C. S. Lewis: the origins of the philosophical, religious and aesthetic views (based on autobiography “Surprised by Joy”) / К. С. Льюис: истоки философских, религиозных и эстетических взглядов (на основе автобиографии «Настигнутый радостью»)

Ефимова Людмила Николаевна кандидат филологических наук доцент, кафедра иностранных языков №2, Российский экономический университет имени Г.В.Плеханова 117997, Россия, г. Москва, пер. Стремянный, 36 Efimova Lyudmila PhD in Philology Docent, the department of Foreign Languages No. 2, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics 117997, Russia, g. Moscow, per. Stremyannyi, 36 luda062001@list.ru

Лопатинская Виктория Валерьевна кандидат педагогических наук доцент, кафедра иностранных языков №2, Российский экономический университет имени Г.В.Плеханова 117997, Россия, г. Москва, пер. Стремянный, 36 Lopatinskaia Viktoriia PhD in Pedagogy Docent, the department of Foreign Languages No. 2, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics 117997, Russia, g. Moscow, per. Stremyannyi, 36 lvv187@mail.ru

The beginning of the twentieth century was a turning point, a crisis era of wars and revolutions, which set a certain direction in the development of philosophy, sociology, and aesthetics. Contradictions and cruelty of the period forced many to get involved in new philosophical ideas: naturalism, positivism, modernism and others.

The trend was reflected in the works of a number of English writers who paid much attention to philosophical, religious questions, the theme of spiritual crisis and existential tragedy. Those years also saw a wide spread of a variety of the documentary-artistic genre – literary autobiography. L. B. Karaeva notes that “the English autobiography is particularly active in the spiritual quest of the past century; the nineteenth century is a prerequisite and preparation for the search of God in yourself, for the interiorization of spiritual experience embodied in the literary autobiography of the 20th century, which determined the evolutionary character of the literary autobiography genre not only in terms of poetry, but also in terms of world outlook, spiritual quest” ^{[3, p. 33]}.

Examining the work of the British writer, poet, teacher, scholar and theologian Clive Staples Lewis Surprised by Joy (1955), we are dealing with an autobiography written by the writer himself. The author critically interprets his own life, assesses it, the narrative reveals the individual features of life and the stages in the development of personality. P. Kreeft, A. Greaves, G. Sayer, C. Walsh and other researches of his works viewed it as a biography, while N. L. Trauberg, the literary critic and translator into Russian of many of his works, even called it a “spiritual autobiography” ^{[6, p. 4]}.

The work of Lewis can be compared with the Confessions of Saint Augustine. Lewis often quoted him in his philosophical and religious treatises, articles and letters. Like Augustine, he knew and repeated that “our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” D. Leigh ^[13], who researched the work of Lewis, drew attention to the same “way round”, that Lewis took to know God. Lewis touchingly described all the horrible and difficult trials occurring on this “way round” in the book Surprised by Joy.

The author begins the narration with childhood memories, which he called “Joy”, that he knew from his inner experience, a mysterious, indestructible and inexplicable Joy in the very depths of existence, on the other side of all life circumstances, which was for him the most convincing proof of the existence of God ^{[18, p. 7]}.

The book Surprised by Joy consists of a preface and fourteen chapters. According to Lewis, this is an essay on the beginning of his life, written in order to tell the story of his conversion. ^{[15, p. 1]}.

So, Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898 in the Irish land, where his mother's ancestors had lived for about two centuries. His paternal grandfather originally came from Wales, but then moved to Ireland. Lewis spent his first years in an environment where two branches of Christianity coexisted: Catholicism and Protestantism, which undoubtedly influenced the development of his religious views later.

The writer's mother was well-educated and taught Lewis mathematics, French and Latin. There were a lot of books in their house, and the boy enthusiastically read the books by A. Conan Doyle and Mark Twain, E. Nesbit and Gulliver's Travels by J. Swift, the tales by B. Potter, Longfellow's poetry and much more. Lewis said they brought beauty into his life. The impressions these books made on the child would become part of his own works: the novel-parable Till We Have Faces, the allegory The Great Divorce, the series of science-fiction novels The Space Trilogy, and the fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia.

It is important to mention the enormous influence of nature on the development of the spiritual and aesthetic views of Lewis. Little Clive didn’t like the surrounding reality, there was no beauty in it, but one day his brother made a toy garden, decorating the tin can with moss, branches and flowers. It was then that Lewis felt for the first time the beauty of Nature – “cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant” and discovered the longing (Sehnsucht), which turned him into “a votary of the Blue Flower” ^{[15, p. 5]}, i. e. a romanticist.

The ability of a fine understanding of beauty, free flight of imagination remained with Lewis until the end of life, which was reflected in his literary-critical works (The Discarded Image, An Experiment in Criticism), as well as in The Space Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia. The uncontrollable “longing” agitated his imagination from childhood, this delight reminded Lewis of the “Eden’s bliss” in Milton, which cannot be expressed in words. Surprisingly, the word Sehnsucht is used in the biography only once. In all the other chapters, Lewis called this aspiration Joy, perceived by him, according to N. L. Trauberg, almost as a “religious concept,” as a feeling, although different from what R. Otto called the feeling of holiness, but something related to it, may be anticipating it, as a recalling of something important, the absence of which renders human existence completely meaningless ^{[8, p. 15]}.

This motive of “recalling”, which brings the author back to his childhood, became later the main storyline of his “way round”. The same theme can also be traced in the Green Door by H. Wells who was admired by Lewis. Many researchers of Lewis's works mention that the presence of Joy can be certainly associated with the beginning of his religious and spiritual experience.

In this manner, extremely inspired, with a sense of divine joy Lewis speaks of Jesus Christ in all his philosophical and religious treatises.

The feeling of Joy experienced by little Lewis was saddened by the terminal illness of his mother. The boy tried to pray that the Lord would heal his mother, by the power of will he made himself confident that his prayers would be heard. According to D. Bingham, Clive imagined God as a good wizard. God the savior and God the judge was unknown to him ^{[9, p. 14]}. It is appropriate here to recall the scientist M. Laski, who believed that children's faith in God has very little in common with the faith in God of an adult ^{[14, p. 12]}. The child imagines God, based on the stories and ideas of the parents, and like everything that is perceived by the child through the authority of adults, this view should be tested by time.

Shortly after his mother died, his father put the eleven-year-old Clive to a school in the south of England. Lewis longed for his native Ireland awfully, and soon he started hating school. There, the future writer faced the worst manifestations of the traditional educational system – coercion, heavy-handed discipline, authoritarianism, daily flogging for the slightest offense, disgusting food, poor learning, arithmetic classes to the detriment of all other subjects. According to Lewis, there was no joy, it was forgotten. However, this period of Lewis’s life left one bright memory: he “came to a serious belief”. It was also encouraged by his Sunday visits to church services, where the boy unconsciously fell under the spell of “the candles and incense, the vestments and the hymns”; but the most important thing was that at school he “he heard the doctrines of Christianity taught by men who obviously believed them” ^{[15, p. 23]}. Lewis expressed his opinion on the church service, on the life of the church and its role in his articles and essays.

Nevertheless, all the difficulties of school life and the nagging feeling of loss did not suppress the imagination of Lewis. He started liking novels about antiquity, enjoyed reading R. Huggard and science fiction of H. Wells, which had a great influence on the development of his artistic and aesthetic tastes. And yet “planetary romances” written by him at a mature age were not an attempt to satisfy teenage cravings, but an attempt to exorcise the demon or subdue it to a higher and purer fantasy.

Another memory of his school years that Lewis retained for many years was that of the night sky behind the curtainless windows of the huge dormitory. Everyone was asleep, while he was looking attentively into this endless darkness, beyond which another world seemed to be hiding, mysterious and incomprehensible. These childhood impressions inspired amazingly colorful descriptions of night landscapes in the fairyland of Narnia. So, despite Lewis's dislike for school, being in it at least to a small extent contributed to the development of his religious consciousness.

Lewis received a different religious and aesthetic experience at the Preparatory School of the House of Cherbourg in Malvern, which he entered at the end of 1910. It was there that Lewis lost his faith and ceased to be a Christian. What encouraged the writer to consciously or unconsciously separate from the faith? The autobiographical essay tells us about a teacher, a gentle and kind woman, but lost in the labyrinth of Anglo-American Occultism. Gradually, Lewis was captured by her stories about spiritualism. He writes: “for the first time, there burst upon me the idea that there might be real marvels all about us, that the visible world might be only a curtain to conceal huge realms uncharted by my very simple theology” ^{[15, p. 40]}. Soon Lewis replaced the “I believe” with “one does feel” (ibid.).

However, it was not only because of the teacher that he renounced his faith. Lewis realized later that this was the intrigues of the enemy of mankind, who had led him to the wrong path. According to D. Bingham, it was also due to Lewis’s sinfulness. But we believe that it is not that simple. Let us recall the great grief that Lewis experienced in his childhood – the death of his mother. How could the all-merciful God allow such a thing?! But at that moment there was not a single believer close to the little Clive, who could comfort, support, and not let the spark of faith, which was still warm in his soul, die out in these bitter moments. It is also necessary to mention that Protestants do not pray for the dead – only for the living, and therefore he did not know how to pray for the dead mother. None of his biographers pays attention to this fact. We can conclude that Lewis initially received insufficient, or even superficial, religious education. As Metropolitan Anthony (of Sourozh) rightly noted, “the emotional content of faith is given to us from the very beginning; <...> in childhood, this act of faith is directed at God through parents, or instructors, or the whole environment <...>; this is an act of simple trust” ^{[7, p. 287]}. It is this trust that Lewis calls Joy.

Lewis’s recantation was accompanied by a change in outlook, attitude to the spiritual tradition. In particular, he more and more often expressed doubts on many issues of faith, he even doubted the legitimacy of Christianity as the true religion. According to the patristic sources, “it most often indicates lack of experience, lack of understanding that a person is unable to make a choice without an error”, and “freedom of choice, freedom of indifference is already a sign that we are not able to immediately distinguish truth from lies, God from His caricature ”^{[7, p. 317]}. During this period of spiritual change, there was no believing friend next to Lewis, and the situation at school did not encourage spiritual growth. As a result, the universe began to appear to Lewis as “menacing and unfriendly,” there was already no place for Joy in it, and his “atheism” connected with occultism. As a result, Clive lost faith and felt, as he said, not a loss, but a greatest relief.

It is no wonder that in the world, which seemed so cruel, Clive surrendered to pessimism. Lewis expressed his atheism with Lucretius's words, calling them the strongest arguments in his favor: “Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam Nequaquam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa” ^{[15, p. 44]}, which means “If God created our world, it would not be so vicious and imperfect as we see it.” A few years later, after returning to faith, in his work The Problem of Pain, Lewis writes that his atheism was explained by the imperfection and cruelty of the world order, the civilizations doomed to death, For the Universe, they tell us, will sometime be a uniform infinity of homogeneous matter at a low temperature. <. ..>. If you ask me to believe that this is the work of a benevolent and omnipotent spirit, I reply that all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Either there is no spirit behind the universe, or else a spirit indifferent to good and evil, or else an evil spirit” ^{[16, p. 2]}.

Moreover, speaking about the causes of Lewis’s atheism, in our opinion, one cannot help mentioning the general spiritual and moral crisis in the British society at the beginning of the century. No doubt, the atmosphere of militant atheism stifling faith and surrounding Lewis contributed to his atheism and became a fertile ground for its flourishing.

Nevertheless, there were also positive things in Lewis’s life in the Cherbourg period. One day he accidentally saw an article in the magazine entitled Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods with an illustration by the artist A. Rackham. Without exaggeration, this was a memorable and joyous event, Lewis was engulfed by “pure Northernness”, “a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer, remoteness, severity and almost immediately remembered that he had already known this long ago” ^{[15, p. 49]}. At the same time, he became acquainted with the music of Wagner and listened with pleasure to The Ring, Parsifal, The Ride of the Valkyries and inspired by the content and the music itself, wrote a long poem about Siegfried in four parts.

The music awakened his happy childhood memories, and, perhaps, prevented his aesthetic ideals from perishing. Pieces of legends and myths that formed the basis of Wagner's opera are clearly distinguished in his literary works. In the novel-parable Till We Have Faces, one cannot but notice harmony in the tender words that Orual says to Psyche before she dies, and it seems like violins from the introduction to Lohengrin opera sound powerfully behind the lines about Narnia in The Last Battle. In our opinion, Lewis’s artistic works are very musical, and the laws of harmony are strictly observed in them. It is for a reason that Lewis was even asked to write operas on the plot of Perelandra.

During his adolescence, thanks to Wagner's music, the beauty of nature was revealed to Lewis in a completely new way, according to him, “nature ceased to be a mere reminder of the books, became herself the medium of the real joy.” At the same time, of course, it remained a reminder and a memory – genuine Joy is, according to the writer, a reminder ^{[15, p. 52]}. Thank to his passion for Wagner, Lewis became very interested in Scandinavian mythology. He acknowledged that he found Joy again and again in those books, although it was no longer like the original one, there was almost nothing spiritual in it and, most likely, it was “intellectual satisfaction”.

However, the time came when Joy disappeared, and only memories of it tormented him. Lewis metaphorically calls his state of mind back then “spiritual desert”, with longing for joy. It was an impact of a new stage in his life – entering Molvern College. He was convinced that from a spiritual point of view, the evil of school life is that everyone was captured by only one desire: to advance, to reach the top, to remain in the elite. To fulfill this all means were good – meanness, servility to the superior; collecting necessary acquaintances, hasty refusals from unnecessary friendship, readiness to throw a stone at someone who is disfavored”. Unfortunately, many years later, instructors continue to point out that the worst features of the traditional school — insincerity, adaptability — are unconsciously absorbed by students who simply adapt to the school environment, learn the accepted way of achieving success ^[17]. Subsequently, Lewis repeatedly made critical remarks about school life and in general about the education system in England in his articles On Equality (1942), After Priggery – What? (1949), etc.

The future writer craving for knowledge spent long hours in the library. There, he accidentally discovered Milton's Corpus Poeticum Boreale and a volume of Celtic mythology, which took a place in his heart next to the Norwegian mythology, at the same time he became acquainted with Greek mythology, and a myth about Cupid and Psyche became the basis of his parable Till We Have Faces (1956). Such a deep study of mythology had a noticeable influence on the development of Lewis's artistic tastes. The traces of Celtic mythology, Irish and Icelandic sagas were directly expressed and became to some extent plotted in the novel-allegory The Pilgrim's Regress, Space Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia and other writings.

The meeting with the brilliant scientist William T. Kirkpatrick, who managed to develop the abilities of Lewis as a researcher, played an important role in the further formation of Lewis's intellectual and literary and artistic experience. These abilities were clearly manifested in his literary and critical essays: The Allegory of Love (1936), English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954), An Experiment in Criticism (1961), and others. Kirkpatrick also shaped the literary and aesthetic tastes of Lewis. Thanks to him, the future writer became acquainted with the works of Boswell, the translation of Herodotus, History of English Literature by A. Lang, read Tristram Shandy, Essays of Elia, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Clive read Homer, Cicero, Demosthenes and many other ancient authors in the original as recommended by his new mentor.

Later, for a long time Kirkpatrick was a “correspondence mentor” for Lewis, it was a kind of distance learning, which already then had rich history. According to some scholars, “distance learning started developing when John Amos Comenius, the author of the Didactica Magna, began widely using illustrated textbooks for educational purposes. The majority believes that extramural (correspondence) education (exchange of tasks by mail), which was widespread in the educational environment in the 19th and 20th centuries, is a prototype of modern distance education ^{[1, p. 268]}. Of course, such “correspondence education” significantly expanded the educational space and played a significant role in the development of literary and artistic tastes of Lewis.

Arthur Greaves had a similar effect on Lewis; their meeting coincided with the most important stage in the development of Lewis's philosophical and religious views. They corresponded from 1914 to 1963 (until the writer's death), sharing their spiritual experiences in letters, exchanging literary impressions. Greaves tried to cultivate in Lewis love for old-fashioned books, thanks to which he read the novels of Ch. Dickens, the Bronte Sisters and others, but he especially liked the works of William Morris. Later, in his article On the Reading of Old Books (1943), Lewis talks about the benefits of reading old books and expresses his critical attitude to the ignorance of young people who prefer cheap tabloids.

The spiritual life of Lewis at that time was undergoing a crisis. On the one hand, he satisfied his intellectual hunger, became an expert on ancient and medieval literature, accumulated powerful potential in philosophy, and on the other hand, the realization that all his achievements have nothing to do with Joy hung heavily on him.The entire eleventh chapter of Lewis's autobiography is devoted to philosophical reflections on this loss of Joy. He tried, by all means, to reach the former Joy, and again he realized that he was incapable of doing it. He painfully missed it, dreamed to feel the “strong jabbing feeling.” Then it did not even occur to him that the contemplation of the surrounding beauty of nature, the remembrance of Joy, was in itself already Joy, which “makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting” ^{[15, p. 115]}. At that time, he could not realize that joy implies a real feeling, and it should not be confused with intellectual or other achievements, as it happened with him in his youth.

Among the poets he read during that period, W. Yeats attracted him most of all, mostly his prose Rosa Alchemica and Per Amica Silentia Lunae. Yeats did not use traditional religion and rejected materialistic philosophy.At the same time, Lewis, who needed to read something in French, at the suggestion of one of his teachers, became interested in M. Maeterlinck who was popular at that time. It should be noted that even then university instructors developed students’ motivation to learn foreign languages in a manner similar to the one used in the modern educational system ^{[10, pp. 62-66]}. The works of Maeterlinck surprisingly combined “Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Pantheism'’. For a moment, Lewis seemed once again to see the light of a distant Joy, which he had lost. But in fact, the occultism has returned. And “the imaginative longing for Joy, or rather the longing which was Joy, and the ravenous, quasiprurient desire for the Occult, the Preternatural as such.. <...> “now came the Devil”. According to Lewis, only “ignorance and inability” protected him from Satanism ^{[15, p. 121]}.

In this difficult and controversial moment, another event occurred, which resulted in radical changes in the spiritual life of the future writer. He read Phantastes. A Faerie Romance by G. MacDonald which made an indelible impression on him. “For I now perceived that while the air of the new region made all my erotic and magical perversions of Joy look like sordid trumpery, it had no such disenchanting power over the bread upon the table or the coals in the grate” ^{[15, p. 124]}. In such a metaphorical way, Lewis describes his state after reading Phantastes. Of course, the conversion was still far away, but then for the first time his imagination became Christian.

In 1917, when Lewis entered the University of Oxford, he still held atheistic beliefs. In the philosophical treatise The Problem of Pain (1940), he admitted that at that time he “was as nearly without a moral conscience as a boy could be. Some faint distaste for cruelty and for meanness about money was my utmost reach—of chastity, truthfulness, and self-sacrifice I thought as a baboon thinks of classical music” ^{[16, p. 19]}.

The First World War was already under way, and in the autumn of 1917 Lewis was called into the army. Amid this monstrous bloodbath, Lewis developed spiritually. He was wounded in the battle of Arras and spent some time in hospital. There, he read Chesterton's essays for the first time, and they literally overwhelmed him, especially he noted the writer's humor. Reading helped Lewis overcome the pain of loss after losing friends.

Lewis returned to University at the age of 21, and during his years at university, Lewis met various people who influenced his convictions. The first one was an old Irish priest, who had long lost faith, but kept his parish. The only thing that interested him and that he sought was his personal immortality. His thoughts seemed shameful to Lewis, who sincerely believed that we had to fight any dreams that could lead one into a mania. Lewis was revolted by the very idea of immortality and he turned away from it, which means that he rejected the main Christian dogma – the Resurrection of Christ, which solves the question of Salvation facing every person. Such thoughts certainly spoke in favor of his atheism, which grew stronger, despite doubts that tormented him from time to time.

Another person, with whom Lewis had to communicate, “had flirted with Theosophy and Yoga, Spiritualism and Psychoanalysis”, and then lost his mind ^{[15, p. 140]}. This meeting, as a dreadful warning, influenced Lewis so much that he lost interest in conversations on occult topics.

At the same time, Lewis began studying H. Bergson carefully and was surprised to find out that one of the divine attributes rose above his intellectual horizon – necessary existence, which he attributed not to God, but to the universe, and as for Joy, he called it “aesthetic experience,” he argued a lot about it and considered it really valuable.

In 1922, Lewis, who had passed the exams brilliantly, stayed at the University of Oxford for the fourth year to study English literature. Back then in the discussion club, he met Nevill Coghill, a Christian who believed in the supernatural at the same time. The influence of a new friend made Lewis reconsider the work of G. MacDonald and G. Chesterton. And later, studying the history of the English literature, Lewis discovered G. Herbert, however, he also used the Christian mythology. Bacon seemed boring to the writer, and the romantics who had fascinated him possessed a certain religious feeling, sometimes dangerously bordering on Christianity, and one way or another contributed to his conversion to faith. He also met H. Dyson and J. R. R. Tolkien, which later developed into a friendship for many years. Both were Christians. According to Lewis, friendship with Tolkien saved him from two more old prejudices: “one cannot trust the papists and philologists”. Tolkien was both, and with the “first Move” he destroyed the “last remains” of atheism. Lewis re-read the book of the philosopher S. Alexander Space, Time and Deity, having studied his theory of “Contemplation” and “Enjoyment”, where “enjoyment” has nothing in common with pleasure, and “contemplation” with meditation” ^{[15, p. 149]}.

S. Alexander led Lewis to the understanding that God really exists, but the Doctrine of God itself is an abstract concept. And it is absolutely impossible to simultaneously experience two experiences of the cognition of the Supreme. The next step on the path of conversion was the reading of the Everlasting Man by Chesterton, where for the first time the Christian view of history seemed to Lewis reasonable and consistent, as well as regular conversations with Tolkien, who, being a true Catholic, tried to convert Lewis into this faith. But these attempts were not successful: the loss of faith by Lewis in his childhood did not lead to a separation from the religious tradition of Ulster Protestantism, which was dominating in his family where he was brought up.

Tolkien invited Lewis to the Coalbiters club, whose members gathered in the evenings and read Icelandic sagas. Communicating with Tolkien, Clive unexpectedly realized that the Christian myth contains as much truth as most people can accept.

After a while, the Inklings Club was established to replace the Coalbiters ^{[11, p. 107]}, and Lewis was its loyal member until the end of life. The club included the writer Charles Williams, a critic Lord D. Cecil, professors from Oxford H. Dyson, N. Coghill, A. Fox and others, as well as Lewis's brother Warren. They discussed philosophy, religion and literature. Obviously, these meetings and discussions had a dramatic impact on the conversion of Lewis.

It can be assumed that the “encounter” phenomenon played a role here, when contacting a new person, one feels significance of what is happening, the particular closeness with this person, perhaps even the embodiment of the ideal in him. The effect arises as a result of some complex, inaccessible to rational explanation correspondences of personal characteristics, which dramatically increase the possibilities of mutual understanding and facilitate communication. The meeting often determines the direction of development: the emergence of such a significant Other sets the pattern of high value, which you want to imitate in everything – in particular behaviors, preferences, etc.

“In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed,” the writer admits ^{[15, p. 157]}. However, it was an appeal to theism, not to Christianity: he did not know anything about the Incarnation. Since that time, Lewis began to go to church, however, according to G. Sayer, not only because he wanted to show people that he believed in God, but because his opposition to a group of atheists in the college had its own personal reason ^{[18, p. 118]}. Lewis himself confessed that visiting the church was for him a purely symbolic act.

The most difficult thing for Lewis was to believe in some Christian doctrines. So, W. Hooper remarked that Lewis did not stop arguing with himself, very seriously thinking about the myth, which he viewed as a chain of random events (such as the resurrection of a dying god) and which existed in many religions ^{[12, p. 93]}. He shared his impressions as a new convert in letters to Griffiths. He recognized the one and only moral God, but had not yet made a choice of which religion was closer to him: such historical rights that Christianity.

Lewis criticized the existing views of the Gospels as a set of myths, and he, we believe, was able to bring strong arguments in defense of his point of view. He was firmly convinced that “They had not the mythical taste…. If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this” ^{[15, p. 162]}.

Summarizing the above, it should be concluded that the essay by C. S. Lewis Surprised by Joy describes the author's long journey towards the attainment of true faith, accompanied by disappointments and insights, ups and downs. One of the specific characteristics of this work is that it contains features of several literary genres. A lot of descriptions, analysis of his own events, social problems are typical of an essay. Facts from Lewis’s real life, a moment of incompleteness (the term by M.M. Bakhtin), the perspective of future events allows us qualify the work as an autobiography. The features of a confession include philosophical reflections on the eternal existential themes, the path of a man from atheism to faith (like Confessions by Saint Augustine), to the spiritual renewal that the writer discovered when becoming a believing Christian.