For Mr. Goodwin - Footnotes to Narnia

"It is a combination, and a mixture
Of ways they might have never met,"

I have failed to confirm or disprove any meeting between CS and TS.

"So going past, nodding at the beige tower, past."

Identification here imprecise and of secondary importance but in order of likelihood: Magdalen Tower, Tom Tower, the tower above the gates of Balliol, that tower above your current room.

"The face of all obedience in Jadis's spire"

"It is I, Jadis, Queen of Charn!" Jadis, variously described as of Giantess heritage, and as descended from the union of Lilith, first wife of Adam, and a Djinn. Warred with her sister for the dominion of Charn. Destroyer of Felinda, Sorlois, and ultimately Charn itself. In her subsequent career, a claimant to the British throne during the reign of Queen Victoria; and more successfully for some hundred years Queen of Narnia, Empress of the Lone Islands and Chatelaine of Cair Paravel. Reign curtailed by murder at the hands of Aslan. Alias the White Witch. Known princes consort: Andrew Ketterley, Edmund Pevensie. The spire probably represents a part of Jadis's picturesque Narnia mansion, with its noted collection of statuary. For a convenient representation, bring to mind the black spire of Exeter.

"Fumigation of the one's old common-room pipe smoke,
The other's butts."

Smoking is in the works of CS Lewis invariably a marker of moral rectitude - note the indictment of the Scrubb parents, as "vegetarians and non-smokers".


I The Burial of the Dead

For this part cf 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' and 'The Last Battle'.

"A harsh thaw they made of it, melting
Boundaries in spring, in summertime lives..."

Both works contain noted martial scenes. Lewis's description of death as "the beginning of the summer holidays" should also probably be noted.

"So sagt mir wo die blumen sind?"

German, "Where have all the flowers gone?", see Joan Baez chanson, recording on 'Farewell Angelina'.

"A coin,
With its mortal majestic composition.
A Lion. And a Unicorn."

Respectively, Aslan, Jewel the Unicorn.

"Le canevas banal, the wardrobe unparadis'd."

See Charles Baudelaire, 'Au Lecteur', John Milton, putative titling of 'Paradise Lost', end of 'The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'

II A Game of Chess

For this part cf. 'The Silver Chair'

"The Chair he sat in, like a burnished cage"

Cf. William Shakespeare, via Mr. Eliot

"Soberly looked on by green Puddleglum"

"The honest Marshwiggle" of 'The Silver Chair'; a gangling, web-footed, damp humanoid most noticeable for his propensity to be as pessimistic in prosperity as optimistic in danger.

"The Marshwiggle of Magdalen's Common Rooms."

It should be recalled that Magdalen was CS Lewis's college; this, not Miss Anna Popplewell, is the intended reference.

"Troubled beside the verdant kirtle's shade.
Unguent incense burnt to Lamia's change."

These lines refer to the Lady of the Green Kirtle, arguably Lewis's most compelling heroine, surpassing even Jadis, "the White Witch". The so-called "Green Witch"'s ancestry is entirely mysterious, though she is noted as "Northern" in origin. Golden haired and rosy cheeked, the Lady rode upon a white palfrey, dressed in a kirtle "as green as poison", and constantly escorted by a knight in black, visored, with a sable blazon. Her voice was "soft and lilting", and she acted in a sympathetic and courteous fashion. She was killed while in the form of an emerald green snake by Prince Rilian of Narnia, her erstwhile captive, and the son of one of her victims. Literary and cultural inspiration for the Lady stems from figures including: Malory's Morgan Le Fay; Spenser's Duessa and False Florimel; Coleridge's Geraldine; Keat's Lamia; the phenomenon of psychotherapy; and the atheist theologian Elizabeth Anscombe. It remains only to be added that she is the present poet's ideal.

III The Fire Sermon

For this part cf. 'The Horse and His Boy' and 'Prince Caspian'.

"A gentle prince is pricking on the plain"

Cf. Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene I.i. 

"The loitering heir, presumptive Caspian,"

Prince Caspian was actually technically Narnia's heir apparent. The author preferred the word presumptive's cadences.

"The horse, tired out, recalls another mounting.
Eugenides's spurs, lei lei lei, lei lei lei."

The poet violently denies improper intentions and is prepared to consult his lawyers.

"With automatic neck now cranes the boy,
Bold as Lord Leicester, pecks Miss Popplewell."

Cf. Mr Eliot; 'Prince Caspian', Walden/Disney film adaptation. This rather petty and irritating reference to Miss Popplewell is this time fully intended by the poet.

IV Death by Water

For this pat, cf. 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader'.

"The Talking Mouse Reepicheep sort of drowned"

Of all Narnia's animal denizens, the effect of Reepicheep upon the consciousness of readers has perhaps been most lasting. A walking metaphor for the glories and limitations of chivalry, Reepicheep is an exceedingly courteous and gallant Mouse. Though his survival in this novel is doubtful, he lives persistently in even contemporary literature, and was cited in one of the novelist Philip Hensher's metaphors in 'The Fit', 2004.

"The Seven Lords plot
Was rent up in some hasty paragraphs."

It really was. The ostensible driving quest of the novel was a search for seven missing, beautifully named Narnian lords. I will try to list them - Revilian, Roop, Octesian, Dorn...the poet's powers of recall prove insufficient. Anyway, their plotline soon enough drowned in theology. Perhaps they themselves had done.

"Gentile or (Messianic) Jew"

I feel all these appelations have intimate bearing upon my esteemed recipient.

V What the Thunder Said

For this part, cf. 'The Magician's Nephew'.

"The older world's blood sun" 

The world of Charn, destroyed by Jadis, who unknowingly acted as Aslan's instrument. "Deities do not flinch from genocide/In matters of buggery or of pride"

"Tolosa dolosa"

Cunning Toulouse; the insult of the Albigensian Crusaders.

" - dying Egypt - "

Shakespeare and Eliot in another semi-amicable collaboration, multched in present bastardisation.

"burst guinea-pigs while ye may -"

Debt to Herrick semi-acknowledged

"And I say the sooner the better"

Lewis's view on the forthcoming return of Arthur Pendragon.

FINIS

From From A View To A Death

My children, I have to announce a hiatus

Though sure shan't be long, nor sharply adhered to;

Yet several concepts convene on a gap -

You'll need a wee Prelude, or yet antiPrelude,

So I'll trace it from pretext to fact.

When I came to Oxford - came again to Oxford -

(not as if you'd ever been so far away,

you might say - well fair Slough is an hour and a half)

For some reason I thought that poems must be witty

Like Pope, or beautiful like Byron, but not serious

With sturgeon-like light novelled glory.

And when I resorted to them, it was due

To rejection, by my own journalistic face,

My prose weight, and then, smarting, by you,

Fairest readers to come. How such a lot came

From an appeasing sonnet from Balliol Bar...

And I cannot leave out my one true lover's role,

Who urged me on in envy, more striding than sorrow,

The captain and catcher of dreams - find him here:

www.sammyamjay.blogspot.com

For I felt, sure, he catches them, but then he's puzzled.

He allows them to float about flustered in cages,

And watches, ands loses the scientist's thrill,

Lets experiment drop, and puts it down to nature -

But I want to wright them and would shine them wrought

If my Thorspastic iron hands could only pin 'em.

But the catcher's last dream caught him up good and proper,

And he never now handles that butterfly net.

The centre, the vortex of shaping art guilt

Is now he who was here, I think:

www.ollyrowse.blogspot.com

 - that's not important -

the thing is, that splendid tyke's written a Play

And for sheer Love and Horror I'll crank out one too.

Those form one real reason - now time for some fake ones -

I can't ride with Guido! I'm not in the 'Sphere

I wield no power, not spitfire tins,

But Victorian railings spitespiked and fast rusting.

Well, back to the truth - the BBC offer

Twenty thousand pounds to a short story handler;

And if dreams elude me, maybe I can do coins,

And similar beasties. I shot off some prizes,

Antonio's argosies, then said goodbye

To Melpomene, Thalia, maybe not Clio

(Clio looks like you, Kirsty;

Becky, Euterpe's got your job, but the track record

Of Urania's better, and closer, with Sidney,

Mary Wrath, etc.)

Goodbye to the less than nine scholarly muses:

The anecdote chorus line, damsels sure met

In the forest wide, lucklessly tracked -

For I dreamt a comical story last night,

post too much Northanger:

not brilliant in itself, it folded these lines:

"Have you children?" "Stewart,

I'm a virgin." "So sorry.

Must be awful for them."