b2b
ALAN LELCHUK
important Marxist literary critics, like Ernst Bloch,
T.
W. Adorno and
Walter Benjamin.
It
is plain that Steiner has read v"idel y, and that his cntlclsm is the
result of deeply felt concerns. Yet it is precisely because he touches upon
important
subject~,
because the promise of deep insight is here, that
the overall failure is so disappointing.
There are to begin with the minor irritants. We arc disappointed
that Steiner, himself a persistent critic of academic smallness, should so
frequently fall victim to his own accusation. What some have described
as profound is better termed pompous (consider the title, or a line like
"The book we begin tomorrow must be as if there had been none be–
fore; new and outrageous as the morning sun ...") . What
Time
ap–
plauds as "erudite" is more appropriately viewed as pedantry (see the
philological and etymological asides, the untranslatecl German quota–
tions). Then there is his rather compulsive habit of speaking as if there
were a podium before him, so that whether the subject be logical posi–
tivism, theories of musical harmony, Leibniz or abstract art, we are sure
to receive lengthy lectures along the way. Rhetorical epigrams are
more often cryptic than clarifying: "style is ... the inward place of Dur–
rell's meaning." The repetitions are endless: the skepticism concerning
the humanities' power to humanize, the litanies praising Hermann Broch,
the "discovery" of Wittgenstein, the adulation of Central European
culture. Was all this necessary? Couldn't some of the f'ssays have been
left out, or revised and combined?
More serious misgivings revolve around Steiner's critical judgment.
Breadth is purchased at the cost of real depth, or satisfying development
of themes. A Steiner essay quickly blurs with others and vanishes from
memory. The force of a personal stamp - that distinguishes
this
par–
ticular essay from another critic's on the same subject, is not found in
Steiner. As an essayist Steiner lacks the theoretical ability that is needed
for the study of an idea, a movement or a complex figure, and he is also
deficient in that easy grace of style and complete familiarity with context
that raises the modest skill of contemporary reviewing into a rounded
art. The
ess~y
on Leavis, for example, is not nearly as incisive as Trilling's
early essay ( 1949 ). Trilling's crisp remarks about the myopia and rigidity
in Leavis, resulting from the English class system, are far superior to
Steiner's rambling appreciation. The review essay on Deutscher's
blOg–
raphy of Trotsky is fitted ingeniously by Steiner upon a Greek stage,
replete with long quotations from Aeschylus, much like a schoolboy's
prize essay. It falls far short, however, in terms of actual political analysis
or real personal elrama, of Howe's essay on Trotsky. Indef'eI the charge
