Language and Silence

Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman

George Steiner

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781480411890
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Language in Philosophy

The evolution and manipulation of language from the celebrated author of After Babel. "A keenly discriminating literary mind at work on what it loves" ( The New York Times Book Review ).
Language and Silence is a book about language—and politics, meaning, silence, and the future of literature. Originally published between 1958 and 1966, the essays that make up this collection ponder whether we have passed out of an era of verbal primacy and into one of post-linguistic forms—or partial silence. Steiner explores the idea of the abandonment of contemporary literary criticism, from the classics to the works of William Shakespeare, Lawrence Durell, Thomas Mann, Leon Trotsky, and more.

INDEX

Abel, Niels Henrik, 14

Absalom and Achitophel (Dryden), 62

“Abstammungsnachweis” zum “Zuchtwart,” Vom (Berning), 95 n

Act Without Words (Beckett), 52

Adamov, Arthur, 139; quoted, 51–52

Adams, Henry, 244, 254, 256; The Education of Henry Adams, 244

Adenauer, Konrad, 114, 115

Adorno, Theodor W., 147, 149, 344, 350; on Auschwitz, 53; on Benjamin, 314; on chamber music, 385–86; on Heine, 125, 151, 354–55; Marxism and, 310, 315, 341, 349; on Schoenberg, 127 n, 129, 132, 139; Quasi una fantasia, 127 n; “Sakrales Fragment: Ueber Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron,” 127 n

Advertising, 26, 77, 251, 361, 384

Aegean Sea, 174–75

Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, 188

Aeschylus, 6, 134, 305, 391; The Libation Bearers, 134; Seven Against Thebes, 366; The Suppliants, 391

Aesop, 268

Aesthetics: art reproducibility and, 314–15, 341, 385; dehumanization and, 9–10, 61, 166, 202; ideology and, 305–06, 307, 308, 310, 311, 315, 317–18, 319, 323, 328–29, 337, 352, 356–57, 360, 362, 363, 382; improvisation and, 385; Leavis and, 223, 226; linear perception and, 253—55, 382; Lukács on, 340–47; musical dominance in, 29–30, 43–46; new forms and, 86–91, 103, 131–32, 136–37, 173, 253, 383, 385, 387, 390, 391–92; personal death and, 386; science and, 16, 18, 21–24, 25, 68, 253, 326–27; silence and, 12, 22–24, 34, 48–49; of tragedy, 390–91, 392. See also Criticism

Africa, 47, 181, 182, 240, 385; anti-Semitism in, 140, 143, 145; English of, 60; nationalism in, 152

Aïda (Verdi), 137

Alamein, El, 101

Albouy, Pierre, Victor Hugo, 314

Alchemy, 15

Aldred, 188

Alexandria, Egypt, 70, 283, 284

Alexandria Quartet (Durrell), 280–87, 326, 353

Algebra, 14, 21

Alice in Wonderland (Carroll), 71

“All the Dead Dears” (Plath), 296

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