Two On Light

This is an excerpt from a short, unpublished story called "The Man Born Blind". The story is about a man who has recently been given sight for the first time after an operation, and his search for a tangible "Light", as he had been convinced existed when he was blind. Walter Hooper gives a date of the 1920's for the manuscript, but C.S. Lewis expert Kathryn Lindskoog asserted that a documents expert dates the ink of the manuscript to sometime after 1950.

There was a mist that morning, but he had encountered mists before and this did not trouble him. He walked through it, out of the little town and up the steep hill and then along the field path that ran round the lip of the quarry. Mary had taken him there a few days ago to show him what she called the 'view'. And while they had sat looking at it she had said, 'What a lovely light that is on the hills over there.' It was a wretched clue, for he was now convinced that she knew no more about light than he did, that she used the word but meant nothing by it. He was even beginning to suspect that most of the un-blind were in the same position. What one heard among them was merely the parrot-like repetition of a rumour--the rumour of something which perhaps (it was his last hope) great poets and prophets of old had really known and seen. It was on their testimony alone that he still hoped. It was still just possible that somewhere in the world, not everywhere as fools had tried to make him believe, guarded in deep woods or divided by distant seas, the thing Light might actually exist, springing up like a fountain or growing like a flower.
~C.S. Lewis, "The Man Born Blind", The Dark Tower and Other Stories (1977)


I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
~C.S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry", The Weight of Glory (1949)

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Link of the day: A review of "Is Theology Poetry?" from Into the Wardrobe (scroll down page a bit).