Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ do, you must introduce the same precision into your factual works.

We’ve never talked about Aylwin⁵³ have we? I don’t know it.

Something funny has happened to the spelling of Danae and Pasiphae on p. 79.⁵⁴ 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.⁵⁵

      Yours ever

      Jack

      Dănăe but Mōīrāī

      

TO CLIFFORD W. STONE (BOD): ⁵⁶

      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.⁵⁷ 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. Arthur⁵⁸ 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 drawings⁵⁹ 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.)⁶⁰

      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.⁶¹ 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.⁶² 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 СКАЧАТЬ