Post #4027464

2026-07-23 05:02 UTC

As a result all of Lewis's hatreds come flying out, loosely contained by the rickety narrative, until at the center there's...nothing with any form, just seething and scintillating chaos, like the Seas of Chaos from Steven Brust's writings or like the unearthly fire that bursts through the Earth in Charles Stansby Williams's The Place of the Lion, the book from which #CSLewis clearly stole the idea for Aslan. The Chronicles of #Narnia do not resemble The Place of the Lion, mind you. He didn't plagiarize. But--ironically, rather like a character from that same book--it's like Lewis became intoxicated with the lion's power so he thought to transplant that into his Narnia books. The fool. (cont'd)

Replies (1)

@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-23 05:08

I doubt any readers of mine have read The Place of the Lion, a very difficult and opaque book which yielded to my understanding only after multiple attempts. In it, the fabric of reality is torn open. That fire which breaks through the Earth is like a rift and everything round it begins to lose its material coherence. Archetypal beings roam free: the Serpent, the Horse (and the Unicorn, like yet unlike) and above all the Lion. Lewis thought he could grab a piece of THAT and use it to power his half-baked children's books. It's a fatal mistake. I feel as if the narrative of #Narnia is one of collapse. There's a reason only the first book feels quite real somehow, anchored in reality as if by that iconic lamp-post, the piece of solid Earth brought into Narnia. (cont'd)

Open ##4027600