I have a quarrel with you. Your letters are
Illegible. They take hours to decode –
The writing crabbed, the style, too, somewhat strange.
(A riddle is not normally written in prose.)
The spelling is not bad (though *iltafaat*
Is spelt with *te* not *toeh*); yet even when read
The far-fetched diction you delight in veils
Your meaning.This is affectation. Write
From now on, clearly, using words that cost
Less torment to your reader and to you.”
From the Humble Administrator’s Garden, published in 1987
Fragment from “From the Babur-Nama, Memoirs of Babur, First Moghul Emperor of India”
[The passage, as it appears in Annette Susannah Beveridge’s translation, 1921:
“Again, Thou hast written me a letter, as I ordered thee to do; but why not have read it over? If thou hadst thought of reading it, thou couldst not have done it, and, unable thyself to read it, wouldst certainly have made alteration in it. Though by taking trouble it can be read, it is very puzzling, and who ever saw an enigma in prose? Thy spelling, though not bad, is not quite correct; thou writest iltafāt with tā ( iltafāt ) and qūlinj with yā ( qīlinj ?). Although thy letter can be read if every sort of pains be taken, yet it cannot be quite understood because of that obscure wording of thine. Thy remissness in letter-writing seems to be due to the thing which makes thee obscure, that is to say, to elaboration. In future write without elaboration; use plain, clear words. So will thy trouble and thy reader’s be less.”
And the same passage, as it appears in Wheeler M. Thackston’s translation, 1996:
And the same passage, as it appears in Wheeler M. Thackston’s translation, 1996:
Juvenilia 