What are you reading now - and then

[Stavros]

George Steiner has died, aged 90. He was with Edmund Wilson one of the most eloquent literary critics and historians of the 20th century, and in Steiner's case a compelling writer on European culture. I owe an enormous debt to Steiner because before I started reading his works in the 1970s, I knew the Holocaust happened, but did not know much else about it. It was the essays in Language and Silence that introduced me to some of the shocking details, but also the cultural context in which Steiner agonized over the power of language to simultaneously expose and conceal realities that in some senses cannot in fact be put into language. He introduced me to Adorno's provocative remarks such as 'there can be no poetry after Auschwitz' and 'after Auschwitz all European culture is garbage', but its most eloquent rebuttal, the poetry of Paul Celan. And in Celan one also encounters the possibility and the impossibility of translating the Holocaust into language, as well as being the finest German poetry since Hölderlin
His lectures tended to be theatrical, in the sense that his oration was flamboyant, and, one knew that he would supply answers to his questions with references to Marx, Kafka, Karl Kraus and Celan. In one lecture he began with the declamation: 'Absolute tragedy is very rare', and proceeded to offer examples from Shakespeare in which only Timon of Athens had no light relief -and was all the poorer because of it- and when he pointed out there is a Fool in Othello, I had to go immediately to my collected works to find out he is right -the character is dropped from most productions of the play. His point, was that humans cannot bear absolute tragedy, it is too bleak, too hard to cope with, and is perhaps one reason why so many people if they do not reject the Holocaust prefer to not talk about it. It touches on that absolute darkness that cannot be illuminated by language, and which we would not want it to be. With his withered arm on one side, his live arm gesticulating, the lectures were illuminating, melodious, and deeply satisfying. And he never went anywhere without Zara, who taught the diplomacy of the interwar years in the History Faculty.

Steiner also held deeply controversial ideas about Israel, and unfortunatelly some have adopted his views without the cultural and religious context in which Steiner offered them. For that reason, I offer this from the interviews he held with Laure Adler. Link is at the bottom, as is a link to a critical article on Steiner's views.

"And I am fundamentally anti-Zionist. Let me explain — even if, as I strongly fear, everything that I’m going to say now may be misunderstood, misinterpreted. For several thousand years, approximately from the time of the fall of the First Temple in Jerusalem, Jews did not have the wherewithal to mistreat, or torture, or expropriate anyone or anything in the world. For me, it was the single greatest aristocracy that ever existed. When I’m introduced to an English duke, I say to myself, “The highest nobility is to have belonged to a people that has never humiliated another people.” Or tortured another. But today, Israel must necessarily (I stress this word, and would repeat it 20 times if I could), necessarily, inevitably, inescapably, kill and torture in order to survive; Israel must behave like the rest of so-called normal humanity. Well, I’m a confirmed ethical snob, I’m completely arrogant ethically; by becoming a people like others, the Israelis have forfeited that nobility I had attributed to them. Israel is a nation between nations, armed to the teeth. And when I look from the top of a wall at the long line of Palestinian workers trying to get to their daily jobs, standing in blistering heat, I can’t help seeing the humiliation of those human beings in that line, and I say to myself, “It’s too high a price to pay.” To which Israel answers: “Be quiet, you fool! Come here! Live with us! Share our danger! We are the only country that will welcome your children if they have to flee. So what right do you have to be so morally superior?” And I have no response. To be able to respond, I would have to be there, on the street corner, giving my absurd spiel, living the daily risks there. Because I don’t do that, I can only explain what I perceive as the Jew’s mission: to be the guest of humanity. And, even more paradoxical (which places the mark of Cain on my forehead), what convinced me was something Heidegger said: “We are the guests of life.” Heidegger came up with that extraordinary expression; neither you nor I could choose the place of our birth, the circumstances, the historical time to which we belong, a handicap or perfect health."

https://forward.com/culture/367139/y...eorge-steiner/

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-art...-anti-semitism

[BlüeKarma]

Now: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Then: The Misfit’s Manifesto by Lidia Yuknavitch

[Stavros]

A Very Stable Genius. Carol Leonnig & Philip Rucker (2020).

Two main points about this book.
1) though adding details we might not have known before, it documents the ignorance, the stupidity, the arrogance and the chaos we already know that governs the life of the 45th President.
2) The major takeaway from the book is the dismal realisation that This chaos happens either because people with responsibility are terrified of disputing facts with the President and telling him to his face he isn't wrong and the policy is wrong, or they support him.
But books like these cannot be written without the revelations, often verbatim that the same people he sacked, or who resigned were unwilling to say to his face, just as we have seen John Bolton preferring to say nothing in public about the Ukraine crisis but sell a book instead. Whatever, the tragedy is that the man who claims to be President and the sycophants, hypocrites and extremists who support him are causing much damage to the image of the USA as well as is domestic politics, with the rule of law now appearing to be a toy in the hands of a King without a kingdom but one who is convinced he has one.
That the Democrats appear to be impotent, that Hillary Clinton may yet re-emerge as their Presidential candidate, suggests there is a deep crisis in the country that is not being publicly debated at the level it should be.

[sukumvit boy]

Yes, The New Yorker magazine where Steiner worked for 30 years had a goog article about him in the most recent issue.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/po...george-steiner

[sukumvit boy]

Also in the most recent New Yorker an interesting article about changes in the UK Land Use Policy resulting from Brexit and Jake Fiennes.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...ace-for-nature

[Stavros]

Yes, The New Yorker magazine where Steiner worked for 30 years had a goog article about him in the most recent issue.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/po...george-steiner

Thank you for the link. George's wife, the historian Zara Steiner died 10 days later -obituary in the link. She was a quite different lecturer to George, replacing his theatricality with a sober, even ride through the topic of the day, and keen to talk to students afterwards. Her two monumental books are frankly not for the casual reader as she amassed a colossal amount of detail over the years it took to research them, and used as much as she could. Her cardinal point is that the 1920s were intended by the Weimar politicians to be a decade of stability and reconstruction, and that for the most part they achieved it, but were blown off course by the Crash of 1929 and the conditions that followed which made the Third Reich possible when it had never been inevitable, a correction to those histories which trace the parallel decline of Weimar and the 'rise' of Hitler as a process that began at Versailles.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...einer-obituary

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks for that interesting reply and link ,Stavros.
Do you have any interest in the other article about restoring the English countryside and hedge rows? I find the whole thing so interesting,
Also, given your interest in history , I'll mention another book which I found to be a fascinating read . Bold new ideas connecting anthropology and culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapien...y_of_Humankind

[Stavros]

Sukumvit Boy --Joan Thirsk is the doyenne of landscape/farming historians, and well worth the effort in tracing her books. She is in the eclectic list linked below, but Amazon has a more extensive list. Articles in The Journal of Historical Geography are worth exploring if you have access to an academic library and several hours free, I have the dubious dishonour of having an article returned by JHG with so many objections from an anonymous reviewer I withdrew it -it was a work in progress anyway, but I had other things to do and the research is gathering dust in a box along with other 'work in progress'...

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/eng...paul-brassley/

[sukumvit boy]

Many thanks,Stavros . that looks like some fascinating reading . I'll look into those books.

[sukumvit boy]

By the way , great link . I ordered the first 2 books by Hoskins and Thirsk in a flash.
"Dubious distinction " indeed , sounds extremely interesting .