A Visit with Owen Barfield a few months before his death

- Allen Pittman

Platonic idealism, the Christian influences of C.S. Lewis, the Anthroposophy of Rudolph Steiner and my experiences as a physical education teacher (sometimes called “Spatial Dynamics”) at the local Waldorf School along with some thorough training from Buddhist teachers (including H.H. the Dalai Lama and the Gandan Tipa of Drepung Monastery - Tibetan now in India) and twenty years of study of the Taoist Martial Art of Ba Gua Zhang; all these things converged to move me to attempt to see Mr. Owen Barfield in his retirement in East Sussex, England.

Barfield, close friend of C.S. Lewis, lawyer and scholar, has been a pioneer in the theory of poetry and has become somewhat of a 'Guardian of Meaning' in language. His theories of the evolving consciousness of humanity and its effect on language have drawn together a small but devoted flock around the world.

Connections in the U.S. said he was probably 'senile,' while others said he's a “pure intellectual and would have nothing to say about the human body,” which was my main interest. Still, I had a feeling...

So while in Manchester, a student of mine connected the two of us together by phone. I picked it up & Barfield himself said, “Is this in the way of a general interview?”

I said, “Yes Sir. I am a Waldorf teacher who hoped to chat with you if you have the time.”

He replied “When would you like to come?”

I said it was up to him.

“How about Thursday at three o'clock in the afternoon?” he responded.

“Wonderful!”

And so I later found myself on the train once again down toward London and then to Sussex to East Grinstead rail station. It was raining as the train came in and I went across to Sainesbury's to buy lunch and found to my delight a cab phone inside.

I called the cab and he promptly came and we stopped en route for a throw-away camera and a rather riveting glance from a salesgirl. We trundled on to Walhatch, a quiet village with a stone villa where some of the older folks live quietly in a comfortable setting with a beautiful garden. The taxi let me out in the downing mist and a woman with an umbrella made her way out of the front door to enquire if she could help me.

I stated flatly, “I am here to see Owen Barfield.”

Her resistant reply was something I had grown accustomed to during this 'Barfieldian Pursuit' “You know he only wants to die,” she said. I looked at her steadfastly. “Does he know you are coming?” she asked.

“Oh, yes - he's expecting me.”

“Well, let me check then... Come in.”

We disappeared inside to a lovely alcove with an electric fire place. (my old friend, R. Smith once told me when he was young they were so poor they made him stand in the alcove for punishment-there were no corners in the house!) I waited in the hall admiring the warmth of this 'retirement home' and she returned saying, “He's ready to see you now.”

As I entered the door of his small book-lined room he was in his chair sideways to me and he turned and said, “Pittman is it?”

“Yes sir,” I replied. I was swept back to the smell of wooden desks and inkwells and Oxford dons, “Pittman, you're early!”

“Yes sir - ten minutes.”

“That's quite all right have a seat.”

He felt he had out lived his usefulness. But I had come I said. He said his memory was dimming a bit. His eyes were failing. “I am out of energy”, he said.

“There must be a purpose for your longevity.” I said.

“One would hope so.” He replied.

I asked him several questions I had brought from a friend of mine in the U.S. and he was careful to have me more closely define the questions. Some of the time he would say he had no opinion. At other times he would say he did not know.

He admitted we were not living in a Christian era but there were signs it was returning. Still he admitted we were in a period where many claiming Christianity as their faith had alienated themselves from the culture.

On the writer, C.S. Lewis & his Northern-Irish (some have said “typically Irish”) background, Barfield felt that it could have been significant in his development - but he saw no significance himself.

“I have met so few typical Irishmen!” he chuckled, “Do you know any Irishmen?”

I replied, “Two-one in the U.S. and one in Hong Kong.”

“Oh...”,he said. He pulled the joke out again later half way through another topic and furrowed his brows and said, “Only two Irishmen?” I had to laugh. He smiled and chuckled. On the other hand he agreed reincarnation allowed one's past lives to outweigh ones present one-as far as influence.

The conversation swung far and wide. He tired and said so. Tea was brought in... He smoked his pipe - I shut the tape recorder off and we continued. Between the taped conversation and the pipe chat I've assembled the following fragments.

“Catholics because of their ritual are more committed and are more comfortable with their bodies than Protestants.”

He said there were no significant places where he would dissent from R. Steiner. The older he became, the more surety he had of the work of Steiner.

“I never met him (Steiner) but I heard him lecture once. He asked if I would like to interview him and I did not feel justified in talking to him so I didn't.”

“More people talk to me with (about) Lewis than Steiner....they were very different links. There was a sharp difference between Lewis and I (on Steiner) have you read “The Great War” (he raises his eyebrows and smiles)?

“I met Tolkien but never had a long talk with him...I wish I had...We did not get to talk for several hours. He's an important figure in the English literary world of our time. I don't have any affinity with it - the mythical world. The real enthusiasts of the Tolkien society have more than enjoyed it they have made a kind of cult of it.”

I read this statement to him - “ Much of your defense of Romanticism has been a broadside against early 20th century positivists (“Entirely!” he says) whose narrowly prescribed epistemology simply renounced any knowledge not reducible to a quantifiable scientific methodology”.

“It's true,” he said, “and that's a stand taken by most thinking people now. It's changing now-the materialist paradigm is not as absolute as it used to be...the renewed interest in the East is taking place because of this.”

Lewis's great contribution was “...punching at the immovable materialism of his time”.

“I don't know how much truth there is in the atomic theory.”

“Why do people buy so heavily into theories?” I asked.

“It is assent(sp) with fashion (in ideas) to be with everyone else.”

Barfield conceded Steiner and Goethe flowed from the same river. Kant was more like an obstacle in the river.

On Nietzsche's stance on the chasm of ahramanic materialism Barfield raised his eyebrows and smiled saying, “It did not do him much good with the ordinary reader did it?”

He conceded most people at present knew about Nietzsche through hearsay rather than reading.

“The whole onset of this computer civilization is frightening”.

“The whole concept of information being important in itself...it is a frightening world.”

He conceded there could be difficulty with genetically prepared bodies being already “preoccupied” thus preventing needful souls from coming in to the world.

On Steiner's statement that we would need to request help from higher beings-or they would not intervene in the new millennium - “highly probable-but I don't feel qualified to make a clear statement on this question.”

Once you realize you are alone (in the world) (i.e. without someone to understand your soul) the fear diminishes.

We laughed over the statement - perhaps one of his dedications from one of his books, “My public, though select and small, is crammed with taste and knowledge!”

He had never asked himself the question of changing any of his decisions in life. He did feel he should have done more with the certain gifts he had.

“The fact one person in the world can talk to anyone else in the world (with the computer) amounts to lunacy...information is not thinking. Information is the material used by thinking...”

He regarded Walter Delamare as one on the best of the modern poets. “Clubbable”, he said, meaning sociable, personal and friendly. “Something came through,” he said referring to Delamare's poetry.

His favorite poet of all was Virgil. After that Dante.

When I said I was not sure I liked any poet after 1960 he said, “I'm with you there!.”

There were other ramblings personal and pedestrian but I hope these few will give readers a sense of his state and the impressions he left me with. I regretted leaving him and noticed his unusually large hands again when I shook them. And his large head. So much in there! but I came away with a sense of his heart and his vision. Large and friendly with clarity. A healthy sense of humor and a willingness to laugh while maintaining a full awareness of the state of the world. His sense of defeat seemed to evaporate as we talked and I often wonder how many brilliant people sit alone in their old age when friendship may well be the only way to meet death. I missed him as soon as I left him.

He died a few months later. Now I am going back to his books and feeling his presence and appreciating him and continuing to feel the mystery of death. I'm glad he left something behind.