220chrisTian wrote:"Bringing Narnia back to what it should be" ... So,
Varnafinde, what was it like before, i.e. what it should be? And how did it become corrupt? How is all this portrayed in the Narnian landscape?
(All other quotes from
Prince Caspian)
I suppose the Golden Age, when the White Witch had been conquered and the Pevensie children were ruling, could be our pattern of what Narnia should be (not going as far back as to the time of the Tree of Protection, because we know very little about that period).
When everything was quite different. When all the animals could talk, and there were nice people who lived in the streams and the trees.
... were made Kings and Queens of Narnia, and their names were Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy. And so they reigned for ever so long and everyone had a lovely time, and it was all because of Aslan -"
All because of Aslan. I believe that as long as they trusted in him, he would turn up to set things right. But at some point, long after the Pevensies had gone back to our world, Narnia ended up in some disorder which is only mentioned and not given any details about - but I guess that some of the connection to Aslan was being lost. In this state the land was weakened and was conquered by the Telmarines.
We don't know exactly what had corrupted the land in the first place, but we know what the conquering Telmarines did to corrupt it further.
... the country of Aslan, the country of the Waking Trees and Visible Naiads, of Fauns and Satyrs, of Dwarfs and Giants, of the gods and the Centaurs, of Talking Beasts. It was against these that the first Caspian fought. It is you Telmarines who silenced the beasts and the trees and the fountains, and who killed and drove away the Dwarfs and Fauns, and are now trying to cover up even the memory of them.
And even the Telmarines know that their real feud is with Aslan.
Your Kings are in deadly fear of the sea because they can never quite forget that in all stories Aslan comes from over the sea. They don't want to go near it and they don't want anyone else to go near it. So they have let great woods grow up to cut their people off from the coast. But because they have quarrelled with the trees they are afraid of the woods. And because they are afraid of the woods they imagine that they are full of ghosts. And the Kings and great men, hating both the sea and the wood, partly believe these stories, and partly encourage them. They feel safer if no one in Narnia dares to go down to the coast and look out to sea towards Aslan's land and the morning and the eastern end of the world.
As a consequence of their feud with Aslan, they have quarrelled with Nature, and Nature doesn't forget it easily.
And now they entered a dark and seemingly endless pine forest, and all the stories Caspian had ever heard of trees being unfriendly to Man crowded into his mind. He remembered that he was, after all, a Telmarine, one of the race who cut down trees wherever they could and were at war with all wild things; and though he himself might be unlike other Telmarines, the trees could not be expected to know this.
Nor did they. The wind became a tempest, the woods roared and creaked all round them. There came a crash. A tree fell right across the road just behind him.
But the trees are silenced, and when the Pevensies return, Lucy tries to wake them up.
"Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees," said Lucy (though she had not been intending to speak at all). "Oh, Trees, wake, wake, wake. Don't you remember it? Don't you remember me? Dryads and Hamadryads, come out, come to me."
Though there was not a breath of wind they all stirred about her. The rustling noise of the leaves was almost like words. The nightingale stopped singing as if to listen to it.
Lucy felt that at any moment she would begin to understand what the trees were trying to say. But the moment did not come. The rustling died away. The nightingale resumed its song. Even in the moonlight the wood looked more ordinary again. Yet Lucy had the feeling (as you sometimes have when you are trying to remember a name or a date and almost get it, but it vanishes before you really do) that she had just missed something: as if she had spoken to the trees a split second too soon or a split second too late, or used all the right words except one, or put in one word that was just wrong.
"used all the right words except one, or put in one word that was just wrong" - yes, I think that was it. I have oftens wondered whether she would have been able to wake the trees that night if she hadn't challenged them to remember her, but to remember Aslan instead.
When Aslan roars to call them, they wake up.
It looked first like a black mist creeping on the ground, then like the stormy waves of a black sea rising higher and higher as it came on, and then, at last, like what it was woods on the move. All the trees of the world appeared to be rushing towards Aslan. But as they drew nearer they looked less like trees; and when the whole crowd, bowing and curtsying and waving thin long arms to Aslan, were all around Lucy, she saw that it was a crowd of human shapes. Pale birch-girls were tossing their heads, willowwomen pushed back their hair from their brooding faces to gaze on Aslan, the queenly beeches stood still and adored him, shaggy oak-men, lean and melancholy elms, shockheaded hollies (dark themselves, but their wives all bright with berries) and gay rowans, all bowed and rose again, shouting, "Aslan, Aslan!" in their various husky or creaking or wave-like voices.
Lewis seems to speak of a connection between the Creator and his creation. I don't know whether it's seen in the landscape at large, but we see it clearly with the trees and the Dryads (and the rivers and the Naiads).
The connection had been broken, but at the end of
Prince Caspian, it has been restored.
(End of essay
)
Posted: Jan 11, 2010 3:02 pm
I love your examples, esp. the one from PC. I remember that scene so well. 
I don't have a copy of the books with me, so I frequently have to go by memory [or check out a book and re-read it 
I really loved these parts: 
