The boring Barfield

Are we to believe the back matter, Owen Barfield was one of the 20th century's most significant philosophers, widely known and with an important influence on both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. Imagine that! So how come you never heard of him?

;-)

In reality, Barfield was a somewhat obscure figure utterly eclipsed by his more famous colleagues. The idea of Barfield as the eminence gris behind Lewis and Tolkien is almost comic, and Barfield himself would no doubt have agreed! But yes, perhaps Barfield's philosophical work "Saving the appearances" *is* more interesting than Lewis' mere Christianity and Tolkien's neo-mythology. Personally, I suspect that Barfield's life long adherence to Anthroposophy might have something to do with his lack of recognition. Rudolf Steiner did say some pretty weird things, and it seems as if Barfield uncritically accepted his entire system, warts and all. This seems to have affected his fiction, as well.

"Eager spring" is a short story about Vi, a graduate student of English literature drawn towards environmental activism and (surprise) Anthroposophy. She's also into courtly love, Renaissance painting and dream interpretation. (For some reason, Goethe isn't mentioned. Barfield was more into Coleridge!) The message of "Eager spring" is frankly unclear. Barfield attacks the Green movement for its left-wing political stances, feminism and egalitarianism. Apparently, the NHS is bad too. Yet, his hero Vi nevertheless teams up with the "Earth lovers", a fictitious but realistic direct action group. At the same time, the author seems to believe that traditional political action simply isn't enough or might be the wrong starting point altogether (here, there are some similarities to Lewis and Tolkien).

But what is Barfield's alternative? Courtly love and a belief in the occult? One of the characters in the story turns out to be the Devil himself, or rather Ahriman, the closest Anthroposophical equivalent. Apparently, he is in some sense behind the present industrial civilization. I didn't get the part about meteorites, but I guess it's connected to some esoteric theory of Steiner's. (In the story, Ahriman can be killed only by a magic dagger made by meteorite iron.) When Vi catches a possibly terminal illness, she reflects on the necessity of death for the evolution of Spirit, and our place as cells in a cosmic organism: "The trouble about that vast Organism was that each cell had a will of its own. That was what happened in cancer; cells took off on their own". So should we all just submerge, then?

Frankly, I didn't like this story. "Eager spring" lacks everything fiction should have: plot, suspense, interesting characters. I'm not against Anthroposophists writing Anthroposophical fiction (what else should they write? Muslim poetry?), but Barfield's story simply isn't an engaging read. Lewis presented his Christian message (with which I mostly disagree, by the way) in a more interesting manner in both the Space Trilogy and the Narnia stories.

"Eager spring" doesn't even come close. It's just plain boring.