Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Walter Hooper
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Биографии и Мемуары
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007332670
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College

      Oxford Dec 4th 1953

      Dear Mr. Unwin

      I would willingly do all in my power to secure for Tolkien’s great book the recognition it deserves. Wd. the enclosed be any use? If not, tell me, and I will try again. I can’t tell you how much we think of your House for publishing it.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      It would be almost safe to say that no book like this has ever been written. If Ariosto rivalled it in invention (in fact he does not) he would still Jack its heroic seriousness. No imaginary world has been projected which is at once so multifarious and so true to its own inner laws; none so seemingly objective, so disinfected from the taint of an author’s merely individual psychology; none so relevant to the actual human situation yet so free from allegory. And what fine shading there is in the variations of style to meet the almost endless diversity of scenes and characters–comic, homely, epic, monstrous, or diabolic!

      

       TO KATHARINE FARRER(BOD):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford Dec. 4th 1953

      Dear Mrs. Farrer

      I too have got The Fellowship of the Ring and have gluttonously read two chapters instead of saving it all for the week-end. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it really succeeded (in selling, I mean)? It would inaugurate a new age. Dare we hope?

      Yours sincerely

      Jack Lewis

      

       TO J. R R TOLKIEN (P):

      [The Kilns]

      Dec 7th 1953

      Dear Tollers

      Yours

      Jack

      

      TO EDNA GREENE WATSON (BOD): TS 504/53.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 7th December 1953.

      Dear Mrs. Watson,

      How very kind indeed of you to send me such a nice Xmas present; for, though things are improving over here under Winston, we are still not exactly living in a land of milk and honey–cake in particular remaining something of a luxury. So your parcel comes in very apropos to ‘mend our cheer’ as the older writers would have put it.

      In one way we are exceptionally lucky this year, and that is in having so far a freak winter. I am writing in an unwarmed room, temperature 60, though it is a dull, sunless day; and the Sunday before last, the crowds were out sun-bathing on Brighton beach! Yesterday it was reported on the wireless that the butter-cups are out in Switzerland, the tulips in Holland, and that wild strawberries are being gathered in Norway; whilst in Petrograd they are having what I suppose seems to them like a heat wave–temperature in the open, 41. I hope you too in America are benefiting by this postponement of winter; not that I, personally, think it very healthy, but no doubt the real winter is lurking not far away.

      Weather apart, there is not much to report here. Term is just over, and I have finished a troublesome academic book, and look forward to my vacation. But, alas, at my time of life, vacations get shorter and shorter: though to be sure, so do terms. With all best wishes for a happy Christmas, and many thanks,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO R. B. GRIBBON (W):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford Dec. 10th 1953

      Dear Mr. Gribbon

      You’ll have fun with Lucretius. I looked into him the other day & came to the melancholy conclusion that I didn’t know so much Latin as I had done 30 years ago. With all good wishes.

      Yours very sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

      Magdalen College

      Oxford Dec 16th. 1953

      Dear Miss Sayers,