all we meet the
unfashioned clay, ready to both our hands, both hushed to
see that which is nowhere. Yet, come forth and be

(00:47):
this moment. If you join me, we begin a partnership
where both must toil to hold the clew that I caught. First.
We lose or win together. If you read, you are enrolled.
And first a marvel. Who could have foretold that in
the city which men called in scorn the perfect city

(01:08):
Dimer could be born there? You'd have thought the gods
were smothered down forever, and the keys were turned on fate.
No hour was left unchartered in that town, and love
was in a schedule, and the state chose, for eugenic reasons,
who should mate with whom, And when each idle song

(01:28):
and dance was fixed by law, and nothing left to chance.
For some of the last Platonists had founded that city
of old and mastery. They made an island of what
ought to be surrounded by this gross world of easier
light and shade. All answering to the master's dream. They

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laid the strong foundations, torturing into stone each bubble that
the academy had blown. This people were so pure, so
law abiding, so logical, they made the heavens afraid. They
sent the very swallows into hiding by their appalling chastity
dismayed more soberly, the lambs in spring time played because

(02:12):
of them, and ghosts dissolved in shame before their common sense.
Till Dimer came. At Dimer's birth, no comet scared the nation.
The public creche engulfed him with the rest, and twenty
separate boards of education closed round him. He was passed
through every test, was vaccinated, numbered, washed and dressed, proctored, inspected, whipped,

(02:38):
examined weakly, And for some nineteen years he bore it meekly.
For nineteen years they worked upon his soul, refining, chipping, molding,
and adorning. Then came the moment that undid the whole
the ripple of rude life. Without a warning. It came
in lecture time one April morning. Alas for laws and locks,

(03:02):
reproach and praise who ever learned to censor the spring days.
A little breeze came, stirring to his cheek. He looked
up to the window. A brown bird perched on the sill,
bent down to wet his beak with darting head. Poor
Dimer watched and stirred uneasily. The lecturer's voice he heard,

(03:24):
still droning from the dais. The narrow room was drowsy,
over solemn, filled with gloom. He yawned, and a voluptuous
laziness tingled down all his spine and loosed his knees,
slow drawn like an invisible caress. He laughed. The lecturer

(03:45):
stopped like one that sees a ghost, then frowned and murmured,
silence please. That moment saw the soul of Dimer hang
in the balance louder than his laughter rang. The whole
room watched with unbelieving awe. He rose and staggered, rising
from his lips broke yet again the idiot like guffaw

(04:09):
He felt the spirit in his finger tips, then swinging
his right arm a wide ellipse, yet lazily, he struck
the lecturer's head. The old man tittered, lurched, and dropped
down dead, out of the silent room, out of the dark,
into the sun stream. Dimer passed, and there the sudden breezes,

(04:31):
the high hanging lark, the milk white clouds sailing in
polished air, suddenly flashed about him like a blare of trumpets,
and no cry was raised behind him. His class sat dazed.
They dared not go to find him. Yet wonderfully some
rumors spread abroad, an inarticulate sense of life renewing in

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each young heart. He whistled down the road. Men said,
there's Dimer. Why what's Dimer? I don't know. Look, there's Dimer.
Far pursuing with troubled eyes. A long, mysterious oh sighed
from a hundred throats to see him go down the
white street and past the gate, and forth beyond the wall.

(05:17):
He came to grassy places. There was a shifting wind
to west and north, with clouds and healing squadron running races.
The shadows following on the sunlight's traces, crossed the whole field,
and each wild flower within it, with change of wavering
glories every minute. There was a river flushed with rains

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between the flat fields and a forest's willowy edge, a
sauntering pace. He shuffled on the green. He kicked his
boots against the crackly sedge, and tore his hands in
many a furzy hedge. He saw his feet and ankles
gilded round with buttercups that carpeted the ground. He looked back.

(06:01):
Then the line of a low hill had hid the
city's towers and domes from sight. He stopped. He felt
a break of sunlight spill around him, sudden waves of
searching light. Upon the earth was green and gold and white,
smothering his feet. He felt his city dress an insult
to that april cheerfulness. He said, I've worn this dust

(06:25):
heap long enough. Here goes and forthwith in the open field.
He stripped away that prison of sad stuff, socks, jacket, shirt,
and breeches off. He peeled and rose up, mother naked
with no shield against the sun, then stood awhile to
play with bare toes, dabbling in cold river clay, forward again,

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and sometimes leaping high with arms outspread, as though he
would embrace in one act all the circle of the sky.
Sometimes he rested in a leafier place and crushed the wet,
cool flowers against his face, And once he cried aloud,
O world, O day, let let me, and then found

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no prayer to say. Up furrows still unpierced with earliest crop,
he marched through woods. He strolled from flower to flower,
and over hills, as ointment, drop by drop preciously meted out,
so hour by hour the day slipped through his hands,

(07:29):
and now the power failed in his feet. From walking,
he was done, hungry and cold. That moment sank the sun.
He lingered. Looking up, he saw a head, the black
and bristling frontage of a wood, and over it the
large sky, swimming red, freckled with homeward crows. Surprised, he

(07:50):
stood to feel that wideness, quenching his hot mood. Then shouted,
trembling darkness, trembling green. What do you mean, wild wood?
What do you mean? He shouted? But the solitude received
his noise into her noiselessness, his fire into her calm.
Perhaps he half believed some answer yet would come to

(08:12):
his desire. The hushed air quivered softly like a wire
upon his voice. It echoed. It was gone, the quiet,
and the quiet dark went on. He rushed into the wood.
He struck and stumbled on hidden roots. He groped and
scratched his face. The little birds woke chattering where he fumbled.

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The stray cat stood paw lifted in mid chase. There
is a windless calm in such a place, a sense
of being indoors, so crowded stand the living trees watching
on every hand, A sense of trespass, such as in
the hall of the wrong house one time, to me befell,

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groping between the hat stand and the wall, A clear
voice from above me, like a bell, the sweet voice
of a woman, asking, well, no more than this? And
as I fled, I wondered into whose aliens story I
had blundered. A like thing fell to dimer, bending low,
feeling his way, he went. The curtained air sighed into

(09:19):
sound above his head, as though stringed instruments and horns
were riding there. It passed, and at its passing stirred
his hair. He stood, intent to hear. He heard again,
and checked his breath, half drawn, as if with pain,
that music could have crumbled, proud belief, with doubt, or

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in the bosom of the sage madden the heart that
had outmastered grief and flood with tears the eyes of
frozen age, and turned the young man's feet to pilgrimage.
So sharp it was, so sure a path it found
soulward with stabbing wounds of bitter sound. It died out

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on the middle of a note, as though it failed
at the urge of its own meaning. It left him
with life quivering at the throat, limbs shaken and wet cheeks,
and body leaning with strain towards the sound and senses,
gleaning the last least ebbing ripple of the air, searching
the emptied darkness, muttering where then followed such a time

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as is forgotten with morning light. But in the passing
seams unending where he grasped the branch was rotten. Where
he trod forth in haste, the forest streams laid weight
for him, Like men in fever dreams. Climbing an endless rope.
He labored much and gained no ground. He reached and
could not touch, and often out of darkness, like a

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swell that grows up from no wind upon blue sea,
he heard the music unendurable in stealing sweetness wind from
tree to tree, uttered and bruised in body and soul
was he when first he saw a little lightness growing ahead,
and from that light the sound was flowing. The trees

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were fewer now, and gladly nearing that light he saw
the stars, for sky was there, and smoother, grass, white flowered,
a forest clearing set in seven miles of forest, secreter
than valleys in the tops of clouds, more fair than
greenery under snow or desert water, or the white peace

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descending after slaughter, as some who have been wounded beyond
healing wake or half wake, once only and so bless,
far off the lamp light traveling on the ceiling, a
disk of pale light, filled with peacefulness, and wonder if
this is the c C s or home, or heaven

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or dreams, then sighing when wise ignorant death before the
pains begin, So dimer in the wood lawn bless the light,
a still light, rosy, clear, and filled with sound. Here
was some pile of building, which the night made larger.
Spiry shadows rose all round, but through the open door

(12:17):
appeared profound recesses of pure light, fire with no flame,
and out of that deep light the music came tiptoes.
He slunk towards it, where the grass was twinkling in
a lane of light. Before the archway there was neither
fence to pass, nor word of challenge given, nor bolted door.

(12:39):
But where it's open, open evermore, no knocker and no porter,
and no guard. For very strangeness entering in grows hard.
Breathe not speak, not walk gently. Someone's here? Why have
they left their house with the door so wide? There

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must be someone. Damer hung in fear upon the threshold,
longing and big eyed. At last he squared his shoulders,
smote his side, and called, I'm here, now let the
feast begin. I'm coming now, I'm Damer, and went in
end of Canto won