George Steiner

"We have no more beginnings", George Steiner begins in this radical book. A far-reaching exploration of the idea of creation in Western thought, literature, religion, and history, he reflects on the different ways people have of talking about beginnings, on the "coretiredness" that pervades end-of-the-millennium spirit, and on the changing grammar of discussions about the end of Western art and culture.

Originating in the Gifford Lectures for 1990

Grammars of Creation

Are great works of art, literature and music 'creations' or 'inventions'? Does the mathematician 'invent' or 'discover'? Exploring an often neglected field, this book asks whether the current revolutions in our means of communication and in the biological sciences, may bring with them radical changes in the concept of individual creation and of poetic and philosophical invention. Are we returning to ancient anonymities and collectivities in aesthetic and intellectual experience? Are music and architecture now at the frontier where, as Plato would have it, truth and beauty meet? In Grammars of Creation the eminent critic George Steiner brings his unparalleled acumen and erudition to bear on these and other questions. 'This is a mesmerising book . . . Expressed in prose that is unfailingly apt, luminous and evocative.' Guardian

Nelson Zagalo

É um livro denso, com muita argumentação e contra-argumentação que requer uma contextualização que não é muito clara por se limitar a dizer que o livro surgiu das suas Gifford Lectures de 1990. Mas as Gifford Lectures não são umas quaisquer lições académicas, são seminários sujeitos a uma temática concreta: a Teologia Natural. Aliás foi nestas que William James apresentou também o seu famoso livro "As Variedades da Experiência Religiosa" em 1902. Ora a Teologia Natural procura provar a existência de Deus por meio filosófico, sem recurso ao sobrenatural. Assim compreende-se que aquilo que está em questão, em toda a discussão apresentada, não são os processos criativos artístico e científico convocados por Steiner, mas explicitamente a criação da existência humana.

Todo o livro é uma deambulação pelas ciências da linguagem, das humanidades e artes indo até às ciências naturais e exatas, para dar conta daquilo que é, ou podem ser, os processos de: Descoberta, Invenção e Criação. Tenho de dizer que em muitos momentos fiquei ali imerso, seguindo o seu pensamento, tentando captar, apreender e aprender. Contudo, quanto mais avançava no livro, mais certo estava de que nada daquilo conduziria a lado algum. Steiner dedica-se apenas e só a aprofundar ideias, a escavar conceitos em todas as dimensões possíveis, apresentando teias de possibilidades, mas nunca se chega à frente para tomar um caminho, para decidir o que quer realmente de tudo aquilo. 

“The Latin invenire would appear to pre-suppose that which is to be “found,” to be “come upon.” As if, to invoke the question underlying this study, the universe had already been “there,” had been extant for the Deity to find, perhaps to stumble upon. Turned to haughty paradox, this invenire is implicit in Picasso’s: “I do not search, I only find.” The tenor of discovery attaches to the Latinate verb when it first enters the English language towards the close of the fifteenth century (invention is thus a late-comer). Yet very quickly, the overlap between “finding” and “producing” or “contriving” becomes evident. After the 1540s, invenire can pertain to the composition, to the production of a work of art or of literature.”

(...)

“The aura of “feigning,” of “fabrication”—itself a term in the highest degree ambiguous—of “contrivance,” modulating into falsehood, is audible after the early 1530s. As the term ripens into currency, both spheres are present: that of origination, production and first devising on the one hand, that of possible mendacity and fiction on the other. ”

(...)

“As I noted, something within the deep structures of our sensibility balks at the phrasing and concept: “God invented the universe.” We speak of a major artist as a “creator,” not as an “inventor.”

(...)

“I have already cited the taboo on the “making of images” in Judaism and Islam. To create such images is to “invent,” it is to “fictionalize” in the cause of a virtual reality, scenes, real presences beyond human perception or rivalry (“I know not ‘seeming,’” says Hamlet in his rage for truth). Time and again, we will meet up with the artist’s sense of himself as “counter-creator,” as competing with the primal fiat or “let there be” on ground at once exultant and blasphemous. Is the lack of humour, so marked in the Hebraic-Christian delineations of a revealed God, instinct with the seriousness of creation? Invention is often thoroughly humorous. It surprises. Whereas creation, in the sense of the Greek term which generates all philosophy, thaumazein, amazes, astonishes us as does thunder or the blaze of northern lights.”

(...)

The taboo, always only partial and often circumvented, on the representation of the human person attaches to a uniquely subtle aesthetic of the ornament, of the mathematical logic and beauty of the geometric. Persian and Arab calligraphy are more than suggestive of algebra (itself, of course, partly of Islamic origin). Centrally, the strain of iconoclasm in Islamic sensibility and architectural practice underlines the paradox latent in any serious aesthetics after the Mosaic prohibition on the making of images and after the Platonic critique of the mimetic. A malaise lies near the heart of re-presentation. Why “double” the natural substance and beauty of the given world? Why induce illusion in the place of truthful vision (Freud’s “reality principle”)? Non-figurative, abstract art is in no way a modern Western device. As ancillary to the reception of the figural prodigality of the natural world, it has long been crucial to Islam. In its formalized borrowings from the shape of plants, from the geometries of live water, the Islamic ornamental motif is simultaneously an aid to disciplined observation of the created and an act of thanks. To borrow a key phrase: the aesthetics of Islam are indeed a “grammar of assent.”

(...)

“There is explicit engagement with transcendence in an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Bach, or a Dostoevski. It is at work with unspecified force in a Rembrandt portrait or on the night of Bergotte’s death in Proust’s Recherche. The wing-beat of the unknown has been at the heart of poiesis. Can there, will there be major philosophy, literature, music, and art of an atheist provenance?”

Eu concordo com Steiner quando ele diz que os físicos não se podem recusar a discutir o que existiu antes do Big Bang, mas não chega dizer que o rei vai nu, menos ainda com isso mesmo limitar-se a levantar a véu do retorno da ideia de um Criador de tudo. Desde logo, porque não concordo com o seu remate de que criadores ateus dificilmente poderão criar obras tão ou mais transcendentes que as de Michelangelo ou Dostoiévski. A declaração de Nietzsche de que "Deus está Morto" é mera constatação do processo desvelado por Darwin, o que não tem de ser nenhum niilismo, menos ainda um "desperançoso" "zero negro" como Steiner parece querer constatar no fecho da sua lição. 

Por outro lado, toda a viagem por entre o virtuosismo referencial de múltiplas ciências e artes é vertiginosa e por isso não supreende a admiração que Steiner sempre manteve na academia. Esta obra é talvez um dos seus maiores legados, representativo da sua mestria e capacidade intelectual.

Nota: lido em inglês em audiobook, acompanhado pela versão portuguesa editada pela Relógio d'Água com tradução de Miguel Serras Pereira.

Publicado bo VI:
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Grammars of Creation Originating in the Gifford Lectures for 1990

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