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Grammars of Creation
"We have no more beginnings", George Steiner begins in this, his most radical book to date. A far-reaching exploration of the idea of creation in Western thought, literature, religion, and history, this volume can fairly be called a magnum opus. He reflects on the different ways we have of talking about beginnings, on the "coretiredness" that pervades our end-of-the-millennium spirit, and on the changing grammar of our discussions about the end of Western art and culture. With his well-known elegance of style and intellectual range, Steiner probes deeply into the driving forces of the human spirit and our perception of Western civilization's lengthening afternoon shadows.Roaming across topics as diverse as the Hebrew Bible, the history of science and mathematics, the ontology of Heidegger, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Steiner examines how the twentieth century has placed in doubt the rationale and credibility of a future tense -- the existence of hope. Acknowledging that technology and science may have replaced art and literature as the driving forces in our culture, Steiner warns that this has not happened without a significant loss. The forces of technology and science alone fail to illuminate inevitable human questions regarding value, faith, and meaning. And yet it is difficult to believe that the story out of Genesis has ended, Steiner observes, and he concludes this masterful volume of reflections with an eloquent evocation of the endlessness of beginnings.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 24, 2001
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About the author
George Steiner
186 books563 followersSee also: George A. Steiner, author on Management and Planning.
Dr. Francis George Steiner was an essayist, novelist, philosopher, literary critic, and educator. He wrote for The New Yorker for over thirty years, contributing over two hundred reviews. Among his many awards, he received The Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award from Stanford University 1998. He lived in Cambridge, England, with his wife, historian Zara Shakow Steiner.
In 1950 he earned an M.A. from Harvard University, where he won the Bell Prize in American Literature, and received his Ph.D. from Oxford University (Balliol College) on a Rhodes Scholarship in 1955. He was then a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, for two years. He became a founding fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge in 1961, and has been an Extraordinary Fellow there since 1969. Additionally, Steiner accepted the post of Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva in 1974, which he held for 20 years, teaching in four languages. He became Professor Emeritus at Geneva University on his retirement in 1994, and an Honorary Fellow at Balliol College at Oxford University in 1995. He later held the positions of the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative Literature and Fellow of St. Anne's College at Oxford University from 1994 to 1995, and Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University from 2001 to 2002.
Dr. Francis George Steiner was an essayist, novelist, philosopher, literary critic, and educator. He wrote for The New Yorker for over thirty years, contributing over two hundred reviews. Among his many awards, he received The Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award from Stanford University 1998. He lived in Cambridge, England, with his wife, historian Zara Shakow Steiner.
In 1950 he earned an M.A. from Harvard University, where he won the Bell Prize in American Literature, and received his Ph.D. from Oxford University (Balliol College) on a Rhodes Scholarship in 1955. He was then a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, for two years. He became a founding fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge in 1961, and has been an Extraordinary Fellow there since 1969. Additionally, Steiner accepted the post of Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva in 1974, which he held for 20 years, teaching in four languages. He became Professor Emeritus at Geneva University on his retirement in 1994, and an Honorary Fellow at Balliol College at Oxford University in 1995. He later held the positions of the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative Literature and Fellow of St. Anne's College at Oxford University from 1994 to 1995, and Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University from 2001 to 2002.
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January 23, 2024I cannot comment after just one reading. Which in fact was a 'listening,' which I was insane to attempt. Steiner is much too dense to listen to. But it is so hard to find worthwhile audiobooks, so I tried. Now I will track down a physical copy and try again. Actually it was the last couple of sections where I lost any ability to track, but I want to try again to get his take on future creativity in an age of internet collaborativity and AI.
I will say that even the occasional parts that I got only reinforced my apoplectic horror at having to also be reading Yuval Hariri's Homo Deus for a book group. Erudition and real thought vs false, smirky, cherry-picked, simplistic blather. Hariri should be condemned to sit in a room for the rest of his life listening to audiobooks by George Steiner, Jurgen Habermas, Timothy Snyder and any number of historians who are familiar with the concept of nuance and complexity. He should also have to actually read Das Kapital before he mentions Marx.
I will say that even the occasional parts that I got only reinforced my apoplectic horror at having to also be reading Yuval Hariri's Homo Deus for a book group. Erudition and real thought vs false, smirky, cherry-picked, simplistic blather. Hariri should be condemned to sit in a room for the rest of his life listening to audiobooks by George Steiner, Jurgen Habermas, Timothy Snyder and any number of historians who are familiar with the concept of nuance and complexity. He should also have to actually read Das Kapital before he mentions Marx.
January 20, 2008
I didn't really understand this book. But it was a lot of fun trying.
December 1, 2020
É um livro denso, com muita argumentação e contra-argumentação que requer uma contextualização que não é muito clara por se limitar a dizer que o livro surgiu das suas Gifford Lectures de 1990. Mas as Gifford Lectures não são umas quaisquer lições académicas, são seminários sujeitos a uma temática concreta: a Teologia Natural. Aliás foi nestas que William James apresentou também o seu famoso livro "As Variedades da Experiência Religiosa" em 1902. Ora a Teologia Natural procura provar a existência de Deus por meio filosófico, sem recurso ao sobrenatural. Assim compreende-se que aquilo que está em questão, em toda a discussão apresentada, não são os processos criativos artístico e científico convocados por Steiner, mas explicitamente a criação da existência humana.
Todo o livro é uma deambulação pelas ciências da linguagem, das humanidades e artes indo até às ciências naturais e exatas, para dar conta daquilo que é, ou podem ser, os processos de: Descoberta, Invenção e Criação. Tenho de dizer que em muitos momentos fiquei ali imerso, seguindo o seu pensamento, tentando captar, apreender e aprender. Contudo, quanto mais avançava no livro, mais certo estava de que nada daquilo conduziria a lado algum. Steiner dedica-se apenas e só a aprofundar ideias, a escavar conceitos em todas as dimensões possíveis, apresentando teias de possibilidades, mas nunca se chega à frente para tomar um caminho, para decidir o que quer realmente de tudo aquilo.
“The Latin invenire would appear to pre-suppose that which is to be “found,” to be “come upon.” As if, to invoke the question underlying this study, the universe had already been “there,” had been extant for the Deity to find, perhaps to stumble upon. Turned to haughty paradox, this invenire is implicit in Picasso’s: “I do not search, I only find.” The tenor of discovery attaches to the Latinate verb when it first enters the English language towards the close of the fifteenth century (invention is thus a late-comer). Yet very quickly, the overlap between “finding” and “producing” or “contriving” becomes evident. After the 1540s, invenire can pertain to the composition, to the production of a work of art or of literature.”
(...)
“The aura of “feigning,” of “fabrication”—itself a term in the highest degree ambiguous—of “contrivance,” modulating into falsehood, is audible after the early 1530s. As the term ripens into currency, both spheres are present: that of origination, production and first devising on the one hand, that of possible mendacity and fiction on the other. ”
(...)
“As I noted, something within the deep structures of our sensibility balks at the phrasing and concept: “God invented the universe.” We speak of a major artist as a “creator,” not as an “inventor.”
(...)
“I have already cited the taboo on the “making of images” in Judaism and Islam. To create such images is to “invent,” it is to “fictionalize” in the cause of a virtual reality, scenes, real presences beyond human perception or rivalry (“I know not ‘seeming,’” says Hamlet in his rage for truth). Time and again, we will meet up with the artist’s sense of himself as “counter-creator,” as competing with the primal fiat or “let there be” on ground at once exultant and blasphemous. Is the lack of humour, so marked in the Hebraic-Christian delineations of a revealed God, instinct with the seriousness of creation? Invention is often thoroughly humorous. It surprises. Whereas creation, in the sense of the Greek term which generates all philosophy, thaumazein, amazes, astonishes us as does thunder or the blaze of northern lights.”
(...)
The taboo, always only partial and often circumvented, on the representation of the human person attaches to a uniquely subtle aesthetic of the ornament, of the mathematical logic and beauty of the geometric. Persian and Arab calligraphy are more than suggestive of algebra (itself, of course, partly of Islamic origin). Centrally, the strain of iconoclasm in Islamic sensibility and architectural practice underlines the paradox latent in any serious aesthetics after the Mosaic prohibition on the making of images and after the Platonic critique of the mimetic. A malaise lies near the heart of re-presentation. Why “double” the natural substance and beauty of the given world? Why induce illusion in the place of truthful vision (Freud’s “reality principle”)? Non-figurative, abstract art is in no way a modern Western device. As ancillary to the reception of the figural prodigality of the natural world, it has long been crucial to Islam. In its formalized borrowings from the shape of plants, from the geometries of live water, the Islamic ornamental motif is simultaneously an aid to disciplined observation of the created and an act of thanks. To borrow a key phrase: the aesthetics of Islam are indeed a “grammar of assent.”
(...)
“There is explicit engagement with transcendence in an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Bach, or a Dostoevski. It is at work with unspecified force in a Rembrandt portrait or on the night of Bergotte’s death in Proust’s Recherche. The wing-beat of the unknown has been at the heart of poiesis. Can there, will there be major philosophy, literature, music, and art of an atheist provenance?”
Eu concordo com Steiner quando ele diz que os físicos não se podem recusar a discutir o que existiu antes do Big Bang, mas não chega dizer que o rei vai nu, menos ainda com isso mesmo limitar-se a levantar a véu do retorno da ideia de um Criador de tudo. Desde logo, porque não concordo com o seu remate de que criadores ateus dificilmente poderão criar obras tão ou mais transcendentes que as de Michelangelo ou Dostoiévski. A declaração de Nietzsche de que "Deus está Morto" é mera constatação do processo desvelado por Darwin, o que não tem de ser nenhum niilismo, menos ainda um "desperançoso" "zero negro" como Steiner parece querer constatar no fecho da sua lição.
Por outro lado, toda a viagem por entre o virtuosismo referencial de múltiplas ciências e artes é vertiginosa e por isso não supreende a admiração que Steiner sempre manteve na academia. Esta obra é talvez um dos seus maiores legados, representativo da sua mestria e capacidade intelectual.
Nota: lido em inglês em audiobook, acompanhado pela versão portuguesa editada pela Relógio d'Água com tradução de Miguel Serras Pereira.
Publicado bo VI:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
Todo o livro é uma deambulação pelas ciências da linguagem, das humanidades e artes indo até às ciências naturais e exatas, para dar conta daquilo que é, ou podem ser, os processos de: Descoberta, Invenção e Criação. Tenho de dizer que em muitos momentos fiquei ali imerso, seguindo o seu pensamento, tentando captar, apreender e aprender. Contudo, quanto mais avançava no livro, mais certo estava de que nada daquilo conduziria a lado algum. Steiner dedica-se apenas e só a aprofundar ideias, a escavar conceitos em todas as dimensões possíveis, apresentando teias de possibilidades, mas nunca se chega à frente para tomar um caminho, para decidir o que quer realmente de tudo aquilo.
“The Latin invenire would appear to pre-suppose that which is to be “found,” to be “come upon.” As if, to invoke the question underlying this study, the universe had already been “there,” had been extant for the Deity to find, perhaps to stumble upon. Turned to haughty paradox, this invenire is implicit in Picasso’s: “I do not search, I only find.” The tenor of discovery attaches to the Latinate verb when it first enters the English language towards the close of the fifteenth century (invention is thus a late-comer). Yet very quickly, the overlap between “finding” and “producing” or “contriving” becomes evident. After the 1540s, invenire can pertain to the composition, to the production of a work of art or of literature.”
(...)
“The aura of “feigning,” of “fabrication”—itself a term in the highest degree ambiguous—of “contrivance,” modulating into falsehood, is audible after the early 1530s. As the term ripens into currency, both spheres are present: that of origination, production and first devising on the one hand, that of possible mendacity and fiction on the other. ”
(...)
“As I noted, something within the deep structures of our sensibility balks at the phrasing and concept: “God invented the universe.” We speak of a major artist as a “creator,” not as an “inventor.”
(...)
“I have already cited the taboo on the “making of images” in Judaism and Islam. To create such images is to “invent,” it is to “fictionalize” in the cause of a virtual reality, scenes, real presences beyond human perception or rivalry (“I know not ‘seeming,’” says Hamlet in his rage for truth). Time and again, we will meet up with the artist’s sense of himself as “counter-creator,” as competing with the primal fiat or “let there be” on ground at once exultant and blasphemous. Is the lack of humour, so marked in the Hebraic-Christian delineations of a revealed God, instinct with the seriousness of creation? Invention is often thoroughly humorous. It surprises. Whereas creation, in the sense of the Greek term which generates all philosophy, thaumazein, amazes, astonishes us as does thunder or the blaze of northern lights.”
(...)
The taboo, always only partial and often circumvented, on the representation of the human person attaches to a uniquely subtle aesthetic of the ornament, of the mathematical logic and beauty of the geometric. Persian and Arab calligraphy are more than suggestive of algebra (itself, of course, partly of Islamic origin). Centrally, the strain of iconoclasm in Islamic sensibility and architectural practice underlines the paradox latent in any serious aesthetics after the Mosaic prohibition on the making of images and after the Platonic critique of the mimetic. A malaise lies near the heart of re-presentation. Why “double” the natural substance and beauty of the given world? Why induce illusion in the place of truthful vision (Freud’s “reality principle”)? Non-figurative, abstract art is in no way a modern Western device. As ancillary to the reception of the figural prodigality of the natural world, it has long been crucial to Islam. In its formalized borrowings from the shape of plants, from the geometries of live water, the Islamic ornamental motif is simultaneously an aid to disciplined observation of the created and an act of thanks. To borrow a key phrase: the aesthetics of Islam are indeed a “grammar of assent.”
(...)
“There is explicit engagement with transcendence in an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Bach, or a Dostoevski. It is at work with unspecified force in a Rembrandt portrait or on the night of Bergotte’s death in Proust’s Recherche. The wing-beat of the unknown has been at the heart of poiesis. Can there, will there be major philosophy, literature, music, and art of an atheist provenance?”
Eu concordo com Steiner quando ele diz que os físicos não se podem recusar a discutir o que existiu antes do Big Bang, mas não chega dizer que o rei vai nu, menos ainda com isso mesmo limitar-se a levantar a véu do retorno da ideia de um Criador de tudo. Desde logo, porque não concordo com o seu remate de que criadores ateus dificilmente poderão criar obras tão ou mais transcendentes que as de Michelangelo ou Dostoiévski. A declaração de Nietzsche de que "Deus está Morto" é mera constatação do processo desvelado por Darwin, o que não tem de ser nenhum niilismo, menos ainda um "desperançoso" "zero negro" como Steiner parece querer constatar no fecho da sua lição.
Por outro lado, toda a viagem por entre o virtuosismo referencial de múltiplas ciências e artes é vertiginosa e por isso não supreende a admiração que Steiner sempre manteve na academia. Esta obra é talvez um dos seus maiores legados, representativo da sua mestria e capacidade intelectual.
Nota: lido em inglês em audiobook, acompanhado pela versão portuguesa editada pela Relógio d'Água com tradução de Miguel Serras Pereira.
Publicado bo VI:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
October 8, 2014
A surprising amount of typos and mistakes in my edition from Yale university press, making it hard to determine in some cases if it was my understanding or the editorial staff letting me down. Other than that there are some very interesting sections in this book about the history of aesthetics in the West, including a section on Dante that summarizes the immense synthesis of theology, philosophy, and aesthetics he achieved with the trilogy. There were sometimes tiring sections comparing scientific discovery to philosophic or aesthetic creation (feel like specialists such as Feyerabend have done more interesting and provocative work here). Overall I would say a fascinating read despite Steiner's meandering, and highly, even perhaps absurdly, allusive style. He has a facility with language that makes the dense reading a bit more memorable -- for example, referring to the explosion of language caused by the growth of the mass media, he writes, "monstrous inflation, the embezzlement of diction, have made the truth speechless." Check out his Lessons of the Masters if you want something a bit shorter and with fewer typos.
His thesis (which doesn’t really appear wholly fleshed out until the last 10 pages or so of the book) is that the notion of creation has faded in Western culture due to the erosive effects of war, genocide, and the Sprachkritik philosophy in the 20th c., which was mostly the labor of Jewish thinkers -- particularly Wittgenstein, Chomsky, and others (strange point but he does make it on page 281). The erosion of the relationship between language and truth, and in art between creation and invention since Duchamp, has led to our peculiar modern condition in which, Steiner claims, creation is no longer possible. Why is this a problem? Because creation is connected with the artistic enterprise, with the hope of immortality and the chance to capture something of the divine.
His thesis (which doesn’t really appear wholly fleshed out until the last 10 pages or so of the book) is that the notion of creation has faded in Western culture due to the erosive effects of war, genocide, and the Sprachkritik philosophy in the 20th c., which was mostly the labor of Jewish thinkers -- particularly Wittgenstein, Chomsky, and others (strange point but he does make it on page 281). The erosion of the relationship between language and truth, and in art between creation and invention since Duchamp, has led to our peculiar modern condition in which, Steiner claims, creation is no longer possible. Why is this a problem? Because creation is connected with the artistic enterprise, with the hope of immortality and the chance to capture something of the divine.
November 3, 2019
Having enjoyed (I think?) Errata: An Examined Life a few years ago , I was surprised by how negative my response was to this book (based on Steiner's Gifford Lectures). Steiner is a great example of a lost type of intellectualism, one whose loss I think might have been a good thing. He is a master of Greek and Latin, French and German, psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism. And he pulls them together in airy and unsubstantiated ways, making grand statements about the decline of the West and the human condition and speculating about quantum mechanics and AI, and relating it to Latin etymologies. I think this sort of writing should die. It's part science envy and part the fetishism of difficulty that TS Eliot established* in Tradition and the Individual Talent. It's also possibly the last of the tradition of European salons, the idea that one should seem careless and throw off ideas and knowledge without caring much about it or having seemed to work to gain it.
Don't get me wrong: Steiner knows an astonishing amount. But the thing is, it's too convenient that he likes every big, difficult name from the 20th century. It's like there isn't anything that he has difficulty with or that doesn't work for him. He just throws in Abstract Expressionism, Heidegger, Leibniz, Shakespeare, John Cage, into a slow cooker and lets it simmer for a few days until it's all a pile of mush. Steiner is brilliant but he isn't a critic. And it almost feels like you could generate another chapter of this by going through Wikipedia, skimming some summaries and then penning a sentence linking Paul Celan, Lacan, Rwanda, the internet, and Daniel Libeskind, and throwing in for good measure some words like poesis and lapidary and factitious...
Or put another way: there's a term for a paragraph that pulls together Heidegger, particle physics, Kandinsky, Qabbalah, Aristotle, and DNA: bullshit. It's fun to read but none of it really means anything. The sort of wide-ranging humanities allrounder who could pretend at understanding theoretical physics has been replaced by, well, partly the overall reduced status of the humanities and partly by the Morettist burrowers of the Digital Humanities, writing Python scripts and generating tables to write about literature. Give me a focused essay on literature, written by a specialist who knows her domain and doesn't pretend to link it to Taoism, AI, and 17th century shipbuilding any day.
* Also in a careless and totally unsubstantiated statement: "we can only say that it appears likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult". See this essay, a nice example of the kind of writing I prefer!
Don't get me wrong: Steiner knows an astonishing amount. But the thing is, it's too convenient that he likes every big, difficult name from the 20th century. It's like there isn't anything that he has difficulty with or that doesn't work for him. He just throws in Abstract Expressionism, Heidegger, Leibniz, Shakespeare, John Cage, into a slow cooker and lets it simmer for a few days until it's all a pile of mush. Steiner is brilliant but he isn't a critic. And it almost feels like you could generate another chapter of this by going through Wikipedia, skimming some summaries and then penning a sentence linking Paul Celan, Lacan, Rwanda, the internet, and Daniel Libeskind, and throwing in for good measure some words like poesis and lapidary and factitious...
Or put another way: there's a term for a paragraph that pulls together Heidegger, particle physics, Kandinsky, Qabbalah, Aristotle, and DNA: bullshit. It's fun to read but none of it really means anything. The sort of wide-ranging humanities allrounder who could pretend at understanding theoretical physics has been replaced by, well, partly the overall reduced status of the humanities and partly by the Morettist burrowers of the Digital Humanities, writing Python scripts and generating tables to write about literature. Give me a focused essay on literature, written by a specialist who knows her domain and doesn't pretend to link it to Taoism, AI, and 17th century shipbuilding any day.
* Also in a careless and totally unsubstantiated statement: "we can only say that it appears likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult". See this essay, a nice example of the kind of writing I prefer!
May 29, 2019
No puedo expresar lo que esta obra es, entrega o significa. Las limitaciones del lenguaje forman parte de las preocupaciones en torno a las problemáticas de creación e invención que Steiner interroga. Los caminos que elige transitar son múltiples. A veces, da la impresión de que se adentra en un paraje tan tentador que olvida su tema, pero de improviso muestra una conclusión novedosa y de implicación estrecha con las génesis del lenguaje, de la poesía, del mundo mismo. Es un estudio complejo, lo que quiere decir que se ramifica, que cumple con la necesidad de multiplicidades que exige el paradigma de conocimiento en vigencia. No por eso deja de criticar ese modelo, y una de sus críticas más fuertes nace de la necesidad de soledad, de pensamiento y de confrontación con la muerte. Me sorprendió que Steiner abogue por la trascedencia. Como el reconoce, la actualidad impide y ridiculiza esos sentires. Le da más valor, entonces. Su rebeldía es la rebeldía del espíritu creador.
Read
March 8, 2016I don't care what anybody says, I like George Steiner (even though he apparently thinks he has more important things to do than read Sorel's magisterial eight volume diplomatic history of the French revolution).
Read
June 10, 2014Requires etiology for unlapidary, recondite prose.
January 7, 2021
Late George Steiner , attests his cortex once again going deep to the issue of creation
versus invention-discovery once again reminding of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and taking again the evidence far
enough that language - to begin with - would exist in the same or in a similar form, if it weren't invented by man at the particular moment that he did.
To enforce his position , he goes to support this notion also for mathematics (pure) , as a language that decodes natural laws.
Man is only the inventor that uses his labor to take things far through sophistication and this is what credits his existence.
The book , like bluebeard's castle attempts to recover an answer on the why of evil and goes close to the answer given by Hannah Arendt for Eichmann that in certain matter and for a mass of people , thought is absent as an excuse to deeds
The book , touches on many aspects of science and humanities , even to the mystical ones and reveals the pain that Steiner went through to gain this great insight , which is such a trait of him
His views are far from parochial ; He is having an authentic global view and he is never outdated since his classical notions are persisting and remain for generations to come.
versus invention-discovery once again reminding of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and taking again the evidence far
enough that language - to begin with - would exist in the same or in a similar form, if it weren't invented by man at the particular moment that he did.
To enforce his position , he goes to support this notion also for mathematics (pure) , as a language that decodes natural laws.
Man is only the inventor that uses his labor to take things far through sophistication and this is what credits his existence.
The book , like bluebeard's castle attempts to recover an answer on the why of evil and goes close to the answer given by Hannah Arendt for Eichmann that in certain matter and for a mass of people , thought is absent as an excuse to deeds
The book , touches on many aspects of science and humanities , even to the mystical ones and reveals the pain that Steiner went through to gain this great insight , which is such a trait of him
His views are far from parochial ; He is having an authentic global view and he is never outdated since his classical notions are persisting and remain for generations to come.
May 9, 2018
The style of the book was a bit stuffy (which is funny when you think about the fact that the focus of the book is on the role that the form and structure of language plays in conveying its message). But it lays a finger on the very essence of the unsayable and the manner in which humanity has historically approached it. For any form of language to do so apart from the poetic is stunning. This book made me want to commune with primordial silence.
January 21, 2014
Plenty to argue with here, but the ideas explored in this essay and their easy-going presentation make it engaging enough to generate really pleasurable internal dialogue that doesn't end when one closes the book. The author's interest in both the differences and similarities of making art and doing mathematics was sophisticated enough to be illuminating.
Want to read
May 17, 2017More details here: "George Steiner does not want to be taken for yet another curmudgeonly conservative wanting to return to the past."
January 9, 2009
This is approximately the 14th time I've tried to read this book. The concept is so good. The book is so damn dense.
July 11, 2021
The dichotomy of creation and invention are at the centre of George Steiner's book 'Grammars of Creation. Looking at the rise of invention as opposed to acts of creation Steiner identifies a sense of crisis in Western Culture. He traces this back to the horrors of World War One and the emergence of Dada in 1916. Here is th e beginning of the loss of the meaning of the word.
To look at the significance of this development, Steiner looks at at the history of speech starting with the scriptures and God reflecting on his handiwork. Who is he speaking to? And who is listening? The act of creation has sufficed to explain existence for millenia. And the creative spirit of humanity is, in key areas, what he, has given life meaning. And what we are left with after the questioning of the meaning of words is just empty signs. Or is it?
This brings Steiner to look at the idea of nothingness or the concept of zero in mathematics. The nature of Nothingness, which is presumably what existed before creation, is the subject of the much speculation. Steiner looks at the solitude of the artist and the crowded nature of that solitude. In what sense can an artist be said to be alone? On the other hand, Steiner points out that some Kabbalist theories postulate that God created existence out of a profound sense of loneliness.
Steiner is as ever very quotable. Here are some examples you may enjoy:
- 'The future tense, the ability to discuss possible events on the day after one's funeral or in stellar space a million years hence, looks to be specific to homo sapiens" (7)
- "Myths are replete with motifs which point towards the prolonged opaqueness of the individual self to itself, to the fragility and terror of the borderline to be drawn between the "I" and the other."(13)
- "In the anthropoligy of Levi Strauss, so direct if recalcitrant an heir to Frazer, the domestication of fire makes man "transgress" into culture; it severs him from nature and impels him towards the solitude of history." (15)
- "... Wittgenstein's aphorism: that the facts of the world are not, will never be, "the end of the matter." (19)
The absence of God: "The vacuum he leaves behind, like a wake of ultimate non-existence, has a charge of negativity comparable, in the guise of of a naive imagining, to that of certain "strange" particles energized without mass , in nuclear physics." (35)
- "Being is, inescapably, compromise... In rabbinic exegesis, twenty-six aborted creations are said to precede the one recorded in Genesis." (30-31)
- "Art brings vehement confirmation. At the heart of form lies a sadness, a trace of loss. A carving is the death of a stone." (32)
- "... solutions are beggars compared to the riches of the problem." (134)
- On Rembrandt and Goya "It confirms a decisive aspect of creation: the retention of the world rejected, of the alternate, in the "completed" work." (134).
- "Colours do carry with them associative asnd symbolic symbols... The lunatic logic whereby the Red Guards in Beijing strove to invest all traffic-lights, so as to make of red the colour of victorious forward motion, failed." (142)
- "The modern body, the modern nervous system continue to inhabit and encounter primordial imperatives.Science does tell new stories - those altering "paradigms" - but does not reach very deep into such primordial set er ruminants as love or hatred or death. These remain the object of incessant recurs upon, of tales told before. The shock of great literature is that of the deja vu." (157)
- "... there are four domains, whose possible interrelations And affinities lie at the heart of the study, in which men and women seem to surpass their condition. They are those of music, of poetry and the arts, of speculative metaphysics when it is at the pitch of a Plato, a Spinoza, or a Kant, and of pure mathematics." (184)
- " In respect of impurity, of invasive realism, language is totally vulnerable... The pure mathematics in languageccould only be silence." (188-189)
- "Language is leprosied with cliche, with individual and social hypocrisy, with glib imprecision." (202)
- "Language is true to itself only when it arrives (always inperfectly) to address the "truth-functions" within itself." (225)
- "It is the production and reception of works of art, in the widest sense, which enables us to share in the experiencing of duration, of time unbounded. Without the arts, the human psyche would stand naked in the face of personal extinction." (259)
- "With the decay of a theological, canonic world-order throughout ever-widening areas of Western existence, the informing source, the normative claims of the primacy of language, of its sovereign at-homeness in creation, weakened." (280)
- "On completion and the fragment, not the.monumental, are the pass-words to modernism." (320)
To look at the significance of this development, Steiner looks at at the history of speech starting with the scriptures and God reflecting on his handiwork. Who is he speaking to? And who is listening? The act of creation has sufficed to explain existence for millenia. And the creative spirit of humanity is, in key areas, what he, has given life meaning. And what we are left with after the questioning of the meaning of words is just empty signs. Or is it?
This brings Steiner to look at the idea of nothingness or the concept of zero in mathematics. The nature of Nothingness, which is presumably what existed before creation, is the subject of the much speculation. Steiner looks at the solitude of the artist and the crowded nature of that solitude. In what sense can an artist be said to be alone? On the other hand, Steiner points out that some Kabbalist theories postulate that God created existence out of a profound sense of loneliness.
Steiner is as ever very quotable. Here are some examples you may enjoy:
- 'The future tense, the ability to discuss possible events on the day after one's funeral or in stellar space a million years hence, looks to be specific to homo sapiens" (7)
- "Myths are replete with motifs which point towards the prolonged opaqueness of the individual self to itself, to the fragility and terror of the borderline to be drawn between the "I" and the other."(13)
- "In the anthropoligy of Levi Strauss, so direct if recalcitrant an heir to Frazer, the domestication of fire makes man "transgress" into culture; it severs him from nature and impels him towards the solitude of history." (15)
- "... Wittgenstein's aphorism: that the facts of the world are not, will never be, "the end of the matter." (19)
The absence of God: "The vacuum he leaves behind, like a wake of ultimate non-existence, has a charge of negativity comparable, in the guise of of a naive imagining, to that of certain "strange" particles energized without mass , in nuclear physics." (35)
- "Being is, inescapably, compromise... In rabbinic exegesis, twenty-six aborted creations are said to precede the one recorded in Genesis." (30-31)
- "Art brings vehement confirmation. At the heart of form lies a sadness, a trace of loss. A carving is the death of a stone." (32)
- "... solutions are beggars compared to the riches of the problem." (134)
- On Rembrandt and Goya "It confirms a decisive aspect of creation: the retention of the world rejected, of the alternate, in the "completed" work." (134).
- "Colours do carry with them associative asnd symbolic symbols... The lunatic logic whereby the Red Guards in Beijing strove to invest all traffic-lights, so as to make of red the colour of victorious forward motion, failed." (142)
- "The modern body, the modern nervous system continue to inhabit and encounter primordial imperatives.Science does tell new stories - those altering "paradigms" - but does not reach very deep into such primordial set er ruminants as love or hatred or death. These remain the object of incessant recurs upon, of tales told before. The shock of great literature is that of the deja vu." (157)
- "... there are four domains, whose possible interrelations And affinities lie at the heart of the study, in which men and women seem to surpass their condition. They are those of music, of poetry and the arts, of speculative metaphysics when it is at the pitch of a Plato, a Spinoza, or a Kant, and of pure mathematics." (184)
- " In respect of impurity, of invasive realism, language is totally vulnerable... The pure mathematics in languageccould only be silence." (188-189)
- "Language is leprosied with cliche, with individual and social hypocrisy, with glib imprecision." (202)
- "Language is true to itself only when it arrives (always inperfectly) to address the "truth-functions" within itself." (225)
- "It is the production and reception of works of art, in the widest sense, which enables us to share in the experiencing of duration, of time unbounded. Without the arts, the human psyche would stand naked in the face of personal extinction." (259)
- "With the decay of a theological, canonic world-order throughout ever-widening areas of Western existence, the informing source, the normative claims of the primacy of language, of its sovereign at-homeness in creation, weakened." (280)
- "On completion and the fragment, not the.monumental, are the pass-words to modernism." (320)
January 11, 2024
Heidegger glimpsed something deep and ancient, but almost completely covered by more than two thousands years of metaphysics. In order to uncover it, he invented and practiced deconstruction. For him, deconstruction was something towards a fundamental and positive end. Derrida, most of the post-war French intellectuals, and the current academics in America are running amok deconstructing left and right – without any goal in sight, not beneath a given mediocrity, and simply because it is fashionable. Nietzsche was partially such a promoter of deconstruction and nihilism - all over the place and just for the fun of it. When compared with Heidegger, Nietzsche's ontology was quite Platonic and mainstream - and thus there was nothing for Nietzsche to uncover.
God, creations, inventions, writings, books, authors, history, time, science, technology, music, paintings, mathematics, solitude, death, and so on - are all deconstructed here. This book is witty and full of facts – but flat and without any depth or purpose. As with Nietzsche, the underlying ontology here is quite mainstream, common-sense, and a matter-of-fact. At the end of this book one just feels more empty and unsecured; not surprisingly since this is the essence of post-modernism.
God, creations, inventions, writings, books, authors, history, time, science, technology, music, paintings, mathematics, solitude, death, and so on - are all deconstructed here. This book is witty and full of facts – but flat and without any depth or purpose. As with Nietzsche, the underlying ontology here is quite mainstream, common-sense, and a matter-of-fact. At the end of this book one just feels more empty and unsecured; not surprisingly since this is the essence of post-modernism.
August 7, 2025
Having only just discovered Steiner, I am pleasantly surprised by this work, which is frequently designated as his magnum opus. Steiner displays a tremendous amount of learning, ranging for knowledge of science and mathematics to literature, art, philosophy and theology. Though I don't think a brief summary can do it justice, his basic insight (as I understand it) is that, by departing from creation and moving toward invention, we have lost sense of a beginning, of a grammar of creation and reduced to emphasis on ending. This emphasis, in large part, spells the shift in our world following the long and crisis laden 20th century. However, Steiner resists the tendency toward nihilistic cynicism, seeing a return to wonder on the horizon. This book is one that would warrant a second reading-and this coming from someone who rarely reads a book twice.
May 29, 2024
É difícil comentar um livro de steiner. Mais um exercício de auto humilhação em que somos expostos a nossa ignorância numa tentativa falhada de acompanhar a reflexão densa de um génio.
Libido sciendi em forma de um mestre que nos deixou uma obra que cada vez faz mais sentido num mundo cada vez mais ignorante.
Libido sciendi em forma de um mestre que nos deixou uma obra que cada vez faz mais sentido num mundo cada vez mais ignorante.
March 12, 2023
Muy bueno, muy intelectual; pero se necesita demasiado bagaje filosófico para comenzar a acercarse a entenderlo. Mejor: la historia de la filosofía para su comprensión. Con retazos teológicos. En fin, pudo haber dicho más en menos.
August 4, 2022
Solo me toco leer solo el primer capitulo, medio mamon pero bastante filosofico.
Read
February 18, 2023MECLAP stuff
September 17, 2019
Imagine a book beginning with "we have no more beginnings": captivating from the very first sentence. Of course his knowledge of the classics borders on the pedantic, a bit of a show-off. But the multitude of insightful observations more than compensate for it.
For instance: Steiner shows that true creation requires absolute freedom. He illustrates the differences between invention, creation and exploration. He enlightened me with the fact that fictional characters, like Hamlet, Madame Bovary, Don Juan or Natasha, are having an eternal life, far more interesting then the characters of real people we meet in a train.
Steiner addresses several paradoxes associated with "creation", including the question if mathematics is "real" or "invented".
A must-read for everybody working in innovation, creation and art.
For instance: Steiner shows that true creation requires absolute freedom. He illustrates the differences between invention, creation and exploration. He enlightened me with the fact that fictional characters, like Hamlet, Madame Bovary, Don Juan or Natasha, are having an eternal life, far more interesting then the characters of real people we meet in a train.
Steiner addresses several paradoxes associated with "creation", including the question if mathematics is "real" or "invented".
A must-read for everybody working in innovation, creation and art.
December 4, 2011
George Steiner refuses to play along with the academic/linguist community, which can make him fun to read. I actually only made it partway through this book, but I've decided to return it to the shelf for now.
Very useful for thinking of language in a new way. Not as useful for writing a senior thesis on Latin translation.
Very useful for thinking of language in a new way. Not as useful for writing a senior thesis on Latin translation.
September 5, 2011
A good book with one point taken off for a discussion of "the Net in 1998" that hasn't aged well. Also be ready to google translate about a dozen block quotes from German, French, and Italian.
February 16, 2013
factual mistakes, superfical and misrepresenting some authors & their works.
July 7, 2016
Very dense but still one of the greatest books I have ever read. Steiner discusses the act of creation and its relation with human nature with deepness and seemingly genuine curiosity.
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