For the Fun of It: Discussing Friendship with C.S. Lewis (Part Two)

(Please read Part One, the previous posting,  to pick up the train of thought.)

M: Sorry to break off our dialogue so abruptly last week, but I ‘m grateful for the chance to continue the discussion.  We were talking about male friendship, and the theory that homosexuality is somehow the basis of every friendship among men.  As I recall, you definitely disagreed.

CSL: “The homosexual theory…seems to me not even plausible.”

M: Yet, historically, it is a fact that some soldiers, warriors, etc. were homosexuals and friends, or homosexual friends.

CSL:  “Certain cultures at certain periods seem to have tended to the contamination. In war-like societies, it was, I think, especially likely to creep into the relation between the relation of the mature Brave and his young armor-bearer or squire. The absence of the women while you were on the warpath had, no doubt, something to do with it.”

M:  So, you believe these instances of homosexual friendships are the exception and not the rule, even though the theory would hold otherwise? How can we be sure, either way?

CSL: “ In deciding, if we think we need or can decide, where it crept in and where it did not, we must surely be guided by the evidence (when there is any) and not by any a priori theory.”

M: I suppose it depends on what you consider to be evidence. What about physical gestures of affection? Are they sufficient evidence?

CSL: “Kisses, tears, and embraces are not in themselves evidence of homosexuality. The implications would be, if nothing else, too comic. Hrothgar embracing Beowulf, Johnson embracing Boswell  (a pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple) and all those hairy old toughs of centurions in Tacitus, clinging to one another and begging for last kisses when the legion was broken up…all pansies? If you can believe that, you can believe anything.”

M: Well, today, everything has become believable. Kisses, tears and embraces between men in America today are evidence of homosexuality. I know in some countries men can still hold hands or walk arm in arm, and no one would give it a thought.  But that’s not culturally acceptable between men in the USA, unless you want to be seen as gay. Times sure have changed!

CSL: “On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation.  We, not they, are out of step.

M:   “We not they are out of step?!!   I am surprised to read that. Can’t friendship lead into erotic love? And isn't the converse true as well: can’t Eros lead to friendship?”

CSL:  “But this, far from obliterating the distinction between the two loves, puts it in a clearer light. If one who was first in the deep and full sense your friend, is then gradually or suddenly revealed as your lover, you will certainly not want to share the Beloved’s erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the friendship. "

M:  Hmm, share friendship but keep the erotic love to yourself….What do you see as the difference between friends and erotic lovers?

CSL:” Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends, hardly ever about their friendship. Lovers are usually face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest…Friendship is the least biological of our loves…true friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth. “

M: That makes a great deal of sense to me, but how do you explain the case of the person who is the clingy, possessive, controlling, possessive friend, or a friend who doesn’t really care about anything, or any cause,  except to collect more and more and more friends? The first case seems to contradict your premise that friendship is side by side, or, directed outward and open; the second, that moving towards a common interest greater than the friends themselves is the unifying factor.

CSL:  “…those pathetic people who simply ‘want friends’ can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else beside Friends.  Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be ‘I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend’,  no Friendship can arise – though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.”

M: I agree with your reasoning, although many people today would not. I’m not sure what kind of “Affection” would arise out of a Friendship that isn’t about anything but itself, however.

CSL: “Friendship is utterly free from Affection’s need to be needed. We are sorry that any gift or loan or night-watching should have been necessary, - and no, for heaven’s sake, let us forget all about it, and go back to the things we really want to do or talk of together. Even gratitude is no enrichment to this love. The stereotyped ‘Don’t mention it’ here perfectly expresses what we really feel.”

 

M: What about the old maxim which says, “A friend in need is a friend indeed?” how does that apply?

CSL: “The mark of a perfect friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.“

M: I have to thank you for these insights. I don'think I ever came across anyone who explained what a beautiful and noble blessing true friendship is as clearly as you did. 

CSL: Don't mention it.