The alter ego and the anti-self: Arthur Greeves and Owen Barfield, the two friendships that shaped Lewis

• Arthur Greeves (1895–1966), met in 1914 through a book of Norse myths.
• Owen Barfield (1898–1997), met in Oxford in 1919: their “Great War” of ideas lasted for years.
• Arthur receives the letter where Lewis announces his conversion; Owen prevents him from remaining an atheist.
• Lucy Barfield, Owen’s adopted daughter, is the dedicatee of *The Lion*.

Two Kinds of Friends

According to Lewis, the first friend is an “alter ego”: he shares your tastes, and meeting him shows you that you are not alone in the world. The second friend is more like an “anti-self”: he is interested in the same things as you, but always reaches the opposite conclusions. The first confirms you in your beliefs, the second challenges you to think. Lewis found the first at fifteen, in Belfast, and the second at twenty, in Oxford.

Arthur, the Alter Ego

“You too?”

In April 1914, Jack, aged fifteen, visits a sick neighbor, Arthur Greeves, whom he barely knows. On the bedside table, a book: *Myths of the Norsemen*. “You like this?” “And you?” The two boys discover they share the same passion for the North, its gods, and its sagas. Lewis will model this scene on the birth of a friendship at the heart of his chapter on friendship in *The Four Loves*.

The Confidant

Arthur, of frail health, from a wealthy and deeply religious family, studies painting at the Slade School in London but never makes it his profession. He remains in Belfast his whole life, then settles in Crawfordsburn, in County Down. For Lewis, he is the one to whom you can say everything: the books you read, the landscapes you love, the torments of adolescence, the doubts. The letters to Greeves, published under the title *They Stand Together* (1979), and then in the complete correspondence, are the main source on his youth and conversion. It is to Arthur that Lewis writes, on October 1, 1931: “I have passed from believing in God to believing in Christ.”

What Arthur Taught Jack

Lewis, a brilliant intellectual, was a snob when it came to taste. Arthur teaches him to love simple things: classic English novels, ordinary landscapes, the *homely*, that which is familiar and warm. Lewis will admit that he owes much of his sensibility to Arthur.

A Loyalty Without Judgment

Arthur Greeves was homosexual, which he confided to Lewis in their youth. The letters show a Lewis who, despite his convictions, never broke off or condemned his friend, but remained loyal to him until the end. Lewis’s biographers note the delicacy of this friendship, which was very unusual for the time. Lewis spends his holidays at Arthur’s almost every summer; it is there, in August 1932, that he writes *The Great Divorce* in two weeks. He pays his final visit in 1958 with Joy. Arthur dies in 1966, three years after Jack.

Owen, the Anti-Self

The Friend Who Says No

Lewis and Barfield meet in 1919, as students at Oxford, and will never stop amiably arguing. Lewis called him “the wisest and best of my unofficial teachers.”

The “Great War”

In the 1920s, Barfield adheres to the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, a spiritual doctrine that Lewis considers flimsy. This leads, from 1923 to about 1931, to what they call their “Great War”: letters, treatises, and endless walks. Barfield attacks what Lewis will later call “chronological snobbery,” the idea that old beliefs are false because they are old. He also shows Lewis that his materialism is inconsistent: if thought is merely a chemical phenomenon, how can it be said to be true? Lewis does not convert to anthroposophy, but after these debates he is no longer able to remain an atheist.

The Philosopher of Language

In *Poetic Diction* (1928), Barfield argues that ancient words carried a unified meaning, both concrete and spiritual, which modern languages have split apart. Tolkien is deeply influenced by this idea. Barfield will later publish *Saving the Appearances* (1957), an important book on the history of consciousness.

Lewis’s Advocate

Unable to live by his pen, Barfield works for thirty years in his family’s law firm in London. He takes part in the Inklings when he is in Oxford, manages Lewis’s finances, creates a discreet fund for his gifts, and becomes his literary executor. He dies in 1997, at ninety-nine, the last surviving member of the Inklings.

What the Two Friends Left in Narnia

• Dedications. Lewis dedicates *The Allegory of Love* to Barfield. *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe* is dedicated to his adopted daughter, Lucy Barfield, Geoffrey’s daughter: “You are already too old for fairy tales, but one day you will be old enough to read them again.”
• Two Models of Friendship. The friendships in Narnia resemble sometimes that of Arthur (Jill and Eustace, companions who discover each other), sometimes that of Owen (Shasta and Aravis, who begin by contradicting each other).
• An Idea of Barfield’s. The rejection of “chronological snobbery” runs through the Chronicles: the Telmarines have forgotten Old Narnia, and it is the old stories that tell the truth.

And Us?

Lewis believed that friendship was the most neglected of the modern loves. These two portraits invite us to ask who is, in our lives, the friend who resembles us, and the one who dares to contradict us.

## See also - [Les Quatre Amours](/lewis/oeuvres/les-quatre-amours/) - [The Pilgrim's Regress (title not published in French)](/lewis/oeuvres/le-retour-du-pelerin/) - [Complete Correspondence (not translated)](/lewis/oeuvres/correspondance-complete/) - [The Allegory of Love (title not translated in French)](/lewis/oeuvres/l-allegorie-de-l-amour/) - [Eight Addresses, Eight Books: the map of Lewis's work](/lewis/huit-adresses-huit-livres/) - [From the Cookie Tin to the Land of Aslan: the "Joy", the secret desire that connects all of Lewis's work](/lewis/de-la-boite-a-biscuits-au-pays-d-aslan/) - [From the Great Divorce to Professor Kirke: Lewis's mentors and their fictional doubles](/lewis/du-grand-coup-au-professeur-kirke/) - [The Lexicon of Jack: twelve of Lewis's ideas and the Narnia scene that shows them](/lewis/le-lexique-de-jack/) - [The Inklings: a literary club](/lewis/les-inklings/) - [The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe](/livres/le-lion-la-sorciere-blanche-et-l-armoire-magique/)