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

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СКАЧАТЬ College,

      Oxford. June 11th 1952

      Dear Mr. Borst–

It takes so long to get anything typed now-a-days that I thought you wd. prefer the lesser nuisance of reading the specimen (asked for in your letter of June 4th) in my own hand. I think it raises all the problems wh. are likely to occur in Spenser–who will not need such heavy glossing as Shakespeare. The only one I was doubtful about was remembrance = memento in line ll.¹¹⁹ Wd. they need that explained? (We don’t want to spoon-feed them more than is necessary.)

      I am terrified by all the instructions about typing and doubt if I can master them. (You showed great discretion in not producing them at an earlier stage, as I shd. certainly not have touched the job had I known it involved all that!). I suppose # means ‘one-space’ and is not a challenge to a game of noughts and crosses. And what is meant by the typist ‘using’ the double right hand margin? In the specimen given she does precisely not use it but types straight on across it to the ultimate right hand margin. Do you mean ‘Let her draw a vertical line 8 spaces to the left of her actual right hand margin and then ignore this line in typing?’ As you begin to see, I have picked up none of the technique of a professional author. Sorry.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      P.S. You might let me have the specimen back.

      

TO HSIN’CHANG CHANG (BOD):¹²⁰ TS

      REF.52/252.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 12th June 1952.

      Dear Mr. Chang,

      If you would care to call on me here at 12 o’c. on Friday 20th, it would give me great pleasure.

      Yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO ROBERT LONGACRE (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford June 19th 1952

      Dear Mr. Longacre–

      All opinions on new poetry are uncertain: especially on poetry read because one has been asked to read it and with the knowledge (which freezes up all the faculties) that one must express a view on it to the author.

      You must therefore not attach too much importance to my ‘re-action’. The truth is, these poems don’t work—with me: they might with other readers, and, I dare say, better readers than I. The poetic species to which they belong—which might be called the Rhapsodical—is one to which I am very insensitive: I can’t bear Walt Whitman.

      My feeling is that the more vast and supersensible a poem’s subject is, the more it needs to be fixed, founded, incarnated in regular metre and concrete images. Thus I is, for me, the worst. Ill is better: the line about the candle in God’s window, the best thing in it. But they are not my sort of poetry. You won’t take this too seriously: they might well suit some other reader. I can’t tell you how I wish I could write something more encouraging: but between Christians the truth must be spoken.

      With all good wishes.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

TO MONSIGNOR FERDINAND VANDRY (WHL): ¹²¹

      [Magdalen College

      ? June 1952]

      Dear Monsignor Vandry,

      Please accept my sincere thanks for the great and unexpected honour offered me in your letter. I do not know whether in order to receive it, I must be present before the Special Convocation on September 22nd. If that is necessary then I am compelled, with great regret and undiminished gratitude, to refuse the Doctorate since my other engagements make it quite impossible for me to visit Quebec in September.

      Even if it is possible for me to receive the degree in absence, the question remains whether that would be held to imply any disrespect for Convocation or any insensibility to the great favour you are showing me. Naturally I would rather lose it than receive it under conditions which the University might consider as ungracious on my part.

      I await your kind advice on these points.

      Whatever the decision may be, I shall retain a vivid sense of the University’s kindness.

      Please convey to all concerned my most respectful and obliged greetings.

      

       TO GENIA GOELZ (L/P):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 20 June 1952

      Dear Genia

Thanks for yours of the 10th. I would prefer to combat the ‘I’m special’ feeling not by the thought ‘I’m no more special than anyone else’ but by the feeling ‘Everyone is as special as me.’ In one way there is no difference, I grant, for both remove the speciality. But there is a difference in another way. The first might lead you to think, ‘I’m only one of the crowd like anyone else’. But the second leads to the truth that there isn’t any crowd. No one is like anyone else. All are ‘members’ (organs) in the Body of Christ.¹²² All different and all necessary to the whole and to one another: each loved by God individually, as if it were the only creature in existence. Otherwise you might get the idea that God is like the government which can only deal with the people in the mass.

      About confession, I take it that the view of our Church is that everyone may use it but none is obliged to. I don’t doubt that the Holy Spirit guides your decisions from within when you make them with the intention of pleasing God. The error wd. be to think that He speaks only within whereas, in reality, He speaks also through Scripture, the Church, Christian friends, books etc.

I haven’t written more than two nonsense poems¹²³ (I enclose the other) but I know my Just So stories.¹²⁴

      God bless you.

      C. S. Lewis

Travellers! In months without an R Beware the woods of Wongomar, For then the resident bumble-bear Booms all day through the thicket there. Its face is round, as is its rump, Its tail is a preposterous stump. Its eyes are shut, its whiskers dense, It lives on butterscotch and bats And lines its nest with bowler hats (Arranged in a volmonic¹²⁵ plan). It cannot talk, but thinks СКАЧАТЬ