> From 1942 to 1944, working as a colleague of #WilliamEmpson's, he produced a series of broadcasts to India written in #BasicEnglish, trying to use its programmed simplicity, as a Tribune article put it,

'as a sort of corrective to the oratory of statesmen and publicists.'

Only during the last year of the war did he write 'Politics and the #EnglishLanguage,' insisting that the defense of English language has nothing to do with the setting up of a #StandardEnglish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_english#cite_note-17

Impure Heart
Unseen Buddha

The heart is impure
The Buddha is unseen

This is a great calendar to ponder while on the toilet and feeling literary. The translations should be less precise and grammatical and more vague and poetic: I keep thinking of #WilliamEmpson and his #SeventTypesOfAmbiguity and his treatment of #NewCorn by #TaoChien
#proverbs #BuddhistCalendar #Buddhism

#WilliamEmpson in Seven Types of Ambiguity wrote about this poem, I think. Empson got me to see that in #war the dead are all lumped together, 'the heroes and the cravens, the spearment and the bowmen" the pilots and the snipers, the sick and the old, the young and the cold...

> He prefaced his Collected Poems with an extract from his own translation of The Fire Sermon, a Buddhist text. It was also read out at his funeral in 1984.
- http://www.petertasker.asia/articles/karma-chameleon-william-empson-in-japan/
#WilliamEmpson #Japan #Buddhism #FireSermon #Empson

> 深い心の水底から
> 熱涙のみが
> ぼつぼつと湧き立つて来るのです。
> よろこびもかなしみも
> その青ざめた沈黙を破ることは出来ません。
- https://blog.canpan.info/poepoesongs/archive/738
#エンプソン #畠山千代子 #WilliamEmpson #CHatakeyama #Poetry #SmallBird #LargeHawk

> 英国のエンプソンからの手紙で、千代子の「馬鹿」という詩が“The Fool”として英BBCの「聴取者」誌に掲載される。また「小鳥の獨白」も昭和11年８月５日発行の同誌に“＊The Small Bird to the Big”というタイト「C.Hatakeyamaの作品をエンプソンが翻訳」と註が付され掲載されたことを知らされる。
- https://blog.goo.ne.jp/tanemakuhito1921/e/f88571d45b3bf09537bfe5442742e8ca
#エンプソン #畠山千代子 #WilliamEmpson #CHatakeyama #Poetry #SmallBird #LargeHawk

NEW CORN
> Swiftly the years, beyond recall.
> Solemn the stillness of this fair morning.
- https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42290/42290-h/42290-h.htm

On p207 of English Through Picture book three the simplified version is
> Quickly the years fly past forever
> Here forever is this spring morning

#EP3 #WilliamEmpson #ArthurWaley #TaoChien #Poetry #Chinese #Trasnlastion #EP3p207