Nothing in a language is less translatable than its modes of understatement. George Steiner More Quotes by George Steiner More Quotes From George Steiner The Socratic demonstration of the ultimate unity of tragic and comic drama is forever lost. But the proof is in the art of Chekhov. George Steiner foreverdramaart When he looks back, the critic sees a eunuch's shadow. Who would be a critic if he could be a writer? Who would hammer out the subtlest insight into Dostoevsky if he could weld an inch of the Karamazovs, or argue the poise of Lawrence if he could shape the free gust of life in The Rainbow? George Steiner rainbowshadowwould-be He who has read Kafka's Metamorphosis and can look into his mirror unflinching may technically be able to read print, but is illiterate in the only sense that matters. George Steiner mirrorsmaylooks There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness. George Steiner gregariousnessnoiseculture To many writers and thinkers, though not to all, another text is, or can be, the most naked and charged of life-forces ... The concept of allusion or analogue is totally inadequate. To Dante these other texts are the organic context of identity. They are as directly about life as life is about them. George Steiner nakedpoetryidentity Functions of technical information, historic record, analytic argument, which are integral and obvious to Dante's use of verse are now almost completely a part of the 'prosaic'. George Steiner recordspoetryuse The whispers of shared ecstasy are choral. George Steiner ecstasy My writing of fiction comes under a very general heading of those teachers, critics, scholars who like to try their own hand once or twice in their lives. George Steiner writingteacherhands If future society assumes the contours foretold by Marxism, if the jungle of our cities turns to the polis of man and the dreams of anger are made real, the representative art will be high comedy. Art will be the laughter of intelligence, as it is in Plato, in Mozart, in Stendhal. George Steiner laughterdreamart A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise. George Steiner Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and archive 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 I learned early on that 'rabbi' means teacher, not priest. George Steiner priestlearnedearlyteacher Books are in no hurry. An act of creation is in no hurry; it reads us, it privileges us infinitely. The notion that it is the occasion for our cleverness fills me with baffled bitterness and anger. George Steiner mebitternesscreationanger
