Screwtape Part II: Reflections on Rhythm

[Spoiler Alert]

The Patient chooses Heaven! Screwtape devours Wormwood for all eternity! Yay! Or Boo! Or both?

Well, now that we've got all of those juicy little spoilers out of the way, I'm not actually going to talk about the end of the book, tender a morsel as it is. From this week's reading, a concept from the 25^th letter caught my attention quite thoroughly: Screwtape's idea of rhythm. He says, “He [The Enemy] has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.” Screwtape, of course, would like to pervert the natural satisfaction with these rhythms of life with a constant pursuit of novelty. Novelty is that which is enjoyed almost entirely for the sake of its newness. Something which will turn out of fashion just as quickly as it came into fashion. These ever-shifting trends and vogues are, as Screwtape himself notes, always expensive and never satisfactory. Take the example of the fashion industry. In the first place, the most trendy fashion statements always look the most outlandish because their goal is not purely aesthetic, but also reaching for novelty. Still, even when a new fashion has been popularly established, it is sure to look outmoded in just a few years. So it is with any art, literature, philosophy, religion or anything else if the goal is always change and never growth or continuity.

St. Augustine spoke of God as that “Beauty ever ancient, [and] ever new” This speaks to the heart of Screwtape's claims about “the Enemy” which is to say that He desires both necessary change and a love of constancy. It may be noted, in line with Augustine's thoughts, that the Enemy is that which is desired and and perhaps pursued in man's joy at the changing seasons or the celebration of holidays. These things reflect both the freshness constant legacy of the Lord Himself. He is a beauty which does not grow old, a love which does not tire. In much of art there is a desire to constantly create something “new”. A story which has been told in a different way before is at best trite and at worst plagiarism. Certain branches of modern art and literature are so inundated with this need for novelty that they have in fact lost all sense of beauty, and indeed have forfeited their ability to evoke a desired emotion or idea or even question into the mind of any audience member. They have become so novel as to be unrecognizable. Meanwhile it is some of the greatest works of art and literature which still speak deeply to the world today, were not original in the common sense. Shakespeare's plays might well be considered plagiarized today. Michelangelo's stunning Pieta was a new way of looking at that well-known sculptural figure. And so on. What these great masters knew in their undertakings was that their goal was not in fact novelty, it was beauty. Certainly they desired to create vision which had not precisely been seen before, to share this unique view of the world through their eyes. But the proper object of their contemplation and creation was a very human truth and beauty which moved the heart as softly as the first chill of Autumn on the late Summer air. These masters, like St. Augustine himself, were enamored of Beauty.

Of course not all art must be beautiful in the strictly pastoral sense of the term. Lewis's example evokes this perfectly. There is a time for winter snowfall, a time for Lenten fasting, and a time for Christmas pudding. Each season is treasured in its own time, and equally so the development of each era's particular artistry casts its own light on the world. The trick is to enter into the rhythm rather than to try to subvert it through pure novelty. If the artists of the Renaissance, for instance, had not learned from their predecessors, the world would not have seen the remarkable realism they were able to bring to the table. It is growth, not blind change which brings the human race ever closer and closer to beauty and to truth. We may cast away what is feeble and flawed, but must cultivate that which is strong is we wish for any created work to truly engage with the hearts of men and women, hearts which were formed aching and seeking for that Ancient Beauty made ever New.