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

Name: Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963
Rating: 5 (3 reviews)
Author: Клайв Стейплз Льюис

Автор

Клайв Стейплз Льюис

Жанр

Биографии и мемуары

Год написания книги

2018

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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.

(#ulink_3283033a-b435-53cf-8da9-171db3e8fb07) 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.

(#ulink_df481993-597a-5181-92bc-4d0e2bc10743) 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 there’s no sign yet of the present dark dynasty weakening. Not that the modern kind of poet is read except by a coterie: but he somehow keeps the rest of you out. With much regret & affection.

Yours always

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): TS

REF.162/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

3rd March 1953.

Dear Roger,

Alas, I shall be at Malvern in Easter week. Did you know that slithy was a word long before Lewis Carroll?

(#ulink_79aa0c6e-6215-5205-beb2-335d8e342052) I found it in Bunyan:

(#ulink_992cc2e7-3f5d-53a2-a09b-d959d84450ad) but see N.E.D.

(#ulink_78df23e5-1c52-59c8-b363-e929a384c5fd)

Love to both of you.

Yours,

Jack

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

4/iii/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Thank you for your letter of Feb. 26 wh. arrived today. I think the poem succeeds and has both the lightness and massiveness you wanted. I’m not quite sure about his in 1. 7. It gives the effect of being put in only to fill the line. In so far as you pass from God simply to ‘our God’ I think you’re weakening the very effect you want at that moment. But I don’t know how to mend it: diagnosis is often easier than cure. ‘Majestic shapes more formidably fair’ is a most august line. (Old Solar grammar a bit weak. Eldila is the true plural: but you can Anglicise it as eldils?)

(#ulink_6f709d97-cc91-5977-a5fe-7c84cb754d37)

I am delighted that yr. lecturer approved my angels. I was v. definitely trying to smash the 19th century female angel. I believe no angel ever appears in Scripture without exciting terror: they always have to begin by saying ‘Fear not’.

(#ulink_6601df6f-3615-533e-b934-b84bc3c08b6e) On the other hand the Risen Lord excites terror only when mistaken for a ghost, i.e. when not recognised as risen. For we are in one most blessed sense nearer to Him than to them: partly of course because He has deigned to share our humanity, but partly, I take it, because every creature is nearer to its creator than it can be to superior creatures. By the way, none of my Eldila wd. be anything like so high up the scale as Cherubim & Seraphim. Those orders are engaged wholly in contemplation, not with the ruling the lower creatures. Even the Annunciation was done by–if I may so put it!-a ‘mere archangel’. Did your lecturer point out my heavy debt to Ezekiel?

(#ulink_6156dfe8-81ef-5714-87e1-aafca64d3c4e)

Of course I knew you weren’t asking for a copy of a ‘First’: but I wanted to explain why I was not offering one–quite a different matter!

I also am having a kind of flu’ that seems never to get beyond early convalescence, tho’ nothing like so acute as yours. For that, and also else, deepest sympathy. Let us continue to pray for each other.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS

REF.28/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

4th March 1953.