Prince Caspian, Plato, books and stories
“Aren’t there lots of stories about magic forcing people out of one place – out of one world – into another? I mean, when a magician in The Arabian Nights calls up a Jinn, it has to come. We had to come, just like that.”
“Yes,” said Peter, “I suppose what makes it feel so queer is that in the stories it’s always someone in our world who does the calling. One doesn’t really think about where the Jinn’s coming from.”
“And now we know what it feels like to be the Jinn,” said Edmund with a chuckle. “Golly! It’s a bit uncomfortable to know that we can be whistled for like that. It’s worse than what Father says about living at the mercy of the telephone.”
This is one of several references to books in Prince Caspian and it is intriguing one. Lewis, like Peter, reimagined some of the classics, like The Arabian Nights, and so created a series that is both rooted in its literary past but also a new outgrowth from it.
Some of his references to great books happen almost in passing, as when Peter, recalling both the stories of Edith Nesbit and stories about King Arthur, tells the others that “it really was hundreds of years ago that we lived in Cair Paravel. And now we’re coming back to Narnia as if we were Crusaders or Anglo-Saxons or Ancient Britons or someone coming back to modern England.”
But, on other occasions, the books are embedded in the story, as with Grammatical Garden (or The Arbour of Accidence pleasantlie open’d to Tender Wits) by Pulverulentus Siccus.
To state the obvious, books clearly matter to the children and to Lewis himself. In fact, it is often their knowledge of books that saves the children, as when Edmund reminds the others that in “the books they always find springs of clear, fresh water on the island. We’d better go and look for them.” (It is also Edmund who comes to the rescue in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader because he is the only one who has read detective stories.)
However, I want to suggest that books are not of primary importance for Lewis. That honour goes to stories. Notice what Trumpkin says:
“I think I’ll have to go right back to the beginning and tell you how Caspian grew up in his uncle’s court and how he comes to be on our side at all. But it’ll be a long story.”
“All the better,” said Lucy. “We love stories.”
And notice too how Price Caspian’s imagination is fired by stories rather than by books:
and though (being a prince) he had wonderful toys which would do almost anything but talk, he liked best the last hour of the day when the toys had all been put back in their cupboard and Nurse would tell him stories.
By contrast, Miraz hates stories:
“That’s all nonsense, for babies,” said the King sternly. “Only fit for babies, do you hear? You’re getting too old for that sort of stuff. At your age you ought to be thinking of battles and adventures, not fairy tales.”
And later:
See what a pack of nursery tales our jacknapes of a nephew has sent us.
Trumpkin too is sceptical. He goes on several journeys in this book but one of the most important is his journey from doubt to belief in stories:
“Do you believe all those old stories?” asked Trumpkin.
and,
Soup and celery! I wish our leaders would think less about these old wives’ tales and more about victuals and arms.
In the end he learns to value stories because the stories come true!
So what are we to make of all this? We could, of course, look at Lewis’s essay ‘On Stories’, which I hope to return to on another occasion, but, for the moment, I want to turn to Plato’s Phaedrus for a helping hand.
In this book, the Egyptian god Theuth boasts to Thamus, the King of Thebes, about his invention of writing:
“This invention, O king,” said Theuth, “will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered.”
But Thamus isn’t so sure:
“Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practise their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them.
You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.”
Though Lewis was undeniably bookish, he was also wise enough to realise the problems that books present, as elixirs not of memory, but of reminding. And maybe in this age of inattention, when attention merchants are constantly fishing (and phishing) for our attention so they can make money from it, we too should recall the power of stories as well as the power of books.
All of which is a reminder, in part, of the importance of reading aloud, of telling each other tales, of drawing from the ancient treasury store to enrich and adorn a younger generation who may, like the Pevensie children, have forgotten that the store even existed.