Imagination & the Health of the Soul
Imagination and the Arts in C. S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds
by Peter J. Schakel
Columbia: University of Missouri, 2002
(214 pages; $32.50, cloth)
reviewed by Dale Nelson
When unhappy young people used to visit the St. Herman of Alaska skete in the hinterlands of northern California, the late priest-monk Seraphim Rose realized that they often had basic needs of the soul that had to be addressed, matters not specifically Christian. And so, rather than directing their attention to the ascetic-mystical texts and practices that some of them were interested in, he would have these adolescents watch an old Dickens film, listen to Bach, or read Dostoevsky. “Dickens communicates an extremely warm feeling about human relationships, which is not given in school today. And this very feeling of warmth about human relationships might have more effect in keeping a boy pure than giving him the abstract standard of Orthodoxy,” he said. “By contrast [to Dickens, Dostoevsky, et al.] the contemporary upbringing in schools emphasizes crudity, coldness, and inability to judge what is better and what is worse—total relativity, which only confuses a person and helps fit him into the world of apostasy.” Rose’s visitors needed to be fed, without haste, with wholesome imaginative fare to strengthen their anemic or poison-accustomed souls.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door with Full Online Access
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
- Six print issues per year
- Full digital archive access
Subscribe (Print + Online)
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95.
Subscribe (Online Only)
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on imagination from the online archives
11.5—September/October 1998
Speaking the Truths Only the Imagination May Grasp
An Essay on Myth & 'Real Life' by Stratford Caldecott
19.10—December 2006
Training Up a Child Requires a Well-Formed Imagination by David Mills
more from the online archives
35.4—Jul/Aug 2022
The Death Rattle of a Tradition
Contemporary Catholic Thinking on the Question of War by Andrew Latham
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
