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Title: Grammars of Creation by George Steiner ISBN: 0-300-09729-8 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (4 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Not the Steiner's masterpiece
Comment: Basically George Steiner repeat himself : you cant find here what he said in "Real presences" or in "No passion spent" or in "Errata" : for those who never read a book of this author, "Grammars of creation" can be a good introduction to the Steiner's thought.
Rating: 2
Summary: A sea of knowledge, one foot deep
Comment: I admit that there is a certain degree of unfairness in this review, having read only 25 pages of the book; but that's all I needed to become more than suspicious of Steiner's ingenuity. Four examples: 1) Steiner says that historical evidence shows that "inhumanity is perennial", that there have not been "communities of justice". Not being myself an expert in the subject, a minimal acquaintance with the works of Marija Gimbutas or Humberto Maturana (the latter giving not historical but biological evidence of the primordial man living in sharing and colaboration) is enough to discredit that affirmation; 2) Steiner's account of Hope as something exclusively trascendental and relative to the future is poor and superficial: the person who hopes is not only walking 'towards' Eternal Life, but is already walking 'in' Eternal Life, walking the Kingdom; 3) Negative theology is not concerned with the "vacuum [God] leaves behind", but with the vacuum that God actually is; to that vacuum refers John of the Cross when talking of "un entender no entendiendo", "un no se que que quedamos balbuciendo" (an understanding which does not understands, a something which we can nothing but stammer at). God as Silence; the Father of the christian Trinity as that Silence, as Raimon Panikkar insightfully reminded to us. 4) "No religion lacks a creation-myth". That is simply not true. Check, for instance, not just buddhism (which only a very narrow concept of religion would consider it not one) and jainism, but various traditional religions of Africa.
In sum, Steiner's lack of rigour turns out to be unbearable. I could identify some of his misguiding asseverations in certain issues, mainly concerned with religion, as another reviewer did in relation to the field of Mathematics. And that misguidance inevitably leads to distrust and suspicion, feelings that you might expect when reading "Mein Kampf", but not a book with such a beautiful title -reason for the two stars- as "Grammars of Creation".
Rating: 3
Summary: Inventive or Creative
Comment: I enjoy Mr Steiner's writing very much and I also enjoy reading about language and its impact on culture - so there are two basic reasons for my approach to this book. Even when Mr Steiner is not making sense for me - and I'll explain why below - his writing is clear and a pleasure to read (even though he does occasionally use a sentence structure with an inserted phrase that does not read well for me - requires me to read again and try to rephrase in my own mind).
Why does Mr Steiner not make sense sometimes? Well, I suspect that most readers will not have the breadth of knowledge that Mr Steiner draws on in this book. Arguments that appeal to Dante, say, do not convince me because I simply haven't read Dante (yet). By chance, arguments that point to Stravinsky or Schwitters are ones that I can support or challenge. But it is my belief that all readers will only have a subset of Mr Steiner's knowledge and so, more or less, some of the book will not 'make sense' to some readers. But there are areas which Mr Steiner covers and admits less background than he would like - mathematics for example. At one point he suggests that mathematicians are less likely to be 'mad' than other creators, but I would maintain (and perhaps I have a more developed knowledge on mathematics than Mr Steiner - although I hesitate to think this might be possible) that eccentrics like Ramanujan and Erdos (who Mr Steiner does refer to) show all the same extremes as are shown by creators such as van Gogh. Should Mr Steiner not have written of this area - is his scholarship, for once, lacking? Since his main arguments centre on the differences between creation and invention the book would not have been possible without him doing this.
But the most annoying aspect of this work for me was one of editorship. There are so many quotes in foreign languages that I certainly can't read. These are truly without meaning. Even if the timbre of the sounds (and without knowing how to pronounce the words this will never be accurately expressed in the printed word), or the flow of the words - rhythm and shape - were the keys to the quotes, I believe that, as a courtesy to all readers, translations should be provided. Surely it can't be suggested that these quotes are untranslatable?
So what did I get out of the book? I found a valuable discussion on the difference between invention and creation. A wonderful quote "The whispers of shared ecstasy are choral". And another: "If, as Galileo ruled, nature speaks mathematics, far too many of us remain deaf". And a thought provoking discussion on the difference in the life of created works - Schoenberg does not cause us to abandon Monteverdi - Dali does not discount our appreciation of da Vinci - Rushdie does not cause us to no longer want to read Shakespeare. And yet, Einstein in some ways does cause us to overlook Newton (although we do not disregard Newton for all this - and the Newtonian understanding is often adequate to solve problems) - Euclid has been supplanted by later geometers, we would never spend time reading Galen when modern medical texts are more appropriate.
My last comment about this book is also an editorial comment. I would have liked a bibliography to quoted works, both primary sources and secondary ones.
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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: 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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Title: Errata: An Examined Life by George Steiner ISBN: 0300080956 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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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: 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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