June 11th 51
Dear Skinner—
I wouldn’t like you to think that Merlin110 has been out all these months without being both bought and read by me. What happened was that I did both shortly after its appearance and then lent it to a man who returned it only the other day. Since then I have re-read it. Any poem of yours is always a refreshment and I think this is better than any you’ve done yet. Of course part of my pleasure consists in agreement–idem sentire de república111 (and about a good many other things too)–but I don’t think it can be discounted on that score. I am sure if I had found half so much wit and invention in any of the dreary modern-orthodox poems which from time to time I try dutifully to appreciate, I should be praising it volubly.
I think you waste a little time in Canto I (though symbol and plot as wholesale and retail is good) but I am thoroughly carried away by II. ‘Mute magnificent cascades of stair’112 is heavenly—and the simile of that evening light in 6-8–and the entrance of Merlin.113 St.114 55 is a good ‘un, too. Frivolous and imperceptive reference to a great modern critic in III 4 is soon swallowed up in the perfectly obvious (once it’s been done) yet stunningly effective rendering of lasciate etc. by no exit:115 wh. is grimmer than Dante’s own words. All the Tartarology—fiends being the perfect guinea pigs etc—good: and oh Bravíssímo at 40 (‘is still called “games’“).
But III 47 I don’t like. He couldn’t see the faces above him if he was in the front row of the dress circle, unless he turned round, could he? Well, a few at the sides. They wdn’t be the first thing. It just checked the formation of my mental picture for a second. In IV the inferred meeting is good: and ‘Macaulay’…of the wrong end (32) simply superb. St. 43 is real good thinking. You make a most dexterous use of the Miltonic background in V, especially of course at 14. I could have wished, not for less fun, but for more beauty about your angels. I thought we are starting it at 35 (splendid as far as it goes) but it died away too soon: and 37, like the fig-leaf in sculpture, rather emphasises than conceals the want. Or am I asking for impossibilities in such a poem. VI has a peculiar glory of its own: the relief and beauty of the transition from hell to earth in 45, 46.
I am longing to read the rest. I shd. think you are enjoying yourself. It is sickening to think how little chance of a fair hearing you have…and poor old Desmond Macarthy116 dying at the wrong moment! Fire-spitting Rowse may do more harm than good: indeed I myself can hardly feel the right side to be the right (and he only feels it to be the Right) when it is sponsored by him. But all good luck. Finish the poem whatever they don’t say. Will the tide ever turn?
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):
Magdalen etc
11/6/51
Dear Mrs. Van Deusen
Genia’s letter is not yet to hand. I wish it were on any other subject. My job has always been to defend ‘mere Christianity’ against atheism and Pantheism: I’m no real good on ‘inter-denominational’ questions.
Walsh’s ‘not wholesome’117 cd. certainly be a bit hard if one took the words in the popular literary sense—in which ‘unwholesome’ suggests a faint smell of drains! But in the proper sense it is, surely, quite obviously true. The mind, like the body, will not thrive on an unbalanced diet. But–granted health and an adequate income, appetite itself will lead every one to a reasonably varied diet, without working it all out in vitamins, proteins, calories and what-not. In the same way I think inclination will usually guide a reasonable adult to a decently mixed literary diet. I wouldn’t recommend a planned concentration on me or any other writer.
There are lots of good religious works both in prose & verse waiting to correct & supplement whatever is over—or under—explained in me: a Kempis, Bunyan, Chesterton, Alice Meynell, Otto, Wm. Law, Coventry Patmore, Dante—
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO GENIA GOELZ (P/Z): 118
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 13/6/51
Dear Mrs. Goelz
(1)I think you are confusing the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. The former is a doctrine peculiar to the Roman Catholics and asserts that the mother of Jesus was born free of original sin. It does not concern us at all.
(2) The Virgin Birth is a doctrine plainly stated in the Apostles Creed that Jesus had no physical father, and was not conceived as a result of sexual intercourse. It is not a doctrine on which there is any dispute between Presbyterians as such and Episcopalians as such. A few individual Modernists in both these churches have abandoned it; but Presby-terianism or Episcopalianism in general, and in actual historical instances, through the centuries both affirm it. The exact details of such a miracle—an exact point at which a supernatural force enters this world (whether by the creation of a new spermatozoon, or the fertilisation of an ovum without a spermatozoon, or the development of a foetus without an ovum) are not part of the doctrine. These are matters in which no one is obliged and everyone is free, to speculate. Your starting point about this doctrine will not, I think, be to collect the opinions of individual clergymen, but to read Matthew Chap. I and Luke I and II.
(3) Similarly, your question about the resurrection is answered in Luke XXIV. This makes it clear beyond any doubt that what is claimed is physical resurrection. (All Jews except Sadducees already believed in spiritual revival—there would have been nothing novel or exciting in that.)
(4) Thus the questions that you raise are not questions at issue between real P. and real Ep. at all for both these claim to agree with Scripture. Neither church, by the way, seems to be very intelligently represented by the people you have gone to for advice, which is bad luck. I find it very hard to advise in your choice. At any rate the programme, until you can make up your mind, is to read your New Testament (preferably a modern translation) intelligently. Pray for guidance, obey your conscience, in small as well as great matters, as strictly as you can.
(5) Don’t bother much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them: when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behaviour. (I hope all of this is not very dull and disappointing. Write freely again if I can be of any use to you.)
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
P.S. Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment. Continue seeking with cheerful seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):
[The Kilns]
16/6/51
My dear Arthur
You’re right. Not that I shall be tired