We are almost brought up out of psyche into pneuma.255 I mean, his myth does that to us imaginatively. Of course his own thoughts about what that higher level might be are not, in our eyes, very new or very profound: but that doesn’t really make so much difference. (Though, by the way, it wd. have been better, even on purely literary grounds, to leave it in its mystery, to philosophise less.) After all, few authors’ glosses on their own myths are as good as the myths: unless, like Dante, they take the glosses from other men, real thinkers. The second climax, the long (not too long) drawn-out close is magnificent.
There is only one change (in conception) that I wd. want to make. It is a pity that he suggests a jealousy and a possible future revolt on the part of the Overlords. The motive is so ordinary that it cannot excite interest in itself, and as it is never going to be worked out the handling cannot compensate for the banality. How much better, how much more in tune with Clarke’s own imagined universe, if the Overlords were totally resigned, submissive yet erect in an eternal melancholy–like the great heroes and poets in Dante’s Limbo who live forever ‘in desire but not in hope’.256 But now one is starting to re-write the book…
Many minor dissatisfactions, of course. The women are all made up out of a few abstract ideas of jealousy, vanity, maternity etc. But it really matters v. little: the thing is great enough to carry far more faults than it commits. It is a strange comment on our age that such a book lies hid in a hideous paper-backed edition, wholly unnoticed by the cognoscenti, while any ‘realistic’ drivel about some neurotic in a London flat–something that needs no real invention at all, something that any educated man could write if he chose, may get seriously reviewed and mentioned in serious books–as if it really mattered. I wonder how long this tyranny will last? Twenty years ago I felt no doubt that I should live to see it all break up and great literature return: but here I am, losing teeth and hair, and still no break in the clouds.
And now, what do you think? Do you agree that it is AN ABSOLUTE CORKER?257
TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford Dec 22d 1953
Dear Mrs. Sandeman–
First, you may be quite sure that I realise (I’d be a fool if I didn’t) that there is something in a loss like yours which no unmarried person can understand. Secondly, that nothing I or anyone can say will remove the pain. There are no anaesthetics. About the bewilderment and about the right and wrong ways of using the pain, something may perhaps be done: but one can’t stop it hurting. The worst way of using the pain, you have already avoided: i.e. resentment.
Now about not wanting to pray, surely there is one person you v. much want to pray for: your husband himself.258 You ask, can he help you, but isn’t this probably the time for you to help him. In one way, you see, you are further on than he: you had begun to know God. He couldn’t help you in that way: it seems to me quite possible that you can now help more than while he was alive. So get on with that right away. Our Lord said that man & wife were one flesh and forbade any man to put them asunder:259 and we maybe sure He doesn’t do Himself what He forbade us to do. Your present prayers for yr. husband are still part of the married life.
Then as for your own shock in discovering that you hadn’t got nearly as far as you thought towards loving the God who made your husband & gave him to you more than the gift. Well, no. One keeps on thinking one has crossed that bridge before one has. And God knows that it has to be crossed sooner or later, in this life or in another. And the first step is to discover that one has not crossed it yet. I wonder could He have really shown you this in any other way? Or even if we can’t answer that, can’t we trust Him to know when and how best the terrible operation can be done? Of course it is easy (I know) for the person who isn’t feeling the pain to say all these things. You yourself wd. have been able to say them of anyone else’s loss. Whatever rational grounds there are for doubt, you knew them all before: can it be rational (of course, it is natural) to weight them so differently simply because, this time, oneself is the sufferer? Doesn’t that make it obvious that the doubts come not from the reason but from the shrinking nerves? At any rate, don’t try to argue with them: not now, while you are crippled. Ignore them: go on. Be regular in all your religious duties. Remember it is not being loved but loving wh. is the high & holy thing. You are now practising the second without the full comfort of the first. It was certain from the beginning that you wd. some day have to do this, for no human love passes onto the eternal level in any other way. God knows, many wives have had to learn it by a path harder than even bereavement: having to love unfaithful, drunken, or childish husbands. And have succeeded too: as God succeeds in loving us. May He help you.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS
192/53.
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 23rd December 1953.
Dear Mrs. Gebbert,
‘Thank heavens’ said my brother, knee deep in Christmas cards and packing paper, ‘here’s something like a real present at last!’ And of course, he was right, though we have so far merely got down to the package: for, like good little boys, we would not for worlds open the box until the morning of the 25th. Thank you very much for your kindness in remembering us. Though the calendar says it is Christmas week, there is nothing about the weather to indicate the fact: still mild, indeed at times warm, and no signs of snow; and I gather that conditions are just the same in eastern America.
My brother was much interested in your recommendation of the Panama Canal route in your last letter, and has often told me of it: he having come by cargo boat from Shanghai to Boston in his army days. He adds that if you ever take a vacation in the Eastern States, you would find it great fun to join the ship at San Pedro, Cal, and go via Panama and the West Indies.
We have not much news here; the chief event has been that last week we entertained a lady from New York for four days, with her boys, aged nine and seven respectively. Can you imagine two crusted old batchelors in such a situation? It however went swimmingly, though it was very, very exhausting; the energy of the American small boy is astonishing. This pair thought nothing of a four mile hike across broken country as an incident in a day of ceaseless activity, and when we took them up Magdalen tower, they said as soon as they got back to the ground, ‘Let’s do it again!’ Without being in the least priggish, they struck us as being amazingly adult by our standards and one could talk to them as one would to ‘grown-ups’–though the next moment they would be wrestling like puppies on the sitting room floor. The highlights of England for them are (a), open coal fires, especially if they can get hold of the bellows and blow it up, and (b), English policemen for whom they keep a smart look-out. The latter they seemed to find even more thrilling than what they call the ‘toy soldiers’, i.e. the Guards in scarlet outside Buckingham Palace. But I am forgetting that to you there is nothing exotic about American small boys, and no doubt at present your interest is concentrated on one American small boy–who I hope is in the best of health and spirits.
Do you know the admirable French word Tohu-bohu? In Scots, a ‘kerfuffle’? Meaning a domestic upsidedownedness which overtakes us all at this season? When it has subsided, I plan to go down to Malvern for a couple of days to prepare myself for the ordeal of the oncoming term with a few walks over the hills.
With