Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949. 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: 9780007332663
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One wants emphatically to know more about those Australians and Canadians. We are told that they were braver than the English. If, as I surmise, they were not subjected to the martinettery, then they cast doubt on the whole thesis. If they were, then still, since it did not produce the same effect on them and on the English, why then, (by the ‘method of difference’) discipline can’t be the whole secret.

      In fact, all my three points come to one—an uncertainty how far the author has faced his own growing discovery of the bad element in discipline and how far he has seen the resulting problem. For the position he leaves us in is this. Discipline is the only way of making it at all probable that your men will win battles: and therefore without discipline the cause of freedom and virtue, so far as it lies with you, will be lost. On the other hand, discipline is unfree, can be applied mechanically like a trick, there is no warrant that it will fall justly etc etc: so that it looks as if discipline itself may be just as fatal to the cause as defeat. This is where one would like the next book to take up the problem. (It is the old damnable fix—efficiency at the cost of the values for whose sake only you wish to be effective, or justice, liberty, and equality preserved only to be knocked on the head by your efficient neighbour. All this bears acutely on the problem of the college junto—of wh. we must discuss).

.21 Still, he seems to share them himself. On the purely literary side, I think it good: vivid without the journalese that usually accompanies these vivid war books. Some of the battles are not v. easy to visualise, but that is almost unavoidable: they are certainly easier than Blunden’s.22 One really glorious bit is the description of the gusto he feels even for the filthy air and Stygian landscape of the front when expecting death: the preciousness of matter as such. I don’t think that’s been done before.

      Both poems improve on re-reading, but the first one still remains the better, for the reasons given before. The selection of imagery in it is almost perfect and the effect all one like a taste.

       HAVE YOU BOOKED THOSE SEATS FOR THE RHEINGOLD?

      Have the venue where you like: but with such a large party—and in Easter week—some room-booking shd. be done at once

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      Last Saturday was the anniversary of the Creation of the World!

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      March 28th 1933

      Dear Mrs. Harwood,

      I hope it was not only literary vanity that made me enjoy so much your very kind and very discriminating letter. Thank you very much indeed.

      I don’t understand the part about the eternal feminine (and masculine) in your letter, and look forward to hearing more about it when next we meet. Cecil was looking grand when he came down to us—he is the most-un-ageing of my friends.

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

       TO GUY POCOCK (W):

      The Kilns

      Headington Quarry,

      Oxford

      March 31st 1933

      Dear Pocock

      This is unfortunate! Since I last wrote family arrangements have been maturing which will take me out of Oxford from the 6th onwards—so that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week are the only days (until the 23rd and after). I don’t want to be a nuisance: on the other hand I should very much like to see you. So just do as you would like. If you want to get me at short notice my Telephone number is 6963 Oxford—preferably after dinner. So sorry.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

       TO J. M. DENT PUBLISHERS (W):

      Department B

      Flint Hall

      Hambledon,

      Bucks

      April 12th 1933

      Dear Sir

      I return corrected proof of the Pilgrim’s Regress.