Читать книгу The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien - Christopher Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien - Страница 76

25 May 1944 (FS 27)

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dearest Chris, Letters, immensely welcome, have poured in. . . . . I was disposed, at last, to envy you a little; or rather to wish I could be with you ‘in the hills’. There is something in nativity, and though I have few pictorial memories, there is always a curious sense of reminiscence about any stories of Africa, which always move me deeply. Strange that you, my dearest, should have gone back there. . . . . There is not much to report of self since Monday. That night I never slept at all (quite literally): partly owing to deafening traffic (on moldan on úprodore¹): and gave up trying at 6 a.m. I was not frightfully bright at lecture on Tuesday, as a result. Chief reason, however, is absorption in Frodo, which now has a great grip and takes a lot out of me: chapter on Shelob and the disaster in Kirith Ungol has been written several times. Whole thing comes out of the wash quite different to any preliminary sketch! Apart from making a hen-coop and chick-run (I succumbed at last: couldn’t stand the untidy box and jumbled net which did duty on the lawn) I have given most of my energies to that task. Two lectures this morning; and this evening I am taking ‘off’, and going to Magdalen, where there’s supposed to be a full assembly, including Dyson. . . . . I hope you will have some more leave in genuine Africa, ere too long. Away from the ‘lesser servants of Mordor’. Yes, I think the ores as real a creation as anything in ‘realistic’ fiction: your vigorous words well describe the tribe; only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For ‘romance’ has grown out of ‘allegory’, and its wars are still derived from the ‘inner war’ of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of ores, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels. But it does make some difference who are your captains and whether they are ore-like per se! And what it is all about (or thought to be). It is even in this world possible to be (more or less) in the wrong or in the right. I could not stand Gaudy Night.² I followed P. Wimsey from his attractive beginnings so far, by which time I conceived a loathing for him (and his creatrix) not surpassed by any other character in literature known to me, unless by his Harriet. The honeymoon one (Busman’s H.?) was worse. I was sick. . . . . God bless you. Your own Father. Finished 3.45 p.m.: 25 May 1944.