George Steiner is a fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Nonfiction
Summer 2012
Fragments (Somewhat Charred)
These aphorismic fragments have turned up on one of the charred scrolls recently unearthed in what is thought to have been a private library in a villa in Herculaneum. Linguistic […]
Nonfiction
Winter 2007
A New Literacy
This essay was originally presented by George Steiner as the Eighth Athenaeum Lecture on 15 September 2005. “A New Literacy” was first published in Great Britain by the Athenacum, Pall […]
Fiction
Winter 2002
At Five in the Afternoon
M. is reputed to be the most dangerous town on earth. The weekly average of homicide runs between twenty and thirty. The blast of a car bomb, the rattle of […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1982
On an Exact Art (Again)
There is an a priori leap which precedes every act of translation; there are assumptions/presumptions, usually unexamined, of “translatability.” We take it that the text in front of us can […]
Contemporary English and Irish Poetry
Summer 1981
Contemporary English and Irish Poetry: An Introduction
No consideration of the tenor of poetry as it is being currently written and/or published in England makes sense if it is divorced from a much larger question. The real […]
Fiction
Spring 1979
The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H.
1 — You. The very old man chewed his lip. — You. Is it really? Shema. In God’s name. Look at you. Look at you now. You. The one out […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1963
Life of Letters
The Collected Letters Of D. H. Lawrence edited by Harry T. Moore. The Viking Press. Two volumes, $17.50. The Letters Of Oscar Wilde edited by Rupert Hart-Davis. Harcourt, Brace and […]
Department KR: A Section of Briefer Comment
Winter 1962
Reply
Mr. Bentley commissioned a translation of Racine. He did not get one. Instead, he received a variation on the theme of Phèdre, a poetic analogue, often brilliant, but rarely concordant […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1961
Two Translations
Phaedra. A new translation of Racine’s Phèdre by Robert Lowell (in a volume also containing Jacques Barzun’s translation of the Figaro of Beaumarchais). Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, $5.00. The Odyssey. […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1961
The Retreat from the Word
The Apostle tells us that in the beginning was the word. He gives us no assurance as to the end. It is appropriate that he should have used the Greek […]
Comment
Autumn 1960
On “The Genius of Robert Graves”
Dear Sirs: That Robert Graves expressed doubts about Mr. Steiner’s ability to get him right and “with vehement protest” corrected the essay which justified his doubts (“The Genius of Robert […]
Nonfiction
Summer 1960
The Genius of Robert Graves
You would recognize him even in a crowd. The sculptured, bronzed profile of one of those Roman emperors about whom he writes so brilliantly; the massive grace of a soldier […]
Nonfiction
Winter 1960
Georg Lukács and His Devil’s Pact
I. In the XXth century it is not easy for an honest man to be a literary critic. There are so many more urgent things to be done. Indeed, criticism […]