I love reading
quotations. Whether they’re funny, wise or poignant, I love those snapshots
into the human mind; I love the beauty of language. There aren’t always easy
ways to crowbar great passages from novels or thoughtful quotations into
ordinary blog posts, so on Fridays I’m letting them speak for themselves.
No deep thoughts, no fancy attempts to unpick hidden meanings – just snippets
of our beautiful language I’ve come across that I’ve fallen in love with. I’d
love to know what you think of them.
This week's quotation is from The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. Not one of his most famous passages, but one which, for me, sums up the charm of the Narnia stories.
“A Centaur has a man-stomach and a
horse-stomach. And of course both want breakfast. So first of all he has
porridge and pavenders and kidneys and bacon and omlette and cold ham and toast
and marmalade and coffee and beer. And after that he tends to the horse part of
himself by grazing for an hour or so and finishing up with a hot mash, some
oats, and a bag of sugar. That's why it's such a serious thing to ask a Centaur
to stay for the weekend. A very serious thing indeed.”
As much as anything I love the description of what a human should eat for breakfast, such a wonderfully classic and slightly dated view of breakfast. There are so many of there sort of meal descriptions in the Narnia series - I always imagine them to be exactly the sort of meals that war-time children under rationing would dream of being able to eat.
ReplyDeleteI also just googled "pavender" assuming that its probably a fish I hadn't heard of and discovered that its a non-talking tasty rainbow coloured fish that lives in the oceans of Narnia :)
I did the same - thinking that pavender might be a typo! I love that they had beer for breakfast!
DeleteGreat quote! I haven't read all of the Narnia books, so I missed this for sure. My chuckle for the day.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read The Last Battle, but I think I've done the rest. They're so marvellous. But my memories mostly come from the BBC drama series from the late 80s. I'm still a bit traumatised from Maugrim...
DeleteI love the way that things one reads as a child and takes totally for fact and for granted, can be so funny when revisited. I can remember the bit you quoted as I read it under the bedclothes by torchlight when I was about nine. Happy days. Ceve
ReplyDeleteThat's what I love about this quote. It's childhood innocence in a box!
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