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

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

TO SISTER MADELEVA CSC (W): ⁷²

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford 18/4/51

      Dear Sister Madeleva

I don’t know whether I shd. thank you or your publishers for so kindly sending me a copy of your wholly delightful Lost Language.⁷³ At any rate I have to thank you for writing it. There has been nothing v. like it before and it emphasises a side of Chaucer too often neglected. I am glad you say a word on behalf of ‘conventions’ on p. 17. I always tell my pupils that a ‘convention’ appears to be such only when it has ended.

      With all good wishes.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MISS BRECKENRIDGE (I):

      Magdalen etc

      19 April 1951

      I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

      Many religious people, I’m told, have physical symptoms like the ‘prickles’ in the shoulder. But the best mystics set no value on that sort of thing, and do not set much on visions either. What they seek and get is, I believe, a kind of direct experience of God, immediate as a taste or colour. There is no reasoning in it, but many would say that it is an experience of the intellect—the reason resting in its enjoyment of its object…

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

      [The Kilns]

      22/4/51

      My dear Arthur

      You were quite right to leave me when you did. A farewell meal is a doleful business: it was much better for me to get my luggage dumped and my berth found & for you to be back at home as soon as possible.

Thank Elizabeth for her letter.⁷⁴ She will understand, I am sure, why I don’t want to continue the discussion by post: my correspondence involves a great number of theological letters already which can’t be neglected because they are answers to people in great need of help & often in great misery.

I have hardly ever had so much happiness as during our late holiday. God bless you–and the Unbelievable.⁷⁵ Pas de jambon encore.⁷⁶

      Yours

      Jack

      

       TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 22/4/51

      My dear Roger—

      May 31st & June 1st will do me nicely. May I book you a room for those two nights?

      I doubt if you’ll find me both in and without a pupil on April 26th except between lunch & tea, when I suppose June will be in the Sheldonian. Cd. you ring me up if convenient?

      Love to all three.

      Yours

      Jack

      

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

      [The Kins]

      23/4/51

      My dear Arthur

       (1.) A Ham has been posted to you today.

       (2.) My plans, if they fit with Yours, for the summer are as follows.

       (a.) Short visit to C’fordsburn with W. Aug. 10 (arrive llth)-Aug. 14

       (b.) Stay with W. in S’thern Ireland Aug. 14-28.

       (c.) Longer visit to C’fordsburn alone Aug. 28-Sept. 11th. Can you be in residence at Silver Hill Aug. 28th-Sept. 11th?

      Blessings,

      Jack

      

       TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS OSB (W):

      Magdalen etc.

      23/4/51

      Dear Dom Bede—

A succession of illnesses and a holiday in Ireland have so far kept me from tackling Lubac.⁷⁷ The Prelude⁷⁸ has accompanied me through all the stages of my pilgrimage: it and the Aeneid (which I never feel you value sufficiently) are the two long poems to wh. I most often return.

The tension you speak of (if it is a tension) between doing full & generous justice to the Natural while also paying unconditional & humble obedience to the Supernatural is to me an absolute key position. I have no use for mere either-or people (except, of course, in that last resort, when the choice, the plucking out the right eye, is upon us: as it is in some mode, every day.⁷⁹ But even then a man needn’t abuse & blackguard his right eye. It was a good creature: it is my fault, not its, that I have got myself into a state wh. necessitates jettisoning it).

The reason I doubt whether it is, in principle, even a tension is that, as it seems to me, the subordination of Nature is demanded if only in the interests of Nature herself. All the beauty of nature withers when we try to make it absolute. Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.⁸⁰ We never get, say, even the sensual pleasure of food at its best when we are being greedy.

      As to Man being in ‘evolution’, I agree, tho’ I wd. rather say ‘in process of being created’.

      I am no nearer to your Church than I was but don’t feel v. inclined to re-open a discussion. I think it only widens & sharpens differences. Also, I’ve had enough of it on the opposite flank lately, having fallen among—a new type to me—bigoted & proselytising Quakers! I really think that in our days it is the ‘undogmatic’ & ‘liberal’ people who call themselves Christians that are most arrogant & intolerant. I expect justice СКАЧАТЬ