David Bentley Hart: uncertainty

Transcript context

…We have time. You can tell us. With varying degrees of competency, Western and Eastern. English, but of course French, German, Spanish, Italian, not bad at Portuguese. Let’s see, I’m lousy but competent in Russian, I had to study Hebrew, Syriac. In theology, I had Greek and Latin from early on. I studied and I don’t consider myself a master of, but I can read now, among Asian languages, Sanskrit, Pali, classical Chinese, although I find it so gnomic at times, it’s hard to be sure that you’ve got the meaning right. It’s amazing how many really variant readings you can get at the same, say, in a Chinese poem by Li Bai. The same line comes out completely differently. I’m still working at my Japanese. I know some Britannic Celtic languages, kind of. I don’t know if I’m forgetting anything or not. When I was an undergraduate, I thought I might be doing Native American studies. I worked on spoken Cheyenne — Tsisinstsistots, to be precise, but that’s pretty rusty. How do you construct your media diet? What do you consume? You wake up, you want inflow. What do you do?…

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