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William Empson Quotes

Sir William Empson was an English literary critic and poet, widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, a practice fundamental to New Criticism. His best-known work is his first, Seven Types of Ambiguity, published in 1930.

Jonathan Bate has written that the three greatest English literary critics of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are Johnson, Hazlitt and Empson, "not least because they are the funniest". Wikipedia  

✵ 27. September 1906 – 15. April 1984
William Empson photo

Works

Seven Types of Ambiguity
Seven Types of Ambiguity
William Empson
William Empson: 25   quotes 2   likes

Famous William Empson Quotes

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

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.”

William Empson

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

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

William Empson

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

“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.”

William Empson

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

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

William Empson

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

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

William Empson

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

William Empson Quotes about people

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

William Empson

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

“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.”

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

“The man writes with such genuine passion for the books he's discussing. With so many critics you feel they're writing so people will say they're good critics.”

William Empson

W. H. Auden, recorded in Alan Ansen (ed. Nicholas Jenkins) The Table Talk of W. H. Auden (London: Faber, 1991) p. 44.
Criticism

William Empson Quotes

“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.”

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

Beauty , Passion

“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.”

William Empson book 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.”

William Empson

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

Failure , Effort

“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.”

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

Death

“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.”

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.”

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.”

William Empson

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

Men , Dreams , Hell

“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.”

William Empson

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

Art

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

William Empson

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

Men , Law

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

William Empson

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

Life

“But as to risings, I can tell you why.
It is on contradiction that they grow.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
Up was the heartening and the strong reply
The heart of standing is we cannot fly.”

William Empson

"Aubade", line 38; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 70.
The Complete Poems

Strong , Heart , Flying

“Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend,
Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end,
Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend,
Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?”

William Empson

"Just a Smack at Auden" (1937), line 15; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 81.
The Complete Poems

Fear , Boy , Waiting

“Feign then what's by a decent tact believed
And act that state is only so conceived,
And build an edifice of form
For house where phantoms may keep warm.”

William Empson

Source: This Last Pain' (1930), Line 29.

Housing

“The waste even in a fortunate life, the isolation even of a life rich in intimacy, cannot but be felt deeply, and is the central feeling of tragedy. And anything of value must accept this because it must not prostitute itself; its strength is to be prepared to waste itself, if it does not get its opportunity.”

William Empson

Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Chatto & Windus, 1935) p. 5.
Other

Life , Feeling

“Ripeness is all; her in her cooling planet
Revere; do not presume to think her wasted.
Project her no projectile, plan nor man it;
Gods cool in turn, by the sun long outlasted.”

William Empson

"To an Old Lady" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 24.
The Complete Poems

God , Thinking , Sun

“Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake.
My house was on a cliff. The thing could take
Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row.
Then the long pause and then the bigger shake.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.”

William Empson

"Aubade" (1937), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 69.
The Complete Poems

Housing

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