Sunday, 31 May 2026

Poets And Hack Writers

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TEN.

When enough evidence has accumulated, Holger deduces that he is in a universe where the myths of Charlemagne are literally true just as later, in A Midsummer Tempest, Valeria Matuchek deduces that Prince Rupert is from a universe where the plays of Shakespeare are literally true. 

"'...that what was myth in one world might always be fact in some other.' PERELANDRA"
-CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories (London, 1983), pp. 124-132 AT p. 124.

(Lewis based a short story on a quotation from his own novel, Perelandra.)

Holger goes further:

"The mystics, dreamers, poets, and hack writers of home had in some unconscious way been in tune with whatever force linked the two universes; the corpus of stories which they gradually evolved had been a better job of reporting than they knew." (ibid.)

- which is precisely how DC Comics explained the differences between the Golden Age and Silver Age versions of their superheroes.

This idea covers a lot of territory and can unite a lot of literature.

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