Dymer

In brief

A long nine-canto poem about a young man fleeing a tyrannical utopian city. Lewis had placed all his hopes as a poet in Dymer; its relative failure turned him away from poetry toward prose.

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On screen

Going further

The Magician's Nephew

Dymer

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Prince Caspian

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Silver Chair

The Last Battle

A long nine-canto poem about a young man fleeing a tyrannical utopian city.

Lewis had placed all his hopes as a poet in Dymer; its relative failure turned him away from poetry toward prose.

In brief

Level: Demanding. For researchers and readers of English poetry.

In brief

Lewis worked on Dymer during his early years as a teacher at Oxford, during his full atheist period.

What announces Narnia

The theme of the tyrannical utopian city will return in the experimental school and with Uncle Andrew.

What stands out for a reader today

Few people will read Dymer today, and that is precisely what makes it interesting: it shows an author failing where he wanted to succeed. For a reader of Narnia, it is a lesson in patience: the man who dreamed of being a great poet found his true voice twenty-five years later, in children's stories.

The story

Few admirers, but few readers. Lewis prefaces the 1950 reissue by judging his former poem with friendly irony.

Themes

• Rebellion and its consequences.
• Dream and reality.
• Desire and its corruption.

See also

• Spirits in Bondage (Spirits in Bondage)
• Poems (posthumous collections)
• The Last Battle: A medievalist at Oxford and Cambridge, and what Narnia owes to his library

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymer