Real Presences

by George Steiner

Overview

Can there be major dimensions of a poem, a painting, a musical composition created in the absence of God? Or, is God always a real presence in the arts? Steiner passionately argues that a transcendent reality grounds all genuine art and human communication.

"A real tour de force. . . . All the virtues of the author's astounding intelligence and compelling rhetoric are evident from the first sentence onward."--Anthony C. Yu, Journal of Religion

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226772349
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	04/23/1991
Edition description:	1
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

George Steiner has written a great many books during his long and distinguished career as a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, translator, and educator. He was professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva, Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative Literature and Fellow of St Anne's College at Oxford University, and Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

I. A Secondary City
II. The Broken Contract
III. Presences

Editorial Reviews

Steiner asserts moral and metaphysical issues are the basis of all art and that our experience of meaning in music, painting and literature presupposes the existence of God as a ``necessary possibility.'' ``Dense, difficult, rewarding, this passionately argued essay ranges fluently over aesthetics, linguistics, philosophy, post-structuralism, the range of Western culture,'' said PW. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this dense, prolix book, critic, linguist, novelist, polymath Steiner holds that in the creation of art (especially music), and in its experiencing, there is a fundamental encounter with a ``real presence'' and that, in fact, it is this transcendent reality that grounds all genuine art and human communication. He does not so much argue this in the traditional manner as give a ``transcendental argument'' a la Kant: since so much literature and so many literary figures attest to the thesis, it must be true. Because of its lack of discursive argument, this difficult book will be dissatisfying to philosophers and largely impenetrable to the general reader. But sophisticated readers looking for highly learned literary criticism will find much here to ponder.-- Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Lib., Washington, D.C.

Library Journal

A brief philosophical excursis by a highly regarded writer/thinker. Steiner confronts the powerful arguments for analysis of language and form with an allusively dense investigation of literary, artistic and musical creation. He argues, with impressive conviction, that both creation and experience of artistic forms, in a time of a sense of on theological overtones. No bibliography. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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