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Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

I believe that Tolkien is one of the folks he read Old Books with.

They were part of the literature discussion group The Inklings, which met mostly on Tuesdays at The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford.

Tolkien is the one that convinced Lewis to leave atheism behind and become a Christian. Tolkien's poem "Mythopoeia" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia_(poem) - was instrumental in that process.

It's worthwhile to read it, but as a warning, it was written from one (highly educated) friend to another (highly educated friend), and it is not easy to understand what Tolkien is trying to say about the nature of reality without reading through it a few times: http://home.agh.edu.pl/~evermind/jrrtolkien/mythopoeia.htm

Thank you for that link. What an amazing poem!

> All wishes are not idle

That line alone could tip me over to Christianity. I'll have to think more about this.

I highly recommend delving more into both Tolkien and Lewis, if you haven't. Basically this single poetry line is reflected in so much of both their works: Silmarillion has several threads of this sentiment woven into it.

Yep. The Inklings was the group and it included Tolkien, Lewis' brother, Christopher Tolkien, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inklings

Probably, Tolkien and Lewis are often noted as being friends. Tolkien regularly gave friendly criticism of Lewis's frequent use of obvious allegory. The main character in the Out of the Silent Planet series is noted as being based on Tolkien.

As an aside, a fun fact: Out of the Silent Planet was the result of a challenge between Tolkien and Lewis, in which Tolkien would write a book about time travel, and Lewis a book about space travel. Tolkien's attempt was The Lost Road -- a work which he never completed, but which appears in fragmentary form in the collection The Lost Road and Other Writings.

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