Arthur Owen Barfield (9 November 1898 – 14 December 1997) was an English philosopher, author, poet, critic, and member of the

Inklings The Inklings were an informal literature, literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusia ...

Life

Barfield was born in London, to Elizabeth (née Shoults; 1860–1940) and Arthur Edward Barfield (1864–1938). He had three elder siblings: Diana (1891–1963), Barbara (1892–1951), and Harry (1895–1977). He was educated at

Highgate School Highgate School, formally Sir Roger Cholmeley's School at Highgate, is a co-educational, fee-charging, private day school, founded in 1565 in Highgate, London, England. It educates over 1,400 pupils in three sections – Highgate Pre-Preparato ...

and

Wadham College, Oxford Wadham College ( ) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street, Oxford, Broad Street and Parks Road ...

and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B.Litt., which became his third book ''Poetic Diction'', he was a dedicated poet and author for over ten years. After 1934 his profession was as a solicitor in London, from which he retired in 1959 aged 60. Thereafter he had many guest appointments as visiting professor in North America. Barfield published numerous essays, books, and articles. His primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings. He is best known as the author of '' Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry'' and as a founding father of

Anthroposophy Anthroposophy is a spiritual new religious movementSources for 'new religious movement': which was founded in the early 20th century by the esotericist Rudolf Steiner that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensibl ...

in the English speaking world.

Family

In 1923 he married the musician and choreographer Maud Douie. They adopted three children, Alexander,

Lucy Lucy is an English language, English feminine given name derived from the Latin masculine given name Lucius with the meaning ''as of light'' (''born at dawn or daylight'', maybe also ''shiny'', or ''of light complexion''). Alternative spellings ar ...

, and Geoffrey. Their sole grandchild is Owen A. Barfield, son of Alexander. After the death of his wife in 1980 he spent his final years in a retirement hotel in

Forest Row Forest Row is a village and a large civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex, England. The village is located three miles (5 km) south-east of East Grinstead. In January 2023, it ranked as Britain’s 3rd poshest village. His ...

East Sussex East Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Kent to the north-east, West Sussex to the west, Surrey to the north-west, and the English Channel to the south. The largest settlement ...

The Inklings

Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling." He had a profound influence on

C. S. Lewis Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer, literary scholar and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Magdalen College, Oxford (1925–1954), and Magdalen ...

and, through his books ''The Silver Trumpet'' and ''Poetic Diction'' (dedicated to Lewis), an appreciable effect on

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson ...

, who made use of the ideas in his writings with the theme of decline and fall in Middle-earth. Tolkien embedded this into his

legendarium Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his ''The Lord of the Rings'', and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of ''The Silmari ...

through the device of repeated fragmentation, of the created light, of language, and of peoples especially in the

sundering of the Elves In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the Elves or Quendi are a sundered (divided) people. They awoke at Cuiviénen on the continent of Middle-earth, where they were divided into three tribes: Minyar (the Firsts), Tatyar (the Seconds) and Nelyar ...

. Barfield's contribution, and their conversations, persuaded both Tolkien and Lewis that myth and metaphor have always had a central place in language and literature. "The Inklings work... taken as a whole, has a significance that far outweighs any measure of popularity, amounting to a revitalisation of Christian intellectual and imaginative life." Barfield and C. S. Lewis met in 1919 as students at Oxford University and were close friends for 44 years. "It is no exaggeration to say that his friendship with Barfield was one of the most important in his ewis'slife..." The friendship was reciprocal. Almost a year after Lewis's death, Barfield spoke of his friendship in a talk in the USA: "Now, whatever he was, and as you know, he was a great many things, CS Lewis was for me, first and foremost, the absolutely unforgettable friend, the friend with whom I was in close touch for over 40 years, the friend you might come to regard hardly as another human being, but almost as a part of the furniture of my existence." When they met, Lewis was an atheist who told Barfield, "I don't accept God!" Barfield was influential in converting Lewis. Lewis came to see that there were two kinds of friends, a first friend with whom you feel at home and agree (Lewis's close friend Arthur Greeves was an example of this) and a second friend who brings to you a different point of view. He found Barfield's contribution in this way particularly helpful despite, or because, "during the 1920s, the two were to engage in a long dispute over Barfield's (and their mutual friend, A.C. Harwood's) connection to anthroposophy and the kind of knowledge that imagination can give us... which they affectionately called 'The Great War'. Through their conversations, Lewis gave up materialist realism – the idea that our sensible world is self-explanatory and is all that there is – and moved closer to what he had always disparagingly referred to as "supernaturalism." These conversations influenced Lewis towards writing his Narnia series. As well as being friend and teacher to Lewis, Barfield was (professionally) his legal adviser and trustee. Barfield was an important intellectual influence on Lewis. Lewis wrote his 1949 book ''

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'' is a portal fantasy novel written by British author C. S. Lewis, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1950. It is the first published and best known of seven novels in ''The Chronicles of Narnia'' (1950–1956 ...

'', the first Narnia chronicle, for his friend's daughter Lucy Barfield and dedicated it to her. He also dedicated ''

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ''The Voyage of the Dawn Treader'' is a portal fantasy novel written by British author C. S. Lewis, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1952. It was the third published of seven novels in ''The Chronicles of Narnia'' (1950–1956). Macmillan US p ...

'' to Barfield's adopted son Geoffrey in 1952. Barfield also influenced his scholarship and world view. He dedicated his first scholarly book, ''The Allegory of Love'' (1936) to his 'wisest and best of my unofficial teachers,' stating in its preface that he asked no more than to disseminate Barfield's literary theory and practice. Barfield's more than merely intellectual approach to philosophy is illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between himself and Lewis, which Lewis did not forget. Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject." "It wasn't a ''subject'' to Plato," said Barfield, "it was a way". In the third lecture of ''The Abolition of Man'' (1947), Lewis suggests that Barfield's mentor,

Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (; 27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century ...

, may have found the way to a "redeemed scientific method that does not omit the qualities of the observed object". Barfield was also an important influence on Tolkien. In a letter to C. A. Furth of Allen and Unwin in 1937, Tolkien wrote, "the only philological remark (I think) in ''The Hobbit'' is...: an odd mythological way of referring to linguistic philosophy, and a point that will (happily) be missed by any who have not read Barfield (few have), and probably by those who have." The reference in question comes when Bilbo visits the dragon Smaug's treasure hoard within the Lonely Mountain: "To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all was wonderful. Bilbo had heard tell and sing of dragon-hoards before, but the splendour, the lust, the glory of such treasure had never yet come home to him. His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment..." Lewis wrote to Barfield in 1928 about his influence on Tolkien: "You might like to know that when Tolkien dined with me the other night he said, apropos of something quite different, that your conception of the ancient semantic unity had modified his whole outlook, and he was always just going to say something in a lecture when your concept stopped him in time. 'It is one of those things,' he said, 'that when you have once seen it there are all sorts of things you never say again." Barfield's notion of final participation (the idea of a fully conscious participative unity with nature) brought to the Inklings ideas similar to those later expounded by others as

radical orthodoxy Radical orthodoxy is a Christian theological and philosophical school of thought which makes use of postmodern philosophy to reject the paradigm of modernity. The movement was founded by John Milbank and others and takes its name from the title o ...

, with its long theological history. It has roots in the Platonic idea of ''methexis'' passed on by Augustine and Aquinas, and offered a sacramental view of reality which Tolkien takes up in ''The Ring'' in, for example, the contemplative artistry and natural oneness of the elves, Tom Bombadil and the Hobbits' simple pleasures.

Anthroposophy

Barfield became an anthroposophist after attending a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in 1924. He studied the work and philosophy of Rudolf Steiner throughout his life, translated some of his works, and had some of his own early essays published in anthroposophical publications. This part of Barfield's literary work includes the book ''The Case for Anthroposophy'' containing his Introduction to selected extracts from Steiner's ''Riddles of the Soul''. Steiner is always a formative presence in Barfield's work, probably his major influence but Barfield's thought should not be considered merely derivative of Steiner's. Barfield expert G. B. Tennyson suggests that: "Barfield is to Steiner as Steiner was to Goethe", which is illuminating so long as it isn't taken as referring to relative stature. Barfield's writing was not derivative, it was profoundly original, but he did not see himself as having moved beyond Steiner, as, in his opinion, Steiner had moved beyond Goethe. Barfield considered Steiner a much greater man in possession of a greater mind than Goethe, and of course he considered himself very small compared to both of them.

Influence and opinions

Barfield might be characterised as both a

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

writer and a learned anti-reductionist writer. His books have been republished by Barfield UK, with new editions including ''Unancestral Voice''; ''History, Guilt, and Habit''; ''Romanticism Comes of Age; The Rediscovery of Meaning; Speaker's Meaning;'' and ''Worlds Apart''. ''History in English Words'' seeks to retell the history of Western civilisation by exploring the change in meanings of various words. ''Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry'' is on the 1999 ''100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century'' list by Philip Zaleski. Barfield was also an influence on T. S. Eliot who called Barfield's book ''Worlds Apart'' "a journey into seas of thought very far from ordinary routes of intellectual shipping." In her book ''Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World'', Verlyn Flieger analyses the influence of Barfield's ''Poetic Diction'' on the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien. More recent discussions of Barfield's work are published in Stephen Talbott's ''The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst'', Neil Evernden's ''The Social Creation of Nature'', Daniel Smitherman's ''Philosophy and the Evolution of Consciousness'',

Morris Berman Morris Berman (born August 3, 1944) is an American historian and social critic. He earned a BA in mathematics at Cornell University in 1966 and a PhD in the history of science at Johns Hopkins University in 1971. Berman is an academic humanist cu ...

's ''The Reenchantment of the World,'' and

Gary Lachman Gary Joseph Lachman (born December 24, 1955), also known as Gary Valentine, is an American writer and musician. He came to prominence in the mid-1970s as the bass guitarist for rock band Blondie. Since the 1990s, Lachman has written full-time, ...

's ''A Secret History of Consciousness.'' In 1996 Lachman conducted perhaps the last interview with Barfield, versions of which appeared in ''

Gnosis Gnosis is the common Greek noun for knowledge ( γνῶσις, ''gnōsis'', f.). The term was used among various Hellenistic religions and philosophies in the Greco-Roman world. It is best known for its implication within Gnosticism, where ...

'' magazine and the magazine '' Lapis.'' In his book ''Why the World Around You isn't as it Appears: A Study of Owen Barfield'' (SteinerBooks, 2012), Albert Linderman presents Barfield's work in light of recent societal examples and scholarship while writing for an audience less familiar with philosophical categories and history. In a foreword to ''Poetic Diction'',

Howard Nemerov Howard Nemerov (February 29, 1920 – July 5, 1991) was an American poet. Nemerov was the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Poet in Residence at Washington University in St. Louis. He was twice ...

, US Poet Laureate, stated: ''Among the poets and teachers of my acquaintance who know POETIC DICTION it has been valued not only as a secret book, but nearly as a sacred one.''

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...

, the Nobel Prize–winning novelist, wrote: "We are well supplied with interesting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting. His ambition is to set us free. Free from what? From the prison we have made for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our limited and false habits of thought, our 'common sense'." The culture critic and psychologist

James Hillman James Hillman (April 12, 1926 – October 27, 2011) was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practic ...

called Barfield "one of the most neglected important thinkers of the 20th Century".

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". Af ...

, describing ''Poetic Diction'', referred to it as "a wonderful book, from which I keep learning a great deal". The film ''Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning'' (1994), co-produced and written by G. B. Tennyson and David Lavery, directed and edited by Ben Levin, is a documentary portrait of Barfield. Barfield has been held in high esteem by many contemporary poets, including Robert Kelly, Charles Stein, George Quasha, Tom Cheetham, and others.

''Poetic Diction''

Barfield's book ''Poetic Diction'' begins with examples of "felt changes" arising in reading poetry, and discusses how these relate to general principles of poetic composition. But his greater agenda is "the study of meaning". Using poetic examples, he sets out to demonstrate how the imagination works with words and metaphors to create meaning. He shows how the imagination of the poet creates new meaning, and how this same process has been active, throughout human experience, to create and continuously expand language. For Barfield this is not just literary criticism: it is evidence bearing on the evolution of human consciousness. This, for many readers, is his real accomplishment: his unique presentation of "not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry, and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge". This theory was developed directly from a close study of the evolution of words and meaning, starting with the relation between the primitive mind's myth making capacity, and the formation of words. Barfield uses numerous examples to demonstrate that words originally had a unified "concrete and undivided" meaning, which we now distinguish as several distinct concepts. For example, he points out that the single Greek word ''pneuma'' (which can be variously translated as "breath", "spirit", or "wind") reflects the original unity of these concepts of air, spirit, wind, and breath, all included in one "holophrase". This Barfield considers to be not the application of a poetic analogy to natural phenomena, but the discernment of an actual phenomenal unity. Not only concepts, but the phenomena themselves, form a unity, the perception of which was possible to primitive consciousness and therefore reflected in language. This is the perspective Barfield believes to have been primordial in the evolution of consciousness, the perspective which was "fighting for its life", as he phrases it, in the philosophy of Plato, and which, in a regenerate and more sophisticated form, benefiting from the development of rational thought, needs to be recovered if consciousness is to continue to evolve.

''Worlds Apart''

''Worlds Apart'' is one of Barfield's most brilliant performances. It is a fictional dialogue between a physicist, a biologist, a psychiatrist, a lawyer-philologist (who might be taken for Barfield himself), a linguistic analyst (more or less the villain), a theologian (who has reminded some readers of C. S. Lewis), a retired

Waldorf School Waldorf education, also known as Steiner education, is based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. Its educational style is holistic, intended to develop pupils' intellectual, artistic, and practical ski ...

teacher, and a young man employed at a rocket research station. During a period of three days, the characters discuss and debate first principles, occasioned at first by the observation that the various branches of modern thought seem to be taking for granted an incompatibility with one another. The discussion culminates in a crescendo of some length from the retired teacher, who expounds the anthroposophical point of view.

''Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry''

''Saving the Appearances'' explores the development of human consciousness across some three thousand years of history. Barfield argues that the evolution of nature is inseparable from the evolution of consciousness. What we call matter interacts with mind and wouldn't exist without it. In Barfield's lexicon, there is an "unrepresented" underlying base of reality that is extra-mental. This is comparable to Kant's notion of the "

noumenal In philosophy, a noumenon (, ; from ; : noumena) is knowledge posited as an object that exists independently of human sense. The term ''noumenon'' is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term ''phenomenon'', which refers to a ...

world". However, unlike Kant, Barfield entertained the idea that the "unrepresented" could be directly experienced, under some conditions. Similar conclusions have been made by others, and the book has influenced, for example, the physicist Stephen Edelglass (who wrote ''The Marriage of Sense and Thought''), and the Christian existentialist philosopher

Gabriel Marcel Gabriel Honoré Marcel (7 December 1889 – 8 October 1973) was a French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist. The author of over a dozen books and at least thirty plays, Marcel's work focused on the moder ...

, who wanted the book to be translated into French.Remark of Barfield, quoted in Sugerman, ed., ''Evolution of Consciousness'', p. 20. Barfield points out that the "real" world of physics and particles is completely different from the world we see and live in of things with properties.

Major works

* ''The Silver Trumpet'' (novel) (1925) * ''History in English Words'' (1926) * ''Poetic Diction: A Study In Meaning'' (1928) * ''Romanticism Comes of Age'' (1944) * ''Greek Thought in English Words'' (1950) essay in: * ''This Ever Diverse Pair'' (1950) * ''Saving the Appearances: a Study in Idolatry'' (1957) ** ''Evolution – Der Weg des Bewusstseins: Zur Geschichte des Europaischen Denkens.'' (1957) in German, Markus Wulfing (trans.) ** ''Salvare le apparenze: Uno studio sull'idolatria'' (2010) in Italian, Giovanni Maddalena, Stephania Scardicchio (editors) * ''Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s'' (1963) * ''Unancestral Voice'' (1965) * ''Speaker's Meaning'' (1967) * ''What Coleridge Thought'' (1971) * ''The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays'' (1977) * ''History, Guilt, and Habit'' (1979) * ''Review of

Julian Jaynes Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American psychologist who worked at the universities of Yale and Princeton for nearly 25 years and became best known for his 1976 book '' The Origin of Consciousness in the Break ...

'', ''

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'' is a 1976 book by the Princeton psychologist, psychohistorian and consciousness theorist Julian Jaynes (1920-1997). It explores the nature of consciousness – particularly "t ...

'' (1979) essay in: * ''Language, Evolution of Consciousness, and the Recovery of Human Meaning'' (1981)essay reprinted in "Toward the Recovery of Wholeness: Knowledge, Education, and Human Values", , p 55–61. * ''The Evolution Complex'' (1982) essay in * ''Introducing Rudolf Steiner'' (1983)essay in * ''Orpheus: A Poetic Drama'' (written in 1937, published in 1983) * ''Listening to Steiner'' (1984) review in * ''Reflections on C.S. Lewis, S.T. Coleridge and R. Steiner: An Interview with Barfield'' (1985) in: * ''Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis'' (1989) G. B. Tennyson (ed.) * ''The Child and the Giant'' (1988) short story in: ** ''Das Kind und der Riese – Eine orphische Erzählung'' (1990) in German, Susanne Lin (trans.) * ''A Barfield Reader: Selections from the Writings of Owen Barfield'' (1990) G. B. Tennyson (ed.) * ''A Barfield Sampler: Poetry and Fiction by Owen Barfield'' (1993) edited by Jeanne Clayton Hunter and Thomas Kranidas * ''The "Great War" of Owen Barfield and C.S. Lewis: Philosophical Writings, 1927–1930'' (2015) Norbert Feinendegen and Arend Smilde (ed.) Inklings Studies Supplements, Nr. 1. * ''The Riddle of the Sphinx: Essays on the Evolution of Consciousness'' (2023) Rory O'Connor (ed.)

Notes and references

Sources

* * * Interview with Bloom, at circa 58 minutes
The Laverytory: Bloom on Barfield
* * * Barfield's influence is a significant thesis of this book. Republished by Kent State University Press, 2002. * * * * * * * * * * * . The work is a ''festschrift'' honouring Barfield at age 75. * *

External links

Owen Barfield Literary Estate
– permissions, publications, academic research on Owen Barfield
Journal of Inklings Studies
peer-reviewed journal on Barfield and his literary circle, based in Oxford *
Owen Barfield website

The Marion E. Wade Center
– Barfield research collection at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL {{DEFAULTSORT:Barfield, Owen 1898 births 1997 deaths Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford Anglican philosophers Anthroposophists English Anglicans Inklings People educated at Highgate School Writers from London 20th-century English philosophers People from Forest Row