Liebestod by S. M. Hutchens

Liebestod

by S. M. Hutchens

Harry Lee Poe cites the young C. S. Lewis as writing to his brother that engagement to be married is "that fatal tomb of all lively and interesting men." Lewis's early  association of marriage with death is in at least one sense appropriate, for in marriage the lively and interesting young man as the pre-Christian Lewis perceived him is burying himself in another—with the prospect of children, and so with all the wonder, liveliness, and interest implied in the procreation of persons other than himself. He no longer dabbles in the poetry of creation solitarily as he once did, but is now fully engaged in writing it, since he has fallen into his wife and died.

What Christianity teaches hungry and ambitious young pagans (or pseudo-Christians) like Lewis about death is that there is an end, a telos in every respect, to the life they prize as lively and interesting, and the only way to find it is through death—that is, to enter the life of the Liveliest and Most Interesting of Young Men, the fons et origo of the good they hope to enjoy in all that is justly perceived as attractive.

It is the devil's business to make marriage and child raising appear drab, painful, and stultifying, when instead its divinely implanted potential is to contain the happiness on this earth that is closest to that of heaven. It was on the tombstone of his wife that Lewis, with infinitely deeper perception than he had as a young man, could write:

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind). . . .

S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.

Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!

Online
Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!

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 from the online archives

22.8—November/December 2009

The Origin of Aesthetics

Looking for Beauty & Justice 150 Years After Darwin’s Classic by Charles Taliaferro

33.4—July/August 2020

No Option

Clear Out the Rubble & Rebuild! by Anthony Esolen

33.1—January/February 2020

Surprised by Gentleness

on a Saint's Charism That Cures Toxic Perfectionism by Colleen Carroll Campbell

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

Support Touchstone

00