скачать книгу бесплатно
Jack
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
25. xi. 1952
Dear Mrs. Van Deusen
No, by wordless prayer I didn’t mean the practice of the Presence of God. I meant the same mental act as in verbal prayer only without the words. The Practice of the Presence is a much higher activity. I don’t think it matters much whether an absolutely uninterrupted recollection of God’s presence for a whole lifetime is possible or not. A much more frequent & prolonged recollection than we have yet reached certainly is possible. Isn’t that enough to work on? A child learning to walk doesn’t need to know whether it will ever be able to walk 40 miles in a day: the important thing is that it can walk tomorrow a little further and more steadily than it did today.
I don’t think we are likely to give too much love and care to those we love. We might put in active care in the form of assistance when it wd. be better for them to act on their own: i.e. we might be busybodies. Or we might have too much ‘care’ for them in the sense of anxiety. But we never love anyone too much: the trouble is always that we love God, or perhaps some other created being, too little.
As to the ‘state of the world’ if we have time to hope and fear about it, we certainly have time to pray. I agree it is v. hard to keep one’s eyes on God amid all the daily claims & problems. I think it wise, if possible, to move one’s main prayers from the last-thing-at-night position to some earlier time: give them a better chance to infiltrate one’s other thoughts.
Thanks v. much for the stationery. I’m afraid I can’t find a W. Chambers book.
(#ulink_4c06edc1-1f0c-5a8b-a27b-9a19428b07db) It’s better not to send the book. They all get lost in the pile on my table.
Yours sincerely, with love to all,
C. S. Lewis
TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
26 xi 52
Dear Blamires
Yes, I did of course write to Edinburgh and did my best.
(#ulink_2bbd5977-8754-5b53-a337-e20f27859cac) I was much hampered by the fact that my questioner laid great stress on practical ability as a teacher, and of course I could not pretend to have any first hand evidence to give on that. I am sorry the Philistines have won: but am sure you will not allow yourself to be too set down about it. All good wishes,
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
26. xi. 1952
My dear Bles
Thanks for American M.C.
(#ulink_95e1ba99-9aae-569c-bc0f-6302099cf82f) and for reviews of D.T.
(#ulink_bc397eaa-d2dc-5583-a095-5301b9bf514c) No, I shan’t need any more copies of the former, so pray dispose of them as you think fit. No one, not even the artist, liked the Church Times picture.
(#ulink_f6a6f354-9e8e-53ac-9511-d9b9c365dbdb) The Torso is not at all imminent:
(#ulink_84385a9f-2ad9-5034-82fa-e92181ed2768) I’m very busy with ordinary work these days. All greetings.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO WILLIAM BORST (P):
Magdalen College,
Oxford
28.xi.52
Dear Borst–
The copy has not yet come to hand but I have your letter of the 19th and I’m afraid the position is this. You can have a little more headnote (but not a statement what each passage ‘illustrates’–it is 50 bad for the students) and as many more glosses as you like: but you can’t have from me any drastic revision of the Selections. For one thing I have not now the leisure: but for another, I can’t have what is really Mr. Harrison’s Selections going under my name.
If you press for such a revision then I will make what seems to me a handsome offer. I will be content with 500 dollars for my introduction and for giving you my selections & glosses as a basis for someone else’s work. You will save money, for you needn’t get an expensive man to do you the kind of Selections you now want. It is work for any intelligent student. For my Selections were quite a different thing. With labour of which you have no conception I quarried a little F.Q. out of the great F.Q.: reproducing its real characteristics. Of course this involved omitting (within individual selections) stanzas that could be spared: and leaving the first appearances of characters as unprepared as S. leaves them: and being ‘tantalising’ as S. is tantalising: and omitting some (v. few) of the dear old Show-pieces. You have almost sensed what I was at: I don’t think Mr. Harrison has. And the result on you is v. significant. You now want more Spenser than you allowed me at first. Why? if not that the thing is acting on you as I hoped it wd. act on the students? If I’d simply chucked all the dear old favourites together in the old way you’d have taken them without a murmur and never asked for more.
As I say, you are quite free to get someone else (and, between ourselves, you need get only a hack). Yet I can’t help hoping you’ll keep my Selections: not for my sake (I shd. not be piqued and I can manage without the other 500 dollars) but for Spenser’s. Arrogant tho’ it may sound I can’t help saying ‘Borst, you know not what you do: let well alone. You’ve got here a new thing, a thing which will whet the students’ appetite as it whets yours. Think twice before throwing it away in favour of one more “specimens of Spenser” such as everyone has done, and no one enjoyed.’
Mr. Harrison is mistaken in thinking that Serena was a foundling of noble birth.
(#ulink_da40fc6f-e320-5b7c-92ba-f1ccb8998617) S. does (emphatically) identify RCK
(#ulink_a9968bed-83a4-5621-9a47-d7d8ccbeff0b) and St George (I x. lxi.).
(#ulink_609c21b4-3cfa-5233-9b5a-d00111913423)
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO I. O. EVANS (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford
28. xi. 52
Dear Evans
Thank you for The Space Serpent which I have read and return.
(#ulink_0fdbe696-3db2-5e1a-ba41-4eda0c8420dd) Most interesting idea—and I fear I wd. never have noticed your ‘howler’ if you hadn’t warned me. But then, as you know, my interest in ‘science-fiction’ puts the emphasis entirely on the fiction end. I must re-read that excellent book Kipps,
(#ulink_df53ee68-3989-501f-a99b-51915464d5fb) and thanks you for reminding me of it. How tragically Wells decayed in his later work! With all good wishes.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO ALAN AND NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Dec 2nd 1952
Dear Alan and Nell
I was going to write to you shortly (I mean ‘in a short time’, how difficult the English language is!) when your card came. I am sending off under separate cover my last story to your little girl. At least I hope that’s what the neat packet contains: I daren’t open it to see because I’m so bad at parcels that I’d never get it put up again nicely if I did. I’m afraid it is a poor gift compared with the chinchilla (is that how you spell it?) coat.
I’m afraid I haven’t a chance to get down to dear Court Stairs this vacation, though it is just the weather for the South Coast and I shd. love to join your merry circle round the fire. Is the old gentleman with the strong views still there? Your garden must look lovely in the snow.
I hope Nell has quite got over the impact of ‘my wife’ by now and that it is all sinking away from both of you, as it is for me, into the status of a dream—even a funny dream. All the same, however she may deserve it, I don’t enjoy remembering every now & then that she is still in jail. Well, dear friends, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you both.
Yours
Jack
TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS
REF.52/206.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
3rd December 1952.
Dear Nell,
Despite your kindness I can’t promise myself any definite date for coming down: there are so few ‘odd times’ in my life. I sometimes have to go into Sussex, and when that happens I’ll try to run over to Courtstairs.
I say—I suppose the Baron and the Countess are O.K. are they? I’m afraid if I’d had your experience I’d suspect every guest!
Greetings to all.
Yours,
Jack
TO I. O. EVANS (W): TS
REF.52/38.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
6th December 1952.
Dear Evans,
Your discourse on Nauthorship is a most interesting document, and tells us at least as much about writing as many theoretical high-brow articles. How right you are about getting the ‘wave-length’.
What I object to most in Wells is his everlasting Gallicism ‘figure to yourself’.
(#ulink_306a1e32-f4e8-5b6a-b34b-527c5522ba10)
All the best.
Yours,
C. S. Lewis
TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS
REF.52/103.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
9th December 1952.
Dear Mrs. Gebbert,
Many thanks for your letter of the 4th. The more I think of it the more I regret that our intercourse should have been that of heavenly bodies rather than human beings: that your orbit should have swung within thirty miles of ours without our making contact. And now you are back in your normal track, five thousand or more miles from Oxford. And, what is worse, the tone of your letter suggests that it will be a very long time before you risk the European adventure again. But take courage. One can visit London without getting influenza, and one can travel by Pan-American Airways without the agonies of sea-sickness. (Incidentally, why does everyone regard this frightful illness as a joke? With us, and I suppose with you too, it is like drunkenness or mothers-in-law, sure of getting what the actors call ‘a hand’ in any radio or stage performance.
I was surprised and impressed by what you had to say about Paris; I did’nt know that at this time of the day one could still hear the tumbrils rolling along to the place of the guillotine. Nor did I realize the shabbiness of present day Paris. The business and travel advertisements still hold up Paris to us as a little oasis of gaiety in a drab world. I’m very much afraid that the answer is that France is an extinct volcano; and can one wonder? For the last four hundred years France has been losing the best stuff in the nation in war after war, and no people can stand up to that indefinitely. Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, we’ve all had our innings: and now it is up to your country to go in and bat. If one looks far enough ahead, I’m inclined to think that—after our time thank goodness—China is going to come out on top: for she has unlimited manpower, unlimited grit, and a capacity for hard work on nothing a year paid quarterly which none of the white peoples possess.
I’m sorry to say that ‘the other Vera’ is not picking up as we had hoped. Of course she is a very bad patient, as are all these women who have been as strong as horses until they get into the ‘fifties, and then have a serious illness. The real trouble is that nothing will persuade her that she does’nt know better than the doctors; she has had specialists, X rays, and what have you, all assuring her that there is no organic defect, but she knows that they are just leading her up the garden path. What can one do with such a patient. However, she is out of the nursing home, and in a week or so we hope that she will be well enough to travel to Ireland, where we trust her own family will fatten her up and restore her to us in real good health.
