Narnia Taught Me A Lot of What I Needed to Know

In Cotsen’s current exhibition, “Ice and Snow,”  an illustration of little Kai being carried off in the Snow Queen’s sleigh is next to the iconic image of Mr. Tumnus and Lucy walking through the snow from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  As much as I have always loved that picture by Pauline Baynes, the first volume of the Chronicles was not my favorite one:  I  preferred The Horse and His Boy to it, perhaps because it was the first book I remember buying with my own money.  

horseandboyThe Manhattan Beach public library didn’t own a complete set of the Narnia books, so my mother drove me to Either Or, the  independent bookstore downtown near the water, to place a special order for a volume I hadn’t read.  About two weeks later The Horse and His Boy came in and I begged to collect it first thing after school  My mother, who probably had a lot more pressing things to do that miserable, wet November afternoon, indulged me.

khan Decades later I understand completely why so many people find the Orientalism permeating The Horse and His Boy off-putting. The long exchange between the Tarkaan and Arsheesh the fisherman in the first chapter, which ends in their haggling over a price for Shasta, does deftly set in motion the lost royal orphan plot.  But the tongue-in-cheek dialogue in the style of an English translation of A Thousand and One Nights now grates.  For better or worse, the adventures of Shasta, Aravis, Bree, and Hwin thoroughly grounded me in Western conceptions of the other–East and West, black and white, North and South, the prince and the pauper.  At age nine, I doubt I realized that The Horse and His Boy also showed me at the same time how a cleverly constructed narrative subverts those seemingly inexorable oppositions and demonstrates their truthiness as much as their potency.

tisrocIt was the thread of political intrigue in The Horse and His Boy that brought me back again and again to the book.   I was simultaneously horrified and fascinated by the Tisroc’s calm betrayal of his eldest son Rabadash.  That the father could lucidly explain why the military expedition would serve his interests no matter how it turned out showed that he was as cold-blooded as a serpent.   Such a master of duplicity deserved to have his ambitions overturned, even though the absurd Rabadash would take the fall.

desertThen began the most harrowing part of the story–the forced ride across the great Calormen desert to mountainous Archenland.  The descriptions of the children beginning the journey across the sands in the cool dark of night, then continuing through the blazing day, was very real to anyone growing up in hot, dry Southern California.  It was so easy to imagine how thirsty they all were when they reached the secret valley after traveling nearly twenty-four hours.  That they fell asleep out of exhaustion and lost the advantage gained by finding the secret shortcut to Archenland was heartbreaking every time, even though I knew Rabadash would not succeed in extending the Tisroc’s empire into the free North. defileWhat the ending of The Horse and His Boy taught me I could have never anticipated.  Shasta, who was raised in a fisherman’s hut is dumbfounded with the news that he, not his twin brother Prince Corin, will be the next king of Archenland.  Shasta (or Prince Cor as he is now called) generously tries to return the crown he thinks must belong to his brother, but is told by his father King Lune that rulers are under the law and therefore cannot subvert the laws of succession at will.

“Hurrah!  Hurrah!” said Corin.  “I shan’t have to be King.  I shan’t have to be King.  I’ll always be a prince.  It’s princes have all the fun.”

“And that’s true than thy brother knows, Cor, ” said King Lune.  “For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”

When the situation calls for backbone, quite often I hear King Lune’s words about what it means to be a leader.  They may be good thoughts to take with us into a new year.

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Educational Tourism: Seeing Knights in Shining Armor at Lowenburg Castle

Where did little German boys long to be taken for a day trip in the 1830s?  The castle of Lowenburg in Kassel, the capital of Hesse.

What was so special about Lowenburg, which wasn’t even a real military fortification, in a country dotted with imposing and beautiful castles?

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Lowenburg as it is today.

Lowenburg was something of an architectural folly, built between 1793 and 1801 by one of the richest men in Europe at that time.  William IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, later Prince-Elector of Hesse (1743-1821), commissioned architect Heinrich Christoph Jussow to build him a brand new ancestral pleasure palace that would look like a medieval castle from a distance.  Jussow was sent to England to look at romantic ruins of abbeys and study the latest trends in garden design.  Lowenburg was built complete with imitation Roman aquaducts, Greek temples, and ruins and surrounded by a moat with a drawbridge, in the picturesque Wilhelmshoheberg park.  The high Baroque interior was furnished with medieval altars, tapestries, stained glass, armor and weapons.

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Contrast the previous view of the castle with this one from the 1830s, before it was modified, bombed to the foundations, and rebuilt. Das Ritterwesen oder die Reise nach der Lowenburg (ca. 1833).

A tourist destination long before 1975 when the Deutsche Marchenstrasse, or German Fairytale Route, was created, it was just the kind of cultural site to be proudly promoted in books for little tarry-at-home travelers.  The production of these kinds of books were a minor industry in Britain, but don’t seem to be anywhere as common in France or Germany.  One of those books was recently acquired by Cotsen: Das Ritterwesen, oder die Reise nach der Lowenberg zur Unterhaltung and Belehrung fur die reifere Jugend [Chivalry, or The Trip to Lowenburg for the Entertainment and Information of Older Children] published by G. H. Renner & Schuster in Nurnberg around 1833.

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The added engraved title page.

In the frame story, the brothers Fritz and Karl are on a walking tour with their tutor. They are delighted to learn that the tutor has planned a side trip to Lowenburg, where they will learn everything there is to know about the noble tradition of German knighthood.

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The tutor and boys, hats in hand, at Lowenburg.

The author of Ritterwesen unceremoniously dropped the dialogue between characters after four pages, which would have made the account more lively, but the illuminated illustrations are more than adequate compensation.

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An installation from the 1830s featuring armor and weapons from the castle’s collection.

 Here is a plate illustrating  knights in different styles of armor.

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And another of fair ladies….

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And a folding plate of knights jousting.

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And a fun fact to close: Lowenburg was the model for Disney castles…

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