Prince Caspian Forever?

Is our childhood chasing us? It's the question Freud was asking himself the most (after the atrocious libidinal power) and giving always a positive answer (to both).

No idea about yours, but mine will be allowed to chase me forever --at least its good parts--which were mainly the parts I was a little curly fugitive. Fleeing from reality was my main habit --sometimes with the help of innocent inhaling methods--, becoming a successful full-time occupation during holidays. It always worked extremely well, allowing me to visit worlds nobody could and to lead lives I never would, only for limited time, thanks to my vivid imagination, hugely assisted by valuable paper stories that I was digging out of books that sometimes were not even written for kids my age.

This one, though, had unwillingly religious kids like me as its target group, even though I never got the well-hidden (christian) message that C.S.Lewis wanted to convey at the fifties. The Chronicles of Narnia, especially The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that I was so fond of and of which I was watching a certain animated version many Christmases in a row ('m talking about the books, my dear illiterate reader, the ones that were used as source for the film adaptation; that film playing in a theater near you these days has a longer history than you could ever imagine) kept my imagination busy for quite some time and made me feel empty inside when I felt the abrupt ending in front of some ridiculously high sea waves and a lion with a highly erotic voice.

These children memories do not cease to come back and to ask for more than I could ever give them: they ask for realisation. Adventurous fantasy worlds and young, blond princes date from that time, when the everyday routine was dull and the only world worth living in was hidden in those symbolic pages. Especially the noble Prince Caspian, whose charming character matches Ben Barnes' stature (or vice-versa?), he painfully reminds me that I appreciate the looks a great deal, but I value the content more. And I will always yearn for a blond prince on a white horse, but I will end up choosing a brave heart and a wise mind --with a good sense of humour, preferably well-dressed and...but let's not deviate that much. The combination of the two is probably possible, but not yet encountered and all that C.S. Lewis' symbolism makes me think that it's mainly symbolic, too. Looks that kill bring so much baggage with them, vanity among other things, that they obstruct further character development.

*And if you disagree, drop me a line.