All serious art, music, literature is a critical act. It is so, firstly, in the sense of Matthew Arnold's phrase: "a criticism of life." Be it realistic, fantastic, Utopian or satiric, the construct of the artist is a counter-statement to the world. George Steiner More Quotes by George Steiner More Quotes From George Steiner Given my age, I am pretty near the end, probably, of my career as a writer, a scholar, a teacher. And I wanted to speak of things I will not be able to do. George Steiner careers age teacher The age of the book is almost gone. George Steiner reading age book The notion of travelling to far places in order to study alien peoples and cultures, is unique to Western man; it springs from the predatory genius of the Greeks; no primitive peoples have ever come to study us. This is, on the one hand, a disinterested, intellectually inspired impulse. It is one of our glories. But it is, on the other, part and parcel of exploitation. [] The Western obsession with inquiry, with analysis, with the classification of all living forms, is itself a mode of subjugation, of psychological and technical mastery. George Steiner unique spring men Literature and the arts are also criticism in a more particular and practical sense. They embody an expository reflection on, a value judgement of, the inheritance and context to which they pertain. George Steiner judgement reflection art If, in the Judaic perception, the language of the Adamic was that of love, the grammars of fallen man are those of the legal code. George Steiner language perception men To many men... the miasma of peace seems more suffocating than the bracing air of war. George Steiner men war peace To understand is to decipher. To hear significance is to translate. George Steiner decipher significance translate To ask larger questions is to risk getting things wrong. Not to ask them at all is to constrain the life of understanding George Steiner constrain risk understanding It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. George Steiner literal past It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past. George Steiner other-cultures mirrors past Fischer does not merely outplay opponents; he leaves them bodily and mentally glutted. Fisher himself speaks of the exultant instant in which he feels the 'ego of the other player crumbling.' George Steiner ego player doe Bookishness, highest literacy, every technique of cultural propaganda and training not only can accompany bestiality and oppression and despotism but at certain points foster it. George Steiner literacy training technique I have students who are now in chairs in five continents. They invite me to their inaugurals. A tremendous reward. George Steiner rewards chairs students I find so much writing colourless, small in its means, unwilling to take stylistic risks. Often it goes wrong; I am not the one to judge. Sometimes, I hope, it goes right. George Steiner judging writing mean I'm sorry, I'm absolutely convinced that there is at the moment no realistic prospect for very much hope in human affairs. George Steiner affair moments sorry The Oresteia, King Lear, Dostoevsky's 'The Devils' no less than the art of Giotto or the 'Passions' of Bach, inquire into, dramatize, the relations of man and woman to the existence of the gods or of God. George Steiner passion kings art What I affirm is the intuition that where God's presence is no longer a tenable supposition and where His absence is no longer a felt, indeed overwhelming weight, certain dimensions of thought and creativity are no longer attainable. And I would vary Yeats's axiom so as to say: no man can read fully, can answer answeringly to the aesthetic, whose "nerve and blood" are at peace in sceptical rationality, are now at home in immanence and verification. We must read as if. George Steiner creativity home men Literary criticism has about it neither rigour nor proof. Where it is honest, it is passionate, private experience seeking to persuade. George Steiner passionate honest criticism Increasingly unable to create for itself a relevant body of myth, the modern imagination will ransack the treasure house of the classic. George Steiner treasure imagination house The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book. George Steiner reading book hands
