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locutor, Eckermann, to the most lively satire,2 being convinced
(imaginatively, of course) that if Goethe and Eckermann had been
alive during the last war they probably would have visited Buchen–
wald (where Semprun was a prisoner). Semprun also supposes that
Goethe would have tried to
connect
the culture of Buchenwald with
the culture of pre-Nazi Germany, to which he had made so great a
contribution.
But how are we to understand George Steiner? I suppose that
when he addressed himself to comparing Greek and modern drama
he hoped by discovering differences to prove more sophisticated than
(in his view) "good Europeans" have been . Then why did he reverse
himself when writing his tale of the Holocaust, and suddenly looking
like nothing so much as a "good European," find in that chaos fewer
differences than resemblances, samenesses, even? Was he trying to
be naive?
How explain Steiner's peculiar mixture of sophistication and
naivete, his falling into the pattern of mistakenness I have described,
and which, to all appearances, must have been earnestly solicited.
To be sure, no one tries to fall into error, but error may come from
striving for profundity- there is such a thing as living intellectually
beyond one's means. Now from the very outset of his career, Steiner
has tried to give the impression that he, Steiner, has thought darkly
and deeply, that he has had weighty thoughts, depressing thoughts,
the kind of thoughts one less thoughtful than he might soon have left
off thinking. Let me read off some of Steiner's dark deep thoughts,
culled from his main works and also from his uncollected literary
reviews. Here they are:
Tragedy is dead. Also, better books will come out of
the East than from the West, where there is the freedom the East lacks.
Isn't
that a depressing thought for anyone who favors freedom? Another
recently expressed - and false - dark thought:
Tragedy can make one deaf
2. The details are just delicious. According to Eckermann, at Buchenwald Goethe
asked him, "Did you know that the tree in whose shade we were so fond of resting is
still inside the camp? That ... is a typically German gesture, and one that I ap–
preciate! Despite the terrible demands of war, that tree-which the officers and
soldiers of this garrison continue to call 'Goethe's tree', which, no doubt, will not fail
to raise the spirits of the wretches imprisoned here for various reasons - that tree has
not been cut down ." And again, "You see that inscription?
Jedem das Seine .
..
I find it
most ... encouraging.... For after all, what does it mean, 'To each his due'? Is it
not an excellent model for a society organized to defend the freedom of all ... to the
detriment, if necessary, of an excessive, harmful, individual freedom?"
