Joy Davidman

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Helen Joy Davidman (18 April 1915 – July 1960) was an American poet and writer.

She earned a master's degree in English literature at Columbia University at the age of 20 in 1935, often referred to as a child prodigy.

In 1938, she received the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and the Russell Loines Award for Poetry in 1939, in addition to her book of poems.

She was the author of several books, including two novels. William Lindsay Gresham, a feminist and immigrant, married her first husband and father of her two sons in 1942.

They divorced and moved to England with her children after a turbulent marriage and after her conversion to Christianity. With a preface by C. S. Lewis, Davidman's best known work, Smoke on the Mountains: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments, was released in 1954.

Lewis influenced her career and conversion and became her second husband after her permanent move to England in 1956.

In 1960, she died from metastatic carcinoma of the bones. In a television BBC film, a stage play, and a theatrical film called Shadowlands, Davidman and Lewis' relationship was chronicled.

Lewis published A Grief Observed in 1961 under a pseudonym, beginning with notebooks he kept after his wife's death, revealing his deep sadness and a period of doubting God.

Lewis eventually returns to a place of peace and gratitude for being welcomed and experiencing the gift of a true love.

Early life

Helen Joy Davidman was born in 1915 in New York City, with Polish-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish descents. Joseph Davidman and Jeanette Spivack (married 1909) both came from Germany in the late nineteenth century. Even during the Great Depression, Davidman grew up in the Bronx with her younger brother Howard Howard Howard, and with both parents working. She was given a high education, piano lessons, and family vacation trips. "I was a well-brought-thinking child of materialism," Davidman wrote in 1951. I was an atheist and the niece of an atheist.

Davidman was a child prodigy with a measurable, analytical, and musical ability that earned him over 150 points on IQ assessments. At the age of eight, she read H. G. Wells' The Outline of History and was able to perform Chopin on the piano after having read it once and not looking at it again. She read George MacDonald's children's books and his adult fantasy book, Phantastes, at an early age. "They instilled in me a lifelong love for fantasy," she wrote about the influence of these stories. "They inspired in me a lifelong love for fantasy, which led to C. S. Lewis, who in turn led to my conversion." She later described herself as "bookish, overprecocious, and rude" as a sickly child who suffered from a crooked spine, scarlet fever, and anemia during her school years and attending classes with many older peers.

She read books at home until she enrolled Hunter College in the Bronx at the age of fifteen, receiving a Bachelor's Degree at nineteen after finishing high school at Evander Childs High School at fourteen years old. While teaching at Roosevelt High School in 1935, she obtained a master's degree in English literature from Columbia University in three semesters. Editor Harriet Monroe asked to work for the journal as both editor and editor in 1936, after many of Davidman's poems were published in Poetry. Davidman resigned from her teaching position to work full time in writing and editing.

Several events during the Great Depression, including the suicide of a hungry orphanage from a rooftop at Hunter College, prompted her to question capitalism's legitimacy and the American economic system. In 1938, she joined the American Communist Party.

In 1938, she won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, Letter to a Comrade. Stephen Vincent Benét praised Davidman for her "varied command of forms and a bold presence." She received the Russell Loines Award for Poetry for this collection of poems in 1939. Although much of her writing during this period represented her political views as a member of the American Communist Party, this collection of poetry contained forty-five poems that were inspired by the Spanish Civil War, class inequalities, and male-female relationship problems. Davidman's poetry in these poems evoked an influence from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

She was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1939 for a six-month stint in Hollywood writing movie scripts. She wrote at least four books, but they weren't published, and she returned to The New Masses, where she wrote a tense movie column analyzing Hollywood movies in a way that was described as "merciless in her critiques." Anya, her critically acclaimed debut, was published in 1940. She served as a book reviewer and poetry editor for The New Masses, with publications in several of the issues between 1941 and 1943.

Life with William Lindsay Gresham

Author William Lindsay Gresham married her first husband on August 24, 1942, after becoming acquainted with him through their common interest in communism. They had two sons, David Lindsay Gresham (born 27 March 1944) and Douglas Howard Gresham (born 10 November 1945). When volunteering in Spain during the Spanish Civil War to combat fascism, Bill Gresham became disillusioned with the party and prompted Davidman to leave the party following the birth of their sons. Gresham wrote his most popular piece Nightmare Alley in 1946, during which Davidman did freelance work and cared for the family and children.

The marriage was marred by challenges that included financial issues, as well as her husband's alcoholism and infidelities. Gresham had occasional outbursts, once smashing his guitar on a chair. Davidman wrote that her husband called her one day in spring 1946, alerting her that he was having a nervous breakdown and didn't know when he would return home. She recovered from a depressed emotional state shortly after. "For the first time, my pride was coerced to admit that I was not 'the master of my destiny,'" she said. The couple began to seek answers in church when Gresham returned home. Davidman first studied Judaism but later decided to investigate all faiths, and found that "the Redeemer who had made himself known, whose personality I would have recognized among ten thousand—He was Jesus." The couple, in particular, began to read and be inspired by C.S.'s books through their religious studies. Lewis.

The family moved to a large acreage in the New York countryside, where Davidman's second book, Weeping Bay and Gresham, began when Gresham received a large sum for the film rights to Nightmare Alley. They became members of the Pleasant Plains Presbyterian Church in 1948. Gresham had similar Christian convictions as Joy but soon rejected them; he continued to have extramarital affairs and manifested an interest in tarot cards and the I Ching. Both tested Dianetics with L. Ron Hubbard's theories and "audited" each other and friends. Even though the couple continued to live together, they became estranged. Davidman began a correspondence with C. S. Lewis in 1950 after an introduction by a fellow American writer, Chad Walsh.

C. S. Lewis' life was a success.

When she first travelled to the United Kingdom in August 1952, Davidman met Lewis for the first time. Lewis's style of apologetics informed her book on the Ten Commandments. Lewis' brother, Warren Lewis, recalled that "a new brother with a good figure, medium height, and horn rimmed specs," after several lunch meetings and walks with Lewis and Davidman. She and her brother spent Christmas and a fortnight at The Kilns. Despite the fact that Davidman was in love with Lewis, there was no reciprocation on his side.

She returned home in January 1953 after Gresham told her that he and her cousin were having an affair and wanted a divorce. Renée Rodriguez, her cousin, had moved to Gresham and was taking care of the family while away. Davidman had intended to save the marriage, but after a violent encounter with Gresham, who had resumed drinking, she decided to divorce. In August 1954, he married Rodriguez after the divorce was declared final.

Davidman and her sons returned to England in November 1953, claiming to be a "complete Anglomaniac." Cynthia Haven argues that the activities of HUAC may have influenced her decision to migrate rather than return, rather than return, considering her political ties in the past. Davidman found a flat in London and enrolled David and Douglas at Dane Court Preparatory School, but she soon ran into financial issues after Gresham stopped giving money for assistance. Lewis paid the school fees and discovered Davidman and her sons a house in Oxford close to The Kilns. Lewis regarded her only as an affable intellectual companion and personal friend. "Undoubtedly intellectual," Warren Lewis wrote about Jack. Joy was the only woman he had ever encountered: she had a brain that matched his own in suppleness, depth of concern, and an analytical eye, as well as humour and a sense of pleasure.

When Lewis began to write, he began to ask for Davidman's opinion and critique, and she was inspired by Orgie, the central character in Till We Have Faces (1956). Reflections on the Psalms (1958) and The Four Loves (1960), among other works she inspired or assisted with included Reflections on the Psalms (1958) and The Four Loves (1960). Smoke on the Peak: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments was published in England in 1955 by Davidman, with a preface by C. S. Lewis. It sold 3,000 copies, twice as many in the United States.

The Home Office did not renew Davidman's visa in 1956, requiring that she and her sons return to America. Lewis decided to enter a civil marriage agreement with her so she could continue to live in the United Kingdom, according to a friend that "the marriage was purely a matter of friendship and expediency." On April 23, 1956, the civil wedding took place at the register office, 42 St Giles', Oxford.

After the civil union, the couple continued to live apart. Davidman was walking across her kitchen when she tripped over the telephone wire and collapsed to the ground in March 1957, breaking her left leg. She was diagnosed with incurable cancer and breast metastases at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. Lewis discovered that he had fallen in love with her right away, but that it would be sad to lose her. "I love you and new tragedy have joined my life," he wrote to a friend. You will be amazed (or perhaps not) if you were surprised (or maybe not). To know how much happiness and even gaiety there is between us, we'd like to know." Davidman underwent multiple surgeries and radiation therapy for the cancer. Warren Lewis wrote in his diary in March 1957: "One of the most difficult days of my life." On Joy, a note of death has been sent, and it is only a matter of time."

Davidman and C. S. Lewis' friendship had deteriorated to the point where they wanted a Christian marriage. This was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, because she was divorced, but Reverend Peter Bide, a close friend and Anglican priest, conducted the service at Davidman's hospital bed on March 21. Lewis's social circle did not approve the marriage, and several of his acquaintances and colleagues advised against the new couple.

She was admitted to The Kilns a week later and then had a remission from the cancer. Lewis helped him with his writing, arranged his financial records, and closet, and painted the house. The pair honeymooned to Wales and then on to Ireland by air. A check-up in October 1959 revealed that the cancer had returned, but that, as of March 1960, it was not responding to radiation therapy as before. Lewis took Davidman on a holiday to Greece in April 1960 to fulfill her lifelong wish to visit Greece, but her illness came back quickly after returning from the trip, and she died on July 13, 1960.

Lewis, a widower, wrote A Grief Observation, a book he published under the pseudonym of N. W. Clerk, expressing his emotions and saying his love to his wife. In the book, he chronicles his fading hope as a result of Davidman's death and his attempt to regain that faith. Lewis died a year later, three years after his wife died, two years after his heart disease resurfaced and went into a coma.

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