Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate.
--Anne Carson, Nox (2010)
David came up with the inscription for my iPad using this passage as inspiration. He wanted it to be poetic and to convey something about translation; it also articulates how our two worlds come together:
luminous big shivering
discandied unrepentant web
It's perfect.
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