What do you think?
Rate this book
Un lector
Una brillante y personal selección de los textos fundamentales de una de las grandes mentes de la cultura europea del siglo XX. «Sus libros son piezas esenciales para comprender el puzle de la contemporaneidad y los viajes de ida y vuelta en el ámbito del pensamiento humanístico desde la óptica del intelectual europeo. Leer a Steiner es comprender los vínculos entre la historia y la cultura sin excepción, a través de una escritura precisa y contundente, irónica a veces». ANTONIO LUCAS, El Mundo «Si se me permite la expresión, Steiner es una máquina de hacer pensar, un formidable mecanismo para estimular la opinión y el pensamiento de sus lectores». MANUEL HIDALGO, El Cultural «George Steiner encarna el gran humanismo que se marchita. Es el último europeo». BORJA HERMOSO, Babelia, El País «George Steiner recoge sus brillantísimas ideas de todas partes y nada se le pasa por alto». Así retrataba The New York Times Book Review al siempre incisivo y provocador crítico de la literatura, el lenguaje y la cultura, una figura de incomparable envergadura intelectual que se cuenta sin duda alguna entre las más privilegiadas mentes de la historia europea del siglo XX. Este libro ofrece una amplia panorámica de sus ideas a través de una variada y apasionante selección de pasajes de sus obras seminales: La muerte de la tragedia, Después de Babel, Lenguaje y silencio... Una completa y personal antología que ofrece una retrospectiva de su trayectoria como lector, escritor y pensador. Y ya sea sobre la teoría literaria marxista, el verdadero significado de Tolstói o los problemas derivados de emplear el material sexual en las novelas, su ágil y astuta mirada nos proporciona en todo momento un inigualable placer como lectores.
512 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1984
14 people are currently reading
479 people want to read
About the author
George Steiner
186 books561 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 5, 2021
The poet enters into silence. Here the word borders not on radiance or music, but on night.
While haunting and effective, I wasn’t moved by A Reader comparable terms to my recent encounter with Steiner. The compilation nature of the text mitigated any sustained result and I did find myself considering previous sections when immersed into a theme quite remote. That is a likely testament to the breadth of Steiner’s erudition. The pieces on Racine, Anthony Blunt and Heidegger proved the most effective. I found the selections from his book on Dostoevsky and Tolstoy intriguing but hardly heraldic. The same for the maneuvers around Flaubert and Thomas Mann. There were corners where I couldn’t manage to linger: it didn’t feel comforting to ponder Steiner parsing pornography.
The concluding sections on the historical challenges to literary and cultural employed similar angles of argument that he had used previously. Spending five hours at a Subaru service center allowed me the chance to finish this book today but I wouldn’t wish such on anyone.
While haunting and effective, I wasn’t moved by A Reader comparable terms to my recent encounter with Steiner. The compilation nature of the text mitigated any sustained result and I did find myself considering previous sections when immersed into a theme quite remote. That is a likely testament to the breadth of Steiner’s erudition. The pieces on Racine, Anthony Blunt and Heidegger proved the most effective. I found the selections from his book on Dostoevsky and Tolstoy intriguing but hardly heraldic. The same for the maneuvers around Flaubert and Thomas Mann. There were corners where I couldn’t manage to linger: it didn’t feel comforting to ponder Steiner parsing pornography.
The concluding sections on the historical challenges to literary and cultural employed similar angles of argument that he had used previously. Spending five hours at a Subaru service center allowed me the chance to finish this book today but I wouldn’t wish such on anyone.
February 10, 2017
Everything Steiner writes is, at least, worth reading, and some -- "The Hollow Miracle" and "Nineteenth-Century America and Russia" -- are essential. In "The Hollow Miracle" Steiner outlines how the German language was so thoroughly degraded by the Nazi party that he blames the language, partly, for the Holocaust:, or, as he calls it, "the unspeakable being said, over and over, for twelve years."
February 23, 2023
"The man who first lied was the inventor of literature".---George Steiner
George Steiner was an Enfant Terrible and agent provocateur, polymath and polyglot at the same time. Critic, novelist, philosopher and academic outlaw. The STEINER READER is the collection of an aging wise guy who wishes to taunt us by reviewing a life filled with outraging the commoner and common sense. Take his musings on post-war Germany, "The Hollow Miracle": "The Nazis invented a new German language". I once tried out this thesis on a German female colleague who specializes in Russian history, and she replied "So did Stalin". I demurred, but did not press the issue further. You see, Steiner could ignite controversy between a Cuban and a German over the politics of language. Or, strap yourself in for "Notes on Post-Culture", which is most famous for asking the rhetorical question "Is poetry possible after Auschwitz?" and muses on the metaphysical legacy of fascism: "For mankind the loss of a belief in hell may have had more sinister consequences than the loss of a belief in heaven. For, while the Communists proved you could not construct a heaven on earth the Nazis did prove it was possible to build hell on earth". For George, a Franco-German-American Jewish atheist, the only poetry, theater, or novel possible after the Holocaust was in the language of silence, hence the apotheosis of Samuel Beckett in many of these essays on language. Or else, as in Celine or Steiner's own novel THE PASSAGE TO SAN CRISTOBAL OF A.H., literature is a road that leads nowhere and closings are an illusion, and lethal ones at that. If Steiner is not as well-known as Susan Sontag or Harold Bloom, who took on similar tasks, it may be due to his aversion to both politics and publicity. Still, not to read Steiner is to miss out on some of the highest intellectual mountains of the last century and the current.
George Steiner was an Enfant Terrible and agent provocateur, polymath and polyglot at the same time. Critic, novelist, philosopher and academic outlaw. The STEINER READER is the collection of an aging wise guy who wishes to taunt us by reviewing a life filled with outraging the commoner and common sense. Take his musings on post-war Germany, "The Hollow Miracle": "The Nazis invented a new German language". I once tried out this thesis on a German female colleague who specializes in Russian history, and she replied "So did Stalin". I demurred, but did not press the issue further. You see, Steiner could ignite controversy between a Cuban and a German over the politics of language. Or, strap yourself in for "Notes on Post-Culture", which is most famous for asking the rhetorical question "Is poetry possible after Auschwitz?" and muses on the metaphysical legacy of fascism: "For mankind the loss of a belief in hell may have had more sinister consequences than the loss of a belief in heaven. For, while the Communists proved you could not construct a heaven on earth the Nazis did prove it was possible to build hell on earth". For George, a Franco-German-American Jewish atheist, the only poetry, theater, or novel possible after the Holocaust was in the language of silence, hence the apotheosis of Samuel Beckett in many of these essays on language. Or else, as in Celine or Steiner's own novel THE PASSAGE TO SAN CRISTOBAL OF A.H., literature is a road that leads nowhere and closings are an illusion, and lethal ones at that. If Steiner is not as well-known as Susan Sontag or Harold Bloom, who took on similar tasks, it may be due to his aversion to both politics and publicity. Still, not to read Steiner is to miss out on some of the highest intellectual mountains of the last century and the current.
December 18, 2014
Uma obra prima de um do maiores pensadores contemporâneos, pouco há a dizer dos livros de Steiner mas muito a aprender!
Read
May 25, 2010nothing
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews