Dostoevsky, Augustine, and CS Lewis
Over the last six weeks, I’ve been enjoying three precious treasures: “As the Ruin Falls,” a poem by CS Lewis, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Augustine’s Confessions (with the help of Peter Kreeft’s companion book called I Burned for Your Peace).
While the three works vary —a love poem, a novel about a murder, and an autobiographical prayer-philosophy — they all interact with notions of love, suffering, and faith.
I’ll comment in this post on “As the Ruin Falls,” and come back to the other two in the coming weeks.
I was first exposed to “As the Ruins” through a Phil Keagy album (Love Broke Through) forty-five years ago. It stood out from all the songs in depth and was, to my twenty-year-old self, beyond understanding, not because it was philosophical or technical, but because I had not lived life. Because I was thinking lately about an old friend, the musical version came back to me, and I looked up the poem.
“As the Ruin Falls” appears to have been written to Joy Davidman as she was dying, but was only published a few years after.
The poem begins with Lewis confessing his love as “fancy rhetoric” and “mercenary.” His goals are merely “peace and pleasure.”
But knowing Joy Davidman taught him about his own shortcomings and opened his heart:
I see the chasm. Everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.
Have you had an experience like this? You feel you are getting free from yourself with the help of another person, brought closer to God, too, in a sort of bliss, then suddenly the ground comes out from under you?
Then you’re falling and falling because the bridge is breaking. Eventually, after many tears, maybe even anger, you see “the pains are more precious.” I was given a gift—one I would never have sought, but here it is! Thank you!
Link to the full text of “As the Ruin Falls”
The link below takes you to Phil Keaggy, almost fifty years after the Love Broke Through album, playing his version of “As the Ruin Falls” with the poet Malcolm Guite, who shares his rendition of the poem.
