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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ S. Lewis

      

       TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. June 8th 1953

      Dear Mrs Van Deusen

      Yes, I think your position is the right one. If one is asked for advice, then, and then only, one has to have an opinion about the exact rule of life which wd. suit some other Christian. Otherwise, I think the rule is to mind one’s own business.

St. Paul goes further than this: it may even be proper at times to adopt practices which you yourself think unnecessary, and which are unnecessary to you, if your difference on such points is a stumbling-block to the Christians you find yourself among. Hence, you see, other Christians’ practices concern us, when at all, as a ground for concessions on our part, not for interference or complacent assertion that our way is best. This is in Romans chap XIV:¹⁴⁰ read the chapter and meditate on it. I am very glad you have seen the real point.

      My ‘troubles’, thanks, are in abeyance, except that I am suffering from Sinusitis: but that too is better than it was.

      Don’t doubt that you and Genia are in my daily prayers. Hasn’t what you are kind enough to say about our Coronation a wider relevance?—that nothing stirs us if it has the sole purpose of stirring us: i.e. the stirring must be a by-product.

      God bless you.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): TS

      REF.162.53.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 11th June 1953.

      My dear Roger,

You have been having a time, have’nt you? I’m glad you are now in calmer waters. I shall be away on July 2nd, but am good for July 1st. Will you dine then? You can sleep too,* if that helps.

      Yours,

      Jack

      

TO MILDRED BOXILL (P): ¹⁴¹

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. June 14th 1953

      Dear Miss Boxill

      Thank you for yours of the 11th. I am sending off to you to day by registered post the corrected galleys, but retaining the carbon of the footnotes (for which many thanks) for later use. In the meantime I send you some corrections of the footnotes on the chance that they might reach you in time to be of use. If they do not I should [be] glad to have this list back again. Like an ass I have in it italicised all that is meant to be printed, which of course I ought not to have done: perhaps someone in the office can re-type it or you can explain to the printer.

In the general list of Contents (for which, again, thanks) I think the words ‘Books I-VI’ after Faerie Queene shd. be deleted. They are not, as you see from the Mutability section, quite accurate, and we are selecting from the whole poem: i.e. the Books of P.L.¹⁴² in Bush’s Milton section are not a parallel.¹⁴³

      I put in references to Book and Canto at the head of each selection before the proofs of the notes arrived and showed me that it had been done thus. I suppose you will delete whichever is more easily deleted on technical grounds.

      I have added a Headnote to the Epithalamion.

      I have put in such cross-references as occurred to me in the margin of the galleys: not knowing where or in what form they will appear in the book. Some (not most) of their re-duplicate parallels appear already in the notes.

      Accents, being given in the text, need not be repeated in the note: if this occurs anywhere, it shd. be deleted. I’m glad you agreed about having them all restored. Lor bless you, metre doesn’t guide the modern student, on either side of the Atlantic. He wholly ignores it. It is not a question of metre guiding him to the pronunciation: we are giving him pronunciation to guide him (‘tis a faint hope) to metre. Of course it’s a losing battle: but let’s fight for the ship till she goes down under us.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD): TS

      REF.307/53.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 15th June 1953.

      Dear Blamires,

Heartiest congratulations.¹⁴⁴ This is a most important turning-point: on the other line you would have been in danger of writing what was substantially the same book over and over again. Lloyd is a good man, and we have every reason to believe he is right.¹⁴⁵

      How right you are to put the house first in your budget: it is ‘the bread and tea of life’ that really matter.

      All good wishes.

      Yours,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. June 16th 1953

      Dear Mrs. Shelburne

      It was a kind thought on your part to send on these two little items. Whether it’s good for me to hear them is another matter! One of the things that make it easier to believe in Providence is the fact that in all trains, hotels, restaurants and other public places I have only once seen a stranger reading a book of mine, tho’ my friends encounter this phenomenon fairly often. Things are really very well arranged. I hope you keep well? With all blessings.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford June 20th 53

      Dear Mrs. Gebbert

The young gentleman looks already, as he should, fathomlessly American: not so much the current model as the heavy millionaire of earlier fiction СКАЧАТЬ