Na minha opinião, um dos mais bem concebidos romances infantis de toda a história da literatura é a grandiosa obra de C.S. Lewis,
" As Crónicas de Nárnia".
Já tive oportunidade de ler todos os sete livros que constituem a obra, tanto em português como em inglês, e, ainda não sou capaz de escolher quais das duas versões está mais entusiasmante. Quando li a obra original de Lewis, a minha primeira leitura em inglês, fiquei fascinada com o modo como Lewis conta as suas histórias, devido a facilidade com que a escrita nos flui na mente. São histórias sobre crianças, escritas para crianças mas que têm o dom de deixar qualquer crescido rendido à simplicidade e harmonia que impera na escrita deste grande senhor.
De todos os sete livros de Lewis sobre Nárnia, o primeiro que li e aquele que abriu o horizonte para os restantes, foi "O Leão, a Feiticeira e o Guarda-Roupa", que , mais tarde, se viria a revelar um sucesso de bilheteira no grande écrã.
Nas palavras de Lewis, "Era uma vez quatro irmãos cujos nomes eram Peter, Susan, Edmund e Lucy. Esta história é sobre algo que lhes aconteceu quando foram enviados para longe de Londres durante a guerra, por causa dos bombardeamentos aéreos".
Os quatro irmãos são, assim, enviados para casa de um velho Professor, e, é aqui que começa a aventura dos irmãos Pevensie quando, ao jogarem às escondidas. a pequena Lucy, a mais nova dos quatro, descobre, dentro de um quarto fechado e vazio, um velho guarda-roupa, que se vem a revelar como passagem entre o nosso mundo e Nárnia.
A posterior chegada dos Pevensie a Nárnia faz com que uma velha profecia conhecida entre os Narnianos, condenados a viver sobre um rigoroso Inverno durante cem anos, decretado por Jadis, a Feiticeira Branca, resuscite, levando-os numa luta pela liberdade, de forma a trazer de novo a Nárnia o calor de um Verão de sempre.
Só que os quatro irmãos não estaram sozinhos. Aslan, o grande Leão e símbolo de Liberdade para os habitantes de Nárnia está de regresso para ajudar os filhos de Adão e Eva, assim chamados pelos Narnianos, a cumprir a profecia, pois Aslan é o verdadeiro Rei de Nárnia.
"E em Nárnia quando se é Rei uma vez, é-se Rei para sempre."
Aqui fica também um excerto do texto de C.S. Lewis em inglês.
CHAPTER ONE
LUCY LOOKS INTO A WARDROBE
"Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs Macready and three servants. (Their names were Ivy, Margaret and Betty, but they do not come into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as well as on his head, and they liked him almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him, and Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.
As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first night, the boys came into the girls' room and they all talked it over.
"We've fallen on our feet and no mistake," said Peter. "This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like."
"I think he's an old dear," said Susan.
"Oh, come off it!" said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made him bad-tempered. "Don't go on talking like that."
"Like what?" said Susan; "and anyway, it's time you were in bed."
"Trying to talk like Mother," said Edmund. "And who are you to say when I'm to go to bed? Go to bed yourself."
"Hadn't we all better go to bed?" said Lucy. "There's sure to be a row if we're heard talking here."
"No there won't," said Peter. "I tell you this is the sort of house where no one's going to mind what we do. Anyway, they won't hear us. It's about ten minutes' walk from here down to that dining-room, and any amount of stairs and passages in between."
"What's that noise?" said Lucy suddenly. It was a far larger house than she had ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and rows of doors leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy.
"It's only a bird, silly," said Edmund.
"It's an owl," said Peter. "This is going to be a wonderful place for birds. I shall go to bed now. I say, let's go and explore tomorrow. You might find anything in a place like this. Did you see those mountains as we came along? And the woods? There might be eagles. There might be stags. There'll be hawks."
"Badgers!" said Lucy.
"Foxes!" said Edmund.
"Rabbits!" said Susan.
But when next morning came there was a steady rain falling, so thick that when you looked out of the window you could see neither the mountains nor the woods nor even the stream in the garden.
"Of course it would be raining!" said Edmund. They had just finished their breakfast with the Professor and were upstairs in the room he had set apart for them—a long, low room with two windows looking out in one direction and two in another.
"Do stop grumbling, Ed," said Susan. "Ten to one it'll clear up in an hour or so. And in the meantime we're pretty well off. There's a wireless and lots of books."
"Not for me"said Peter; "I'm going to explore in the house."
Everyone agreed to this and that was how the adventures began. It was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms, as everyone had expected that they would; but soon they came to a very long room full of pictures and there they found a suit of armour; and after that was a room all hung with green, with a harp in one corner; and then came three steps down and five steps up, and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out on to a balcony, and then a whole series of rooms that led into each other and were lined with books—most of them very old books and some bigger than a Bible in a church. And shortly after that they looked into a room that was quite empty except for one big wardrobe; the sort that has a looking-glass in the door. There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead blue-bottle on the window-sill. "
Setinha @ Looking into the wardrobe
