I don’t feel as you do about the alteration of it and he, but I will be guided by your advice.75 That is, I will try to normalise on he throughout (tho’ a few it’s are sure to slip through by infirmity). Don’t blame me if this means heavier corrections than usual!
I see I must write a treatise on the aesthetics of gender!76
I’m a bit better, thanks. At least, the smell is.
Yours,
C. S. Lewis
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):
Magdalen College
Oxford Mart, xvii MCMLIII
Dilectissime Pater
Gavisus sum, ut semper, de epistola tua. Res mira est et corrobora-tio fidei duas animas loco, natione, lingua, oboedentiâ, aetate diversas sic in dulcem familiaritatem adductas esse; adeo ordo spirituum ordinem materialem superat. Reddit faciliorem illam necessariam doctrinam, nos arctissime conjungi et cum peccatore Adamo et cum justo lesu quamquam (secundum carnem, tempus et locum) tam diversi ab ambobus viximus. Haec unitas totius humani generis extat: utinam extaret praestantior illa unio de quo scribis. Nullum diem sine oratione pro illo opiato fine praetereo. Quae dicis de praesenti statu hominum vera sunt: immo deterior est quam dicis. Non enim Christi modo legem sed etiam legem Naturae Paganis cognitam neglegunt. Nunc enim non erubescunt de adulterio, proditione, perjurio, furto, ceterisque flagitiis quae non dico Christianos doctores, sed ipsi pagani et barbari reprobav-erunt. Falluntur qui dicunt ‘Mundus iterum Paganus fit.’ Utinam fieret! Re vera in statum multo pejorem cadimus. Homo post-Christianus non similis homini prae-Christiano. Tantum distant ut vidua a virgine: nihil commune est nisi absentia sponsi: sed magna differentia intra absentiam sponsi venturi et sponsi amissi! Adhuc laboro in libro de oratione. De hac quaestione quam tibi subjeci, omnes theologos interrogo: adhuc frustra.
Oremus semper pro invicem, mi pater. Vale,
C. S. Lewis
*
Magdalen College
Oxford 17 March 1953
My dearest Father
I was delighted, as always, by your letter.
It is a wonderful thing and a strengthening of faith that two souls differing from each other in place, nationality, language, obedience and age should have been thus led into a delightful friendship; so far does the order of spiritual beings transcend the material order.
It makes easier that necessary doctrine that we are most closely joined together alike with the sinner Adam and with the lust One, Jesus, even though as to body, time and place we have lived so differently from both. This unity of the whole human race exists: would that there existed that nobler union of which you write. No day do I let pass without my praying for that longed-for consummation.
What you say about the present state of mankind is true: indeed, it is even worse than you say.
For they neglect not only the law of Christ but even the Law of Nature as known by the Pagans.77 For now they do not blush at adultery, treachery, perjury, theft and the other crimes which I will not say Christian Doctors, but the Pagans and the Barbarians have themselves denounced.
They err who say ‘the world is turning pagan again’. Would that it were! The truth is that we are falling into a much worse state.
‘Post-Christian man’ is not the same as ‘pre-Christian man’. He is as far removed as virgin is from widow: there is nothing in common except want of a spouse: but there is a great difference between a spouse-to-come and a spouse lost.78
I am still working on my book on Prayer.
About this question which I submitted to you, I am asking all theologians: so far in vain.
Let us ever pray for each other, my Father.
Farewell,
C. S. Lewis
TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 20/3/53
My dear Bles
Here is the next tale.79
My view about He and It was that the semi-humanity cd. be kept before the imagination by an unobtrusive mixture of the two. Your re-action, however, shows that either such a mixture cd. not be unobtrusive or else that I, at any rate, could not make it so. Of course I cherish a secret hope that you are merely playing the ‘normalising scribe’, well known to textual critics: see the Preface to the Oxford Virgil (Hirtzel) on those who corrígere studentes, floríbus Musarum delicatis-simis saepius insultaverint.,80 That is my hope: but my sober fear is that you are right.
Your friend thinks I am ‘smelling things’ in the same sense in which the D.T.81 patient ‘sees things’. But it’s not quite as bad as that. My smell (ambiguous phrase) is subjective only in the sense that it does not come from the outer world. There is a real physical stimulus within the body–a sinus discharging its corrupt humours just under the olfactory nerves. So don’t be alarmed lest in my next letter I tell you that a marsh-wiggle called on me or something of that sort. ‘My pulse with yours doth temperately keep time.’82
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford 20/3/53
Dear Nell
I am indeed sorry to hear about your Mother. In a way you were most fortunate to have had her so long (mine died when I was a little boy), yet in another way it probably makes it worse, for you have lived into the period when the relationship is really reversed and you were mothering her: and of course, the more we have had to do for people the more we miss them–loving goes deeper than being loved. But it must be nice for her. Getting out of an old body into the new life–like stripping off tiresome old clothes and getting into a bath–must be a most wonderful experience.
I return Mrs. Hooker’s letter. I think ‘both sincere and insincere’ is about right. She certainly sounds more sensible in the letter than she did when I saw her.
Ugh! Holloway does give one the creeps, doesn’t it? But I see it doesn’t give them to you. It does me. If ever I go to jail (which may happen to anyone now-a-days) I do hope my cell will be white-washed and not that ghastly green!
I’ve been having a rather thin time with Sinusitis for about 4 weeks. In case you don’t know this complaint, it feels like toothache but since it is not a tooth you can’t have it out.
It’s nice to think of you and Alan working away in that delightful garden. I expect you are further on down there than we are in the midlands. Our daffodils are out and the catkins are all pussy and strokable, but the weather remains wretchedly cold.
I trust the nasty-taste of the Hooker crisis has now all gone away. The far more serious sorrow about your Mother will presumably have put paid to that. Remember me to Alan & God