George Steiner R.I.P.

[Bella Kemp]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/04/george-steiner-influential-culture-critic-dies-aged-90

His writing means a great deal to me. Some of his writing is impenetrable (to me) but at his best he had a popular style that shed new light on an extraordinary range of literary topics.
I've now begun a re-read of his excellent 'Errata', his wonderful autobiography. Highly commended.

[kernelbogey]

He was a formidable lecturer and one who could really excite you about ideas for their own sake.

[kernelbogey]

Steiner wrote:
We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning. To say that he has read them without understanding or that his ear is gross, is cant. In what way does this knowledge bear on literature and society, on the hope, grown almost axiomatic from the time of Plato to that of Matthew Arnold, that culture is a humanising force, that the energies of spirit are transferable to those of conduct?

(Quoted in the Guardian obituary, link in Bella's post.)

[antongould]

I loved his appearance on Private Passions .........

[Nick Armstrong]

I loved his appearance on Private Passions .........