Lewis: A Brief Encounter with the East

Lewis’ letter, with a luxurious sensuality, details the otherworldly, meditative state he experiences essentially on the side of a mountain. Lewis himself negates the experience through claims that “I didn’t detect an experience; I don’t even know whether I had one”, and proceeds by explaining that what he did do with certainty was “ask a question, and know a failure” pertaining to recurring themes that crop up throughout his letter, reflected in his poem too. The first recognisable theme is that of failure, in its manifestations not only as Lewis’ inability to “pray”, “understand”, or meditate for longer than a minute, but also in his feelings of rejection -  signalled by the consistent use of vocabulary such as “refusal”, “rebuff’ and “failure” - whether that be by the people of India, as the poem portrays, or the entirety of the “East” itself, as pertained to in the letter, both rejections being due to his “rank” and position as a white, European soldier.

There are details of consequence mentioned in both Lewis’ letter and his poem, such as the aversion of nature towards Lewis and his English friends, and more vitally the “little granite Buddha” which acts as point of reference for the reader, specifically in the letter, whereby it not only catalysts Lewis’ “divination”, but additionally, and crucially, reflects the transformation Lewis exhibits after his intensely detailed and seemingly sporadic minute of meditative thought. As he first sinks into an altered state of awareness, triggered by his “utter failure” - supposedly in prayer - he becomes “several degrees more aware” of his “physical self”, suggesting the cause of his “rebuff” to be linked to this total mental awareness of his many bodily, human “intimations”. The use of the word “imitations” here suggests Lewis’ alignment, if only temporarily, with Buddhist thought, in his subtle acknowledgment of a mentally spiritual existence as separate to, or limited by, an intense awareness of, and existence within, the physical body. Lewis concludes in this moment, with the help of the “stone figure”, the cause of his “failure”, his “rebuff”, his “refusal” by “a wall of darkness, hard resistant, smooth-surfaced”, to be one of his own making, by which, through forgetting these physical impulses, he recognises a faint ability to reach a state he describes as entirely detached from his “rank, or…any job or responsibility”.

This notion pertains to another theme within both the letter and the poem; the notion of Lewis’ “job” or “rank” as a military Englishman as limiting and corrosive to not only his pursuit of successful “prayer”, but also in his ability to “understand the East”. He begins his letter by recognising the limitations his role as a British soldier has on his ability to assimilate with the East and its people, asserting that “You can’t pray the first time you try; nor can a fussy officer sahib expect to “understand the East” at the point of a pistol”. This quote becomes more significant by the end of the letter, following Lewis’ recognition that by relinquishing his military European identity, if only temporarily, he is better able to exist as “Buddha” does, in a state of “simplicity so complete and timeless and artless” thus allowing us, the reader, to recognise his change in mindset, whereby the “little stone figure” described at the beginning of his letter transcends from just a statue, to something “timeless and artless”, and of inherent and seemingly unexplainable value. The description of the setting Lewis writes within too demonstrates this transition in the mind of the author, from one of melancholy - whereby in the “desolation of the hill and plain” Lewis feels his first rejection - to one of “wonderful happ(iness)”, whereby “all the tranquility and persistence of the East (is) caught in the stones and hills and plain” by the end of Lewis’ meditative experience. Clearly then, the letter details a “journey” for Lewis, from a self-critical and cynical mind, to an intuitive and accepting awareness as to the complexities of prayer, and of the mystical and elusive East.

The poem then, seems to add more body to the themes alluded to in Lewis’ letter, building on the emotions and complexities established, whereby the same transition from a cynical to a reflective mindset is portrayed, albeit with more ambiguity and instability. The poem begins with an even more sombre tone than the letter does, elucidated through Lewis’ focus on the “long-nosed swine vultures/Groping the refuse for carrion” whereby he exhibits little regard for the beauty of the “roof of gold in the gaon”. Lewis sets up these two contrasting entities to convey to the reader his own state of mind; instead of choosing to focus on the beauty of his surroundings, his mind dwells upon “the burial cairns” and the rotting flesh consumed by birds of prey. This persistence on the doleful, more hateful aspects of his surroundings continues as Lewis’ language becomes increasingly adverse, whereby the third stanza introduces the theme of rejection, not just through imagery such as the “old hags mumbling by the well”, or “the young girls in purple always avoiding us”, but even by nature itself, as symbolised by “the sacred monkeys...loping obscenely round our smell”. Clearly notions of rejection and isolation are triggered here, in which Lewis’ feelings of being a total outcast are evidenced even by the “sacred” force of nature rejecting him and his English counterparts for their smell; their very essence. This relates back to the letter, as in Lewis’ struggle to pray, whereby the “wall of darkness” he faces is here brought to life by the people and animals he comes into contact with. In this sense, just as the letter exhibits, the poem conveys to the reader Lewis’ anxieties surrounding his role as a British soldier in India during the tumultuous 1940s, evoking notions of guilt and even shame, especially when in direct relation to his witness of the “hard and hungry” lives of the Indian people. 

The “experience” described in detail in the letter of his “divination” is further alluded to in the poem, specifically in the fifth and sixth stanzas, in which the “little Vishnu of stone,/Silently and eternally simply Being” facilitates Lewis’ realisation of the limitations of the “flesh” which seeks to “catch and lime the singing birds of the soul/And holds their wings in mesh”. These stanzas give further clarity to Lewis’ recent, if fleeting understanding of this same premise as explored in the letter, while stanza five principally seeks to reinforce feelings of loneliness and isolation through the repeated use of the word “alone”, and the description of the “lonely salt plain” as inspired from the “desolation of the hill and plain” as described in the letter. In this regard, the poem details perhaps the more elusive elements of Lewis’ spiritual meditation, furthering the “sense of perfect freedom, a sense of infinite space to be in, just to be in” that Lewis experiences in the letter. 

However, perhaps somewhat unlike his letter, Lewis’ cynicism remains in tact by the end of the poem somewhat, whereby his focus is drawn to “Love” as something lacking in the East, threatened by “the lizards in this wasted land”; seemingly Lewis’ sympathy for the “hard and hungry” people who “have no love” is short-lived, and instead the “diverse and alien” aspects of the Indian people’s existence takes precedence over any initial pity the poem arouses. Nevertheless, Lewis ends the poem with a newfound sense of patience and “humility without submission” just as he experiences in his letter, by which he recognises in the final stanzas that “Love must wait” just as “the Gods must wait”, suggesting a final and substantial acknowledgement of the sanctity of internal peace, and a placement of one’s inner sense of tranquility above the trivial matters of the heart or religious faith: “And when my sweetheart calls me shall I tell her/That I am seeking less and less of world?/And will she understand?”. 

In summary, it seems the poem reaches a far greater sense of clarity and perhaps certainty as to the “experience” Lewis attempts to encapsulate in his letter. While the letter ends on the certainty of a temporary sense of happiness, it begins with a sort of disclaimer that seeks to negate the lucidity, and even existence of the “experience” as a whole; the poem, in contrast, reinforces both the lucidity and gravity of Lewis’ meditative encounter, and further augments this seemingly supernatural “divination”  through the finality of Lewis’ pursuit of tranquility as more extensive and far-reaching than his worldly love for his “sweetheart”.