I enjoyed reading the book. The crux seemed to be 'creativity'
against 'invention' and what the difference was. George seemed
to think of 'invention' being related to science and technology
and 'creation' to the arts. And being defensive about the arts
being superior to science. But it was a lively book with much
else of interest in it. THere was a massive discussion in
'rec.arts.books' about the need for God in art, I think it was,
the Americans being so religious. George is getting old now
and he is always looking for God in his books nowadays, clutching
at straws to prevent his imminent extinction. But it is all
good fun for the reader. He gives the Charles Eliot Norton
lectures soon so that will produce another book.
But 'creativity' being an 'invention' was a lovely generous
twist at the end of 'Grammars of Creation' as Alison picked
out. It is a lively book. I enjoyed reading it- twice so far.
Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto: [log in to unmask]
Lynx: Poetry from Bath .......... http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html
On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Reading George Steiner's The Grammar of Creation - interesting, even if
> the questions he asks seem to be somewhat behind the eightball, though he
> always asks them elegantly. His thesis is that creation - In the
> Beginning was the Word and that rich Judaeic-Christian mythological
> tradition, which has fired Western art - was just a human invention, and
> now we have entered an age of "post creation" (he doesn't use the term,
> and would shudder at it). That is, after the anti-creation of Dada -
> Duchamp, Schwitters et al - and the reign of science and technology,
> where next for art?
>
> A couple of quotes:
>
> "The human intellect will persist in posing questions which science has
> ruled illicit or unanswerable. Though perhaps condemned to ultimate
> circularity, this persistence is thought made urgent, which is to say,
> metaphysical. An imp of demonic triviality inhabits the imperial regime
> of the sciences. It could be that music _knows_ better, although there
> is nothing more intractable to definition than the nature of that
> knowledge.
>
> "We saw that the armature of poiesis has been, in a larger sense,
> theological; that it lies on the far side of physics (meta-physics) ...
> The wingbeat of the unknown has been at the heart of poiesis. Can, will
> there be major philosophy, literature, music an art of an atheistic
> provenance?"
>
> Like Zygmunt Bauman, but from a different perspective, he perceives the
> fundamental loneliness which besets the individual in our age - for
> Steiner an aesthetic rather than moral and social dilemma, though it
> seems to me that these distinctions are beginning to dissolve, and the
> contemporary obsession with ethics (poethics etc) reflects this uneasy
> feeling.
>
> Best
>
> Alison
>
|