Creation through Song

Creation through Song is the founding act through which Aslan gives Narnia its world, its living communities, and their responsibilities. Creation begins as music before the land has even acquired its visible form; it proceeds from stars and sunrise to grass, trees, and awakened animals, and culminates in speech and an ethical charge to care for the world.

The First Voice and the Arrival of Light

In the darkness, a voice begins to sing without words and with scarcely a tune. Digory cannot locate its direction: at times it seems to come from everywhere, at times from beneath the ground. Its low notes seem to belong to the earth itself, while the sound’s beauty overwhelms him. The horse responds with a whinny likened to the recognition of a beloved presence, making the music’s arrival affect animal life even before the new world is visible.

The first song is joined by innumerable higher voices just as stars suddenly appear overhead. Stars, constellations, and planets leap into the previously black sky all at once, and the two wonders begin at exactly the same moment. The scene presents the stars not as a background that happens to accompany creation, but as participants in its music: to Digory, they seem to sing, while the deep First Voice appears to have made them and brought their song forth.

The music rises until the eastern sky changes from white to pink and then gold. At its greatest intensity, the sun rises. Its appearance reveals a valley shaped by a broad, swift river flowing east, with mountains to the south and lower hills to the north. Yet the land is still bare of trees, bushes, and grass. The sequence therefore distinguishes the creation of light and the visible world from the later filling of the land with life.

The Song Gives the Land Its Growth

Aslan, a great Lion, walks to and fro across the empty country, singing a softer, more lilting song. Grass spreads outward from him like a pool and climbs the hills like a wave; the lower mountain slopes turn green, and the wind begins to move through the new growth. Heather darkens the higher slopes, while other rough green plants emerge in the valley. The plants grow visibly and rapidly, until Digory recognizes the spiky forms around him as trees.

The shift from the first song to this gentler music gives creation a developing rhythm. The earlier voice brings the heavenly lights and sunrise; Aslan’s walking song makes the earthly landscape fertile. The world is not presented as complete at the moment it first becomes visible: it is made habitable through successive acts that add vegetation and transform bare earth into a living environment.

Breath, Selection, and Awakening

After the song has ceased, Aslan moves among the animals. He approaches them in pairs, touching two beavers, two leopards, and a stag and a deer, while passing over other animals and some kinds altogether. Those he touches leave their own groups and follow him; the chosen animals gather in a wide circle, while the untouched creatures wander away. The moment becomes quiet and expectant before the awakening begins.

Aslan fixes his gaze on the gathered beasts. The smaller animals grow larger, while the largest, especially the elephants, grow somewhat smaller. Many sit upright, and most incline their heads as if trying to understand. Aslan breathes out a long, warm breath; it moves the animals as wind moves a line of trees. The stars sing again, then a flash comes either from the sky or from Aslan. The voice that follows gives Narnia its command to awaken: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

The animals’ transformation is both physical and intellectual: they change in size and posture, and they receive the capacities to love, think, and speak. The horse, now called Strawberry, is among the chosen and becomes a Talking Beast. His first words are an admission that the creatures do not yet know very much, marking the beginning of speech as a new capacity rather than instant mastery of the world.

The Gift of Narnia and Its Moral Order

Aslan’s address to the newly awakened creatures makes the relation between creation and responsibility explicit. He gives them the land, its woods, fruits, rivers, and stars, and gives them himself. The gift includes the Dumb Beasts, whom the Talking Beasts are instructed to treat gently and cherish. They must not return to the ways of the Dumb Beasts, Aslan warns, because they came from them and can become like them again.

The command does not end with solemnity. The animals promise to obey, and a jackdaw’s emphatic agreement arrives after the others have fallen silent, embarrassing it. The animals laugh in their own ways, and Aslan tells them that they need not always be grave: speech makes room for jokes as well as justice. Narnia’s creation thus establishes more than a landscape or a hierarchy of beings. The song and awakening bring forth a community whose gifts are joined to duties, and whose new speech carries both moral judgment and humor.