George Steiner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Steiner

George Steiner George Steiner 2013 (cropped).jpg George Steiner speaking at The Nexus Institute, The Netherlands, 2013 Born Francis George Steiner April 23, 1929 (age 89) Neuilly-sur-Seine, France Occupation Author, essayist, literary critic, professor Nationality French, American Period 1960–present Genre History, literature, literary fiction Notable works After Babel (1975) Notable awards The Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award (1998) Spouse Zara Shakow Steiner Children David, Deborah Francis George Steiner,[1] FBA (born April 23, 1929)[2] is a French-born[3] American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator.[4] He has written extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the impact of the Holocaust.[5] An article in The Guardian described Steiner as a "polyglot and polymath", saying that he is either "often credited with recasting the role of the critic", or a "pretentious namedropper" whose "range comes at the price of inaccuracy" and "complacency".[6]

Among his admirers, Steiner is ranked "among the great minds in today's literary world."[2] English novelist A. S. Byatt described him as a "late, late, late Renaissance man ... a European metaphysician with an instinct for the driving ideas of our time."[6] Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature director of the British Council, described him as a "magnificent lecturer – prophetic and doom-laden [who would] turn up with half a page of scribbled notes, and never refer to them."[6]

Steiner was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva (1974–94), Professor of Comparative Literature and Fellow at the University of Oxford (1994–95) and Professor of Poetry at Harvard University (2001–02).[1]

He lives in Cambridge, England, where he has been Extraordinary Fellow at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge since 1969. He is married to author and historian Zara Shakow Steiner; they have a son, David Steiner (who served as New York State's Commissioner of Education from 2009 to 2011) and a daughter, Deborah Steiner (Professor of Classics at Columbia University).[1]

Biography Early life George Steiner was born in 1929 in Paris, to Viennese Jewish parents Dr Frederick George Steiner and Mrs Else Steiner (née Franzos). He has an elder sister, Ruth Lilian, who was born in Vienna in 1922.[1] Frederick Steiner was a senior lawyer in the Austrian Central Bank, and Else Steiner was a Viennese grande dame.[7]

Five years before George Steiner's birth, his father had moved his family from Austria to France to escape the growing threat of Nazism. He believed that Jews were "endangered guests wherever they went"[6] and equipped his children with languages. Steiner grew up with three mother tongues: German, English, and French; his mother was multilingual and would often "begin a sentence in one language and end it in another."[6]

When he was six years old, his father who believed in the importance of classical education taught him to read the Iliad in the original Greek.[6][8][9] His mother, for whom "self-pity was nauseating",[6] helped Steiner overcome a handicap he had been born with, a withered right arm. Instead of allowing him to become left-handed, she insisted he use his right hand as an able-bodied person would.[6]

Steiner's first formal education took place at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris. In 1940, during World War II, Steiner's father once again relocated his family, this time to New York City. Within a month of their move, the Nazis occupied Paris, and of the many Jewish children in Steiner's class at school, he was one of only two who survived the war.[6] Again his father's insight had saved his family, and this made Steiner feel like a survivor, which profoundly influenced his later writings. "My whole life has been about death, remembering and the Holocaust."[6] Steiner became a "grateful wanderer", saying that "Trees have roots and I have legs; I owe my life to that."[6] He spent the rest of his school years at the Lycée Français de New York in Manhattan, and became a United States citizen in 1944.

Education After high school, Steiner went to the University of Chicago, where he studied literature as well as mathematics and physics, and obtained a BA degree in 1948. This was followed by an MA degree from Harvard University in 1950. He then attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford in England on a Rhodes Scholarship.

After his doctoral thesis at Oxford, a draft of The Death of Tragedy (later published by Faber and Faber) was initially rejected, and so Steiner took time off from his studies to teach English at Williams College and to work as leader writer for the London-based weekly publication The Economist between 1952 and 1956. It was during this time that he met Zara Shakow, a New Yorker of Lithuanian[6] descent. She had also studied at Harvard, and they met in London at the suggestion of their former professors. "The professors had had a bet ... that we would get married if we ever met."[10] They married in 1955, the year he received his DPhil from Oxford University.[6]

Career In 1956 Steiner returned to the United States, where for two years he was a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He also held a Fulbright professorship in Innsbruck, Austria from 1958 to 1959. In 1959, he was appointed Gauss Lecturer at Princeton, where he lectured for another two years. He then became a founding fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge in 1961. Steiner was initially not well received at Cambridge by the English faculty. Many disapproved of this charismatic "firebrand with a foreign accent"[6] and questioned the relevance of the Holocaust he constantly referred to in his lectures. Bryan Cheyette, professor of 20th-century literature at the University of Southampton said that at the time, "Britain [...] didn't think it had a relationship to the Holocaust; its mythology of the war was rooted in the Blitz, Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain."[6] While Steiner received a professorial salary, he was never made a full professor at Cambridge with the right to examine. He had the option of leaving for professorships in the United States, but Steiner's father objected, saying that Hitler, who said no one bearing their name would be left in Europe, would then have won. Steiner remained in England because "I'd do anything rather than face such contempt from my father."[6] He was elected an Extraordinary Fellow at Cambridge in 1969.

After several years as a freelance writer and occasional lecturer, Steiner accepted the post of Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva in 1974; he held this post for 20 years, teaching in four languages. He lived by Goethe's maxim that "no monoglot truly knows his own language."[6] He became Professor Emeritus at Geneva University on his retirement in 1994, and an Honorary Fellow at Balliol College at Oxford University in 1995. He has since held the positions of the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative European Literature and Fellow of St Anne's College at Oxford University from 1994 to 1995,[11] and Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University from 2001 to 2002.

Steiner has been called "an intelligent and intellectual critic and essayist."[2] He was active on undergraduate publications while at the University of Chicago and later become a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many journals and newspapers including the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. He has written for The New Yorker for over thirty years, contributing over two hundred reviews.[12]

While Steiner generally takes things very seriously, he also reveals an unexpected deadpan humor: when he was once asked if he had ever read anything trivial as a child, he replied, Moby-Dick.[6]

Views George Steiner is regarded as a polymath and often credited with recasting the role of the critic by exploring art and thought unbounded by national frontiers or academic disciplines. He advocates generalisation over specialisation, and insists that the notion of being literate must encompass knowledge of both arts and sciences. Steiner believes that nationalism is too inherently violent to satisfy the moral prerogative of Judaism, saying "that because of what we are, there are things we can't do."[6]

Among Steiner's non-traditional views, in his autobiography titled Errata from 1997, Steiner relates his sympathetic stance towards the use of public houses since his college years at the University of Chicago. As Steiner states, "My virginity offended Alfie (his college room-mate). He found it ostentatious and vaguely corrupt in a nineteen-year-old... He sniffed the fear in me with disdain. And marched me off to Cicero, Illinois, a town justly ill famed but, by virtue of its name, reassuring to me. There he organized, with casual authority, an initiation as thorough as it was gentle. It is this unlikely gentleness, the caring under circumstances so outwardly crass, that blesses me still."[13]

Central to Steiner's thinking, he has stated, "is my astonishment, naïve as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to love, to build, to forgive, and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate."[12]

Steiner received criticism and support[14][15] for his views that racism was inherent in everyone and that tolerance was only skin deep. He is reported to have said: "It's very easy to sit here, in this room, and say 'racism is horrible'. But ask me the same thing if a Jamaican family moved next door with six children and they play reggae and rock music all day. Or if an estate agent comes to my house and tells me that because a Jamaican family has moved next door the value of my property has fallen through the floor. Ask me then!"[14]

Works George Steiner's career spans half a century. He has published original essays and books that address the anomalies of contemporary Western culture, issues of language and its "debasement" in the post-Holocaust age.[6][16] His field is primarily comparative literature, and his work as a critic has tended toward exploring cultural and philosophical issues, particularly dealing with translation and the nature of language and literature.

Steiner's first published book was Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast (1960), which was a study of the different ideas and ideologies of the Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Death of Tragedy (1961) originated as his doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford and examined literature from the ancient Greeks to the mid-20th century. His best-known book, After Babel (1975), was an early and influential contribution to the field of translation studies. It was adapted for television in 1977 as The Tongues of Men and was the inspiration behind the creation in 1983 of the English avant-rock group News from Babel.

Several works of literary fiction by Steiner include four short story collections, Anno Domini: Three Stories (1964), Proofs and Three Parables (1992), The Deeps of the Sea (1996), and A cinq heures de l'après-midi (2008); and his controversial[17] novella, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. (1981). Portage to San Cristobal, in which Jewish Nazi hunters find Adolf Hitler (the "A.H." of the novella's title) alive in the Amazon jungle thirty years after the end of World War II, explored ideas about the origins of European anti-semitism first expounded by Steiner in his 1971 critical work In Bluebeard's Castle. Steiner has suggested that Nazism was Europe's revenge on the Jews for inventing conscience.[6] Cheyette sees Steiner's fiction as "an exploratory space where he can think against himself." It "contrasts its humility and openness with his increasingly closed and orthodox critical work." Central to it is the survivor's "terrible, masochistic envy about not being there – having missed the rendezvous with hell".[6]

No Passion Spent (1996) is a collection of essays on topics as diverse as Kierkegaard, Homer in translation, Biblical texts, and Freud's dream theory. Errata: An Examined Life (1997) is a semi-autobiography,[2] and Grammars of Creation (2001), based on Steiner's 1990 Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Glasgow, explores a range of subjects from cosmology to poetry.

Awards and honors George Steiner has received many honors, including:

A Rhodes Scholarship (1950) A Guggenheim Fellowship (1971–72) Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by the French Government (1984) The Morton Dauwen Zaubel Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters (1989) The King Albert Medal by the Belgian Academy Council of Applied Sciences An honorary fellow of Balliol College at the University of Oxford (1995) The Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award by Stanford University (1998)[16] The Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities (2001)[18] Fellowship of the British Academy Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts Honorary Doctorate of Literature degrees from: University of East Anglia (1976) University of Leuven (1980) Mount Holyoke College (1983) Bristol University (1989) University of Glasgow (1990) University of Liège (1990) University of Ulster (1993) Durham University (1995) University of Salamanca (2002) Queen Mary, University of London (2006) Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna (2006) Honoris Causa - Faculty of Letters - University of Lisbon (2009) He has also won numerous awards for his fiction and poetry, including:

Remembrance Award (1974) for Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966. PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award (1992) for Proofs and Three Parables.[2] PEN/Macmillan Fiction Prize (1993) for Proofs and Three Parables.[2] JQ Wingate Prize for Non-Fiction (joint winner with Louise Kehoe and Silvia Rodgers) (1997) for No Passion Spent.

=ג'ורג' סטיינר=

'לידה 23 באפריל 1929 (בן 90) פריז, צרפת עיסוק פילוסוף, מחבר רומנים, מתרגם, מרצה באוניברסיטה, מבקר ספרותי, עיתונאי, סופר, היסטוריון מקום לימודים בייליול קולג' אוניברסיטת הרווארד אוניברסיטת שיקגו תיכון ז'אנסון-דה-סאי בית הספר הצרפתי של ניו יורק מוסדות אוניברסיטת פרינסטון אוניברסיטת הרווארד אוניברסיטת ז'נבה האקונומיסט ויליאמס קולג' פרסים והוקרה אביר בלגיון הכבוד מלגת גוגנהיים פרס נסיך אסטוריאס לתקשורת ולמדעי הרוח (2001) פרס אלפונסו רייס הבינלאומי פרס היום דוקטור לשם כבוד מאוניברסיטת ז'ירונה (2012) דוקטור לשם כבוד מהאוניברסיטה הקתולית של לוון (1980) דוקטור לשם כבוד מאוניברסיטת לייז' (1990) דוקטור לשם כבוד מאוניברסיטת דרהאם (1995) דוקטור לשם כבוד מאוניברסיטת בולוניה (2006) עמית האקדמיה הבריטית עמית החברה המלכותית לספרות פרס לודוויג ברנה (2003) מלגת רודס עריכת הנתון בוויקינתונים בן/בת זוג Zara Steiner עריכת הנתון בוויקינתונים צאצאים David Steiner עריכת הנתון בוויקינתונים

פרנסיז ג'ורג' סטיינר (נקרא בעברית גם: ג'ורג' שטיינר; באנגלית: Francis George Steiner; נולד ב-23 באפריל 1929, בפריז), הוא מבקר ספרות יהודי אמריקאי, פובליציסט, פילוסוף, סופר ומחנך. מרבה לכתוב על היחס שבין לשון, ספרות וחברה, וכן גם על השואה. נחשב לאחד מהחוקרים הבולטים בעולם בנושא הספרות והקשריה החברתיים הרחבים.[1]

כיהן כפרופסור לאנגלית וספרות משווה באוניברסיטאות ז'נבה, אוקספורד והרווארד. מתגורר כיום בקיימברידג', אנגליה.

תוכן עניינים 1 קורות חיים 2 קריירה אקדמית 3 דעותיו 4 עבודתו 5 לקריאה נוספת 6 קישורים חיצוניים 7 הערות שוליים

קורות חיים ג'ורג' סטיינר נולד בשנת 1929 בפריז להורים ממוצא יהודי – אוסטרי. אביו היה ד"ר פרידריך גאורג שטיינר, שכיהן כבנקאי בכיר בבנק המרכזי בווינה. אמו, אלזה (פראנצוז) שטיינר. אחותו הבכורה, רות ליליאן, נולדה בווינה.[2]

כחמש שנים לפני לידתו של ג'ורג' סטיינר, עברה משפחתו מאוסטריה לצרפת, כדי להימלט מהמקום, שראו בו איום הולך וגובר של תורת הנאצים. כבר בילדותו למד סטיינר שלוש שפות ברמת שפת אם: גרמנית, צרפתית ואנגלית, ובהמלצת אביו, למד גם לקרוא את היצירות הקלאסיות של יוון בשפת המקור. אמו, מצדה, הרגילה אותו להתגבר על חולשה מולדת ביד ימינו, ולהתעקש לכתוב דווקא ביד זו, כדי לא להיכנע למגבלה.

בשנת 1940, במהלך מלחמת העולם השנייה, עברה משפחתו להתגורר בניו יורק, כחודש לפני שפריז נכבשה על ידי הנאצים. שני ילדים יהודים בלבד שרדו מהכיתה בה למד סטיינר בבית הספר בפריז. מאחר שניצל פעמיים ממצב של סכנה קיומית, נותרה בסטיינר תחושה מתמדת של שורד העוסק בשואה. "כל חיי התעסקתי במוות וזכרתי את השואה", כתב.[3] שטיינר גם מרבה לנדוד, וטוען שהוא חב את חייו לעובדה זו.

סטיינר המשיך את לימודיו בבית הספר Lycée Français de New York (אנ') אשר במנהטן, וקיבל אזרחות אמריקנית בשנת 1944. בשנת 1948 קיבל סטיינר תואר ראשון מאוניברסיטת שיקגו, ושנתיים לאחר מכן, את תוארו השני מאוניברסיטת הרוורד. את הדיסרטציה השלים סטיינר באוניברסיטת אוקספורד באנגליה, וקיבל את תואר הדוקטור בשנת 1955, שנה בה גם נישא לזארה שאקוב, שאף היא למדה באוניברסיטת הרוורד, על אף שהכיר אותה בלונדון.

קריירה אקדמית בשנת 1956 חזר סטיינר לארצות הברית והמשיך כחוקר וכמרצה באוניברסיטת פרינסטון ובמוסדות אקדמיים אחרים. הוא חזר לאנגליה בשנת 1961 והיה בין חבר המייסדים של Churchil College באוניברסיטת קיימברידג'. לא כולם בפקולטה לאנגלית קיבלו ברצון את המרצה הכריזמטי בעל המבטא הזר, שמרבה להתעסק בנושא השואה.[3] היו מרצים שחשו שהנושא איננו באמת רלוונטי לבריטניה, שהתמקדה יותר בנושאים כמו הפגזות הבליץ, קרב דנקרק והקרב על בריטניה. ואכן, סטיינר לא קיבל מעולם את התואר של פרופסור חבר בקיימברידג', על אף שבפועל הוא קיבל את המשכורת שתואמת את התואר. אמנם, היו לו הזדמנויות לחזור לארצות הברית כדי לעבוד באוניברסיטאות אחרות, ולזכות בתנאים המתאימים, אך אביו טען שאם הוא יעזוב את אירופה, היטלר ינצח בכוונותיו להשמיד את השם היהודי ביבשת, והוא נענה לאביו.

לאחר מספר שנות עבודה במחקר והוראה קיבל סטיינר בשנת 1974 את התפקיד של פרופסור לספרות משווה באוניברסיטת ז'נבה - שם הוא לימד במשך 20 שנה בארבע שפות שונות. עם פרישתו, בשנת 1994 הוא קיבל את התואר של פרופסור אמריטוס בז'נבה, וכן תואר של חברות כבוד ב Balliol College, באוניברסיטת אוקספורד. לתארים אלו הצטרפו אחרים מאוניברסיטאות שונות ומכובדות באנגליה ובארצות הברית.

סטיינר הרבה להרצות ולפרסם מחקרים ונחשב למבקר חשוב. הוא פרסם עשרות מאמרים וביקורות בעיתונות הבכירה, הן בארצות הברית והן באנגליה. על אף הרצינות הרבה שבה הוא מתייחס לעבודתו, הוא ידוע גם כבעל הומור יבש. כשנשאל פעם איזו ספרות קלילה קרא בילדותו, הוא ענה "מובי דיק".[3]

דעותיו ג'ורג' סטיינר נחשב לאיש אשכולות בין-תחומי, שאינו כבול בהגדרות אקדמיות או לאומיות. הוא מעדיף ראייה נרחבת על פני התמחות נקודתית ומדגיש שאיש משכיל צריך לשלוט בתחומי האמנות והמדע כאחד. הוא מאמין שבמהותה של הלאומיות קיימים יסודות אלימים. "ניסיתי, על אף המחיר האישי והמקצועי ששילמתי, להזהיר כנגד הלאומניות והיחס לפלסטינים בישראל. יש דברים שאיננו יכולים להרשות לעצמנו לעשות בגלל הזהות היהודית שלנו", טען בראיון.[4] עיקרון מהותי לחשיבתו של שטיינר מתבטא במשפט הבא: "לתדהמתי, עד כמה שזה נשמע נאיבי לאנשים, ניתן להשתמש בדיבור האנושי לאהבה, לבנייה, לסליחה, אבל בד בבד גם לעינוי, לשנאה, להרס ולהשמדה."[5]

שטיינר קיבל הרבה ביקורות מצד אחד, ותמיכה מצד שני, על דעותיו בנושא הגזענות. לדעתו, הגזענות טבועה בנו באופן מולד, והסובלנות היא רק מן השפה אל החוץ. קל מאוד לגנות גזענות באופן תאורטי, הוא קובע, אבל ברגע שבדירה שממולך מתגוררת משפחה מרעישה מג'מייקה, ובעקבות זה ערך דירתך יורד - דעתך משתנה.

עבודתו הקריירה של ג'ורג' סטיינר משתרעת על פני מחצית מאה. הוא פרסם עשרות מאמרים וספרים שדנים בכשלים של התרבות המערבית העכשווית ובסוגיות של לשון ונסיגתה בתקופה של פוסט-שואה. התחום העיקרי של התמחותו הוא ספרות משווה, ועבודתו כמבקר נוטה למחקר תרבותי-פילוסופי המתמקד בעיקר בתרגום ובאיפיונה של הלשון והתרבות.

אחד ממשפטיו הידועים על צריכת התרבות מפקפק בהשפעתה המוסרית החיובית:[6] "אנו כבר יודעים שייתכן שאדם יקרא גתה או רילקה בערב, ואחר כך ינגן באך ושוברט, וילך לעבודת יומו באושוויץ בבוקר. לומר שהוא קרא אותם בלי להבין, או שאוזנו ערלה, היא אמירה לא רצינית. כיצד משפיעה ידיעה זו על הספרות ועל החברה, על התקווה שהפכה לאקסיומה מימי אפלטון ועד מתיו ארנולד, שהתרבות היא כוח מעדן, ושאפשר להפוך אנרגיות של הרוח לאנרגיות של התנהגות?

— ג'ורג' שטיינר בהקדמה לספרו: Language and Science אסף שגיב מאפיין את ג'ורג' סטיינר כאיש ציבור בעל מוניטין רב, שעבודתו מתעסקת ומתחבטת בסוגיות הנוקבות ביותר של היצירתיות האנושית, בכוחה וגבולותיה של הלשון, בקשר ההדוק שבין אמנות לתאולוגיה ובתדמית המוסרית של הציוויליזציה המודרנית. בעיני משכילים רבים, אומר שגיב, שטיינר הוא מעין מורה דרך בדרכים המפותלות של הציוויליזציה האירופית.[7] עם זאת, מוסיף שגיב, דוחה סטיינר כל בדלנות ולאומנות מכל סוג שהוא, כולל מדינה ציונית, עקב תמיכתו בהומניזם אוניברסלי ורדיקלי. היהודים במיטבם דווקא כאשר הם חלק מהעולם הגדול, ולא כשהם מקובצים במדינה ריבונית שלהם. הוא מרבה לצטט את הבעל שם טוב: "האמת מצויה תמיד בגלות, היא חייבת לשוטט" ואת חיים ויצמן (על אף שבטעות ייחס זאת לעזר ויצמן): "היהודים המפוזרים בעולם הם כדשן לאדמת העולם וכשהם מרוכזים הם כזבל פרות".[8]

בשנת 1966 החל גם לכתוב טור קבוע בענייני ספרות בשבועון הידוע "הניו יורקר". כ-150 מאמרים פרסם סטיינר, שבהם פתח לאמריקאים אשנב לתרבות האירופית והגדיר מחדש את תפקידו של המבקר. בזכות עבודתו זו ואחרות זכה בחברות כבוד באקדמיה האמריקנית למדעים ואמנויות, בפרס טרומן קאפוטה למפעל חיים ובמשרה בקתדרה לשירה באוניברסיטת הרווארד. "מתווך התרבות המשפיע ביותר הכותב היום בשפה האנגלית" ו"ראש הממשלה של התרבות" הם רק חלק מהסופרלטיבים שהעניקו לו מעריציו.[7]

ספרו הראשון: Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (טולסטוי או דוסטויבסקי): דן בדעות ובגישות המנוגדות, כפי שבאו לידי ביטוי ביצירותיהם של השניים.

The Death of Tragedy (מותה של הטרגדיה) יצא בשנת 1961 והתבסס על עבודת הדוקטור שלו באוקספורד, בודק את הספרות החל מיוון העתיקה ועד אמצע המאה ה-20. ספרו הידוע ביותר הוא: After Babel (לאחר בבל), שיצא בשנת 1975 והיווה תרומה גדולה לתחום התרגום ומקור לתוכנית טלוויזיה.

סטיינר גם פרסם מספר ספרים בתחום הספרות יפה, ספר אוטוביוגרפי, אראטה; מאזן של חיים, (יצא בעברית בשנת 2001), ספרים על השואה וספרים אחרים בנושאים מגוונים.

ג'ורג' סטיינר זכה לפרסי הצטיינות רבים וחברויות כבוד במוסדות אקדמיים רבים.

לקריאה נוספת גרשון שקד, "על ההוגה ג'ורג' שטיינר", ידיעות אחרונות, 21 ביוני 1991 יואב רינון, "למעשה עוד לא התחלנו להיות בני אדם" ; ראיון עם ג'ורג' סטיינר, הארץ, 14 ביוני 1961 שולמית הראבן, "שיחה עם יהודי קוסמופוליטי, (בעקבות שיחה עם פרופ' ג'ורג' שטיינר וחבריו), הארץ, 16 באוגוסט 1968 קישורים חיצוניים רשימת פרסומיו של סטיינר בספרייה הלאומית רשימת פרסומים שעוסקים בג'ורג' סטיינר בספרייה הלאומית מסותיו של ג'ורג' שטיינר , דבר, 18 במאי 1972 שולמית לפיד, "מרצח אב לרצח עם", מעריב, 2 במאי 1980 בועז נוימן, ריבונותה של המילה , הארץ, 17 בדצמבר 2001 אמנון רובינשטיין, הגניוס והגן היהודיים - דברי כפירה ציוניים

של ג'ורג' שטיינר, בלוג של אמנון רובינשטיין ג'ורג' שטיינר, "המסתורין הכביר של החיים ", קטעים נבחרים מנאומו של  ג'ורג' שטיינר בנאום תודה בפרנקפורט, לרגל זכייתו בפרס לודוויג בֶרנֶה, 2004. בלוג ״פאזל״ של אורי ישראל פז הערות שוליים

Hahn, Daniel. Contemporary Writers in the UK. Retrieved March 26, 2008.

Cheyette, Bryan (February 1, 2008). "My Unwritten Books by George Steiner" . The Independent. London. Retrieved March 26, 2008.

Maya Jaggi March 17, 2001). "George and his dragons" . The Guardian. London. Retrieved March 27,2008.

, Maya Jaggi, George and his dragons , The Guardian

Review, D. J. R. Bruckner; D. J. R. Bruckner Is An Editor Of The New York Times Book (2 במאי 1982). "TALK WITH GEORGE STEINER" . The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . בדיקה אחרונה ב-8 בספטמבר 2016.

ראו אצל אהרן ליכטנשטיין, באור פניך יהלכון, משכל, 2012, עמ' 244–245

אסף שגיב, "הבעיה היהודית של ג'ורג' שטיינר", בתוך: תכלת; כתב עת למחשבה ישראלית, מס. 12, תשס"ב, עמ' 133 - 158

ראו את מכתבו של ג'ורג' שטיינר בתכלת 15, סתיו 2003, עמ' 3, ואת תגובתו של עזר ויצמן בנושא, תכלת 16, חורף 2004, עמ' 3

https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%92%27%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%92%27_%D7%A1...

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Steiner

George Steiner George Steiner 2013 (cropped).jpg George Steiner speaking at The Nexus Institute, The Netherlands, 2013 Born Francis George Steiner April 23, 1929 (age 89) Neuilly-sur-Seine, France Occupation Author, essayist, literary critic, professor Nationality French, American Period 1960–present Genre History, literature, literary fiction Notable works After Babel (1975) Notable awards The Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award (1998) Spouse Zara Shakow Steiner Children David, Deborah Francis George Steiner,[1] FBA (born April 23, 1929)[2] is a French-born[3] American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator.[4] He has written extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the impact of the Holocaust.[5] An article in The Guardian described Steiner as a "polyglot and polymath", saying that he is either "often credited with recasting the role of the critic", or a "pretentious namedropper" whose "range comes at the price of inaccuracy" and "complacency".[6]

Among his admirers, Steiner is ranked "among the great minds in today's literary world."[2] English novelist A. S. Byatt described him as a "late, late, late Renaissance man ... a European metaphysician with an instinct for the driving ideas of our time."[6] Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature director of the British Council, described him as a "magnificent lecturer – prophetic and doom-laden [who would] turn up with half a page of scribbled notes, and never refer to them."[6]

Steiner was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva (1974–94), Professor of Comparative Literature and Fellow at the University of Oxford (1994–95) and Professor of Poetry at Harvard University (2001–02).[1]

He lives in Cambridge, England, where he has been Extraordinary Fellow at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge since 1969. He is married to author and historian Zara Shakow Steiner; they have a son, David Steiner (who served as New York State's Commissioner of Education from 2009 to 2011) and a daughter, Deborah Steiner (Professor of Classics at Columbia University).[1]

Biography Early life George Steiner was born in 1929 in Paris, to Viennese Jewish parents Dr Frederick George Steiner and Mrs Else Steiner (née Franzos). He has an elder sister, Ruth Lilian, who was born in Vienna in 1922.[1] Frederick Steiner was a senior lawyer in the Austrian Central Bank, and Else Steiner was a Viennese grande dame.[7]

Five years before George Steiner's birth, his father had moved his family from Austria to France to escape the growing threat of Nazism. He believed that Jews were "endangered guests wherever they went"[6] and equipped his children with languages. Steiner grew up with three mother tongues: German, English, and French; his mother was multilingual and would often "begin a sentence in one language and end it in another."[6]

When he was six years old, his father who believed in the importance of classical education taught him to read the Iliad in the original Greek.[6][8][9] His mother, for whom "self-pity was nauseating",[6] helped Steiner overcome a handicap he had been born with, a withered right arm. Instead of allowing him to become left-handed, she insisted he use his right hand as an able-bodied person would.[6]

Steiner's first formal education took place at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris. In 1940, during World War II, Steiner's father once again relocated his family, this time to New York City. Within a month of their move, the Nazis occupied Paris, and of the many Jewish children in Steiner's class at school, he was one of only two who survived the war.[6] Again his father's insight had saved his family, and this made Steiner feel like a survivor, which profoundly influenced his later writings. "My whole life has been about death, remembering and the Holocaust."[6] Steiner became a "grateful wanderer", saying that "Trees have roots and I have legs; I owe my life to that."[6] He spent the rest of his school years at the Lycée Français de New York in Manhattan, and became a United States citizen in 1944.

Education After high school, Steiner went to the University of Chicago, where he studied literature as well as mathematics and physics, and obtained a BA degree in 1948. This was followed by an MA degree from Harvard University in 1950. He then attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford in England on a Rhodes Scholarship.

After his doctoral thesis at Oxford, a draft of The Death of Tragedy (later published by Faber and Faber) was initially rejected, and so Steiner took time off from his studies to teach English at Williams College and to work as leader writer for the London-based weekly publication The Economist between 1952 and 1956. It was during this time that he met Zara Shakow, a New Yorker of Lithuanian[6] descent. She had also studied at Harvard, and they met in London at the suggestion of their former professors. "The professors had had a bet ... that we would get married if we ever met."[10] They married in 1955, the year he received his DPhil from Oxford University.[6]

Career In 1956 Steiner returned to the United States, where for two years he was a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He also held a Fulbright professorship in Innsbruck, Austria from 1958 to 1959. In 1959, he was appointed Gauss Lecturer at Princeton, where he lectured for another two years. He then became a founding fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge in 1961. Steiner was initially not well received at Cambridge by the English faculty. Many disapproved of this charismatic "firebrand with a foreign accent"[6] and questioned the relevance of the Holocaust he constantly referred to in his lectures. Bryan Cheyette, professor of 20th-century literature at the University of Southampton said that at the time, "Britain [...] didn't think it had a relationship to the Holocaust; its mythology of the war was rooted in the Blitz, Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain."[6] While Steiner received a professorial salary, he was never made a full professor at Cambridge with the right to examine. He had the option of leaving for professorships in the United States, but Steiner's father objected, saying that Hitler, who said no one bearing their name would be left in Europe, would then have won. Steiner remained in England because "I'd do anything rather than face such contempt from my father."[6] He was elected an Extraordinary Fellow at Cambridge in 1969.

After several years as a freelance writer and occasional lecturer, Steiner accepted the post of Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva in 1974; he held this post for 20 years, teaching in four languages. He lived by Goethe's maxim that "no monoglot truly knows his own language."[6] He became Professor Emeritus at Geneva University on his retirement in 1994, and an Honorary Fellow at Balliol College at Oxford University in 1995. He has since held the positions of the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative European Literature and Fellow of St Anne's College at Oxford University from 1994 to 1995,[11] and Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University from 2001 to 2002.

Steiner has been called "an intelligent and intellectual critic and essayist."[2] He was active on undergraduate publications while at the University of Chicago and later become a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many journals and newspapers including the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. He has written for The New Yorker for over thirty years, contributing over two hundred reviews.[12]

While Steiner generally takes things very seriously, he also reveals an unexpected deadpan humor: when he was once asked if he had ever read anything trivial as a child, he replied, Moby-Dick.[6]

Views George Steiner is regarded as a polymath and often credited with recasting the role of the critic by exploring art and thought unbounded by national frontiers or academic disciplines. He advocates generalisation over specialisation, and insists that the notion of being literate must encompass knowledge of both arts and sciences. Steiner believes that nationalism is too inherently violent to satisfy the moral prerogative of Judaism, saying "that because of what we are, there are things we can't do."[6]

Among Steiner's non-traditional views, in his autobiography titled Errata from 1997, Steiner relates his sympathetic stance towards the use of public houses since his college years at the University of Chicago. As Steiner states, "My virginity offended Alfie (his college room-mate). He found it ostentatious and vaguely corrupt in a nineteen-year-old... He sniffed the fear in me with disdain. And marched me off to Cicero, Illinois, a town justly ill famed but, by virtue of its name, reassuring to me. There he organized, with casual authority, an initiation as thorough as it was gentle. It is this unlikely gentleness, the caring under circumstances so outwardly crass, that blesses me still."[13]

Central to Steiner's thinking, he has stated, "is my astonishment, naïve as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to love, to build, to forgive, and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate."[12]

Steiner received criticism and support[14][15] for his views that racism was inherent in everyone and that tolerance was only skin deep. He is reported to have said: "It's very easy to sit here, in this room, and say 'racism is horrible'. But ask me the same thing if a Jamaican family moved next door with six children and they play reggae and rock music all day. Or if an estate agent comes to my house and tells me that because a Jamaican family has moved next door the value of my property has fallen through the floor. Ask me then!"[14]

Works George Steiner's career spans half a century. He has published original essays and books that address the anomalies of contemporary Western culture, issues of language and its "debasement" in the post-Holocaust age.[6][16] His field is primarily comparative literature, and his work as a critic has tended toward exploring cultural and philosophical issues, particularly dealing with translation and the nature of language and literature.

Steiner's first published book was Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast (1960), which was a study of the different ideas and ideologies of the Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Death of Tragedy (1961) originated as his doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford and examined literature from the ancient Greeks to the mid-20th century. His best-known book, After Babel (1975), was an early and influential contribution to the field of translation studies. It was adapted for television in 1977 as The Tongues of Men and was the inspiration behind the creation in 1983 of the English avant-rock group News from Babel.

Several works of literary fiction by Steiner include four short story collections, Anno Domini: Three Stories (1964), Proofs and Three Parables (1992), The Deeps of the Sea (1996), and A cinq heures de l'après-midi (2008); and his controversial[17] novella, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. (1981). Portage to San Cristobal, in which Jewish Nazi hunters find Adolf Hitler (the "A.H." of the novella's title) alive in the Amazon jungle thirty years after the end of World War II, explored ideas about the origins of European anti-semitism first expounded by Steiner in his 1971 critical work In Bluebeard's Castle. Steiner has suggested that Nazism was Europe's revenge on the Jews for inventing conscience.[6] Cheyette sees Steiner's fiction as "an exploratory space where he can think against himself." It "contrasts its humility and openness with his increasingly closed and orthodox critical work." Central to it is the survivor's "terrible, masochistic envy about not being there – having missed the rendezvous with hell".[6]

No Passion Spent (1996) is a collection of essays on topics as diverse as Kierkegaard, Homer in translation, Biblical texts, and Freud's dream theory. Errata: An Examined Life (1997) is a semi-autobiography,[2] and Grammars of Creation (2001), based on Steiner's 1990 Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Glasgow, explores a range of subjects from cosmology to poetry.

Awards and honors George Steiner has received many honors, including:

A Rhodes Scholarship (1950) A Guggenheim Fellowship (1971–72) Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by the French Government (1984) The Morton Dauwen Zaubel Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters (1989) The King Albert Medal by the Belgian Academy Council of Applied Sciences An honorary fellow of Balliol College at the University of Oxford (1995) The Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award by Stanford University (1998)[16] The Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities (2001)[18] Fellowship of the British Academy Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts Honorary Doctorate of Literature degrees from: University of East Anglia (1976) University of Leuven (1980) Mount Holyoke College (1983) Bristol University (1989) University of Glasgow (1990) University of Liège (1990) University of Ulster (1993) Durham University (1995) University of Salamanca (2002) Queen Mary, University of London (2006) Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna (2006) Honoris Causa - Faculty of Letters - University of Lisbon (2009) He has also won numerous awards for his fiction and poetry, including:

Remembrance Award (1974) for Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966. PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award (1992) for Proofs and Three Parables.[2] PEN/Macmillan Fiction Prize (1993) for Proofs and Three Parables.[2] JQ Wingate Prize for Non-Fiction (joint winner with Louise Kehoe and Silvia Rodgers) (1997) for No Passion Spent.