The Cultivation of Conspiracy (1998)
Context: The Latin osculum is neither very old nor frequent. It is one of three words that can be translated by the English, "kiss." In comparison with the affectionate basium and the lascivious suavium, osculum was a latecomer into classical Latin, and was used in only one circumstance as a ritual gesture: In the second century, it became the sign given by a departing soldier to a woman, thereby recognizing her expected child as his offspring.
In the Christian liturgy of the first century, the osculum assumed a new function. It became one of two high points in the celebration of the Eucharist. Conspiratio, the mount-to-mouth kiss, became the solemn liturgical gesture by which participants in the cult-action shared their breath or spirit with one another. It came to signify their union in one Holy Spirit, the community that takes shape in God's breath. The ecclesia came to be through a public ritual action, the liturgy, and the soul of this liturgy was the conspiratio. Explicitly, corporeally, the central Christian celebration was understood as a co-breathing, a con-spiracy, the bringing about of a common atmosphere, a divine milieu.
Source: Short fiction, A Style in Treason (1970), Chapter 5 (p. 144)
“Nor word for word too faithfully translate.”
Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus
Interpres.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 133 (tr. John Dryden)
“Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.”
Keywords (1983)
Introduction
Adventures in the Nearest East (1957)
Context: Mesopotamian merchants spread their commercial institutions far and wide, into Western Asia, Egypt and Europe. The ancient inhabitants of Babylonia used the word qaqqadum, 'head', in the sense of 'principal'... our English word 'capital' (via Latin caput [head]) reflects ancient Mesoptamian usage.... our financial system, that reckons with interest on principal, harks back to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Re: Polymorphism in Common Lisp http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/28cb9d4217fe6dc3 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous
Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 2, Athenian Demagogues, p. 44
As cited in Dictionary of South African Quotations, Jennifer Crwys-Williams, Penguin Books 1994, p. 22
Part Four, St. Petersburg Wager, Daniel Bernoulli, p. 184
Fortune's Formula (2005)
“"For Freedom", or "For Liberty" are translations of the Latin motto of Clan Wallace.”
“There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.”
"The Task of the Translator," translated by Harry Zohn
