Customer Reviews

Bright Shadow of Reality: Spiritual Longing in C. S. Lewis

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This is a truly fascinating book, and I can't imagine how it could be improved upon. If you consider the work of C.S. Lewis to be worthy of further investigation, Carnell's book should be essential reading for you. He argues correctly that spiritual longing or "sehnsucht" is, and has been a basic concept in literature through the ages, sometimes being referred to as Romanticism, or at least the "common denominator" in Romanticism. He shows us how it is prevelant in Wordsworth, Blake, Juvenal, Voltaire, Auden, Dylan Thomas, Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and in less likely places, such as Saul Bellow, Theodore Dreiser, and even Beatrix Potter. Carnell is convinced however, that the clearest place we can learn about sehnsucht is by reading what Lewis said about it, both didactically and in his fiction. I thoroughly agree.

Sehnsucht is hard to define. It is the compulsive quest, which brings with it both fleeting joy and the sad realization that one is yet separated from what is desired. Yet, it is more than this... it is ceaseless longing, it is causeless melancholy, it is ecstatic wonder. It is nostalgia. The hush of the deep mystery of man's finitude and creatureliness coupled with a sense of the numinous. My own definition: it is the incomprehensible momentarily made known, with the proviso that one cannot carry it away, prolong it, or even reproduce it. "Effort, and expectation, and desire / And something evermore about to be." <Wordsworth>

By recounting Lewis's personal experiences of sehnsucht, and by an examination of his writings on the topic, Carnell creates a flawless sehnsuchtopedia that has the page-turning quality of a good novel. Do not hesitate to get this new re-issue of a tremendous book.

One thing I will definitely say is that, contrary to the opinions of many educated readers and amazon.com patrons, this book was not in fact written by C. S. Lewis.

This is probably one of C. S. Lewis's unpopular books. He has written many other famous works of literature. C. S. Lewis is also the author of the classic, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.