“But I would like to think for a moment about a man who in the morning teaches his students that a false attribution of a Watteau drawing or an inaccurate transcription of a fourteenth-century epigraph is a sin against the spirit and in the afternoon or evening transmits to the agents of Soviet intelligence classified, perhaps vital information given to him in sworn trust by his countrymen and intimate colleagues. What are the sources of such scission? How does the spirit mask itself?”

— George Steiner

"The Cleric of Treason," The New Yorker (1980-12-08).
George Steiner: A Reader (1984)

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George Steiner 74

American writer 1929–2020

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George Steiner 74

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