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(#ulink_ca1a6b9b-0a50-5e6e-bff5-720927914465) That I believe is entirely new and of immense importance.
Since you can write like that, then, though of course exactly the same type wouldn’t do, you must introduce the same precision into your factual works.
We’ve never talked about Aylwin
(#ulink_8d66958d-0e47-5677-b8cc-a7189e4367db) have we? I don’t know it.
Something funny has happened to the spelling of Danae and Pasiphae on p. 79.
(#ulink_04a83b52-b0d4-5693-8b1b-3d8a315256e1) I suppose you assumed that [because] Lat. æ (dipthong) = Gr αι in some places, it therefore does in all. But in those two fem. names the ē (η) is the ordinary fem. ending as in Phoebē and the preceding a has nothing to do with the matter.
Give my love and duty to June.
I’ve nearly finished the last chronicle.
(#ulink_dd446ec1-efba-5f45-b044-b853c28ede46)
Yours ever
Jack
Dănăe but Mōīrāī
TO CLIFFORD W. STONE (BOD):
(#ulink_fcd2b7e8-aa03-5768-a140-d0d7073c7404)
Magdalen College
Oxford, England
Feb. 27. 1953
Dear Mr. Stone
Thank you very much for Report from Paradise which turned up a few days ago.
(#ulink_d9c7a90b-f32b-5408-93ad-aa16505bc81c) I read it always with amusement and at times with deep interest. Of course one mustn’t expect from it the edge and force of a story on the same subject either by a real believer or a real militant sceptic like Anatole France: but within its limits it is good. How v. unexpected that Mark Twain of all people shd. tell us at such length that Heaven is not egalitarian. That raised my opinion of his insight. And what a light it casts on his religious upbringing that all the great ones of his Heaven are from the Old Testament–prophets and patriarchs, not a word about apostles and martyrs!
I met his work first in a very funny way-reading the Yankee at the Court of K. Arthur
(#ulink_d6a9a99d-c118-55d8-81c0-eabbe55bd990) as a small boy simply and solely for the sake of the Arthurian stuff in it and ignoring the satiric or burlesque elements. Only years later did I come to know & love the great work–by wh. I mean Huckleberry Finn.
With v. many thanks and all good wishes.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR GREEVFS (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
Feb 27. 53
My dear Arthur
I wd. love to come away with you this year again but it couldn’t be earlier than last year. I have been put on to examine this year which will keep me busy at Oxford into the first week of August. My jaunt with W. could be made to come after my jaunt with you instead of before it if you wish, I expect. I hope this doesn’t spoil things for you?
Someone has given me Armadale. It is clearly not so good as the famous two but well worth reading.
I’m in such pain with sinusitis today I can’t think straight: so if any of this letter doesn’t make sense you’ll understand! I’m not lecturing at Queen’s.
Yours
Jack
TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
ii/iii/53
My dear Bles
I return the drawings
(#ulink_76095c25-3a42-59cc-8678-2186e39bc37a) which I think the best set Miss Baynes has done for us yet. There is, as always, exquisite delicacy: and I think the faces (human faces) are greatly improved. It is difficult to find 10 that one wd. willingly reject. The ones I suggest for omission are:
6. ‘She found she could lie on her back.’ No real sense of wind in it. Her hair ought to be blowing straight forward. 8. ‘Leaning one hand’ etc.
10. The poet. Not our idea of a blind bard at all!
17. The stone-throwing giants. Has its merits, but the travellers ought to be carrying packs, not parcels in their hands like trippers!
36. The gnome. I think better of this than you do but he is too like a human brat out of Dickens’s London, and since we must cut some, this is a good candidate.
39. The Dance. Her dances are usually lovely, but this is not one of her best.
42. The Centaurs.
43. Ruined by the utterly un-numinous, foreshortened Asian in the background. (I wish you, who live in town, wd. take an afternoon off and conduct Miss Baynes round the Zoo! In quadrupeds claudicat.)
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That’s as many as I can find it in my heart to turn down.
In 19, could the shield be painted out in Chinese White & then obliterated? Knights didn’t wear shields on the right arm.
2 wd. be lovely in colour if it cd. be afforded.
You will hear with mixed feelings that I have just finished the seventh & really last of the Narnian stories. That means there are 3 more. Are you still game? If so, tell me when to send you the next.
The Book of Prayer makes some progress: and will, I hope, make more when term and ill-health are over. As some deaf people suffer from head-noises, I, who cannot now smell anything in the outer world, suffer from nose-smells. I live in a stench: like one of the nastier circles in Dante. Phew! Good apothecary, an ounce of Civet to sweeten my imagination.
(#ulink_3283033a-b435-53cf-8da9-171db3e8fb07) No doubt it is an allegory. My kindest regards to both of you.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO HERBERT PALMER (TEX):
Magdalen College,
Oxford
3/iii/53
My dear Palmer
Alas, I wd. be perfectly useless.
(#ulink_df481993-597a-5181-92bc-4d0e2bc10743) When I first began to sell I had the idea that this would give my opinion about other people’s books some weight with publishers. I was soon undeceived. Never once in my whole career has any publisher taken my advice about a book–except, of course, when he had asked for it. I suspect it is a principle with them. ‘Do not let your Authors act as volunteer Readers.’ It is even possible that such volunteered recommendations do harm. I do sympathise deeply with you.
And there’s no sign yet of the present dark dynasty weakening. Not that the modern kind of poet is read except by a coterie: but he somehow keeps the rest of you out. With much regret & affection.
Yours always
C. S. Lewis
TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): TS
REF.162/53.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
3rd March 1953.
Dear Roger,
Alas, I shall be at Malvern in Easter week. Did you know that slithy was a word long before Lewis Carroll?
(#ulink_79aa0c6e-6215-5205-beb2-335d8e342052) I found it in Bunyan:
(#ulink_992cc2e7-3f5d-53a2-a09b-d959d84450ad) but see N.E.D.
(#ulink_78df23e5-1c52-59c8-b363-e929a384c5fd)
Love to both of you.
Yours,
Jack
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford
4/iii/53
Dear Mrs. Shelburne
Thank you for your letter of Feb. 26 wh. arrived today. I think the poem succeeds and has both the lightness and massiveness you wanted. I’m not quite sure about his in 1. 7. It gives the effect of being put in only to fill the line. In so far as you pass from God simply to ‘our God’ I think you’re weakening the very effect you want at that moment. But I don’t know how to mend it: diagnosis is often easier than cure. ‘Majestic shapes more formidably fair’ is a most august line. (Old Solar grammar a bit weak. Eldila is the true plural: but you can Anglicise it as eldils?)
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I am delighted that yr. lecturer approved my angels. I was v. definitely trying to smash the 19th century female angel. I believe no angel ever appears in Scripture without exciting terror: they always have to begin by saying ‘Fear not’.
(#ulink_6601df6f-3615-533e-b934-b84bc3c08b6e) On the other hand the Risen Lord excites terror only when mistaken for a ghost, i.e. when not recognised as risen. For we are in one most blessed sense nearer to Him than to them: partly of course because He has deigned to share our humanity, but partly, I take it, because every creature is nearer to its creator than it can be to superior creatures. By the way, none of my Eldila wd. be anything like so high up the scale as Cherubim & Seraphim. Those orders are engaged wholly in contemplation, not with the ruling the lower creatures. Even the Annunciation was done by–if I may so put it!-a ‘mere archangel’. Did your lecturer point out my heavy debt to Ezekiel?
(#ulink_6156dfe8-81ef-5714-87e1-aafca64d3c4e)
Of course I knew you weren’t asking for a copy of a ‘First’: but I wanted to explain why I was not offering one–quite a different matter!
I also am having a kind of flu’ that seems never to get beyond early convalescence, tho’ nothing like so acute as yours. For that, and also else, deepest sympathy. Let us continue to pray for each other.
Yours most sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS
REF.28/53.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
4th March 1953.
