EighthDayTheology

If C. S. Lewis didn’t spend any significant time embedded in a foreign culture, learning its language (and as far as I can find out, he didn’t), then how does he describe the experience so well?

Lewis’s Space Trilogy is some of my very favourite fiction. In the first book, Out of the Silent Planet, his protagonist (Ransom) ends up on Mars, living in a village of rational, otter-like creatures (the Hrossa), and finding them to be kind enough to teach him their speech, culture, and way of life.

For someone who hasn’t done much of it himself, the way Lewis describes the excitement, frustration, and discombobulation of face-to-face cross-cultural communication is masterful.

But Lewis captures something much more important about being a cross-cultural long term guest. We hear it in how Ransom’s first assumptions about his hosts are quickly corrected:

But the real revolution in his understanding of the hrossa began when he had learned enough of their language to attempt some satisfaction of their curiosity about himself. In answer to their questions he began by saying that he had come out of the sky. Hnohra immediately asked from which planet or earth (handra). Ransom, who had deliberately given a childish version of the truth in order to adapt it to the supposed ignorance of his audience, was a little annoyed to find Hnohra painfully explaining to him that he could not live in the sky because there was no air in it; he might have come through the sky but he must have come from a handra. He was quite unable to point Earth out to them in the night sky. They seemed surprised at his inability, and repeatedly pointed out to him a bright planet low on the western horizon – a little south of where the sun had gone down. He was surprised that they selected a planet instead of a mere star and stuck to their choice; could it be possible that they understood astronomy? Unfortunately he still knew too little of the language to explore their knowledge.

It’s there when his repeated attempts to find out which creatures rule the planet end in incomprehension:

He tried to ask what would happen if the sorns used their wisdom to make the hrossa do things – this was as far as he could get in his halting Malacandrian. The question did not sound nearly so urgent in this form as it would have done if he had been able to say ‘used their scientific resources for the exploitation of their uncivilised neighbours’. But he might have spared his pains. The mention of the sorns’ inadequate appreciation of poetry had diverted the whole conversation into literary channels. Of the heated, and apparently technical, discussion which followed he understood not a syllable.

It’s evident in his growing appreciation and love for their culture:

To every man, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly ever equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within. For Ransom, this moment had now come in his understanding of Malacandrian song. Now first he saw that its rhythms were based on a different blood from ours, on a heart that beat more quickly, and a fiercer internal heat. Through his knowledge of the creatures and his love for them he began, ever so little, to hear it with their ears. A sense of great masses moving at visionary speeds, of giants dancing, of eternal sorrows eternally consoled, of he knew not what and yet what he had always known, awoke in him with the very first bars of the deep-mouthed dirge, and bowed down his spirit as if the gate of heaven had opened before him.

What am I talking about? Ransom was learning humility. Humility expressed in the realisation that difference doesn’t mean inferiority. Humility experienced in often failing to keep up with conversations. Humility exhibited in being awed by beauty and depth in a song newly understood.

Culture shock is a common enough phenomenon. Plenty has been written about it.

It’s pretty normal to follow an emotional arc that goes something along the following lines: initial thrill –> increasing bewilderment –> frustration and anger –> renewed appreciation, understanding and acceptance.

Key to surviving culture shock, and to truly understanding and appreciating one’s host culture, is humility.

It’s not uncommon to come across foreigners who fly in to conduct training for the local church here. It’s often a reproduction of something that’s been powerful back home, and frequently presented through translation.

I’m not saying it’s done from arrogance (I think that’s pretty rare). I’m also not saying there’s no place for training via translation (it can be done very effectively).

But it’s a truly special thing when a foreigner pays the considerable cost of being a genuine learner in their host culture. When they go through the battering of culture shock, and through their determination to hold on to humility tighter than arrogance, emerge with a deeper love for their hosts. When they suffer the experience of wrestling to understand and use the host language, until it becomes natural. When the very process of language learning bears the character fruits of patience and perseverance. When they get deep enough into the culture to experience some of the same fears, temptations, joys and sorrows as their host friends. When they have the privilege to not merely come in as an expert, but to walk alongside as a friend.

Humility is vital, especially for Christians (Philippians 2:1-11).

I’d even go so far as to say that cross-cultural humility is necessary for translation which is accurate and powerful.

Here’s one more quote from Out of the Silent Planet. Ransom is doing his best to translate the ravings of another ‘alien’ from Earth into the language of the locals, who are listening:

‘Me no … no …’ began Weston in Malacandrian and then broke off. ‘I can’t say what I want in their accursed language,’ he said in English.

‘Speak to Ransom and he shall turn it into our speech,’ said Oyarsa.

Weston accepted the arrangement at once. He believed that the hour of his death was come and he was determined to utter the thing – almost the only thing outside his own science – which he had to say.

He cleared his throat, almost he struck a gesture, and began: ‘To you I may seem a vulgar robber, but I bear on my shoulders the destiny of the human race. Your tribal life with its stone-age weapons and beehive huts, its primitive coracles and elementary social structure, has nothing to compare with our civilisation – with our science, medicine and law, our armies, our architecture, our commerce, and our transport system which is rapidly annihilating space and time. Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower. Life –’

‘Half a moment,’ said Ransom in English. ‘That’s about as much as I can manage at one go.’ Then, turning to Oyarsa, he began translating as well as he could. The process was difficult and the result – which he felt to be rather unsatisfactory – was something like this: ‘Among us, Oyarsa, there is a kind of hnau who will take other hnaus’ food and – and things, when they are not looking. He says he is not an ordinary one of that kind. He says what he does now will make very different things happen to those of our people who are not yet born. He says that, among you, hnau of one kindred all live together and the hrossa have spears like those we used a very long time ago and your huts are small and round and your boats small and light and like our old ones, and you have one ruler. He says it is different with us. He says we know much. There is a thing happens in our world when the body of a living creature feels pains and becomes weak, and he says we sometimes know how to stop it. He says we have many bent people and we kill them or shut them in huts and that we have people for settling quarrels between the bent hnau about their huts and mates and things. He says we have many ways for the hnau of one land to kill those of another and some are trained to do it. He says we build very big and strong huts of stones and other things like the pfifltriggi. And he says we exchange many things among ourselves and can carry heavy weights very quickly a long way. Because of all this, he says it would not be the act of a bent hnau if our people killed all your people.’

Quite apart from his extraordinary arrogance and the evil of his ideas, Weston fails to communicate because he lacks the humility to seek understanding. His rhetoric isn’t landing, because it is made up of earthly ideas, expressed in earthly images and examples.

If it wasn’t for Ransom’s attempts to translate not only the words, but also the ideas, which he knows won’t land due to their lack of contextualisation, there would be no hope of understanding.

This is all shown so brilliantly by C. S. Lewis through story. Which makes me ask again – how does he write so descriptively of the need for cross-cultural humility, when he seemingly never went through the experience himself?

Perhaps Lewis’s love of languages is the key. Because language is never just the art of decoding and recoding words. Language and culture are inseperable. My guess is that Lewis learned something of the imporance of cross-cultural humility bent over his books in his study. Which means reading well can form character.

At least, I know reading Ransom’s adventures on Malacandra has helped me in my motivation for language learning and loving my host culture. It helps me see how much further I have to grow.

Maybe you’d enjoy reading them too?