I WRITE this on return from an extraordinary C. S. Lewis conference in Romania. How is it that more than 50 scholars from around the world, and many more students and interested members of the general public, all made the trek there? Moreover, this was the seventh annual iteration of this conference, which has continued to grow every year. What is going on here? Why this extraordinary enthusiasm for Lewis in, of all places, Romania? Thereby hangs a tale.
It begins on a dark and stormy night in Bucharest, in 1989. Romanian winters, for many years, had been especially grim, with power cuts, food shortages, and fear on every side as the Securitate, the state secret police, took ever harsher measures to keep Ceaușescu’s odious regime in power.
On this particular evening, a young student, soaked and shivering, stepped through an open door, just to stand for a moment in the warm and dry. It happened to be the door of the British Consulate, and she was welcomed in. She told me that she encountered not only light and warmth, but also the smell of oranges: a magical moment, redolent of childhood Christmas; for there had been no oranges available to ordinary people in Bucharest for years.
She was told to make herself comfortable till the storm was over, and was given something to read to while away the time. The book that they put into her hand was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She was studying the English language at university, and so she had enough English to read and understand what was given her.
As the story unfolded, she was gripped more and more with a sense of excitement and connection: the country under a curse that made it “always winter and never Christmas”, and under the equally icy grip of a wicked tyrant; the ubiquitous network of spies recruited, as Tumnus was by the tyrant herself; the spies themselves afraid of being spied on and informed against (“Some of the trees are on her side,” Tumnus says fearfully). Then came the discovery of Tumnus’s arrest, the trashing of his house, the notice of denunciation left by Maugrim, “the chief of the secret police” — it was all too familiar to Theodora.
But then, as she turned the pages, came the great turn towards hope: the prophecy of an end to the tyranny, the rumour of Aslan’s arrival, and, with it, in the dominant metaphor of the whole novel, the arrival, first, of Christmas and then, of spring. The tyrant insists that it’s only a thaw, but all the oppressed people know that it’s spring.
A political spring was already sweeping through the rest of Eastern Europe, and this enchanting children’s tale seemed to offer a hope that spring and liberation would come at last to Romania, too. The storm let up, and Theodora asked whether she could borrow the book to finish it. She took it to her English professor, who loved it and immediately saw its relevance to Romania.
Together, the two women photocopied the whole book, and the Professor worked night and day on a translation, which was passed from hand to hand and copied again and again. Soon, this strange English children’s story became an underground classic, an emblem of hope.
Later that year, the Romanians had their revolution, the tyrant fell, and they began a new chapter. Lewis’s classic was published properly, at last, and another student of that far-sighted Professor wrote her doctorate on Lewis and started a Romanian C. S. Lewis and Kindred Spirits Society. All three women were at the conference, celebrating, with all of us, the 75th anniversary, this year, of a life-changing book.