The Donkey, the Lion and the Wardrobe

[altariel]

I have no idea whether the bit about Mithraism is true or not (I'm sure someone can tell me), but I loved this piece of Narnian revisionism (from here):

"The moral force of the Christian story is that the lions are all on the other side. If we had, say, a donkey, a seemingly uninspiring animal from an obscure corner of Narnia, raised as an uncouth and low-caste beast of burden, rallying the mice and rats and weasels and vultures and all the other unclean animals, and then being killed by the lions in as humiliating a manner as possible—a donkey who reëmerges, to the shock even of his disciples and devotees, as the king of all creation—now, that would be a Christian allegory. A powerful lion, starting life at the top of the food chain, adored by all his subjects and filled with temporal power, killed by a despised evil witch for his power and then reborn to rule, is a Mithraic, not a Christian, myth."

Another piece of Narnian retelling that I adore is the bit in Perdido Street Station where Benjamin Flex opens up the back of the wardrobe to reveal a printing press. Love, love, love it so much! Almost enough to forgive the author for the death of Flex, but not quite.

Comments

[aervir.livejournal.com]

I haven't got anything useful to add about Mithraic symbolism or Narnia revisionism -- sorry! I'd just like to thank you for pointing out the New Yorker link, as the whole article was truly an inspiring read.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed :-)

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

Talking of revisionism, have you seen the site that attempts to prove that Lewis served Satan?

That's an interesting point the author makes. The Narnia universe does seem to cater to more conventionally 'noble' animals (thinking e.g. of Tirian's final battle, in which his non-human comrades are an eagle and a unicorn), whereas the more conventionally non-beautiful creatures get to be stolid rather than glamorously heroic (e.g. the Beavers and Trufflehunter). I suppose that there's an outside-reflecting-the-inside thing going on, where animals are identified according to the human-like characters that Lewis wanted them to have. (Aslan's making me think now of the beautiful wildcat-daemon of the crippled man in His Dark Materials.) But I haven't got my books with me for reference and so I may be making no sense.

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

the more conventionally non-beautiful creatures get to be stolid rather than glamorously heroic

I'm forgetting Reepicheep, of course. But I think that he can still be slotted into that pattern: there's tension within the book between his glorious ideals and the fact that he's a mouse, and that's what makes him a comical - as well as heroic - character.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Reepicheep's a French musketeer. Indeed none of Lewis's animals is anything but a person in a furry suit. I think the observation altariel1 noted is very apt; he is such a High Tory. There is, of course one socialist in the books: he's the dwarf Nikabrik who comes to a bad end in Prince Caspian for distrusting the bosses and standing up for the workers. The other way you can tell he's a baddie is that he's a non-smoker - antisocial little killjoy, see? Vegetarians are specifically targeted as baddies, too, as are female head teachers. There wasn't a reactionary opinion that man didn't hold - I'm all on Pullman's side myself.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I read the books as a child and loved them (missing all the allegory) but that's really off-putting. Of course he's a product of his class, society, and ivory tower like Tolkien. I'm used to cutting slack for classism and sexism if I like a story enough (I have a collection of unintentionally funny 30s boys' annuals) but ... bugger.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I saw an interview with the actors on TV the other night. I liked that they made the witch blonde to counteract the 'dark is bad' cliché, and also to make her look like the Aryan ideal since this was set in wartime, but the actors who play the children had incredibly plummy upper class accents. Oy.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen that site. Wow. There's a whole other world out there.

I'm struggling to remember (and I do have the books here, they're just, er, downstairs), but doesn't Puzzle the donkey at the end of The Last Battle find himself something of a hero? The Last Battle is the one I go back to least, of course.

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

I remember Puzzle being quite passive for the most part - he lets Shift dress him up as Aslan, and later he lets Jill lead him over to Tirian's side. Although - I might be misremembering - doesn't he have a brave moment where he addresses the crowd at the stable and confesses to the fraud?

Puzzle's interesting in light of that quote from the article - the literal donkey tries to act like the lion and just ends up looking like a fool or worse.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Blake was as consciously set up as Aslan as Servalan is as Jadis?

However, Lewis certainly isn't the only one to have ketchup (or, I suppose in context, brown sauce) sticking the pages of the New Testament with embarrassing things about the Son of Man being poor and homeless and camels and needles' eyes.

And I for one can accept at face value that he really did take devoted care of Mrs. umm, Wossname, can't remember...because a battlefield pledge to a dead hero *would* be sacred, and not so they could have kinky sex. Sheesh, they say that *slashers* can't recognize a loving relationship that isn't sexual.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Was it Mrs Moore? I can see AN Wilson's biography where I'm sitting, but it's at the top of a high shelf, and I am very short and not feeling acrobatic today.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Thank you, yes, Moore.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ooh, interesting quote, and quite right too if you look at Jesus' life. I don't know much about Mithraism except that there are some parallels with Christianity and it was popular among the legionaries.

[kerravonsen]

Oh, this is just silly!

The lion is from the Lion of Judah. Christian symbolism is so multi-faceted, one can't have all of it at once. Otherwise people would be complaining why Aslan wasn't portrayed as a grapevine. It's discrimination against plants, I tell you!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

It's Turkish! When I went to Anatolia, souvenir sellers rushed the coach waving little hand-carved lions and shouting "Aslan"! I thought gosh, they know about Narnia even here, but it turned out it was Turkish for lion.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

A little hand-carved lion would be ever so sweet next to a little hand-carved mouse...

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I did buy one, after the required haggling, but I gave it away. If I find myself in Anatolia again...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

:-) I like the Narnia stories as they are, but I thought that was a fascinating spin on retelling them.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Pleasure! :-)

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Lewis didn’t embrace Christianity because he had eaten too much cake; he embraced it because he thought that it would keep the cake coming, that the Anglican Church was God’s own bakery.

Still reading--wonderful essay--but that line needed to be underscored.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Glad you're enjoying the link :-)

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link!

Believe it or not, musing about the upcoming Narnia film and Aslan, I found myself thinking more or less the same last night (if you replace `Mithraic' by 'pagan'). Lewis only got converted because Tolkien convinced him he could become a Christian *and* keep his pagan myths. The big question is, whether Tolkien's view on this were genuinely Christian.

Did you attend Ronald Hutton's lecture on `pagan Tolkien' in Birmingham, where he argued that both Tolkien and Lewis were essentially pagan rather than Christian authors (as opposed to Charles Williams)? One of the most fascinating presentations of the conference.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Glad the article is interesting. Do you have high hopes for the film? I hope you'll post about it when you've seen it. I missed Ronald Hutton's lecture, unfortunately.

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

I'm very curious about the film, but I'm keeping my hope down, as the religious overtones may be a bit loud. Narnia won't come out in the Netherlands until Dec. 21, but once I've seen it, I'll try to find time to post about it.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I read the whole series as a child and adored them without ever seeing there was any religious message till the very end.

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Same here. I was very surprised to discover what it was all about.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It's a great story--till the message overcomes it--and I shall enjoy it all over again. The excerpts I've seen look amazing. I don't like being preached at by anyone though, no matter what their beliefs; I felt the same about Heinlein shoving his ideas about sex at his readers, and Clarke doing the same with his atheism. For me the story is the thing.

My favourite was 'The Horse and His Boy'. :-)

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Hutton didn't say much about Lewis, as his talk was mainly about Tolkien; what he said was not very different from the article.

As for Tolkien, I seem to remember that it had something to do with his concepts of fate and doom, his tragic world view and the general sadness of his tone, which is often far removed from the joy of the Gospel. I suppose the text will be published in the Proceedings (though I've got no idea when this will be).

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I think he's right that a donkey story would be more like primitive christianity, but modern christianity really owes more to mithraism than it does to the teachins of Jesus (IMHO). In mithraism the god's sacrifice is a magic spell, and by linking to the magic you 'win' the cosmic battle. The other version of Christianity is that the god's sacrifice is a demonstration of a moral fable about meekness and not fighting back. Aslan does at one point refuse to fight back, but this is explicitly only so that the magic will work. All the rest is about the triumphalism of being ruling class or biggest animal.

In that respect Lewis-style theology I think is like modern fundamentalism and like classical paganism. It's about ritual purity and magical alliance with the strongest god who will then smite your enemies. That was the late classical paganism of Rome and Egypt and Babylon.

There's a different older paganism as well, but I think Lewis was never that kind of pagan.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

This is all massively interesting to me right now, thank you. Off to think more.