George Steiner
George Steiner | |
---|---|
Born | Francis George Steiner April 23, 1929 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France |
Died | February 3, 2020 Cambridge, England | (aged 90)
Occupation |
|
Nationality | French, American |
Education | DPhil) |
Period | 1960–2020 |
Genre | History, literature, literary fiction |
Notable works | After Babel (1975) |
Notable awards | Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award (1998) |
Spouse | [1] |
Children | 2 |
Francis George Steiner,[2] FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020)[3][4] was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator.[5] He wrote extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, as well as the impact of the Holocaust.[6] A 2001 article in The Guardian described Steiner as a "polyglot and polymath".[7]
Among his admirers, Steiner is ranked "among the great minds in today's literary world".[3] English novelist A. S. Byatt described him as a "late, late, late Renaissance man ... a European metaphysician with an instinct for the driving ideas of our time".[7] Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature director of the British Council, described him as a "magnificent lecturer – prophetic and doom-laden [who would] turn up with half a page of scribbled notes, and never refer to them".[7]
Steiner was Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the University of Geneva (1974–94), Professor of Comparative Literature and Fellow in the University of Oxford (1994–95), Professor of Poetry in Harvard University (2001–02) and an Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.[2]
Early life
George Steiner was born in 1929 in
Five years before Steiner's birth, his father had moved his family from Austria to France to escape the growing threat of
When he was six years old, his father, who believed in the importance of classical education, taught him to read the Iliad in the original Greek.[7][10][11] His mother, for whom "self-pity was nauseating",[7] helped Steiner overcome a handicap he had been born with, a withered right arm. Instead of allowing him to become left-handed, she insisted he use his right hand as an able-bodied person would.[7]
Steiner's first formal education took place at the
After high school, Steiner went to the University of Chicago, where he studied literature as well as mathematics and physics, and obtained a BA degree in 1948. This was followed by an MA degree from Harvard University in 1950. He then attended Balliol College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship.[4]
After his
Career
In 1956 Steiner returned to the United States, where for two years he was a scholar at the
After several years as a freelance writer and occasional lecturer, Steiner accepted the post of Professor of English and
Steiner was called "an intelligent and intellectual critic and essayist."[3] He was active on undergraduate publications while at the University of Chicago and later became a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many journals and newspapers including The Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. He wrote for The New Yorker for over thirty years, contributing over two hundred reviews.[17]
While Steiner generally took things very seriously, he also revealed an unexpected deadpan humor: when he was once asked if he had ever read anything trivial as a child, he replied, Moby-Dick.[7]
Views
Steiner was regarded as a polymath and is often credited with having recast the role of the critic by having explored art and thought unbounded by national frontiers or academic disciplines. He advocated generalisation over specialisation, and insisted that the notion of being literate must encompass knowledge of both arts and sciences. Steiner believed that nationalism is too inherently violent to satisfy the moral prerogative of Judaism, having said "that because of what we are, there are things we can't do."[7]
Among Steiner's non-traditional views, in his autobiography titled Errata (1997), Steiner related his sympathetic stance towards the use of brothels since his college years at the University of Chicago. As Steiner stated, "My virginity offended Alfie (his college room-mate). He found it ostentatious and vaguely corrupt in a nineteen-year-old... He sniffed the fear in me with disdain. And marched me off to Cicero, Illinois, a town justly ill famed but, by virtue of its name, reassuring to me. There he organized, with casual authority, an initiation as thorough as it was gentle. It is this unlikely gentleness, the caring under circumstances so outwardly crass, that blesses me still."[18]
Central to Steiner's thinking, he stated, "is my astonishment, naïve as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to love, to build, to forgive, and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate."[17]
Steiner received criticism and support[19][20] for his views that racism is inherent in everyone and that tolerance is only skin deep. He is reported to have said: "It's very easy to sit here, in this room, and say 'racism is horrible'. But ask me the same thing if a Jamaican family moved next door with six children and they play reggae and rock music all day. Or if an estate agent comes to my house and tells me that because a Jamaican family has moved next door the value of my property has fallen through the floor. Ask me then!"[19]
Works
Steiner's literary career spanned half a century. He published original essays and books that address the anomalies of contemporary Western culture, issues of language and its "debasement" in the post-Holocaust age.[7][21] His field was primarily comparative literature, and his work as a critic tended toward exploring cultural and philosophical issues, particularly dealing with translation and the nature of language and literature.[22]
Steiner's first published book was Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast (1960), which was a study of the different ideas and ideologies of the Russian writers
Works of
No Passion Spent (1996) is a collection of essays on topics as diverse as Kierkegaard, Homer in translation, Biblical texts, and Freud's dream theory. Errata: An Examined Life (1997) is a semi-autobiography,[3] and Grammars of Creation (2001), based on Steiner's 1990 Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Glasgow, explores a range of subjects from cosmology to poetry.[26]
Awards and honors
George Steiner received many honors, including:
- A Rhodes Scholarship (1950)[4]
- A Guggenheim Fellowship (1970/1971)[14]
- French Government (1984)[26]
- The Morton Dauwen Zabel Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters(1989)
- The King Albert Medal by the Belgian Academy Council of Applied Sciences[26]
- An honorary fellow of Balliol College, Oxford (1995)[27]
- The Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award by Stanford University (1998)[21]
- The Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities (2001)[28]
- Fellowship of the British Academy (1998)[3]
- Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts[27]
- Honorary Doctorate of Literature degrees from:
- University of East Anglia (1976)
- University of Leuven(1980)
- Mount Holyoke College (1983)
- Bristol University(1989)
- University of Glasgow (1990)
- University of Liège (1990)
- University of Ulster(1993)
- Durham University (1995)
- University of Salamanca (2002)
- Queen Mary University of London (2006)
- Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna (2006)
- Honoris Causa – Faculty of Letters – University of Lisbon (2009)
He has also won numerous awards for his fiction and poetry, including:
- Remembrance Award (1974) for Language and Silence: Essays 1958–1966.
- PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award (1992) for Proofs and Three Parables.[3]
- PEN/Macmillan Fiction Prize (1993) for Proofs and Three Parables.[3]
- JQ Wingate Prize for Non-Fiction (joint winner with Louise Kehoe and Silvia Rodgers) (1997) for No Passion Spent.
Bibliography
References
- ^ a b Schudel, Matt (February 16, 2020). "Zara Steiner, distinguished scholar of diplomatic history, dies at 91". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 16, 2020.
- ^ a b c d "The Papers of George Steiner". Archivesearch. Retrieved 6 October 2021.
[Steiner] has not used the name Francis since his undergraduate days.
- ^ a b c d e f g Hahn, Daniel. "George Steiner". Contemporary Writers in the UK. Archived from the original on October 1, 2007. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
- ^ a b c d Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher; Grimes, William (February 3, 2020). "George Steiner, Prodigious Literary Critic, Dies at 90". The New York Times. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
- ^ Murphy, Rex. "ERRATA: An Examined Life by George Steiner". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, January 3, 1998. Archived from the original on January 24, 2008. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
- ^ Cheyette, Bryan. "Between Repulsion and Attraction: George Steiner's Post-Holocaust Fiction". Jewish Social Studies. Archived from the original on February 18, 2020. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Jaggi, Maya (March 17, 2001). "George and his dragons". The Guardian. London. Retrieved March 27, 2008.
- ^ a b Steiner, George. "Büchner lives on". The Times Literary Supplement, December 13, 2006. London. Retrieved March 27, 2008.
- ^ a b Edward Hughes, Ben Hutchinson, "George Steiner" in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy (British Academy, 2022), pp. 392–410
- ^ Baker, Kenneth (April 12, 1998). "Steiner's Memoir a Sketchy Mix of Reminiscence and Complaint". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved July 26, 2012.
- ^ "Errata: An Examined Life". University of Chicago Magazine. Retrieved March 27, 2008.
- ^ Cowley, Jason (September 22, 1997). "A traveller in the realm of the mind". The Times. Archived from the original on August 11, 2007. Retrieved March 27, 2008.
- ISSN 0307-661X. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
- ^ a b Homberger, Eric (February 5, 2020). "George Steiner obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
- ^ "The Weidenfeld Chair in Comparative European Literature". St Anne's College, Oxford. Archived from the original on December 30, 2013. Retrieved December 28, 2013.
- The Harvard Gazette. March 15, 2001. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
- ^ a b "Grammars of Creation" (PDF). National Adult Literacy Database. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 13, 2007. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
- ^ Steiner, George (1997). Errata, Yale University Press, 1997, pp. 43–44.
- ^ a b Simpson, Aislinn; Salter, Jessica (August 11, 2008). "Cambridge academic says he would not tolerate Jamaican neighbours". The Daily Telegraph. London.
- ^ Johns, Lindsay (September 3, 2008). "Out of touch, but not a racist". The Guardian. London.
- ^ a b "Literary Critic George Steiner wins Truman Capote Award". Stanford Online Report. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
- OCLC 892798474.
- ISBN 978-1-4438-8304-7.
- ^ "November News 2005". Paris Transatlantic. November 2005. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
- ^ Rosenbaum, Ron (March 17, 2002). "Mirroring Evil? No, Mirroring Art Theory". The New York Observer. Retrieved February 28, 2008.
- ^ a b c "The Gifford Lectures: George Steiner". www.giffordlectures.org. 18 August 2014. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
- ^ a b "Professor George Steiner, 23 April 1929 – 3 February 2020". Churchill College Cambridge. February 4, 2020. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
- ^ "George Steiner". Prince of Asturias Awards. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved April 8, 2008.
Sources
- Averil Condren, Papers of George Steiner, Churchill Archives Centre, 2001
- The Harvard Gazette (27.09.01)
External links
- Ronald A. Sharp (Winter 1995). "George Steiner, The Art of Criticism No. 2". The Paris Review. Winter 1995 (137).
- George Steiner at ContemporaryWriters.com.
- George and his dragons. The Guardian, March 17, 2001.
- A traveller in the realm of the mind. Interview with George Steiner, The Times, September 22, 1997.
- Grammars of Creation. Full text of Steiner's 2001 lecture.
- "Between Repulsion and Attraction: George Steiner's Post-Holocaust Fiction" Archived 2020-02-18 at the Wayback Machine. Jewish Social Studies, 1999.
- "George Steiner's Jewish Problem". Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation.
- George Steiner at IMDb
- (in French) About George Steiner, by Juan Asensio, L'Harmattan, 2001
- George Steiner bibliography. Fantastic Fiction
- George Steiner in Literal – features an essay by Steiner
- Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 23rd July 2007 (video)
- Audio: George Steiner in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum.
- Biography and summary of Gifford Lectures by Dr Brannon Hancock
- The Rest is Silence: On George Steiner,1929–2020. Ben Hutchinson, Times Literary Supplement, 2020 [1]
- The Papers of George Steiner held at Churchill Archives Centre