中古之交的古羅馬基督教哲學家波愛修斯所著《哲學的慰藉》,是西方中世紀哲學的奠基之作,與二十世紀中世紀研究家C. S.路易士的著述與生命旅程深相呼應。《慰藉》對「命運」(Fortune)與神意(Providence)的哲學思考,「命運之輪」、「囚徒」、「哲學女神」等寓言形象的藝術表現,以及該作的自傳性所含的超越哲思與藝術的生命書寫,都映現在路易士《痛苦的奧秘》中對痛苦問題的探究、《天路歸程》和《驚悅》中寓言體的寫作、《卿卿如晤》中靈魂之旅的記錄。二者的相遇、彼此映照,與後者對前者在信仰奧秘上的超越,都交織在兩位遠隔千載的思想家對現世命運的經歷與書寫,對「至高靈界現實」的追慕與啟見。
Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy, a foundational work representative of the Medieval mindset, deeply echoed with the life and works of C. S. Lewis, a 20th-century Medievalist and Christian writer. In The Consolation, its philosophical interpretation of Fortune and Providence, its allegorical representation of the images of the wheel of Fortune, the Prisoner and Lady Philosophy, and the lived text of the author beyond the literary text of this autobiographic work resonate with Lewis in his apologetical exploration of the problem of pain, the allegorical writing of The Pilgrim Regress and Surprised by Joy, and the record of his soul's journey in A Grief Observed. Though one and a half millennia apart, their works and their woes and weals in life crossed and converged, with the latter transcending the former along the path of the mystery of faith, in enacting the drama of the soul's strenuous searching for the constant "highest spiritual realities" against the inconstant Fortune.