My, my …

… all too timely — Elberry's Ghost. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The most enduring artefacts are those which eschew explanation, context, easy clarity. Wallace Stevens: poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully. This is one reason i loathe CS Lewis – he takes matters of spiritual value, and falsifies them into a Christianity for Dummies kindergarten theology. He was a don, through and through. The really valid and lasting works of art go deep; thus the epic of Gilgamesh could be lost for a few thousand years, re-emerge, and no harm done. Likewise very few today would read Homer or Milton as intended; but this is precisely their worth. CS Lewis, by contrast, is a propagandist, the Noam Chomsky of Christianity.

What one loves about elberry is his romantic passion. In this, he a blood brother of Ed Champion. One feels as the other does. When I was in grade school, in one of my classes we read The Screwtape Letters — and afterwards we would pray that C.S. Lewis would come over to Rome. He never did. Years ago, I read all of the Narnia Chronicles to my stepchildren. At the point in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where Aslan is killed, I had to stop, because I was crying. But then, I am a cradle Catholic. I was programmed early and well.