If you ask experts (including simply experts on curricula, like teachers) what children a certain age are likely to need to learn, and you know you can speak so children that age can understand you and you write a book to suit that need, well, you will very likely write a book that is fun for that age, but not quite as fun in an older age when the lesson is already well learned.
If you write books to suit your taste, including the taste you had back at a certain age as perceived in retrospect, you are likely to write works of art, which continue to enchant well after your "age back then" is reached by the readers, just as it did for you.
I don't think many Swedes would still as adults, unless when reading to children, admit to loving Alfons Åberg and spending hours reading him. I think very many Swedes would still admit loving and spending hours on Ronya or Mio or Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren (apart from pro-death ending of the last book mentioned, this includes me).
I think if you put a riddle into a childrens book, that the child does not solve and the adult does solve at 52, when looking back, this means your books fall into the latter category.
Now, look first at this paragraph on Autumn (a season some of you may better know as Fall). The compare the comparisons I give.
After a Summer sometimes too hot, Autumn comes as a liberation. With red hue and black trunks, with umbrellas and scarves, but still with lots of gifts: you huddle around the fire for a hot tea, you enjoy the honey recently harvested from the bees, all the fruits make the meals richer. As you sit by the fire and hear the wind lull you to sleep, you drowse and wake up to torrential rain, reminding of some back in spring, but sadder, since Autumn leads you on to Winter, and nearly betrays you to him ... but yet saves you, though not himself : Winter will take away the ruddy freshness and leave only grey and cold and his house totally disshevelled.
Now, look at Tumnus. Look hard at a line by Queen Susan to him:
Oh, Tumnus!
Do you see another name here? Well, Autumnus pronounced by an Englishman. He is the Roman god or divinity of Autumn. There is another Roman divinity with a name ending in Tumnus : Vertumnus. So, if in a Spanish book two characters, father and son, are called Vergilio and Oberon Toño, that is a fair parallel to the old man on the wall and his son in the leanchair.
Getting back to the line by Queen Susan, in The Horse and His Boy, Tumnus did liberate her from the excessive heat of Calormene "Summer". "After a Summer sometimes too hot, Autumn comes as a liberation."
Now, back to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Mr. Tumnus has black hair and horns and cloven hooves and is hairy all over the legs, but his skin is red. "With red hue and black trunks," as I said. He has a scarf and an umbrella and lots of gifts. "[W]ith umbrellas and scarves, but still with lots of gifts," I said. And his hospitality to Lucy matches "you huddle around the fire for a hot tea, you enjoy the honey recently harvested from the bees, all the fruits make the meals richer."
He takes up a flute and plays until Lucy falls asleep: "As you sit by the fire and hear the wind lull you to sleep, you drowse," I just said.
Lucy wakes up as the faun cries so as to leave a real puddle on the floor and Mr. Tumnus admits being such a bad faun, he was leading Lucy on to the White Witch. He admits his father would never have done such a thing. And I just said: "and wake up to torrential rain, reminding of some back in spring, but sadder, since Autumn leads you on to Winter, and nearly betrays you to him." Obviously the other Mr. Tumnus, the father, Vertumnus, would not have done such a thing, he would have been leading you on to Summer instead.
Tumnus saves Lucy by walking her back to the lamp post, and Autumn's harvests save us from starvation in Winter.
Mr. Tumnus pays a great price, his house is sacked, it is found cold, and he is turned to stone in the home of the White Witch. And as I just said "but yet saves you, though not himself : Winter will take away the ruddy freshness and leave only grey and cold and his house totally disshevelled."
Tumnus will of course be un-stoned when Aslan breathes on him, but he will not be taking an active part after his martyrdom. Why? As Spring has come and then Summer, Autumn is alive in his principles but not active in his own right. Since all processes leading up to a rich Autumn are already active from Spring on and throughout Summer. And next time Tumnus appears, and actively so, is of course for The Horse and His Boy, which is inside the last chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as delivering Queen Susan from what could very well be considered as "excessive Summer heat".
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts. Sulpicius and Servilian
Martyrs of Rome
20.IV.2021
Romae sanctorum Martyrum Sulpicii et Serviliani, qui, praedicatione et miraculis beatae Domitillae Virginis ad Christi fidem conversi, ambo, cum nollent idolis immolare, in persecutione Trajani, a Praefecto Urbis Aniano sunt capite caesi.
A badly needed shoutout to this video, which did the blunder of identifying Tumnus with Vertumnus, the "god of seasonal change" when in fact Vertumnus was the god specifically of spring:
Tumnus Isn't Who You Think | Narnia Lore | Into the Wardrobe
18th April 2021 | Into the Wardrobe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9QQva-5scU
No comments:
Post a Comment