kradeelav | (no subject)

Most fans of his work probably have no idea that Lewis entertained sadistic fantasies. To quote from one of his biographies, C.S. Lewis: Creator of Narnia by Michael White,

In a letter written in January 1917 Lewis begins to explain that he is writing the letter on his knee and this seemingly innocent comment leads him on to a discourse on whipping and spanking. He declares: “Across my knee … of course makes one think of positions for whipping: or rather not for whipping (you couldn’t get any swing) but for that torture with brushes … very humiliating for the victim” Soon he was signing his letters to Greeves “Philomastrix” (“lover of the whip”) and detailing gruesome fantasies involving Arthur’s younger sister, in which he whipped her “for the good of her soul”. In other letters he described a particularly beautiful girl he had seen in Oxford and what pain she would have suffered if she had received only half the torment he had inflicted on her in his imagination. (p 47)

Arthur later scribbled through incriminating passages in the letters, but those passages are restored (and noted) in the volume presently being reviewed. In 1931, Lewis wrote Arthur “I am now inclined to agree with you in not regretting that we confided in each other even on this subject, because it has done no harm in the long run—and how could young adolescents really be friends without it?” (Incidentally, Arthur was homosexual and, presumably, indicated some of his fantasies to Jack.) At the time, Arthur indicated concern about confiding such details to paper, but Lewis wrote “if any person did read out letters, he would be an ill-bred cad & therefore we shouldn’t mind what he say” (274). Hopefully he would except the present reviewer and his audience.

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neotula

that's honestly hilarious to read as someone who can attribute a portion of their sexual awakening to The Silver Chair and then The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe movie.

as someone with a hankering for d/s styled stuff, those books gave kid me so much mileage. i was getting so into his books before i even understood why i was getting so into them.

kradeelav

isn't it fascinating? new appreciation for the author and for his layers there. always love hearing about things like this since there's both the "ohhhh" moment and a sense of not being quite as alone. he said some pretty rauchy stuff about tolkein too.

cmdonovann

oh, huge same. i definitely had some interesting, uh, awakenings watching the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe movie as a kid. rewatched the scene where the witch kills aslan multiple times? check. had some interesting feelings seeing the faun guy covered in blood? check. that movie was like catnip to my developing brain, haha.

:D those two scenes had an indescribable frission didn't they? It's kind of funny looking back on which movies were awakenings and how they're never the ones the MPAA board would expect, haha.

amado1

My brother is a firm believer that Lewis was secretly gay. He's ranted to me for HOURS about those sadistic fantasies lmao

lmao i genuinely would love hanging out with both of you over coffee and hearing him rant about that :D we could probably make a pretty solid list of which classic authors were kinksters.

FOR SURE

queenlua

god i always love reading more about drama involving The Inklings gang :D

have you ever heard about Lewis's cult-leader-BFF who Tolkien fucking HATED???

(or, on a less goofy note, i had a really interesting discussion with some theology nerd buds the other day, where they were talking about how, in both Lewis's fiction and essayistic/theological writing, he really sees justice as a central virtue, and seems to have pretty fervent, warm feelings toward punishment, in a way that e.g. Tolkien does not—Tolkien really centralizes mercy as a virtue, Frodo's ultimate dooming-and-yet-saving act is not killing Gollum, etc. it was pretty interesting! not that EVERYONE'S actual value set correlates with their... hornt up... value set... but y'know sometimes you see the overlap and go hmmmmm hahahaha)

oh my god that writeup was amazing, that author's style is perfect for that vanishingly casual fun blog style that's still professional. lol at all the girlies being almost a proto-form of groupies to their teacher, some things really aren't new at all.

hahaha i think you're onto something what with the overlap there between iddy predispositions versus what sort of virtues one tends to lean towards. not a 1:1 of course - but some flavor of vices-and-virtues being different sides of the coin of what's oddly comforting as a familiar shadow, even if it's ribald. with good authors showing a lot of their heart circuitry in their books it's probably easier to pick out passages where they put a lot of themselves on the page... i know the doujin circle and i have talked a lot about what are some of the 'tells' for certian fetishes, more from a visual angle and basically cruising each other from a 'yo you want to talk more about this freely' angle :P

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