The Country of Narnia:

CHAPTER FOUR

"Nothing is yet in its true form." -Till We Have Faces

Other Worlds According to Lewis's friend, J. R. R. Tolkien, man is a "subcreator" when he creates a fantasy world:

Although now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned: Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons-twas our right (used or misused). That right has not decayed: we make still by the law in which we're made. ("On Fairy Stories," J. R. R. Tolkien)

Man thus creates because he is made in the image of the Creator and because there is a part of him which is unsatisfied by the rational, natural world. Using materials from the world around him and drawing on spiritual reality, he expresses truths that cannot be expressed or explained in any other way. But to create convincing "other worlds," Lewis believed that he must draw on the only real "other world" he knew, that of the spirit. In his essay "The Weight of Glory," he writes: "Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years."

Professor Kirke suggests that there are probably other worlds right "around the corner." But the "chinks" or "chasms" which connect these worlds are growing rarer. Narnia is described as one of these secret countries that is real-"a really other world-another Nature-another universe-somewhere you would never reach even if you travelled through the space of this universe for ever and ever-a world that could be reached only by Magic." But first, the children enter an in-between place.

The Wood Between the Worlds Digory has the sensation of coming up into a new world, only to discover that he has entered not a new world, but an "in-between" place, from which he can get into other worlds. It contains dozens of pools with a different world at the bottom of each of them. Though a dreamy, sleepy place where nothing seems to happen, it is alive-warm and rich as a plumcake. The leafy trees grow so close together that they allow only a "green" daylight to seep in, and he can almost hear them growing! Digory feels as though he has always been there. But the second time the children try to enter from their own world, they enter a world of Nothing.

The Creation of Narnia According to Lewis's time-line for Narnia, Narnia was created in 1900 A.D. Although the children enter a world of Nothingness, Narnia is still a potential, "waiting" to be born, and they feel solid earth beneath them. Aslan creates it by singing, "the most beautiful noise Digory had ever heard." Other voices blend in harmony with it, but in "higher, cold, tingling, silvery voices" which become stars, constellations, and planets bursting into sight in the sky. Next, as the sky becomes lighter, Digory can see the many colors of a "fresh, hot and vivid earth;" then a young sun arises, laughing with joy. A soft, rippling music produces first grass, then trees. By now, Polly notices a connection between the notes Aslan is singing and the things he is creating. For example, a series of deep, prolonged notes produces dark fir trees; light, rapid notes produce primroses. But a wild, invigorating tune produces humps in the ground from which a joyous menagerie of animals emerge: moles, dogs, stags, frogs, panthers, leopards, showers of birds, butterflies, bees, and elephants. It becomes clear that Aslan's creations are things he imagines and the song comes from these ideas in his mind, a song so special that it makes you hot and flushed, wanting to jump and shout!

This idea of God creating the universe through singing it into being is found also in Tolkien's Silmarillion in which Eru creates the Ainor, or Holy Ones, as offspring of his thought and propounds to them musical themes. Harmoniously they sing before him a Great Music, whereas evil and proud beings desire to sing their own music which results in discord. Both Lewis and Tolkien seem to be drawing on a medieval concept which uses music as a metaphor for the harmony of the universe. The ancients believed that the planets, for example, were aligned in such exact mathematical relationships that they gave off a special music-the Music of the Spheres. In this scheme, the universe is represented as a musical instrument that includes all creation, from angels to stones. The hand of God stretches out to tune it. A common 17th century notion of the world pictures an organ with God as primal Organ Player.

After singing Narnia into being Aslan speaks: "Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters." Narnia, as Aslan first creates it, makes our world seem "hard and cruel" in comparison. For Narnia is a country of walking trees, visible naiads and dryads in the streams and trees, fauns and satyrs, dwarfs, giants, centaurs and Talking Beasts. The existence of mythological creatures such as these in Narnia grows out of an intriguing idea that occurs quite frequently in Lewis's works-that what is myth and legend in our world may be factual reality in another. Even Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, is seen romping through Narnia, changing the streams to wine. One of the books in Mr. Tumnus' home is titled, with faun humor, "Is Man a Myth?"

Narnian Geography and Government By gathering information from the seven Narnia tales, we get a fairly comprehensive idea of the geography of Narnia and the surrounding countries. Lewis mapped his own rough conception of Narnian topography, and from this sketch Pauline Baynes later drew a more detailed map for Lewis. This map is available in the Bles and Puffin editions of Prince Caspian and is also sold as a large poster. The map reproduced on the cover of this book and on page 50 was drawn by Sylvia Smith and is also the result of considerable research. Narnia itself seems to resemble Lewis's favorite parts of the English and Irish countrysides with its avenues of beeches, sunny oak glades, deep forests, and orchards of snow-white cherry trees; its windy slopes of gorse bushes, acres of blue flowers, wild valleys, and heathery mountains and ridges; its roaring waterfalls, winding rivers, plashy glens, mossy rocks and caverns. The low hills to the north and the moorlands lead to the wild and desolate land of the giant stronghold, described predominantly in The Silver Chair. This Northern land of barren, rocky plains, frigid mountains, and stony boulders and ruins has a bleak, windy, snowy climate unlike the rich and dewy atmosphere of Narnia. To the west of Narnia is the Western Wild where one can see high, snowcrowned mountains and glaciers, and verdant valleys with streams tumbling down from the mountains, sparkling like blue jewelry. Here, the Great Waterfall crashes down to create the Caldron Pool, then the River of Narnia winds across the land to the Sea. This is where the beginning and ending of Narnia takes place. Lantern Waste is located on the east side, where the children enter Narnia in The Lion and where the Lamp-post springs up.

South of Narnia is another ridge of mountains across which lie two countries: Archenland, connected to Narnia by a pass, and Calormen, across a sandy desert. The Great Sea lying to the east of Narnia contains all the islands visited in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Galma, Terebinthia, the Seven Islands, the Lone Islands, the Dragon, Deathwater, Darkness, and World's End Islands. Beyond this is Aslan's Country and the End of the World. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the topography of Narnia and these countries is described as being like a great, round but flat table with the waters of all the oceans pouring endlessly over the edge. During the creation of Narnia, Aslan chooses two of each animal by touching their noses with his. These become Talking Beasts which are put in charge of the Dumb Beasts. Yet only a human can be a King or Queen of Narnia.

The hierarchy is thus as follows: The Emperor-Over-Sea and his son Aslan Peter (High King) Kings and Queens minor nobility Talking Beasts and longaevi ("long-livers," creatures such as nymphs, satyrs and centaurs.) Dumb Beasts

The Kings and Queens of Narnia rule from a castle on the eastern sea-coast named Cair Paravel (which means an "inferior court," implying its administration is still subordinate to the Emperor-Over-Sea). Life there is very reminiscent of the medieval Arthurian setting of coronations, feasts, falconry, rich clothing and courtly language. As in medieval courts, old epics are told aloud; for example, the children hear the story of The Horse arid His Boy retold 100 years later. Battle clothes are bright tunics, steel or silver caps covered with jewels and with winged sides, and straight swords; their banner depicts a red Lion. Yet the subjects of this monarchy retain their freedom; in fact, there is no slavery at all in Narnia-not even marriage against one's will! Aslan instructs King Frank, first Narnian King, that a good King rules kindly and fairly, with no favorites, and is to be first in the charge and last in retreat from enemies.

The creatures in Narnia seem to come straight out of the pages of classical mythology: giants, centaurs, unicorns, dwarfs. The trees can hear and even assume human form: "strangely branchy and leafy" birch-girls, beech-girls, larch-girls; shaggy, wizened and hearty oak men with frizzled beards; lean and melancholy elms; and shockheaded hollies. Even common animals like foxes, badgers, mice, moles and squirrels are larger than in our world. As in the legends of the North American Indians, even the stars, like Coriakin and Ramandu, are glistening real people, with white hot spears and whose long hair shines like burning silver. Narnia, in fact, has its own constellations-the Ship, Hammer, and Leopard-and starsSpear-head (North star), Tarva, and Alambil. Of course, there is not always peace in Narnia because it is surrounded by powerful enemies who could always invade it. (It is relatively small-one quarter the size of the smallest Calormen province.) But for the most part, there are years and years of peace and joyful activities-dances, feasts, and great tournaments; hunting parties, treasureseeking, and midnight dances. The Great Snow Dance, described in The Silver Chair, is especially unique. On the first moonlit night when snow is on the ground, a ring of Dwarfs dressed in fine clothes throw snowballs in perfect time to the sound of wild music. If everyone is in the right place, no one gets hit. Here, Lewis may again be drawing on a rich metaphor of the Middle Ages which other writers, such as Tolkien and Madeleine L'Engle, have also used in their works. The Great Dance, like the Music of the Spheres, was a metaphor for the perfect harmony, joy, and unity of the universe, in which every person, animal, planet, and microorganism played its part in a precisely patterned rhythm. Ramandu, for example, says that when he has been rejuvenated, he will once again rise and tread the measures of this Great Dance.

Narnian History After Lewis wrote the seven stories, he drew up an outline of Narnia's history. An historical time-chart of Narnia, based on Lewis's outline and the information found in the stories themselves, is shown on pages 54-57. There are 2555 Narnian years between its creation and destruction, corresponding to 52 earth years. During the history of Narnia, there was an "Old Narnia" and a "New Narnia."

The former consisted of years of peace and joy, when every day and week was better than the last, and to recollect those happy years is like "looking down from a high hill onto a rich, lovely plain full of woods and waters and cornfields, which spread away and away till it got thin and misty from distance." Actually the story of the "New Narnia" begins with the story of Telmar.

Telmar Telmar, an island beyond the Western Mountains of Narnia, is first colonized by the Calormenes in the year 300 (Narnian time). When these Calormenes behave wickedly, Aslan turns them into dumb beasts and the country is laid waste. 160 years later, some pirates in our word are driven by storm onto an island in the South Seas. They kill the natives and take native women as their wives. One day they become drunk and quarrel. Six flee with the women to the center of the island, then climb up a mountain into a cave. This cave is a "chink" or "chasm" between worlds, and they fall through to the uninhabited land of Telmar. Their descendants become fierce and proud. In the Narnian year 1998, there is a famine, and Caspian I of Telmar leads an invasion of Narnia and becomes king. But the Telmarines begin to change Narnia, for they silence the beasts, trees and fountains; kill and drive away the dwarfs and fauns, and try to erase all memory of them. Since they fear the Sea, they let woods grow up around Cair Paravel and the coast to separate them from the water. Then, because they hate the trees, they invent a story that these Black Woods are full of ghosts. So by the time of Prince Caspian, both the Telmarines and Old Narnians have forgotten the truth about Old Narnia-it is all "just stories." Caspian admits that he has often wondered if Aslan is real and if there actually were any Talking Beasts and dwarfs.

As we know from the story of Prince Caspian, Narnia is restored to the old order. At the end of the book, Aslan allows those who wish to go back to the South Sea islanda land of good wells, fresh water, fruitful soil, timber, and fish-through a special doorway. That chasm between the two worlds is then closed forever.

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Calormen Far to the south of Narnia, below Archenland and across the mountains and a great desert, lies Calormen. As Lewis describes the Calormenes and their capital city, they are reminiscent of the Turks or Arabians. Supposedly, Lewis disliked The Arabian Nights and perhaps used that culture as a basis for his invention of the evil enemies of Narnia.

Calormen is created in Narnian year 204, when outlaws from Archenland flee south across the desert and set up the kingdom. A Calormene visitor is readily recognized: "The spike of a helmet projected from the middle of his silken turban and he wore a shirt of chain mail. By his side hung a curving scimitar, a round shield studded with bosses of brass hung at his back, and his right hand grasped a lance. His face was dark .... the man's beard . . . was dyed crimson, and curled and gleaming with scented oil." Typical Calormenes are "grave," "mysterious," "wise," "cruel," and "ancient," wearing orange turbans, flowing robes and shoes turned up at the toe. Seeming to lack imagination and creativity, the Calormenes write poetry consisting only of maxims and apothegms-about topics other than love and war-and they must be taught to tell stories.

Tashbaan is the Calormen capital, located on an island between two rivers. Buildings rise on either side of the streets which zig-zag up the hill and completely cover the island. In between are masses of orange and lemon trees, roof gardens, balconies, archways, battlements, spires, and pinnacles. If you look closely, though, you can see crowded narrow streets full of rude, bumping people and sniff the pervasive smell of garlic, onions, refuse, and unwashed bodies. The Calormenes adhere rigidly to a strict hierarchy. Although they care nothing for Aslan, they have a deityTash, a hideous, birdlike creature with a vulture's or eagle's head and four arms. The ruler is called the Tisroc, under whom are Tarkhans (lords) and Tarkheenas (ladies), such as Aravis or Lasaraleen in the story of The Horse and His Boy. Lasaraleen's lifestyle is much like that of a Turkish princess, as she rides proudly atop a platform carried by servants and shielded by lavish curtains.

Underland and Bism In The Silver Chair, we learn that Narnia's world has several layers. The Green Witch's world of Underland lies just beneath the ruins of an ancient Northern city and is a perversion of the real world. The children must descend through numerous caverns and suffocating tunnels, each cave lower than the last. There are no wind or birds but only a greenish light, batlike animals, and a city full of docile, miserable Earthmen. Like the River Styx in mythology, a river glides lazily to the Witch's castle.

But the Green Witch's world is sandwiched in between Narnia and another, deeper, wonderful realm. For beneath her false "Shallow-Lands" is Bism. This is the "Really Deep Land," 1000 fathoms beneath the Queen's realm. Bism is the real home of the gnomish Earthmen, to whom living on the Upper World sounds horrible: "You can't really like it-crawling about like flies on the top of the world!" Through a chasm in the earth (from which seeps a strong heat and a rich, sharp, exciting smell) the children can see brilliant fields and groves of hot, bright blues, reds, greens, and whites. The gems there, they learn, are alive! Through all this runs a river of fire inhabited by salamanders. Lewis is drawing on the ancient tradition that subterranean fire-one of the four elements-was inhabited by gnomes and salamanders. In fact, he wrote a poem about "The True Nature of Gnomes":

. . . A gnome moves through earth like an arrow in the air, At home like a fish within the seamless, foamless Liberty of the water that yields to it everywhere.

Beguiled with pictures, 1 fancied in my childhood Subterranean rivers beside glimmering wharfs, Hammers upon anvils, pattering and yammering, Torches and tunnels, the cities of the dwarfs;

But in perfect blackness underneath the surface, In a silence unbroken till the planet cracks, Their sinewy bodies through the dense continuum Move without resistance and leave no tracks ....

But Bism also seems to represent a far deeper reality which Rilian reluctantly decides not to explore. The gnomes plunge headlong into it, just as Robin, in Lewis' story "The Man Born Blind," dives into the light and warmth symbolic of the beauty Lewis says we long to bathe in.

Entering Narnia The idea of a parallel world reached only by magic is a favorite device in fantasy, and it is through magic that the children of our world enter Narnia:

"How did you get there?" said Jill . . . "The only way you can-by Magic," said Eustace almost in a whisper.

But Professor Kirke explains that the children can never get into Narnia a second time by the same route. In fact, they can't try to get there at all. Instead, Aslan calls them in his own way and time, and it happens when they aren't expecting it. The children are usually called to Narnia when someone "in a pinch" needs them, although they are assured that there are many, many years of peace in Narnia. The only way to Aslan's country from all worlds is across a river bridged by Aslan himself.

In The Magician's Nephew, Digory and Polly enter by means of yellow rings that only need to be touched. They were made from dust in a box from the lost city of Atlantis which Uncle Andrew obtained from his godmother. Since the material of the rings is from another world that existed when ours was just beginning, it draws one back into the place where it came from. So Digory and Polly come up through a pool into the Wood Between the Worlds. The green rings, on the other hand, transport them out of the Wood and into a new world. The experience of leaving is brief, but doesn't happen too quickly for Digory to note bright lights-the stars and even Jupiter's moonsmoving around him. More remarkable, as he gets closer to England, he can even see through the walls of houses, and objects that were at first shadowy come sharply into focus. At the end of their adventures in this book, the children simply have to look at Aslan's face and they are back in England for good.

Narnia is reached in a different way made famous in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Digory takes a special apple from a Narnian tree and plants the core in his back yard. Although a storm ruins the tree that subsequently grows, he makes a magic wardrobe out of the salvaged wood. Then, many years later, after Digory has become old Professor Kirke, Lucy Pevensie climbs into the wardrobe, and steps behind the coats and mothballs into Lantern Waste. Yet when the other three children try to confirm her wild tale of a secret country, all they find is hard wood at the back of the wardrobe. So, again, one can't try to get into Narnia. To return to England from Narnia in this book all the children have to do, even after 15 Narnian years have passed, is to walk back through the coats and into the wardrobe. This wardrobe is reminiscent of the stable in The Last Battle, whose inside is bigger than its outside and which leads the Narnians into another world. (Incidentally, a beautiful hand-carved wardrobe that actually belonged to Professor Lewis and perhaps was inspiration for this story can be seen at the Marion E. Wade Collection at Wheaton College, Illinois).

The children are not called to Narnia again until one day, sitting dejectedly at the train station waiting to return to school, they feel themselves "pulled" and then suddenly scratched with branches. Trumpkin has blown Susan's magic horn, which always brings help when used. The children's return to England is more spectacular. Like the special door which appears in The Last Battle, Aslan sets up two wooden stakes three feet apart, with a third binding them together at the top, and thus creates a doorway "from nowhere into nowhere." Through this doorway, the Telmarines pass back into the South Seas of our world. Then the children sorrowfully pass through "layers" and see three curious things: first, a cave opening to a Pacific Island; next, a glade in Narnia; and, finally, the gray platform of the country station, just as it was when they left England. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader begins in still a different way. On Eustace Scrubb's bedroom wall is a lovely picture of a sailing ship on the sea. But the more Lucy stares at it, the more real and alive the scene becomes-in fact, the waves start to roll up and down and the air smells wild and briny. Lucy, Edmund and Eustace are even slapped in the face with salt water! As the incorrigible Eustace attempts to smash the picture, he finds himself standing on the frame, then swept into the sea! At the end of their long adventure, Lucy and Edmund are told that they are too old to return to Narnia again. Then Aslan returns all three of them to Cambridge by ripping the blue sky like a curtain, and letting them through!

That same year, Eustace and his schoolmate, Jill Pole, despairing of their dreary life at a school called Experiment House, really try to get to Narnia: "Aslan, Aslan, Aslan! . . .Please let us two go into-." As they rush away from the noise of their approaching schoolmates, they throw open a usually locked door in a high stone wall. But instead of seeing a heathery moor, they find the cool bright air and vibrant forest of Aslan's country. At the end of their mission to rescue Rilian, they triumphantly return to Experiment House-this time with Aslan-who simply leads them through the woods to the school. Of course, in the final trip to Narnia, every one of the "friends of Narnia" on earth is called to Narnia by means of an actual train accident which instantly kills them all. Jill and Eustace, however, immediately find themselves with Tirian when he needs them the most. We don't know what happened right away to the others, but we do know they ended up in Aslan's country-this time, to stay!
Time As the timeline for Narnia indicates, there is an obvious and distinct difference between the time frames of Narnia and England: 2555 years of Narnia from beginning to end correspond to just 52 earth years. Yet two Narnian years pass between 1930 and 1933 and 698 years between 1933 and 1940! Just what was Lewis up to?

First, it is quite common in stories for two worlds to have different times; even Tirian acknowledges this fact. Professor Kirke explains to the children that if there is a separate world, "I should not be at all surprised to find that that that other world had a separate time of its own; so that however long you stayed there it would never take up any of our time." As a result, each time the children return from Narnia to England they find no time has passed on earth, no matter how long they have been busy in Narnia. For example, Digory, Polly, and the whole crew of Cabby, horse, and Witch leave England and witness all the glorious events of Narnia's creation and the establishment of the new kingdom; then Digory and Polly return right into the middle of the very mess the witch had created. Lucy emerges breathlessly from the Wardrobe without a second having ticked away; and when all four "Kings and Queens" return after their 15 year reign, they return "the same day and the same hour of the day on which they had all gone into the wardrobe to hide."

A second "muddle about time," which seems to take the children quite a while to get used to, is the fact that Narnian time flows differently from ours. So that once you're out of Narnia, you have no idea how Narnian time is going: "If you spent a hundred years in Narnia, you would still come back to our world at the very same hour of the very same day on which you left. And then, if you went back into Narnia after spending a week here, you might find that a thousand Narnian years had passed, or only a day, or no time at all. You never know till you get there." So, in Prince Caspian, the children have only been gone from Narnia one year but find it entirely grown over and so changed they can't recognize it, for it is hundreds of Narnian years later. Yet when they return, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, after another year in England, only three Narnian years have passed since Caspian's coronation.

Walter Hooper explains that Lewis knew what he was doing here; for he believed that other worlds might have a time with "thicknesses and thinnesses," not a linear time like ours. Hooper feels this has two important effects. Not only do the strange time lapses allow more interesting adventures, but also teach the children about history itself. Since they do not know what stage of Narnian history they are playing a role in, they cannot see the meaning of the whole plan; only Aslan does. Only Aslan "calls all times soon."
The End of the World One thing Lewis does, perhaps better than any other writer, is to depict a vision of what heaven is like. Quite unforgettable is the description of the End of the World in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, always associated with the Utter East. The first effect on the children is that they simply feel different-not sleepy, hungry, or thirsty. Like their vigor after the romp with Aslan following his resurrection, they feel life to its fullest! Two things they notice are also associated with Aslan himself: light and smell. The light becomes a whiteness radiating all around them, for the sun grows larger. Still, they get used to it, seeing "more light than they had ever seen before." Also, a "fresh, wild, lonely smell that seemed to get into your brain" pervades the air. The clear water reveals a submarine world and is sweet like the air-like "drinkable light"-and carpeted with lilies. There is a stillness . . . and joy.

In the distance, the mountains of a green, forested country "outside the world" come into view; these are always associated with Aslan's country in the Chronicles. From there, too, sweeps a smell and musical sound "that would break your heart." In The Silver Chair, Jill and Eustace are permitted to get just a taste of this country. They find a stream and crystal air that clears their minds, as well. When they return there briefly at the end of the book, Jill notices that this is a place where you can't want the wrong things, and people are no particular age. Aslan promises they some day may be called to this place- their real "home"-to stay forever.
Destruction of Narnia-Aslan's Country Jill Pole remarks, "Our world is going to have an end some day. Perhaps this one won't. Wouldn't it be lovely if Narnia just went on and on . . . ? But "all worlds draw to an end; except Aslan's country." And so at the end of The Last Battle, we sadly watch this wonderful world come to an end. In contrast to the music by which Aslan called it into existence, Father Time blows his giant horn to reverse the process. First, the stars fall, leaving an emptiness as Aslan calls them home. Then the Talking Beasts pass through Aslan's door, leaving only Dragons and Giant Lizards to devour Narnia-as in the "Ragnarok" or destruction of the earth in Norse mythology. Then water arises to blanket all, and the sun and moon turn red and disintegrate. At last, Peter closes and locks the door on a cold, dead world.

All worlds end-except Aslan's country. The disappointed children follow Aslan "further up and further in" through the stable. The land just inside the door reminds them of something they can't quite place: a deep blue sky, soft summer breeze, and thick trees with wonderful, indescribable fruit which makes all the fruit of our world seem dull by comparison. It seems to be a country where everything is allowed!

Then they realize where they have seen all this before. Aslan's world is just like the Narnia they had known, only "more like the real thing." Lewis explains the difference as being like a reflection of a landscape in a mirror, where the reflection is just as real but "somehow different-deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story." This "new Narnia" looks "deeper"-as if every flower and blade of grass "meant more." Finding that they are able to run faster than ever before, and without tiring, the group moves even "further up and further in" through Aslan's country by scaling a waterfall (most likely the "real" waterfall of which the Great Waterfall and Caldron Pool in the Lantern Waste had been only a reflection!). Racing to an area just like the Western Wilds, then up a hill, they enter a garden (again, just like the Platonic Ideal) the reflection of which Digory had entered thousands of years earlier. They notice again the characteristic, delicious smell, the springy turf dotted with white flowers. Even more wonderful, everyone they have ever known is there!

As Lucy climbs up the green slopes and mountains of forests, through the sweet orchards and past flashing waterfalls, she begins to see more and more clearly. Now, peering over the wall of the garden, she distinctly sees "Narnia" spread out below:
"I see," Lucy says thoughtfully. "I see now. This garden is like the stable. It is far bigger inside than it was outside." "Of course, Daughter of Eve," explains Mr. Tumnus. "The further up and further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside."
Lucy sees then, that the garden is-contains-a whole world: "I see," she says. "This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the Stable door. I see . . . world within world, Narnia within Narnia ...." "Yes," says Mr. Tumnus, "like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last."

She sees not only the layout of Narnia-the desert, Tashbaan, Cair Paravel, island after island to the End of the World-but even England looking like a cloud cut off from them by a gap. This, too, is the "England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia." All real countries, in fact, are like spurs jutting out from the great mountains of Aslan which ring the entire world.
Lewis's Platonism The children thus find the real Narnia and real England of which the others were only a shadow or copy. In fact, Aslan calls England the "Shadow Lands"! "It's all in Plato," Professor Kirke keeps explaining. Plato believed that the real, stable, permanent part of the universe exists in a super-natural, super- sensible "heaven" as Ideas or Forms. Thus the physical world is only the realm of appearances, rather than solid reality-illusory, transitory. In this way, it is a shadow or copy of the "real world." But Lewis places his Platonic reality not in a far removed, abstract heaven, but rather at the very heart, the center of all that exists. The children go further up (to Aslan' s country in the mountains, to Platonic heaven) and further in (to the center of the onion), then on to a garden containing a Narnia that is even better, and at last to a Narnia seen from the mountains which is "as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream . . . . It's all in Plato."

Furthermore, Lewis totally reverses the shadowy Platonic conception of heaven. We often tend to associate God and Heaven with the "sky" and the "spiritual," forgetting that our language is only symbolic and incapable of describing or understanding them. Consequently, says Lewis, God has become to many "like a gas diffused in space" or a "mist streaming upward"-vaporous, vague, indefinable, shadowy. We also have a "vague dream of Platonic paradises and gardens of the Hesperides" which represent the "heaven" we long for. But in The Last Battle, the Platonic realm is portrayed as a solid, concrete reality: every rock and flower and blade of grass seems to "mean more." In The Great Divorce, Lewis likewise notes that in comparison to the ghostly earthlings stumbling on heaven's soil, things in heaven are much "solider," even harder in comparison - you can cut your finger on the grass! Life is weak and flimsy compared to the solid reality it reflects. Similarly, in Perelandra, Ransom is told, "You see only an appearance, small one. You have never seen more than an appearance of anything," and he sadly realizes "I have lived all my life among shadows and broken images."

The paradox implicit in the idea of a sphere with a center bigger than its circumference illustrates how difficult it is for us to believe that this vast universe came out of something smaller and emptier than itself. "It is not so," says Lewis. "We are much nearer to the truth in the vision seen by Julian of Norwich, when Christ appeared to her holding in His hand a little thing like a hazel nut and saying, 'This is all that is created.' And it seemed to her so small and weak that she wondered how it could hold together at all. "3 Instead, the real power of the center is illustrated in The Last Battle:

"It seems then," says Tirian, smiling himself, "that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from without are two different places." "Yes," says Lord Digory. "Its inside is bigger than its outside."

Similarly, the Garden is far bigger inside than outside.

"Of course," says the Faun. "The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The in- side is larger than the outside." "Yes," says Queen Lucy. "In our world, too, a Stable once had something insideit that was bigger than our whole world."

In contrast, Hell is smaller than one atom of the Real World; and a damned soul, writes Lewis in The Great Divorce, is also nearly nothing, "shrunk, shut up in itself." But we perpetually view reality the other way around, as if we were looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

Platonism involves an aspiration, a longing, a crying out of the human soul from within the unreal world we now know, for a beauty which lies "on the other side of existence." Lewis himself experienced this longing all his life. Long before he even enters Narnia, Digory longs for a world with a fruit that could care his sick mother. Similarly, Shasta says he has been "longing to go to the north all my life." "Of course you have," Bree responds. "That's because of the blood that's in you .... You're true northern stock." And not only is he returned to his home but restored to his proper name.

Raised a Telmarine, and hearing only fleeting stories about Talking Narnians, Caspian searches for such people all his life. His old nurse says that she, too, has always waited for Aslan. As Aslan leads his band of rejoicing, newly-freed followers through the towns, a school teacher, like Caspian's nurse, feels a "stab of joy" and follows him. Jill feels a similar sensation as she steps into Narnia through a hole in the wall; though frightened, she realizes she has "always been longing for something like this." Reepicheep, questing valiantly for the End of the World, says the spell of Aslan's country "has been on me all my life." And finally, Jewel the Unicorn, upon reaching the new Narnia of Asian's country, stamps on the ground and cries, "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this."

In an essay, "The Weight of Glory," Lewis says we all have a desire for a "far off country" like an inconsolable inner pang-"a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it." In fact, he says we were made for another world. What more poignant illustration of this could there be than the magical tree from Narnia that grows in Digory's back yard but bends whenever a breeze blows in Narnia because of the Narnian sap running within it! Perhaps we mistakenly identify what we long for as beauty, or memory; but these are only "the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." In Narnia, the things we long for are associated with the distant mountains of Aslan's country and the islands of the Utter East. After their unforgettable experience at the End of the World, Edmund and Lucy cannot describe the smell and the musical sound carried on the sweet breeze from Aslan's country: " 'It would break your heart.' 'Why,' said I, 'was it so sad?' 'Sad!! No,' said Lucy."

Digory experiences the same strange "echo" during his first time in the Wood Between the Worlds: "If anyone had asked him: 'Where did you come from?' he would probably have said, 'I've always been here.' That was what it felt like - as if one had always been in that place." His and Polly's life before this seems like a dream, a "picture" in their heads. The former life of Strawberry the horse also seems muddled like a dream, and Aslan's song reminds them all of "something." After the four Pevensies are Kings and Queens in Narnia for many years, the "real" world seems like a dream to them, too.

Only Aslan is able to "wake up" the visitors from earth to the reality he alone can bring. The children only need to look into his face to feel as though they have never been alive or awake before. Similarly, in The Horse and His Boy, after Aslan visits with the children they feel as if awakened from sleep: "But there was a brightness in the air and on the grass, and a joy in their hearts, which assured them that he had been no dream." As the Telmarine in Prince Caspian feels the touch of Aslan's breath, a new look comes into his eyes, "as if he were trying to remember something."

By contrast, evil makes us forget. The White Witch cannot even remember being in the Wood Between the Worlds -that "quiet place"-no matter how often or how long she was there. Likewise, the gnome, Golg, says that the Green Witch called them to her world by magic and made them forget about their own world: "We didn't know who we were or where we belonged. We couldn't do anything, except what she put into our heads." Puddleglum has to denounce her evil, drowsy enchantment, which lures them into forgetting the real world, by reasoning, "Suppose we have dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones .... We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow."

But the world we dream of, or remember, or long for is not "made-up." In Aslan's country, beyond the Stable Door, "The dream is ended: this is the morning." Lewis uses the Stable Door not only in The Last Battle but also in several of his other writings as a symbol for the entrance to that Platonic reality which we have always longed for because we have vague Wordsworthian recollections of a past glory. We long to be "inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside .... to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache." Someday, says Lewis, we shall again be permitted to "get in . . . pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects." Lewis makes this vivid in one of the most memorable passages in all of the Chronicles, when Lucy, in reading the Magician's Magic Book, comes across a "spell for the refreshment of the spirit." Like the living pictures that Orual sees while telling Psyche's story at the end of Till We Have Faces, Lucy finds that she is living in the story as if it were real, and all the pictures were real, too. It is about a cup, a sword, a tree, and a green hill, and is the loveliest story she has ever read. But she can neither go back and read it again, nor really remember it. Ever since that time, though, Lucy defines a good story as one that reminds her of this forgotten story. Aslan promises her that he will tell that story to her for years and years. This certainly is Lucy's glimpse, like the glimpses we have all our lives, of the Great Story which the children are just beginning to experience at the conclusion of The Last Battle, "which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."