Extraterritorialité: Essais sur la littérature et la révolution du langage

by George Steiner

Pour la première fois, George Steiner aborde ce que la pensée moderne doit à la "révolution du langage" amorcée au début du XXè siècle. Il montre comment les recherches linguistiques et biologiques modernes donnent de nouveaux éléments pour penser ce qu'il appellera bien plus tard les "grammaires de la création".
Se dessine aussi un Steiner plus personnel, apatride issu d'une famille de Juifs allemands réfugiés en France, puis à New York et en Angleterre. Plus frontalement encore que dans son autobiographie, il s'interroge sur son statut extraterritorial en évoquant quelques figures de proue de la littérature moderne : Beckett, Nabokov, Borges, qui tous trois ont écrit dans une "langue qui n'était pas la leur".
Dans un autre volet, il livre une méditation sur les rapports du mal et de la littérature, ferraille avec Sartre, affirmant qu'on ne saurait écrire un bon roman à la gloire de l'antisémitisme. C'est aussi pour lui l'occasion de s'interroger sur l'art de lire, sur sur la postculture et l'avenir du livre.
Traduit en français trente ans après sa publication en langue anglaise. Extraterritorialité marque un tournant essentiel dans l'oeuvre de Steiner.

Philosophe du langage, critique littéraire et romancier, né en 1929 à Paris, George Steiner a enseigné à Princeton et a été professeur de littérature anglaise et de littérature comparée à Genève. Invité dans les universités du monde entier (même en Chine populaire!), il est professeur honoraire à Cambridge. Errata , son autobiographie récemment rééditée en Folio, a reçu en 1998 le prix Aujourd'hui.
Traduit en France trente ans après sa publication en langue anglaise, un tournant dans l'oeuvre de Steiner. Tous ses livres ultérieurs y sont en germe.
Un plaisir évident de lecture, agrémenté par une richesse de références à la littérature classique et universelle, qui fait de chaque livre de Steiner une fête de l'intelligence.

Genres: Philosophy, Criticism

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

George Steiner was a French and American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator whose work explored the relationship between language, literature, and society, with a particular focus on the moral and cultural consequences of the Holocaust. Multilingual from an early age, Steiner grew up speaking German, English, and French, and studied the classics under his father, while overcoming a physical handicap with his mother’s encouragement. His family relocated to the United States during World War II, an experience that shaped his lifelong reflections on survival, morality, and human cruelty. He studied literature, mathematics, and physics at the University of Chicago, earned an MA at Harvard, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Steiner held academic posts across Europe and the United States, including Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva, Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative European Literature at Oxford, and Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard, teaching in multiple languages. A prolific writer, he produced influential works in criticism, translation studies, and fiction, including Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, The Death of Tragedy, After Babel, and The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., blending historical insight with philosophical reflection. His essays and books explored the power and ambivalence of human language, the ethical responsibilities of literature, and the persistence of anti-Semitism, while his fiction offered imaginative examinations of moral and historical dilemmas. Steiner was celebrated for his intellectual breadth and lecturing style, described as prophetic, charismatic, and sometimes doom-laden, and he contributed extensively to journals such as The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and The New Yorker. He was married to Zara Steiner, with whom he had two children, David and Deborah, both of whom pursued academic and public service careers. Steiner’s work remains widely respected for its integration of rigorous scholarship, ethical inquiry, and literary sensitivity, marking him as one of the foremost thinkers in twentieth-century literature and comparative studies.

Reviews

[Ricardo Cabrita · Rating 5 out of 5]

The powerful and far-reaching insight of this collection of essays is astounding and what's more, delivered in genius prose. After reading this, besides dumbfounded, I am all the more convinced (despite the current and deceptively vicious push for STEM) that there is no greater emergency in education than the need for profound literacy.

[Theodoros Vassiliadis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steiner in the usual leitmotif , straining to offer an ample exegesis to the baffling consciousness riddle.
A worked dissertation in tandem to chomskian theory vis a vis Skinner's behaviourism.
A row of essays for the role of literature of explaining the world with targeted references.
Steiner tries to play the role of the panopticon in order to draw results and avoid any eminent debacle for the physiognomy of arts in life

[Sergio · Rating 4 out of 5]

A través del dominio de una lengua, un desarraigado puede sentirse como en casa en distintos lugares.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll admit that Steiner runs circles around me. His reading range was immense and his grasp of the significance of the authors is what kept me reading.

I especially liked his essays on Borges.

[Erwin Maack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um escritor que o leva adiante pegando-o pela mão descortinando os mais variados ambientes de forma surpreendente. Muitas vezes o lugar está escuro e você descendo degrau por degrau cuidadosamente, se vê diante de um desafio de descer mais de um degrau, dois ou três, sem ver nada à sua frente e ainda assim, confiante no autor, dá o seu salto no escuro. Não seria demasiado chamá-lo de "encorajador". Ele vai esclarecendo pouco a pouco o tamanho do nosso desconhecimento. Do desconhecimento e ignorância própria do Homem. Para mim fica esta impressão de iluminação. Ele é um verdadeiro polímata. Não é um texto fácil, porém é um texto que vale cada palavra bem como o esforço do leitor. Ele ensina a ler e a escrever; estes ensaios têm o efeito de um microscópio, ou segundo o caso, de um telescópio porque através deles outra perspectiva se abre. E aquela escuridão inicial finalmente se ilumina. O livro não o liberta depois da leitura, ele fica criando sinapses em seu cérebro.

[LuciAna Mestanza · Rating 5 out of 5]

About the book and about the idea of “Extraterritoriality”:

In the book called "Extraterritorial", author George Steiner explains the implications to which this term is subject. This word, used mainly in literature, has acquired relevant importance in the field of the challenge of freedom.

I see the idea of extraterritoriality -migration-, as a translation for himself or herself -humans- through a process of subjectivation, facing in his or her path, lots of steps, many of them dangerous and risky.

The “extraterritoriality” concept implies openness, empathy and solidarity.

L.

[Francisco Luiz Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Livro que li em 1992 e relei agora com o mesmo prazer e entusiasmo.