Frasi di William Empson (25 frasi) | Citazioni e frasi celebri

William Empson: 25 citazioni0 Mi piace

William Empson: Frasi in inglese

“It is the pain, it is the pain, endures.
Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.”

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William Empson

"Villanelle" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 33.
The Complete Poems

“Your rights reach down where all owners meet, in Hell's
Pointed exclusive conclave, at earth’s centre
(Your spun farm's root still on that axis dwells);
And up, through galaxies, a growing sector.”

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William Empson

"Legal Fiction", line 9; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 37.
The Complete Poems

“The plain fact is that many of the reputations which today occupy the poetic limelight are such as would crumble immediately if poetry such as Empson's, with its passion, logic, and formal beauty, were to become widely known.”

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William Empson

John Wain "Ambiguous Gifts", in The Penguin New Writing no. 40 (1950); cited from John Lehmann and Roy Fuller (eds.) The Penguin New Writing 1940-1950: An Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) p. 492.
Criticism

“Man, as the prying housemaid of the soul.”

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William Empson

Origine: This Last Pain' (1930), Line 5.

“Johnson, Hazlitt and Empson are the greatest English critics of their respective centuries not least because they are the funniest.”

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William Empson

Jonathan Bate, in the London Review of Books January 24, 1991.
Criticism

“Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves;
Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems;
Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.”

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William Empson

"Arachne" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 34.
The Complete Poems

“Liberal hopefulness
Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.”

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William Empson

"Ignorance of Death", line 11; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 78.
The Complete Poems

“An ambiguity, in ordinary speech, means something very pronounced, and as a rule witty or deceitful…. any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language.”

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William Empson libro Seven Types of Ambiguity

From the Preface
Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930)

“Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
It is not the effort nor the failure tires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.”

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William Empson

"Missing Dates" (1937), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 79.
The Complete Poems

“Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death
Making death their ideal basis for different ideals.
The Communists however disapprove of death
Except when practical.”

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William Empson

"Ignorance of Death" (1940), line 3; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 78.
The Complete Poems

“The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.”

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William Empson

Milton's God (1961; repr. London: Chatto & Windus, 1965) p. 261.
Other

“p>It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.”

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William Empson

"Let It Go" (1949), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 99.
The Complete Poems

“Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.”

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William Empson

"Missing Dates", line 12; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 79.
The Complete Poems

“All those large dreams by which men long live well
Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.”

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William Empson

Origine: This Last Pain' (1930), Line 21.

“Attending there let us absorb the cultures of nations
And dissolve into our judgement all their codes.
Then, being clogged with a natural hesitation
(People are continually asking one the way out),
Let us stand here and admit that we have no road.”

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William Empson

"Homage to the British Museum" (1932), line 8; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 55.
The Complete Poems

“To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public.”

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William Empson

Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Chatto & Windus, 1935) p. 15.
Other

“Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.”

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William Empson

"Legal Fiction" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 37.
The Complete Poems

“Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.”

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William Empson

"Bacchus" (1935), note; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 290.
The Complete Poems