Posted on 12/21/2007 12:41:07 PM PST by rhema
"Always winter, and never Christmas” are, perhaps, the most famous words C. S. Lewis wrote. The phrase comes four times in the opening Chronicle of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. First, Tumnus informs Lucy of a White Witch who has made it “always winter and never Christmas.” Lucy passes on the grim news to Edmund and later Peter.
Finally, Mr. Beaver announces, in great excitement, “Didn’t I tell you that she’d made it always winter and never Christmas? Didn’t I tell you? Well, just come and see!” The reason for his excitement is that he can see in front of him a man who spells the end of the Witch’s reign:
He was a huge man in a bright red robe (bright as hollyberries) with a hood that had fur inside it and a great white beard that fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest. . . . He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn.
The appearance of Father Christmas in this story has become a lightning rod for criticism of the Narnia Chronicles. It is taken as evidence of Lewis’s slapdash compositional style. Tolkien thought that Lewis had carelessly assembled figures from incompatible mythological traditions: children fresh from E. Nesbit, a Snow Queen out of Hans Andersen, dryads and naiads from classical tradition, and—forsooth!—Santa Claus from popularized hagiography.
Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the first study of the Inklings, thought Lewis borrowed “indiscriminately” from his various sources and “threw in any incident or colouring that struck his fancy.” Lewis’s biographer A. N. Wilson described the Chronicles as a “jumble,” a “hotch-potch,” “full of inconsistencies.”
There is apparent force in these judgments, so much so that several Lewis scholars have gone
(Excerpt) Read more at touchstonemag.com ...
Non-creators always offer copious advice to creators on how to create. ;)
He also has Bacchus, the god of wine, in Prince Caspian.
Lumme! That was awesome, thanks for posting.
The “Kappa-component in narrative”. I must say I had Lewis pegged as a mere allegoricist, especially after Pilgrim’s Regress. Well he’s had the last laugh on me.
Say not “non-creators”.
Lewis, and especially Tolkien, and all really effective mythologists, were and are “sub-creators”. They have created something - it’s not reality, but it’s still something that wouldn’t have existed without their efforts.
Good One! ... Corollary from Dilbert: "I'll file that away with the rest of the marginally useful things that others suggest that I do."
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