Tiêu đề Fifteen Years The Writerly Life.pdf ✅

FIFTEEN YEARS LANGUAGE HAS BECOME a profoundly embarrassing subject nowadays. The thought of it gives a peace-loving citizen a pain in the neck. I mean it with particular reference to the English language. An average citizen today is in the position of appreciating the language but not wanting it. We are not so far away from the time when people used to say as a matter of prestige, ‘He speaks perfect English’, and a bride who could write her letters in English and who could claim to have read Scott and Dickens was considered fully accomplished. In the matter of employment, too, a young man who could draft an English letter with ease and confidence stood a better chance of being employed than the one who was proficient only in his regional language. And there were people who didn’t know English, and who said with a sigh, ‘If I had only learned English I would have conquered the world . . .’ This may not be a very comfortable memory for anyone now, but it would be false to pretend that such values did not exist at one time. However, various causes, practical, political, etc. have demanded the abolition of English from our midst. It is almost a matter of national propriety and prestige now to declare one’s aversion to this language, and to cry for its abolition. But the language has a siren- like charm and a lot of persistence, and (if we may personify it) comes up again and again and demands, ‘What have I done that you hate me so much?’ The judge does not lift up his head for fear that he might weaken. He assumes the gruffest tone possible and says, ‘You are the language of our oppressors. It is
Fifteen Years | 313 through you that our nation was enslaved, and it is only through you that the people were divided, so that those who were masters of English could rule others who didn’t know the language. Your insidious influence wrought a cleavage in our own midst . . .’ “You speak very good English.’ ‘Well, well, I won’t be flattered by it,’ says the judge. ‘All of us are masters of English, but that proves nothing. You are the language of those who were our political oppressors. We don’t want you any more in our midst. Please, begone.’ ‘Where shall I go?’ ‘To your own country...’ ‘I am afraid this is my country. I fear I will stay here, whatever may be the rank and status you may assign me—as the first language or the second language or the thousandth. You may banish me from the classrooms, but I can always find other places where I can stay. I love this country where: Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.’ ‘That is a beautiful Shakespeare passage. However, I cannot allow the court’s time to be wasted in this manner. You have a knack of beguiling the mind with quotations. I forbid you to quote anything from English literature.’ ‘Why are you dead set against me, sir? I have a fundamental right to know why you are throwing me out, under the Indian Constitution...’ ‘But it doesn’t apply to you.’ ‘Why not?” ‘Because you are not an Indian.’ ‘Iam more Indian than you can ever be. You are probably fifty, sixty or seventy years of age but I’ve actually been in this land for two hundred years.’ ‘When we said “Quit India”, we meant it to apply to Englishmen