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George Steiner (1) (1929–2020)

Author of After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

For other authors named George Steiner, see the disambiguation page.

85+ Works 6,562 Members 62 Reviews 20 Favorited

About the Author

George Steiner was born in 1929 in Paris, but also lived in Vienna and New York. Steiner was a critic, novelist, philosopher, translator, and educator. Currently, he is a professor at Cambridge University and the University of Geneva. He has written for the New Yorker for over thirty years and has show more published the books No Passion Spent, Errata: An Examined Life, and Martin Heidegger: With a New Introduction. George Steiner died in Cambridge, England on February 3, 2020, at the age of 90. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: By TheNexusInstitute (youtube) - George Steiner - The Humanities Don't Humanize (at 3min 43s), CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43136163

Series

Works by George Steiner

Real Presences (1989) 528 copies
Heidegger (1978) — Author — 400 copies
Grammars of Creation (2001) 377 copies
Errata: An Examined Life (1997) — Author — 328 copies
The Death of Tragedy (1961) 255 copies
Lessons of the Masters (2003) 215 copies
My Unwritten Books (2008) 204 copies
Nostalgia for the Absolute (1974) 168 copies
The Idea of Europe: An Essay (2004) 121 copies
George Steiner: A Reader (1984) 97 copies
Proofs and Three Parables (1992) 91 copies
Homer: A Collection of Critical Essays (1961) — Editor — 78 copies
Anno Domini (1964) 65 copies
Le silence des livres (2006) 62 copies
The Penguin book of modern verse translation (1966) — Editor — 57 copies
Fragments (un peu roussis) (2012) 34 copies
La Barbarie de l'ignorance (1998) 25 copies
Entretiens (1992) 23 copies
Maîtres et disciples (2003) 16 copies
De la Bible à Kafka (2002) 11 copies
Œuvres (2013) 8 copies
Recordar el futur (1900) 5 copies
Sinn und Form 6/2012 (2012) 3 copies
Universitas? 3 copies
Le sens du sens (1980) 3 copies
Språkdyret 1 copy
Passions impunies (1997) 1 copy
Inner lights 1 copy

Associated Works

The Trial (1925) — Introduction, some editions — 19,772 copies
Notes from Underground (1864) — Foreword, some editions — 12,444 copies
The Symposium (0360) — Preface, some editions — 6,472 copies
A Clockwork Orange [Norton Critical Edition] (2010) — Contributor — 914 copies
Anna Karenina [Norton Critical Edition, 2nd ed.] (1995) — Contributor — 229 copies
McLuhan, Hot & Cool (1967) — Contributor — 156 copies
Granta 28: Birthday: The Anniversary Issue (1989) — Contributor — 150 copies
Granta 30: New Europe (1990) — Contributor — 145 copies
Granta 58: Ambition (1997) — Contributor — 144 copies
The Cambridge Companion to Homer (2004) — Contributor — 139 copies
Anna Karenina [Norton Critical Edition, 1st ed.] (1970) — Contributor — 134 copies
The Best American Essays 2016 (2016) — Contributor — 133 copies
The Big New Yorker Book of Cats (2013) — Contributor — 131 copies
Granta 36: Vargas Llosa for President (1991) — Contributor — 126 copies
Granta 15: The Fall of Saigon (1985) — Contributor — 97 copies
Granta 18: The Snap Revolution (1986) — Contributor — 90 copies
Homer in English (Poets in Translation, Penguin) (1996) — Translator — 78 copies
A Voyage Round the World (1777) — Editor, some editions — 68 copies
Max Stirner: The Ego and His Own (1971) — Preface — 30 copies
The Best Spiritual Writing 2012 (2011) — Contributor — 27 copies
Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond (1996) — Contributor — 21 copies
Entendre el món: amb onze pensadors contemporanis (2015) — Contributor — 20 copies
The Return of Thematic Criticism (1993) — Contributor — 10 copies
The New Salmagundi Reader (1996) — Contributor — 3 copies
Lezen, een kunst die uit de mode raakt — Author, some editions — 1 copy

Tagged

19th century (232) Ancient Greece (104) ancient philosophy (95) anthology (66) classic (268) classics (555) criticism (128) ebook (87) essay (169) essays (384) existentialism (241) fiction (1,304) Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) (64) Granta (138) Greece (98) Greek (177) Greek literature (74) Greek philosophy (86) history (89) Kindle (87) language (163) linguistics (83) literary criticism (426) literary theory (57) literature (689) love (106) non-fiction (394) novel (257) own (70) philosophy (1,956) Plato (217) poetry (76) read (206) Russia (331) Russian (418) Russian literature (583) short stories (103) to-read (1,105) translation (199) unread (117)

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Steiner, George
Legal name
Steiner, George Francis
Other names
STEINER, George Francis
STEINER, George
Birthdate
1929-04-23
Date of death
2020-02-03
Gender
male
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Neuilly sur Seine, France
Place of death
Cambridge, Engeland, Groot-Brittannië
Places of residence
New York, New York, USA
Geneva, Switzerland
Cambridge, England, UK
Education
Lycée Français de New York
University of Chicago (BA|1948)
Harvard University (MA|1950)
University of Oxford (Balliol College)
Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, Paris, France
Occupations
professor of English and Comparative Literature
literary critic
novelist
translator
essayist
Relationships
Steiner, Zara Shakow (wife)
Steiner, Deborah Tarn (daughter)
Organizations
University of Oxford
Harvard University
University of Geneva
University of Cambridge (Churchill College)
The Economist
Awards and honors
Premio Príncipe de Asturias (Communications and Humanities, 2001)
Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (1984)
Fellow, British Academy (1998)
Zabel Award (1970)
Truman Capote Lifetime Award for Literature (1999)
King Albert Medal (show all 9)
Rhodes Scholar (1955)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1971)
Bell Prize (1950)
Short biography
Son of Dr Frederick George and Mrs Else Steiner, George Steiner was raised trilingually, in German, English and French. His first formal education took place at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris and then at the Lycée Français de New York after the family moved to the United States in 1940. In his Memoirs, Steiner recalled being hit by a piece of chalk in the face by a teacher at the Lycée. His field is comparative literature. His work as a critic has tended toward exploring cultural and philosophical issues, particularly having to do with translation and the nature of language and of literature. Steiner's best-known book, After Babel (1975), was an early and influential contribution to the field of translation studies.

Members

Reviews

Weakest when discussing actual translations, which might be a fatal flaw, but really this was quite interesting.
 
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audient_void | 9 other reviews | Jan 6, 2024 |
George Steiner's classic study of the peculiar nature of translation as a literary and linguistic process, which drags you through some fairly knotty thickets of the philosophy of language before opening up in the last couple of chapters into a string of brilliant case-studies.

We get to think about why there are different languages in the first place, and about how — since the meaning of words shifts between contexts, times and individuals — any reading of a text anywhere is going to involve some kind of translation. And we get to confront the paradox that whilst an "exact" 1:1 translation between different languages, even of the most trivial phrase, is clearly impossible, we still use translations every day and find them helpful. Even the most complex and baffling literary texts have been translated in ways that seem to serve a useful purpose for readers and scholars.

This is something of a literary steeple-chase, where we are expected to cope with references from a broad range of literature, linguistics, philosophy and other disciplines (in numerous different languages). At one point we leap straight from a detailed discussion of prophecy in the Old Testament to a (non-trivial) excursion into statistical thermodynamics and the Second Law. So you will need that parachute. But it is fun, and when we get to the case-studies of how literary translation is actually done it is also very useful.
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thorold | 9 other reviews | Apr 12, 2023 |
George Steiner’s comparative study of the two giants of Russian literature, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, is subtitled “An Essay in the Old Criticism.” When it appeared in 1959, the “New Criticism” movement held the field in literary studies, so Steiner’s subtitle is programmatic. It should not be understood, however, as rejecting the insights of the New, which devoted attention to the text itself. Indeed, Steiner studied with some of the best practitioners of it. Instead, Steiner’s concern is that the approach was too narrow, especially when applied to forms such as the novel or drama. He turned out to be a harbinger.
Not only do novels generally profit from the broader context Steiner espouses, but the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which present a particular problem, especially so. If the novels of Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—-from Samuel Richardson to Henry James—are taken as defining the form, then the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are outliers. They sprawl and present semi-digested blocks of philosophy (some New World writers—Poe, Hawthorne, and especially Melville—present a similar problem).
Part of the problem is formal. Both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky incorporated earlier literary forms in their work—forms said to be played out in their day and superseded by the novel. Tolstoy’s model was the epic poem; his point of reference—one could even say his peer—was Homer. Dostoevsky’s was tragic drama. His pole star was Shakespeare. It is remarkable, given their length, how much his books focus on dialogue and action.
But the oddity of these books is not only a matter of form. As Steiner sees it, the heart of the “problem” with these novels is that the Western novel is secular, concerned with this world alone, while Tolstoy and Dostoevsky spent their lives grappling with God. This concern unites and divides the two authors, for as Steiner demonstrates if the God of Tolstoy and the God of Dostoevsky were to meet, they probably wouldn’t get along.
Steiner’s book is divided into four long chapters. This may seem daunting, but the chapters are subdivided into sections. I read one section at a time and could follow the argument. The first chapter, the briefest, situates Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the European literary tradition. The second offers a close reading of Tolstoy, arguing for the greatness of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and his other works. The third does the same for Dostoevsky. Chapter Four is the payoff, devoted to the interplay of art and mythology in both authors. In an imaginative foray, Steiner recasts the poem of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov as a dialogue between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He admits that Dostoevsky could not have known the points of contact between the philosophies of the Grand Inquisitor and Tolstoy since many of them were expressed in private notes and remained unpublished until after Tolstoy’s death, yet Steiner’s treatment illuminates. The final section builds on this and touches on the paradoxical posthumous fate of the two authors. Tolstoy, the landed patrician, was lauded in post-revolutionary Russia as a precursor of the new order. Dostoevsky, by contrast, though initially acclaimed for his grim portrayal of life in Tsarist Russia, quickly fell out of favor. Meanwhile, he was more influential than Tolstoy in the West as one of the giants of existential thought. Gide, Camus, and others acknowledged their debt to him.
George Steiner was the product of a world that no longer exists. It could be summed up by his self-identification as Middle European, although academically, his training was in Paris, Oxbridge, and the United States. He was thus uniquely fitted to appreciate the best of what the New Criticism had to offer, yet knew the value of the historical-philological work that it sought to displace. The result here is a valuable book that is both erudite and humane. Highly recommended, although no substitute for deep reading of Anna Karenina, The Idiot, and the other masterpieces he analyzes.
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HenrySt123 | 3 other reviews | Jun 26, 2022 |

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Works
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Rating
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