Lewy

Rereading Out of the Silent Planet. I don't think I grasped much of it in the first reading. at least I didn't retain much.

            Man travels to Mars and finds a world that didn't fall as ours did. There are three rational creatures on Malacandra, the Hrossa, Seroni, and Pfifltriggi. they work together in perfect unity, each doing what it does best and appreciating what the others do. The hrossa are otter-like and great poets. Seroni are wise and collect all the knowledge and the Pfifltriggi are incredible blacksmiths and miners and sculptors. Ransom, the main man (aptly named) is wandering alone on their planet trying to make sense of the perfect harmony. fortunately he accepts their camaraderie fairly quickly. Lewis put a lot of his considerable intellect into imagining this world. They have no word for bad in their language, nor guilt or shame. they appreciate things as they come and go and do not hold on to or rush their lives. It really makes sense as a perfect world.

            "A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. the seroni could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when i remember it as I lay down to die, what it makes in me all my days until then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it." Hyoi the Hross.

" 'We thought it,' said the sorn, 'and the pfifltriggi made it.'

'Why do they make them,' said Ransom. He was trying once more, with his insufficient vocabulary, to find out the political and economic framework of Malacandrian life.

'They like making things,' said Augray. 'it is true they like best the making of things that are only good to look at and of no use. But sometimes when they are tired of that they will make things for us, things we have thought, provided they are difficult enough. They have not patience to make easy things however useful they would be.' "

" 'Does no one keep your people at their work, Kanakaberaka?'

'Our females,' said the pfifltrigg with a piping noise which was apparently his equivalent for a laugh.

'Are your females of more account among you than those of the other hnau among them?'

'Very greatly. The sorns make least account of females and we make most.' "