A Closed Letter to Andrea Charicoryides Surnamed Polygrapheus, Logothete of the Theme of Geodesia in the Empire, Bard of the Court of Camelot, Malleus Malitiarium, Inclinga Sum Sometimes Known as Charles Williams

Poems by J.R.R. Tolkien
A Closed Letter to … Charles Williams
Poem Information
Written	likely November, 1943
Published	The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien
Subject(s)	Charles Williams

A Closed Letter to Andrea Charicoryides Surnamed Polygrapheus, Logothete of the Theme of Geodesia in the Empire, Bard of the Court of Camelot, Malleus Malitiarium, Inclinga Sum Sometimes Known as Charles Williams is an eight-stanza poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien "in the grand classical tradition of the verse epistle" possibly in November of 1943. The poem expresses Tolkien's admiration for Charles Williams, but also difficulty with his works. The typescript with the only title of the poem is kept in the Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College in Illinois.

Poem excerpts

First stanza

'Our dear Charles Williams many guises shows:
the novelist comes first. I find his prose
obscure at times. Not easily it flows;
too often are his lights held up in brackets.
Yet error, should he spot it, he'll attack its
sources and head, exposing ramps and rackets,
the torturous byways of the wicked heart
and intellect corrupt. Yea, many a dart
he crosses with the fiery ones! The art
of minor fiends and major he reveals —
when Charles is on his trail the devil squeals,
for cloven feet have vulnerable heels.

Third stanza

'Geography indeed! Here he again
exerts a subtle mind and labouring pen.
Geodesy say rather; for many a 'fen'
he wrote, and chapters bogged in tangled rhymes,
and has survived Europa's lands and climes,
dividing her from P'o-L'u's crawling slimes,
to her diving buttocks, breast, and head
(to say no fouler thing), where I instead,
dull-eyed, can only see a watershed,
a plain, an island, or a mountain-chain.
In that gynecomorphical terrain
History and Myth are ravelled in a skein
of endless interchange. I do not hope
to understand the deeds of king or pope,
wizard or emperor; beyond my scope
is that dark flux of symbol and event,
where fable, faith, and faërie are blent
with half-guessed meanings to some great intent
I cannot grasp. For Mount Elburz to me
is but a high peak far beyond the sea
(and high and far I'd ever have it be).

Last stanza

'A truce to this! I never meant to do it,
thus to reveal my folly. Now I rue it.
Farewell (for now) beloved druid-poet!
Farewell to Logres, Merlin, Nimue,
Galahad, Arthur! Farewell land and tree
heavy with fates and portents not for me!
I must pass by all else you wrote:
play, preface, life, short verse, review or note
(rewarded less than worth with grudging groat).
'When your fag is wagging and spectacles are twinkling,
when tea is brewing or the glasses tinkling,
then of your meaning often I've an inkling,
your virtues and your wisdom glimpse. Your laugh
in my heart echoes, when with you I quaff
the pint that goes down quicker than a half,
because you're near. So, heed me not! I swear
when you with tattered papers take the chair
and read (for hours maybe), I would be there.
And ever when in state you sit again
and to your car imperial give rein,
I'll trundle, grumbling, squeaking, in the train
of the great rolling wheels of Charles' Wain.

Background

The poem was first published in 1978 in The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends on pages 123-6. In his commentary, Humphrey Carpenter explains that the word "fen" in line 22 is "the name of a section in Avicenna's Canon of Medicine" that was "also used by Chaucer in The Pardoner's Tale". Carpenter also notes that the "King or pope, wizard or emperor" in lines 33-4 are Arther, the pope, Merlin, and the emperor, "four of the principal characters in the Taliessin poems". He also explains that "Mount Elburz" in line 38 refers to a "Caucasian mountain" mentioned in several of Charles Williams' poems. Williams described the mountain as being the "type of the lowness and height, fertility and chastity, verdure and snow, of the visible body". In a note to line 88, Carpenter noted that the phrase "beloved druid-poet" refers to "Taliessin from Celtic legend", associating him "with druidical origins". In a note to line 107, Carpenter pointed out that the phrase "Charles' Wain" is "a name for the constellation more commonly called the Great Bear" or "Arthur's Plough".

In September of 2024, the poem was republished in September as entry 174 in The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien. In their commentary, Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull explain that Geodesy in line 22 refers to "the mathematical study of the figures and areas of the Earth". In a note to line 107, they speculated that Tolkien may have used the phrase "Charles' Wain" as a play on the word wain ("wagon"). In a review of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien in the Journal of Tolkien Research, John R. Holmes notes that the poem

is in the grand classical tradition of the verse epistle, like Horace's Epistles, Ovid's Heroides, or Pope's Moral Epistles. In form the verse is iambic pentameter triplets, which forces Tolkien to find two fellows for each rhyme. There are three exceptions to the pattern: two quadruplets, lines 16-19 and the last four lines, 104-107; and one couplet beginning at line 62, though the dropped second rhyme may be a result of the antilabe, or split line (which in fact causes the editors to misnumber the lines at this point: “O, buttocks to Caucasia!” and “Tolkien, please!" constitute a single metrical line, split between two speakers).

As a comment to Hammond and Scull's last note, Holmes suggested that Tolkien wasn't playing with the words wain and "wagon" since that "is the primary meaning of "Charles' Wain" (OE carles wægn) as an English name for Ursa Major". He instead suggested that "Charles" is the pun, at that plays on the name of Charles Williams.