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The Beekeeper's Veil

The Beekeeper's Veil Given Owen Barfield’s quiet influence on both sides of the Atlantic, extending over so many decades and seemingly disparate writers, it would not be surprising to hear the creation myth of Paul Simon’s composing ‘Homeward Bound’ on a railway platform told with this additional detail: he and Barfield were waiting for the same train. In this version of the story, the professor gives the young celebrity some advice and some chocolate. It almost certainly didn’t happen. However, with his lines ‘Darkness crept back, darkness crept back, darkness | The loving minion, the pluperfect friend’ (The Tower, XI.8–9), Barfield does bridge a gap between Milton’s Samson Agonistes (‘O dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of noon’) and Simon’s ‘Sound of Silence’ (‘Hello, darkness, my old friend’). Barfield’s bridge is a long one, and it creaks. Travelers cannot blithely trip-trap across it without risking the appetites of trolls who lurk underneath. One pleasure of this volume, making the risk worthwhile, is the glimpses it gives us into the shared manuscripts of the Inklings: a chance to read drafts passed from hand to hand. Leslie A. Taylor and Jefferey H. Taylor have done an excellent job of documenting what can be known http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Inklings Studies Edinburgh University Press

The Beekeeper's Veil

Hadaway, Elizabeth
Journal of Inklings Studies , Volume 11 (1): 6 – Apr 1, 2021
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
2045-8797
eISSN
2045-8800
DOI
10.3366/ink.2021.0098
Publisher site
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Abstract

Given Owen Barfield’s quiet influence on both sides of the Atlantic, extending over so many decades and seemingly disparate writers, it would not be surprising to hear the creation myth of Paul Simon’s composing ‘Homeward Bound’ on a railway platform told with this additional detail: he and Barfield were waiting for the same train. In this version of the story, the professor gives the young celebrity some advice and some chocolate. It almost certainly didn’t happen. However, with his lines ‘Darkness crept back, darkness crept back, darkness | The loving minion, the pluperfect friend’ (The Tower, XI.8–9), Barfield does bridge a gap between Milton’s Samson Agonistes (‘O dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of noon’) and Simon’s ‘Sound of Silence’ (‘Hello, darkness, my old friend’). Barfield’s bridge is a long one, and it creaks. Travelers cannot blithely trip-trap across it without risking the appetites of trolls who lurk underneath. One pleasure of this volume, making the risk worthwhile, is the glimpses it gives us into the shared manuscripts of the Inklings: a chance to read drafts passed from hand to hand. Leslie A. Taylor and Jefferey H. Taylor have done an excellent job of documenting what can be known

Journal

Journal of Inklings Studies – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2021

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