To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter. ---Euripides
Nice graduation party for Thomas.
The body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby was found on this day in 1932, more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s Hopewell, New Jersey, mansion.
Empson on Sonnet 73
In 1930, at the age of 24, William Empson published Seven Types of Ambiguity, a book that does possess some plausible claim to have “reinvented” literary criticism. It remains one of the cleverest, wittiest, most breathtaking demonstrations of the art of responsive criticism ever written. Empson went on to write two other books that both have some claim to be regarded as minor masterpieces of the trade: Some Versions of Pastoral, published in 1935, and The Structure of Complex Words, in 1951. In the heyday of literary criticism’s prominence in the wider culture in Britain and the US (roughly, the 1940s to the 60s), only TS Eliot rivaled Empson in terms of standing and influence among English-language critics.
One of the most distinctive features of Empson’s critical prose is the way it contains whole passages that are not, strictly speaking, analysis or appreciation, but a kind of narrative substitution, an extended paraphrase of what an author is saying. Unlike most paraphrases, however, Empson’s are usually geared not just to summarising the literal meaning but also to voicing the kind of impact on the reader the original was intended to have. (from Collini's review of Wood's On Empson"
Poetry analysis.
Here is Empson on the opening quatrain of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
Nice graduation party for Thomas.
“Forty percent of Americans in 2017 didn’t have enough savings to cover a $400 medical emergency or car repair, according to the Federal Reserve.” This appeared in the WSJ in an op-ed by Governor John Hickenlooper. But that is not the question that was asked, nor is it the answer. The question was about how people would choose to pay a $400 “emergency expense” — not whether or not they could pay it out of savings (or checking) if they wanted to. 86% would pay cash or charge it and then pay off the bill at the next statement (many consumers autopay credit card bills from checking accounts). Respondents were also free to choose more than one way of paying the extra $400 (“please selects all that apply”), so the answers add up 143% rather than 100%. Even if 100% said they could pay an extra $400 with cash, there could still be more than 40% who would choose a different method.
I’d always imagined cheerfulness was a sickly child, born nine months after a Tinder date between Stoicism and Christianity. --allisandri
Empson on Sonnet 73
In 1930, at the age of 24, William Empson published Seven Types of Ambiguity, a book that does possess some plausible claim to have “reinvented” literary criticism. It remains one of the cleverest, wittiest, most breathtaking demonstrations of the art of responsive criticism ever written. Empson went on to write two other books that both have some claim to be regarded as minor masterpieces of the trade: Some Versions of Pastoral, published in 1935, and The Structure of Complex Words, in 1951. In the heyday of literary criticism’s prominence in the wider culture in Britain and the US (roughly, the 1940s to the 60s), only TS Eliot rivaled Empson in terms of standing and influence among English-language critics.
One of the most distinctive features of Empson’s critical prose is the way it contains whole passages that are not, strictly speaking, analysis or appreciation, but a kind of narrative substitution, an extended paraphrase of what an author is saying. Unlike most paraphrases, however, Empson’s are usually geared not just to summarising the literal meaning but also to voicing the kind of impact on the reader the original was intended to have. (from Collini's review of Wood's On Empson"
Poetry analysis.
Here is Empson on the opening quatrain of Shakespeare's Sonnet 73:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
"The comparison [between boughs of the tree and choirs] holds for many reasons: because ruined monastery choirs are places in which to sing, because they involve sitting in a row, because they are made of wood, are carved into knots and so forth, because they used to be surrounded by a sheltering building crystallized out of the likeness of a forest, and colored with stained glass and painting like flowers and leaves."
Michael Wood, who cites this passage, further comments:
"When I think of this poem I am most taken by the thought that the choirs and the birds can be both literal and metaphorical—the birds can be birds or boys, and they can sing in the ruin or in the forest; the choir is a choir and a cluster of trees—and a real tension arises as soon as we remember the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which occurred in the 1530s, and altered the architectural face of England in so many ways, to say nothing of Henry VIII's sources of income."
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