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

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Клайв Стейплз Льюис

Жанр

Биографии и мемуары

Год написания книги

2018

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My dear Bles,

Cunning man, you don’t say how long the MS is! If it can be read in a week-end and put up in a large envelope (I’m no good at parcels), I’ll read it. But I have honestly neither health nor leisure at present for more than very slight extra jobs.

All sympathy to Madame. I return Stewart’s letter.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 12th 1953

Dear Miss Pitter

Or (to speak more accurately)

Bright Angel!

I’m in a sea of glory! Of course I haven’t had time to read it properly, and there’ll be another, more sober, letter presently. This is just a line to be going on with, and to assure you at once that the new volume is an absolute Corker.

(#ulink_762bc506-aa2b-5afb-b1d6-0b63e67f17da) I had feared that you might be one of those who, like poor Wordsworth, leave their talent behind at conversion:

(#ulink_a27321d0-344d-5667-8e5b-3aa3b0aa6587) and now–oh glory–you came up shining out of the font far better than you were before. ‘Man’s despair is like the Arabian sun’

(#ulink_cda29ca6-ec09-577e-89c8-469cab380701)-I seriously doubt if there’s any religious lyric between that one and Herbert on the same level. And then my eye strays to the opposite page and gets the ‘dying-dolphin green’.

(#ulink_dd05b6a0-0bde-5ebe-9e43-f0665d20603b) And ‘What we merit–A silence like a sword’.

(#ulink_fd8822c6-acfe-58e8-a76c-f8070f3bb7c6)

I wonder have you yourself any notion how good some of these are?

But, as you see, I’m drunk on them at this present. Glory be! Blessings on you! As sweet as sin and as innocent as milk. Thanks forever.

Yours in great excitement

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS

Magdalen College

Oxford

12th May 1953.

My dear Bles,

MS duly received: and end leaf returned with thanks. I had seen it, but forgot that end leaves naturally are’nt included in the paper-back proof, and thence foolishly wondered if it had somehow miscarried. Authors with book, like expectant mothers, have their wayward fancies.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 15th 1953

Dear Miss Pitter

The brightness does not fade: appealing from Lewis drunk to Lewis sober, I still find this an exquisite collection. When I start picking out my favourites, I find I am picking out nearly all. Tree at Dawn is full of delight for eye and ear. Great Winter is extremely new and delightful in rhythm: and ‘storm of suns’

(#ulink_ca72ae13-bf81-5df1-8215-4c8f632d224e) is wonderful. The Other has, I think, a few flaws (the second stanza on p. 15 seems to use words that precious poets have sucked all the juice out of) but also v. great virtues. The noises all through Herding Lambs-not only at ‘rainlike rustle of feet’,

(#ulink_89bfcec2-5583-5c16-bfcb-0386fb0ab0de) tho’ that is the most striking single aural image–are wonderfully conveyed. Captive Bird is pure gold all through: so lovely fair my ‘sense aches with it’: and I still think as I did about World is Hollow (A v. tough undergraduate to whom I showed it thinks the same as I). Cedar is, I expect, extremely good in imagery, but I’d need a real cedar before me by which to judge. That’s the trouble about very visual writing. On the other hand the colours in Hill & Valley came through really well. Penitence is taut & accurate as a Yeats poem. Narrow but Deep & Aged Man to Y.M.

(#ulink_94a2d5ac-90db-5243-b174-ddac807a4565) show you in a v. different vein: not the one I like best, but v. good. May is a fine meaty, yet not heavy, meditation. The Five Dreams do, I don’t know how, build up to a whole greater than the parts. The only one in the book I don’t much like is Father Questioned. I think Rostrevor Hamilton (see The Tell-Tale Article) wd. justly have something to say about the stanza at the top of p. 24.

(#ulink_64c772fc-b87a-5db4-8583-fb8cf91d72ff)

I do congratulate you again and again. I hope you are as happy about the poems as you ought to be.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN H. MCCALLUM (P):

(#ulink_2ab5b81c-c9bc-5025-a7f2-ba755bc00882)TS

218/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th May 1953.

Dear Mr. McCallum,