Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ dear Barfield

Death and damnation! This will never do. Look here—when you walk I walk. If you are finally forced to take your holiday earlier, make that the walk and Griffiths and I will come with you. A walk with the new Anthroposophical³⁵ member and without you is not good enough. But I trust you will be able to stick to the original arrangement.

      Somehow prurient doesn’t seem to be the right word for Spenser. Delicatus- relaxed in will—of course he is.

You must have been having a horrible time alternating between bed and exams.³⁶ Condolences! I have written about 100 lines of a long poem in my type of Alexandrine. It is going to make the Prelude (let alone the Tower)³⁷ look silly.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):

      The Kilns,

      Headington Quarry,

      Oxford.

      March 19th 1932

      My dear Barfield–

      Rê Walk: (1) I could certainly come earlier, but very strongly deprecate a date too near Easter on account of crowded hotels etc. (2) I would reluctantly agree to changing the terrain to Sussex: but if the date is put near Easter, this reluctance increased to just not being absolute recalcitrance. That country at that time will be a stream of hikers talking about yaffles. Is it, by the way, to any one’s interest besides yours to walk in Sussex.

      (3) I enclose Griffiths’ letter, to which I have replied telling him all I know (it isn’t much) about dates. It is an alarming and disappointing letter. I am afraid Anthroposophy is his only chance now. He seems to be heading for unmitigated egoism. I wrote him rather a breezy letter trying to give him the feeling, without saying it, that the idea of his being a ‘burden’ on our walk (damn his impudence) was unutterably ridiculous. I’d like to see anyone try? This walk is his last chance. Either we’ll cure him or make an enemy of him for life!

Thanks for the Note on Pain. ‘I kan not bult it to the bran’³⁸ at all. When you say that the redeemed self can feel no pain, does this mean that the actual sense-data would be different, or only that the self’s attitude to them would be i.e. it would feel what we call pain but would not ‘mind it’—have

³⁹ but not. ⁴⁰ Again, is ‘being aware of something as good’ equal to ‘feeling something as pleasurable’. If pain disappears as soon as we find it good, then can’t we be said to find pain good? You see I am all muddled. I will try to get clear and write about it later on: but I think the ‘note’ very important.

      I am still pleased with my new poem. What Wordsworth didn’t see was that the subjective epic can learn a lot from the structure of the old epic. There need be no flats if you use the equivalent of inlet narrative and hastening in media res.

      Have you passed your exam?

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

       TO HIS BROTHER (W):

      [The Kilns]

      March 20th 1932

      My dear Warnie–

      We had a few days ago your letter of Jan. 28th and the first written by you during the troubles. The papers had of course relieved our minds some time before we got it: and I have now passed from anxiety to that sulky state in which I feel that you have given us all a great deal of unnecessary trouble. I feel as the P’daitabird did when he replied to a Cherbourg letter of mine, telling him how I had had a nasty fall in a puddle, ‘Please try for my sake to avoid such drenchings in the future.’ I hope you will be equally considerate. By the way, as regards one point in your letter,—there is no question of building a fence instead of building the two rooms. Indeed, considering the comparative cost of the two works, this would be rather like buying a new pair of braces instead of a Rolles-Royce.

Next to the good news from China, the best thing that has happened to me lately is to have assisted at such a scene in the Magdalen smoking room as rarely falls one’s way. The Senior Parrot-that perfectly ape-faced man whom I have probably pointed out to you—was seated on the padded fender with his back to the fire, bending down to read a paper, and thus leaving a tunnel shaped aperture between his collar and the nape of his neck [designated P in a drawing of the man]. A few yards in front of him stood MacFarlane.⁴¹ Let MacFarlane now light a cigarette and wave the match to and fro in the air to extinguish it. And let the match be either not wholly extinguished or so recently extinguished that no fall of temperature in the wood has occurred. Let M. then fling the match towards the fire in such a way that it follows the dotted line and enters the aperture at P with the most unerring accuracy. For a space of time which must have been infinitesimal, but which seemed long to us as we watched in the perfect silence which this very interesting experiment so naturally demanded, the Senior Parrot, alone ignorant of his fate, continued absorbed in the football results. His body then rose in a vertical line from the fender, without apparent muscular effort, as though propelled by a powerful spring under his bottom. Re-alighting on his feet he betook himself to a rapid movement of the hands with the apparent intention of applying them to every part of his back and buttock in the quickest possible succession: accompanying this exercise with the distention of the cheeks and a blowing noise. After which, exclaiming (to me) in a very heightened voice ‘It isn’t so bloody funny’ he darted from the room. The learned Dr Hope (that little dark, mentally dull, but very decent demi-butty who breakfasted with you and me)⁴² who alone had watched the experiment with perfect gravity, at this stage, remarked placidly to the company in general, ‘Well, well, the match will have gone out by now’, and returned to his periodical—But the luck of it! How many shots would a man have taken before he succeeded in throwing a match into that tiny aperture if he had been trying?

You asked Minto in a recent letter about this Kenchew man.⁴³ As a suitor he shows deplorable tendency to hang fire, and I fancy the whole thing will come to nothing. (Ah there won’t be any proposal): as a character, however, he is worth describing, or seems so to me because I had to go for a walk with him. He is a ladylike little man of about fifty, and is to-a-tee that ‘sensible, well-informed man’ with whom Lamb dreaded to be left alone. My troubles began at once. It seemed good to him to take a bus to the Station and start our walk along a sort of scrubby path between a factory and a greasy strip of water—a walk, in fact, which was as good a reproduction as Oxford could afford of our old Sunday morning ‘around the river bank’. I blundered at once by referring to the water as a canal. ‘Oh-could it be possible that I didn’t know it was the Thames? I must be joking. Perhaps I was not a walker?’ I foolishly said that I was. He gave me an account of his favourite walks; with a liberal use of the word ‘picturesque’. He then called my attention to СКАЧАТЬ