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Title: In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture by George, Steiner ISBN: 0-300-01710-3 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: August, 1974 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Optimal Steiner
Comment: While reading this book I constantly had to remind myself that it was written in 1970-71, so prescient and prophetic were Steiner's insights. As a study of Western culture, an investigation into where--and what--we are historically and globally, it remains absolutely critical reading. Steiner read right what continue to be the major issues of our time: the generalized suspicions about the irrelevance of "high" culture when projected against 20th century political atrocities; the role of literacy in a progressively visual culture; the increasingly pervasive roles of various forms of music; the emerging pre-eminence of "facts," of a scientific mind-set and of scientific knowledge in general; the ethical and intellectual risks posed by the scientific unknowns--to name but a few themes in this dense, richly thought-out essay.
This is a thin book, unlike "No Passion Spent"; rigorously and earnestly investigatory, unlike "Errata." Ironically I came to this book last, but it is by far the most satisfying. In the former, only one essay, "Archives of Eden," touches on the large cultural questions examined here, and then more in the form of a rant; in the latter, what had by then become Steiner's familiar terrain seemed only to have been re-rehearsed, with no substantive new insights.
But here is Steiner at his least pretentious (he does have a tendency to flaunt his polylingual capacities), at his most profound and probing. It isn't easy reading and isn't intended to be. It has the earmark of a formidable mind investigating its time and space for its own sake, more out of its own curiosity and impulse to understand as of any desire to impress, or advance its host professionally.
Here is Steiner at the same amplitude as an Elias Canetti or a William Irwin Thompson--an encyclopedic generalist discussing broad cultural questions with command, eloquence and erudition.
Rating: 5
Summary: Taking over where Freud left off
Comment: Steiner is certainly absorbed in cultural fracture and decay. For the most part, Steiner is really intent on telling us how bad it really is. Is it really? or Is this Steiner's interpretation of the state of things based on an ontology that demands progress. Steiner takes off from Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (which posits that there is tension between civilization and our natural tendencies), so can Steiner be said to be falling prey to an ontology almost bent on self-destruction. If we are as Freud suggests turning our aggressions inward through the pressure we place on ourselves can Steiner be said to be perpetuating that sense of progress? Steiner although directly telling us we are on the decline, he is not prescriptive. He does not redefine culture as the sub-title suggests. Despite his reacting to Eliot he really, perhaps underhandedly, attempts to redefine the role of culture.
The great question he poses for us to contemplate revolves around the issue of the holocaust. How can such a cultured society - with science, math and art be able to perpetuate such cruelty. When the moral judgment is rendered that the "Other" is inhuman than the machine of "reason" with all its mechanized efficiency is set in motion. Have we really progressed? If progress is really moving "forward" and we should be getting more enlightened - we perpetuate such horrendous atrocities. Which calls to question that once the last door is open and it leads us to the future - are we ready for it? We seem destined to open the door no matter what - ready or not here we come. If Steiner is to prove useful, it will not be in the area of resetting the progress machine in motion but that he stopped us for a few seconds to reconsider the damage we can and are all to willing to perpetuate. Where is our culture now?
In my opinion, Steiner is at his best when he muses over the age of contemporary communication. He reflects on music and science founded on math, which effectively will result in a wordless culture. He examines the widespread deterioration of traditional ideas in literate speech. In "The Great Enuui" he harkens that since the age of Napoleon we do not have meaning, we have slumbered into a death without dying. We are in a state of apathy but we pine for a golden age. I have to admit to reading into Steiner nostalgia for whatever his conception is for a golden age. Reflectively, admittedly and unrepentantly Eurocentric, Steiner falls into the same trap that Nietzsche, Freud and Dostoevsky did by getting stuck in the passion (natural) vs. reason (imposed) dichotomy. Nonetheless, as with all those just mentioned, he is informative in his reflections - almost postmodernist in his deconstruction but unmistakably modernist in his outlook and still naively seeking a sense of progress as if man is on a teleological quest for perfection. In a postmodern world where fissures are exposing the naiveté our most cherished certainties sometimes it is nice to be certain about something. Steiner may want to recall this stuff to presence but fails - nonetheless it is highly informative, very compelling and a necessary read.
Miguel Llora
Rating: 5
Summary: Compelling conjecture.
Comment: A bold reflection about why the West lost her innocence by organizing the Holocaust.
For the author, the motives for the Holocaust lie in the subconscious and more particularly in the psychology of religion.
First, Moses gave us monotheism with an abstract, ruthless, almighty but absent God. Secondly, his son Christ, required in his Sermon of the Mount total self abandonment. Thirdly, there was the Messianic socialism of Marx, Trotski and Bloch.
The West took revenge by exterminating the people who saddled its subconscious with these inhuman utopian dreams.
The West lost her innocence; but how can it react against the committed barbarism: by the stoicism of a Freud, or by the cheerfulness of Nietzsche for the fact that we are only a few moments here on this gruesome planet.
This powerful text forces the reader to a serious reflection. I don't have any clinical psychoanalytical material at my disposal that confirms or denies the author's conjectures. So suggestions for other work in this field are very wellcome.
For me, this book is certainly not the whole truth, as there were among others, resentment for success, the search for a scapegoat for the economic depression or the more than ambivalent attitude of the Catholic Church.
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Title: Lessons of the Masters : by George Steiner ISBN: 0674012070 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Real Presences by George Steiner ISBN: 0226772349 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: April, 1991 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: No Passion Spent: Essays 1978-1995 by George Steiner ISBN: 0300074409 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Grammars of Creation by George Steiner ISBN: 0300097298 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman by George Steiner ISBN: 0300074719 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: January, 1999 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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