I read this paragraph and gasped, that apart from a shared history etc. it's indeed the English Language that is holding an empire like the Federal Republic of Nigeria together:
Joseph Brodsky's 55 page line by line commentary
on
"September 1, 1939" by W. H .Auden
Pages 309-310 of - Less Than - One Seleceted Essays by Jospeh Brodsky
"Some twenty years later, in a poem written in memory of Louis MacNeice, Auden expresses a desire to " become, if possible, a minor Atlantic Goethe". This is an extremely significant admission , and the crucial word here is , believe it or not , not Goethe but Atlantic. Because what Auden had in mind from the very outset of his poetic career was the sense that the language in which he wrote was transatlantic or, better still , imperial: not in the sense of the British Raj but in the sense that it is the language that made an empire. For empires are held together by neither political nor military forces but by languages. Take Rome, for instance, or better still Hellenic Greece, which began to disintegrate immediately after Alexander the Great's own demise ( and he dies very young). What held them for centuries , after their political centres collapsed , were magna lingua Grecae and Latin. Empires are, first and foremost, cultural entities; and it's language that does the job, not legions. So if you want to write in English, you ought to master all its idioms, from Fresno to Kuala Lumpur, so to speak. Other than that, the importance of what you are saying may not go far beyond your little parish, which is perfectly commendable, of course; what's more, there is that famous "drop of water" (which reflects the entire universe) approach to comfort you. That's fine. And yet there is every chance for you to become citizens of the Great English Language"
Professor Harrow, do you agree?
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