Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949. Walter Hooper

TO JANET SPENS (BOD):

      The Kilns,

      Headington Quarry.

      Jan 8th 1935

      Dear Miss Spens

You will have begun to wonder if your Agape & Eros¹ was lost forever! It is an intensely interesting book. I am inclined to think I disagree with him. His central contrast—that Agape is selfless and Eros self-regarding—seems at first unanswerable: but I wonder if he is not trying to force on the conception of love an antithesis which it is the precise nature of love, in all its forms, to overcome.

Then again, is the contrast between Agape (God active coming to man passive) and Eros (man by desire ascending to God quâ passive object of desire) really so sharp? He might accuse me of a mere play upon words if I pointed out that in Aristotle’s ‘He moves as the beloved’ (

) there is, after all, an active verb,

.² But is this merely a grammatical accident—is it not perhaps the real answer? Can the thing really be conceived in one way or the other? In real life it feels like both, and both, I suspect, are the same. Even on the human level does any one feel that the passive voice of the word beloved is really exclusive—that to attract is a—what do you call it—the opposite of a deponent? However, I must tackle him again. He has shaken me up extremely.³

I was one of a party of four some weeks ago who discussed your parallel between those passages from F.Q. and the Prelude,⁴ and divided—two agreeing with you in finding an important similarity-in-dissimilarity between them, and the other two failing to find any reason why you had brought them together at all. Now for the interesting point. We all gave analyses of the effect which both passages had on us, which disclosed the fact that the opposition were attending exclusively to the things mentioned in the passages, and had apparently no sensation of the immediate all pervading imaginative flavour-and no idea that they ought to look for it, or that there was such a thing. I was astonished and was led on to wonder whether many people read poetry in the same way. If so, no wonder we hear such odd judgements.

Yes—the passage about Genius in the Bower of Blisse⁵ is more difficult than I had remembered. I will tell you sometime how I was trying to take it (I haven’t the book handy)—but I now think my way involves almost impossible syntax. And what on earth does he mean by ‘good Agdistes’⁶-the only Agdistes story I can find is a long nightmare of meaningless cruelties and obscenities. Why ‘good’? I shall have to work at this rather hard. My own work is a book on medieval allegory which will end with a chapter on Spenser, and it is towards that that you have helped me so much. By the bye, one of my party of four (the one who sided with us) maintains that Spenser’s great fault is his prosaic style, but that his stories are so good that they save him. This is not such nonsense as it sounds!

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

       TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      Feb 5th 1935.

      My dear Harwood,

      The poem is very good-perfect except for the rather clumsy end of stanza one.

      I note your position about the walk you and Beckett are about equally problematical, but for different dates. A pretty tangle!

      Yours

      C.S.L.

       TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      [March 1935]

      My dear Barfield

What a glorious relief—I thought I was done for. No, I don’t transfer non philosophical letters straight to the W.P.B.:⁷ contrariwise, as soon as [I] see that they deal with contingent, empirical matter of fact, I transfer them to my pocket to note and deal with later: but sometimes (specially if I change my coat) the second part of the plan does not get carried out. I know I am a guiter.⁸

      Yes- I would love to go with Beckett & you on the Tuesday and return on Sunday night. Where is the Venue?

      I don’t think I can come and stay this Vac. If I find I can I shall just ask myself and you can refuse me if

      The Christmas poem is a complete success. The other is perfectly satisfactory stuff but too uncoloured to stand alone: in a context it would come out alright.

Why don’t you send Tertium Quid⁹ to a publisher? Now that P.R.¹⁰ has gone through so easily, I am sure T.Q. would—and they’d make a pretty pair.

      I have done about 200 lines of the Aeneid into riming alexandrines: it goes like fun into that metre, and you can reproduce the effect of the hexameter, getting nearly a prose rhythm in the middle and pulling itself together at the end.

      Harwood was down for the week end. He gets better and better-not to talk to, you know (in (that respect he gets worse) but just better.

Apparently Sparrow is a great man in military circles.¹¹ My brother is quite impressed at our venturing to walk with him. We are devils of fellows aren’t we?

Did you ever read Jeckyll & Hyde?¹² It is a

.¹³

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

       TO PAUL ELMER MORE (PRIN):

      The Kilns,

      Headington Quarry,

      Oxford.

      April 5th 1935

      My dear Mr. More

Your letter gave me a great deal of pleasure. I had thought of sending you that essay as some return for the books you have sent me: but then again I thought that what was kind from you to me would be merely ‘pushing’ from me to you.¹⁴ But I always regretted my decision for I really wanted to know whether we were of one mind on this subject. I am ‘continuing the work’ as best I can. The Criterion (the only likely periodical on other grounds) is closed to me,¹⁵ so I am coming back to the lecture for its original purpose, i.e. a method of publication, I give two or three a year on this kind of subject and get a very good audience-sometimes am even applauded, wh. is rare here.

      I mention this, partly no doubt from vanity, but partly because it proves that there is a demand for some literary theory not based, like the prevailing ones, on materialism. (You