The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.
I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer.
Sometimes I'll go by and there are a couple of swans, the next day it's a few ducks. I'd like to stop there every day for a year and capture how it changes, then put it all together to create an incredible image of a traditional English scene.
These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages.
English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.
But at the time when he wrote, Englishmen, with the rarest exceptions, wrote only in French or Latin; and when they began to write in English, a man of genius, to interpret and improve on him, was not found for a long time.
Until the June 1967 war I was completely caught up in the life of a young professor of English. Beginning in 1968, I started to think, write, and travel as someone who felt himself to be directly involved in the renaissance of Palestinian life and politics.
If the English want a king, it is their business. If the Russians want communism, it is their business. If the Americans want our form of government, it is our business.
