Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper

had, isn’t the word ‘giggled’ too damaging? (I’m always reminding people that nothing can get into literature save by becoming a word, and that things may be O.K. where the words are not. The bearings of this are wide, as you’ll see if you reflect on the difference between drawing a nude and verbally describing it,⁸⁰ or the impossibility of mentioning Cheko-Slovakia (is that how you spell it) at the apex of a lyric however deeply one may feel about that country).