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i'm not even going to pretend this time
Man, if you thought 'Sea Change' and the Revolutionsverse was bad, heads up. This is probably the most pretentious (...and academic discipline- and litigation-inviting) thing I've done to date.
I co-wrote Narnia fic with Emile Durkheim. It's England fic, of which approx 50% is copy-pasted from Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life. The translation I have is the Joseph Swain one, and it's beautifully written and it reminds me of Narnia ALL THE DAMN TIME. My notes in the margins largely consist of things like "OMG SUSAN" and "the constitutive elements of Aslan" and just, I dunno. Sometimes the book feels like a collection of excerpts from fic. Durkheim totally could've written some bombass Narnia fic if he wanted to. So I made him!
For Z, who loves me anyway.
(I, uh. I should flock this, shouldn't I.)
Forms & Foundations
Narnia. Susan, Edmund. G. Co-written with Emile Durkheim, posthumously.
"This world tells her, You are Susan Pevensie, a whole equal to the sum of her parts, and she wonders what that entails."
It is said that an idea is necessary when it imposes itself upon the mind by some sort of virtue of its own, without being accompanied by any proof. It contains within it something which constrains the intelligence and which leads to its acceptance without preliminary examination. This is something with which Susan cannot hold, this intersection of necessity and willful ignorance: therein lies Narnia, and all her futures that can no longer be.
Under these conditions, forcing reason back upon experience causes it to disappear, for it is equivalent to reducing universality to an illusion, which may be useful practically, but which, she suspects, corresponds to nothing in reality.
Susan confesses her thoughts to Edmund, saying, "These aren't ideas that are meant to stand side by side together. Surely we aren't supposed to need to be willfully ignorant of what is in front of our eyes."
Edmund just smiles. "Oh Su, in Narnia you were willfully ignorant of a great many things, if I recall."
"Stop it, I'm trying to be serious." (And Edmund may be right, but that is beside the point.)
Her siblings would tell her that she is a queen, but what Susan is trying to find out is why she must lead these two existences at the same time. Why do these two worlds, which seem to contradict each other, not remain outside of each other? And why must they mutually penetrate one another as such? Why won’t it let her go?
I am a queen, her memories would affirm.
This world tells her, You are Susan Pevensie, a whole equal to the sum of her parts, and she wonders what that entails.
+
Mythology is where our non-identity is staged. It is where what we are not is housed. In Narnia, you keep time by the cycles of ritual, and you measure it in units of memory. With each day and month and year that passes, Narnia becomes more and more of a collective secret from which they draw the shape of their lives.
In Narnia, Susan routinely met many gods and goddesses who have the most contradictory attributes simultaneously, who are at the same time one and many, material and spiritual, who can divide themselves up indefinitely without losing anything of their constitution. But look at England, look at London outside her window: these perfect beings which are gods could not have taken their traits from so mediocre, and sometimes even so base a reality.
"Perhaps it’s true then," she says. "Perhaps God is in reality only a part of ourselves, after all."
"Then,” Edmund counters, “how could he confer upon us powers superior to those which we have in our own nature?"
Susan replies, "But we don't have these powers. Not anymore."
Some might say that men have a natural faculty for idealizing, of substituting for the real world another different one, to which they transport themselves by thought. But Susan never used to need to transport herself at all, and she is beginning to dislike the act of it. Lucy and Peter transport themselves, certainly, and still in a sense make permanent habitation there. Edmund too, as sensible as he is. She loves them all and cannot play their games; it is too confusing, and she is forgetting the rules.
The idealization of a world is merely changing the terms of the problem; it is not resolving it or even advancing it. It is only an addition to the real, but not the real itself. In a word, above the real world where her life passes, they have placed another which, in one sense, does not exist except in dreams and promises, but to which they attribute a higher sort of dignity than to the first. Above their own selves, they catch a glimpse of a whole kingdom in which they participate, but which is greater than them. This is the first intuition of the realm of truth, and truth has always caused a lot of trouble for everyone.
And it’s not that Susan doesn’t believe in Narnia. It’s that she doesn’t believe Narnia.
+
There are no gospels which are immortal, but neither is there any reason for believing that humanity is incapable of inventing new ones.
“We are for Narnia and Narnia is for us,” Edmund tells her, and Susan turns this over in her mind.
You are never sure of again finding a perception such as you experienced it the first time; for if the thing perceived has not changed, it is you who are no longer the same. If Narnia is for them, then perhaps it changed the second time around not because it is its nature to do so, but because it had to be rectified for their return. What if Narnia truly was a world that revolved around them as such? All rising and falling in the name of them, and in the name of Aslan.
Still, when Susan attempts to revolt against Narnia, to free herself of it, she meets with great resistance: from her siblings of course, from muscle memory, and surprisingly, from her own intuition. If Narnia depends on them, then it is a dependence that imposes.
"It is true that when our sensations have been actual, they impose themselves upon us in fact," Edmund muses. "But, by right, we are free to conceive them otherwise than they really are, if that is what you wish."
Susan recognizes his closed-off expression, and chooses to ignore his unasked question. Instead she asks, “But then what grounds us?” She asks, "Is it too much to ask for permanence?"
And Edmund looks at her, and looks at her, and answers, "Perhaps."
+
The ideal society is not outside of the real society; it is a part of it.
Far from being divided between them as between two poles which mutually repel each other, you cannot hold to one without holding to the other. What is it, then, that has made her and her siblings acquire the need of raising themselves above the world of experience, and what has furnished them with the means of conceiving another world?
“It’s not us who conceived it,” Edmund frowns.
Susan retorts, “How can you be sure?”
Because she thinks she sees how it works. No one can retain beliefs for any length of time by a purely personal effort. It is not thus that beliefs are born and it is not thus that they are acquired. It is even doubtful that they can be kept under these conditions. One must leave one’s isolation, approach others and seek to convince them, and it is the ardor of the convictions that you arouse that strengthen your own. Peter tries to keep her in the fold, and oh he tries. Lucy tries to cajole her into nostalgia, and Edmund tries to prove her contemplations wrong, but in the end it comes down to this: no one wants to be alone, and no one wants to be abandoned. Susan can feel herself abandoning, if not her siblings, then the dreams that they shared together. She can see the question in their eyes: why are you doing this?
If they do not see the obvious answer, well, then there is no point in wasting words with them.
No one is ever told any story but their own anyway.
QUOTES, MODIFIED OR OTHERWISE, ARE FROM: Book Title: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Contributors: Emile Durkheim - author, Joseph Ward Swain - transltr. Publisher: Free Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1965. omg pls dont sue, i only mean to express my love!
ETA: In the interest of full disclosure, I posted the Durkheim quotes in their entirety here. If I missed any, please do tell. I'm not trying to claim anything of Durkheim's as my own!
I co-wrote Narnia fic with Emile Durkheim. It's England fic, of which approx 50% is copy-pasted from Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life. The translation I have is the Joseph Swain one, and it's beautifully written and it reminds me of Narnia ALL THE DAMN TIME. My notes in the margins largely consist of things like "OMG SUSAN" and "the constitutive elements of Aslan" and just, I dunno. Sometimes the book feels like a collection of excerpts from fic. Durkheim totally could've written some bombass Narnia fic if he wanted to. So I made him!
For Z, who loves me anyway.
(I, uh. I should flock this, shouldn't I.)
Forms & Foundations
Narnia. Susan, Edmund. G. Co-written with Emile Durkheim, posthumously.
"This world tells her, You are Susan Pevensie, a whole equal to the sum of her parts, and she wonders what that entails."
It is said that an idea is necessary when it imposes itself upon the mind by some sort of virtue of its own, without being accompanied by any proof. It contains within it something which constrains the intelligence and which leads to its acceptance without preliminary examination. This is something with which Susan cannot hold, this intersection of necessity and willful ignorance: therein lies Narnia, and all her futures that can no longer be.
Under these conditions, forcing reason back upon experience causes it to disappear, for it is equivalent to reducing universality to an illusion, which may be useful practically, but which, she suspects, corresponds to nothing in reality.
Susan confesses her thoughts to Edmund, saying, "These aren't ideas that are meant to stand side by side together. Surely we aren't supposed to need to be willfully ignorant of what is in front of our eyes."
Edmund just smiles. "Oh Su, in Narnia you were willfully ignorant of a great many things, if I recall."
"Stop it, I'm trying to be serious." (And Edmund may be right, but that is beside the point.)
Her siblings would tell her that she is a queen, but what Susan is trying to find out is why she must lead these two existences at the same time. Why do these two worlds, which seem to contradict each other, not remain outside of each other? And why must they mutually penetrate one another as such? Why won’t it let her go?
I am a queen, her memories would affirm.
This world tells her, You are Susan Pevensie, a whole equal to the sum of her parts, and she wonders what that entails.
+
Mythology is where our non-identity is staged. It is where what we are not is housed. In Narnia, you keep time by the cycles of ritual, and you measure it in units of memory. With each day and month and year that passes, Narnia becomes more and more of a collective secret from which they draw the shape of their lives.
In Narnia, Susan routinely met many gods and goddesses who have the most contradictory attributes simultaneously, who are at the same time one and many, material and spiritual, who can divide themselves up indefinitely without losing anything of their constitution. But look at England, look at London outside her window: these perfect beings which are gods could not have taken their traits from so mediocre, and sometimes even so base a reality.
"Perhaps it’s true then," she says. "Perhaps God is in reality only a part of ourselves, after all."
"Then,” Edmund counters, “how could he confer upon us powers superior to those which we have in our own nature?"
Susan replies, "But we don't have these powers. Not anymore."
Some might say that men have a natural faculty for idealizing, of substituting for the real world another different one, to which they transport themselves by thought. But Susan never used to need to transport herself at all, and she is beginning to dislike the act of it. Lucy and Peter transport themselves, certainly, and still in a sense make permanent habitation there. Edmund too, as sensible as he is. She loves them all and cannot play their games; it is too confusing, and she is forgetting the rules.
The idealization of a world is merely changing the terms of the problem; it is not resolving it or even advancing it. It is only an addition to the real, but not the real itself. In a word, above the real world where her life passes, they have placed another which, in one sense, does not exist except in dreams and promises, but to which they attribute a higher sort of dignity than to the first. Above their own selves, they catch a glimpse of a whole kingdom in which they participate, but which is greater than them. This is the first intuition of the realm of truth, and truth has always caused a lot of trouble for everyone.
And it’s not that Susan doesn’t believe in Narnia. It’s that she doesn’t believe Narnia.
+
There are no gospels which are immortal, but neither is there any reason for believing that humanity is incapable of inventing new ones.
“We are for Narnia and Narnia is for us,” Edmund tells her, and Susan turns this over in her mind.
You are never sure of again finding a perception such as you experienced it the first time; for if the thing perceived has not changed, it is you who are no longer the same. If Narnia is for them, then perhaps it changed the second time around not because it is its nature to do so, but because it had to be rectified for their return. What if Narnia truly was a world that revolved around them as such? All rising and falling in the name of them, and in the name of Aslan.
Still, when Susan attempts to revolt against Narnia, to free herself of it, she meets with great resistance: from her siblings of course, from muscle memory, and surprisingly, from her own intuition. If Narnia depends on them, then it is a dependence that imposes.
"It is true that when our sensations have been actual, they impose themselves upon us in fact," Edmund muses. "But, by right, we are free to conceive them otherwise than they really are, if that is what you wish."
Susan recognizes his closed-off expression, and chooses to ignore his unasked question. Instead she asks, “But then what grounds us?” She asks, "Is it too much to ask for permanence?"
And Edmund looks at her, and looks at her, and answers, "Perhaps."
+
The ideal society is not outside of the real society; it is a part of it.
Far from being divided between them as between two poles which mutually repel each other, you cannot hold to one without holding to the other. What is it, then, that has made her and her siblings acquire the need of raising themselves above the world of experience, and what has furnished them with the means of conceiving another world?
“It’s not us who conceived it,” Edmund frowns.
Susan retorts, “How can you be sure?”
Because she thinks she sees how it works. No one can retain beliefs for any length of time by a purely personal effort. It is not thus that beliefs are born and it is not thus that they are acquired. It is even doubtful that they can be kept under these conditions. One must leave one’s isolation, approach others and seek to convince them, and it is the ardor of the convictions that you arouse that strengthen your own. Peter tries to keep her in the fold, and oh he tries. Lucy tries to cajole her into nostalgia, and Edmund tries to prove her contemplations wrong, but in the end it comes down to this: no one wants to be alone, and no one wants to be abandoned. Susan can feel herself abandoning, if not her siblings, then the dreams that they shared together. She can see the question in their eyes: why are you doing this?
If they do not see the obvious answer, well, then there is no point in wasting words with them.
No one is ever told any story but their own anyway.
QUOTES, MODIFIED OR OTHERWISE, ARE FROM: Book Title: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Contributors: Emile Durkheim - author, Joseph Ward Swain - transltr. Publisher: Free Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1965. omg pls dont sue, i only mean to express my love!
ETA: In the interest of full disclosure, I posted the Durkheim quotes in their entirety here. If I missed any, please do tell. I'm not trying to claim anything of Durkheim's as my own!
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