Welcome back to my mini-series on Literary Time Consciousness, where I discuss various facets of how literature (and stories in general) can manipulate and undermine our understanding of time and temporality.
In C.S.Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, specifically The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the two main worlds we experience as readers operate by two entirely different timelines. Narnia, at the beginning of the book, is temporally stuck in an eternal winter (always winter, but never Christmas). When Lucy Pevensie goes into Narnia, she feels as though she’s been gone for hours, when to her family, she’s been missing for only a few minutes at the most. When all four Pevensie children go to Narnia and live out lives as kings and queens, they barely miss any time back in “our” world. It’s an incredibly simple device, but it invites so many layers of reflection on how we experience time in reality, in our imaginations or in stories, and even in eternity.
Even people who might never consider time to be anything but an objective measure that marches on without their consent nevertheless notice that they experience time differently at different times in their lives. Children who cannot wait for their birthday feel as though it will never come. When we’re little, summers last a lifetime and afternoons spent in a game of make-believe expand to fit our imaginations. When we get older we lament how fast time goes, noting that the years feel shorter as each one passes by. We grumble that the summer is over too fast, that the years slip by without our even noticing, and that here is never enough time for anything. We’re always under slept, overworked, and letting time slip through our fingers.
The explanation I most often hear is that the objectivity of time turns our experience of it into a percentage. When you’re only two years old, a year is literally half of your life, but when you’re thirty years old, it’s merely one thirtieth. Of course you’ll experience it faster.
But I’m not convinced that’s the whole story. When I look at Lewis’ Narnia, I’m swept up by the idea that you can find pockets of time if you look for them in the right places, or in the right way. It makes me think that how you live, think, and dream can actively change how you experience time. If you’re open to finding Narnia, then you can find moments that expand.
I’m reminded of when I used to travel a lot for weekend dance workshops. They’d start on Friday night with an evening dance, and then after midnight we’d head to a late night dance. After a shower and a nap, we’d be up for 4-5 hours of classes on Saturday, another evening main dance, followed by another late night. Then on Sunday there’d be another 4-5 hours of classes, and another dance in the evening. Add in meals, traveling with friends, live bands, and more, and you’d have a weekend that felt like a full week. It was incredible how much life you can pack into a short amount of time, how full a weekend can feel. Every dance would expand too, and every song – especially a good dance to a live musician. It’s difficult to describe, but there are moments when you’re so full of joy and excitement, so given over to the music and the muscle memory that it’s like stepping into Narnia for hours in what turns out to be just a few minutes.
In the same way, reading a story can fill our moments with a temporal experience that seems to exceed the objective passing of time. We can have tea with the Fawn and feel our heads grow heavy with the weight of the hours, even though barely a fraction of that time passes in our own world. And so does every good story beckon to its audience as the Fawn beckons to Lucy:
Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?
Stories & Soliloquies 
8 thoughts on “The Eternal Summer of Spare Oom”
Steve Morris
I think the key is living in the moment. If we spend our time thinking about the past or future, we don’t notice what is happening and it is gone.
Michelle Joelle
Definitely. I toyed with a few different examples (hiking, playing music, getting caught up in research, spending time with a loved one, teaching, etc.) and what they really shared in common was that they each demanded full attention. The moments that feel the fullest are the moments when you’re fully “on”, and there is no part of you that isn’t actively engaged.
Tienzen (Jeh-Tween) Gong
“… time and temporality … When all four Pevensie children go to Narnia and live out lives as kings and queens, they barely miss any time back in “our” world. … Children who cannot wait for their birthday feel as though it will never come. … noting that the years feel shorter as each one passes by. … When you’re only two years old, a year is literally half of your life, but when you’re thirty years old, it’s merely one thirtieth. Of course you’ll experience it faster.”
Excellent article and very important topic. I am glad that you did not discuss the absolute time of Newton and the relative time of Einstein. For every physics-layman, one do experience three types of time.
One, emotional time, the time becomes slow when we are waiting and becomes fast when we are enjoying.
Two, life-history time, time measured with one’s life history (measured by harmonic sequence (1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4,…, 1/n, …)). One year is 100% of the life history of one year old baby while it is only 2% (1/50) of one’s life history for a 50 year old person. So, the length of one year is measured with the harmonic sequence.
Three, fairy’s time, it goes in both way. A few days in the fairyland are about 100 years in the Earth time, or a few years in the fairyland are just a few minutes in the real time. Fairy’s time points out a solid reality which sits way beyond the empirical reaches. That is, we should discuss the ‘real’ time.
Yes, there is a real time (not the absolute time of Newton and relative time of Einstein). The ‘now’ is the external point of the ‘entire history of this universe’. When the lights of ‘super nova 1987’ took 300,000 years reached our telescopes, its history is in our hand and we can ‘now’ reach it in seconds. I am planning a travel one year from now, and my future plan can be lived as a never ending joy. The only ‘measurable’ time is ‘now’, and both the past and future are indeed in the fairyland.
Michelle Joelle
As much as I would love to talk about Einstein’s relative time, I would have to do some research, and this series is more focused on literary relativity – but I may take the time to visit that distinction after I power through some Husserl and Kafka, perhaps as a way to round the series out a bit.
I think you also raise a really interesting point about future-time, and in particular, anticipation. I often find myself preferring anticipation to the event I’m anticipating, because the anticipation time seems so much longer and fuller, and the event itself can never live up to the comparison. That’s why I like Christmas Eve better than Christmas Day, for example.
Tienzen (Jeh-Tween) Gong
“As much as I would love to talk about Einstein’s relative time, I would have to do some research,… because the anticipation time seems so much longer and fuller, and the event itself can never live up to the comparison.”
It was not too long ago, but I already forgot how I surfed to this blog. Yet, I bookmarked it after read only one post. I did know that you are not a physicist, but you have a good comment sense which is now a very rare commodity among the academia, as most of them are now imprisoned in the small doctrinal cage which they build themselves. This article about ‘time’ is indeed a great discussion about this very important issue with common sense. If you don’t mind, I would like to discuss it with a commoner sense to dispel some doctrinal teaching.
In your article and my comment, we did not talk about the ‘essence’ of time. What is time? Is time real? Or time is just a sensual illusion? We only talked about the ‘measuring’ of time, especially measuring it as an intelligent agent (with feeling, experience history, imagination, etc.).
In physics, we ‘measure’ time with mechanic device (such as a watch) with a ‘reference’ point (such as an inertia frame or an accelerating frame, etc.). In this definition, the ‘essence’ of time is not very important. It is defined ‘operationally’ with two parts.
One, a mechanic device (not an intelligent agent).
Two, a reference point.
By adding the point two (the reference point), it becomes the nutshell of ‘special relativity’, one of the great doctrinal teaching. So far so good. But, there is a third point.
Three, every reference point is moving in a continuum.
This third point is seemingly also a result of common sense. But, this vital point gives rise to two inevitable consequences.
1. We can measure the time of ‘past’ the same as we are measuring the time at ‘now’.
2. We can measure the time of ‘future’ exactly the same as we are measuring the time at now.
These two consequences will definitely make the Narnia story ‘fictitious’, that is, nonsense in terms of reality. And, this is the doctrinal common sense.
Yet, there is a truer common sense. We (you, I or anyone else) can no longer ‘measure’ the time of ‘past’ although we can ‘calculate’ it on paper. Again, we can never measure the time of ‘future’ as we must ‘wait’ for its permission (when our watch reaches the measuring point). These two facts can be understood by true common sense while they are discredited by the doctrinal teaching. With these two true common senses, we know that ‘time’ in the past and in the future cannot be ‘measured’. Then, why should the Narnia story be fictitious?
I can of course show more details on this in terms of physics. But, by pointing out that Narnia story is not just an imagined story, as in the big part of the universe, the ‘time’ is not measurable. And, thus it could be the ‘central’ point of the ‘essence’ of nature. That is, this Narnia story could be a good philosophical question to think about in addition to as a great literary work.
Michelle Joelle
I like how you’ve phrased things – I think my best response is coming up in my Philosopher Fridays series. I’m taking another look at Husserl. It’ll take me a couple of weeks to get through the essence of streaming conscious and perception, but I think its worth the time!
On a second note, I think you’re absolutely right about the reality of literature. If nothing else, it actively alters how we experience our consciousness, and there’s so much to explore in that little notion.
Thank you for taking time to write such a substantive comment – I hope my future posts will keep this discussion going!
James Pailly
Now I want to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe again.
Michelle Joelle
Do it! I also like the way that The Magician’s Nephew handles this (also, this was the book that made me think row-homes were mysterious and exciting, a feeling I retain to this day – I grew up in the country, so the idea of connecting houses was fascinating!).