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

Velin-Lus-Ro

The supreme being could have chosen to dwell in the uncreated infinity of the void. Creation is, in the strict sense, optional. It enters freely into a diacritical relation with, abstention from non-being or nullity. All religion, all theology could be defined as an endeavour to grasp, to offer thanks for, the gratuitous miracle of creation. It celebrates or, in the case of negative theology, questions the unfathomable choice whereby “there is not nothing.” This other option, although we cannot conceive of it or attach to it even the most spectral of images, can be supposed to have had its own exceeding logic and plausibility. Only nothingness is at perfect rest. There were, moreover (there are) other possible choices. I have referred to the idea of numerous preceding creations, of “rough drafts” from the Maker’s atelier. Aristotelian-Thomist cosmology insists on a single universe, modelling the will and perfection of its architect. Other hypotheses, long judged heretical, invoke a plurality, indeed an infinity of other worlds, of “universes” either analogous to or radically different from our own (la pluralité des mondes, intimated by Giordano Bruno and argued by the Enlightenment). Creating freely, the Deity or first principle can re-create in corrective or playful prodigality. An obvious menace attaches to this liberty: that of subsequent unmaking, or God as Tinguely trashing His own artifact. The Noah-legend, so widespread in diverse mythologies and cultures, is a weak version of such possibility. It is not merely human and animal forms which can be returned to non-being; it is the cosmos itself. There is no guaranteed tenure in the fact of existence. Stars burn out. Hence the anxiety of the major theological and metaphysical doctrines in regard to time. As Plato’s Timaeus seeks to make plain, once created, once in being, the cosmos is everlasting. For Aristotle it is eternal (a rather different concept). Judaeo-Christian perceptions of God look to the rainbow, to the celestial promise that annihilation will not be visited on created being. Does this pious hope not abrogate God’s absolute freedom?

Grammars of Creation quotes

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