Narnia books/Lewis quotes-kinda long

[kevin j hopp <khopp at garbersoft_net>]

Peter:
I *do* know that the original
Narnia books were very much a reflection of C.S. Lewis's own highly
personal (and somewhat idiosyncratic?) tastes and beliefs, and I really,
really doubt anyone else can capture their flavour.

One of the main things a Christian would most likely get wrong is start with
trying to embody the Christ story in allegory and work out from there. Lewis
had said quite a few times that he never set out to write an allegory. 
IIRC he
even said on a few occasions that they are not allegory in the strictest 
sense.
 He made a fantasy world *first,  then, when the Lion came onto the scene
and he realized who he was,  went about telling this *other story.
So it's not so much the story of Christ in this world retold in Narnia
but another story - the story of Aslan in Narnia which has echo's of our 
worlds story.

Here is one place he talks about it. I can't remember any of the places 
right now where he specifically talks about his understanding of 
allegory and applies that to his Narnia books but this gets to how they 
started in his head.

"Some people seem to think I began by asking myself how I could say 
something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale 
as an instrument; then collected information about child psychology and 
decided what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic 
Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is 
all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way at all. Everything 
began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a 
magnificent lion. At first there wasn't even anything Christian about 
them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord. It was all part 
of the bubbling.....
"I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past my own 
religion in childhood. Why did
one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God 
or the sufferings of Christ?
I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An 
obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. 
The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it 
were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things 
into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and 
Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time 
appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those 
watchful dragons? I thought one could That was the Man's motive. But of 
course he could have done nothing if the Author had not been on the boil 
first."
"One thing I am sure of. All my seven Narnian books, and the three 
science fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head. At first 
they were not a story, just pictures. The'Lion' all began with a picture 
of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snow wood. This picture 
had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was 
about forty, I said to myself : 'let's try to make a story about it.'
  At first I had very little idea how the story would go. But then 
suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good 
many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don't know 
where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there he pulled 
the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian 
stories in after him"

pg 36-37, 42 Of Other Worlds

kevin

The mind is a blue guitar on which
     we improvise the song of the world. -- Annie Dillard, Living by Fiction


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