"Because it carries
the past within it,
language,
unlike mathematics,
draws backward.

This is the meaning of Eurydice.

Because the realness
of his inward being
lies at his back,
the man of words,
the singer,
will turn to the place of
necessary shadows."

- George Steiner, Condensed from `A Future Literacy', Atlantic Monthly (8/1971), anthologized in More Random Walks in Science, ed. Robert L Weber.
Reprinted by kind permission of Atlantic Monthly Magazine.