George Steiner
Francis George Steiner was born on the 23rd of April 1929 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. His right arm withered from birth yet his mother insisted he use it as an able-bodied person would. She believed self-pity was nauseating and refused to let him become left-handed. This physical struggle formed the first layer of a life defined by survival against odds. Five years before his birth his father moved the family from Austria to France to escape anti-Semitism. Frederick Georg Steiner worked as an investment banker after being a senior lawyer at Austria's central bank. He told his children that Jews were endangered guests wherever they went. He wanted them equipped with languages to earn a living and the ability to pack a suitcase rather than a steamer trunk. They took joy in the adventure of displacement.
When Steiner turned six his father taught him to read the Iliad in original Greek. This classical education became a cornerstone of his identity even as war approached. In 1940 his father secured permission for the family to travel to New York while Germans prepared to invade France. Steiner his mother and sister Lilian left by ship from Genoa. Within a month of their move the Nazis occupied Paris. Of the many Jewish children in Steiner's class at school he was one of only two who survived the war. This event made him feel like a survivor which profoundly influenced his later writings. He stated that his whole life had been about death remembering and the Holocaust. He called himself a grateful wanderer saying trees have roots and he has legs.
Steiner accepted the post of Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva in 1974. He held this post for twenty years teaching in four languages. He lived by Goethe's maxim that no monoglot truly knows his own language. Before Geneva he spent time as a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton between 1956 and 1958. He also held a Fulbright professorship in Innsbruck Austria from 1958 to 1959. In 1959 he was appointed Gauss Lecturer at Princeton where he lectured for another two years.
He became a founding fellow of Churchill College Cambridge in 1961. Some disapproved of this charismatic firebrand with a foreign accent. They questioned the relevance of the Holocaust he constantly referred to in his lectures. Bryan Cheyette professor of twentieth-century literature at the University of Southampton noted Britain did not think it had a relationship to the Holocaust. Its mythology of the war was rooted in the Blitz Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. While Steiner received a professorial salary he was never made a full professor at Cambridge with the right to examine. His father objected to him leaving England saying Hitler who said no one bearing their name would be left in Europe would then have won. Steiner remained in England because he would do anything rather than face such contempt from his father.
Central to Steiner's thinking is his astonishment that you can use human speech both to love to build to forgive and also to torture to hate to destroy and to annihilate. He believed nationalism is too inherently violent to satisfy the moral prerogative of Judaism. He stated that because of what they are there are things Jews cannot do. This view on language extended into his academic work where he explored art and thought unbounded by national frontiers or academic disciplines.
Steiner advocated generalisation over specialisation insisting that literacy must encompass knowledge of both arts and sciences. His best-known book After Babel published in 1975 was an early and influential contribution to the field of translation studies. It was adapted for television as The Tongues of Men in 1977. The book inspired the creation in 1983 of the English avant-rock group News from Babel. He received criticism and support for his views that racism is inherent in everyone and that tolerance is only skin deep. He asked audiences to consider how easy it is to say racism is horrible while sitting in a room versus facing a Jamaican family moving next door with six children playing reggae and rock music all day.
Steiner wrote extensively about the impact of the Holocaust on Western culture and the moral responsibilities of the Jewish people. His first published book Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast appeared in 1960. It studied the different ideas and ideologies of Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Death of Tragedy published in 1961 originated as his doctoral thesis at Oxford examining literature from ancient Greeks to the mid-20th century.
His controversial novella The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. appeared in 1981. In this work Jewish Nazi hunters find Adolf Hitler alive in the Amazon jungle thirty years after World War II ended. Steiner explored ideas about the origins of European anti-semitism first expounded in his critical work In Bluebeard's Castle published in 1971. He suggested Nazism was Europe's revenge on the Jews for inventing conscience. Cheyette sees Steiner's fiction as an exploratory space where he can think against himself. Central to it is the survivor's terrible masochistic envy about not being there having missed the rendezvous with hell.
Steiner met Zara Shakow a New Yorker of Lithuanian descent while working as leader writer for the London-based weekly publication The Economist between 1952 and 1956. She had also studied at Harvard and they met in London at the suggestion of their former professors. The professors had had a bet that they would get married if they ever met. They married in 1955 the year he received his DPhil from Oxford University. They had a son David Steiner who served as New York State's Commissioner of Education from 2009 to 2011. Their daughter Deborah Steiner became Professor of Classics at Columbia University.
In his autobiography Errata published in 1997 Steiner related his sympathetic stance towards the use of brothels since his college years at the University of Chicago. His virginity offended his roommate Alfie who found it ostentatious and vaguely corrupt in a nineteen-year-old. Alfie marched him off to Cicero Illinois a town justly ill famed but reassuring by virtue of its name. There Alfie organized an initiation as thorough as it was gentle. Steiner stated this unlikely gentleness blessing him still.
Steiner last lived in Cambridge England where he died at home on the 3rd of February 2020 at the age of 90. Zara Steiner died from pneumonia ten days later. He held the positions of the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative European Literature and Fellow of St Anne's College Oxford from 1994 to 1995. He also held the Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University from 2001 to 2002. He received many honors including a Rhodes Scholarship in 1950 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970 or 1971.
His final book A Long Saturday Conversations was written with Laure Adler. It was published in French in 2014 and in English in 2017. He wrote for The New Yorker for over thirty years contributing over two hundred reviews. He became a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many journals and newspapers including The Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. Edward Hughes and Ben Hutchinson described him in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy as a polyglot and polymath. Harriet Harvey-Wood called him a magnificent lecturer prophetic and doom-laden who would turn up with half a page of scribbled notes and never refer to them.
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Common questions
When was George Steiner born and where did he grow up?
Francis George Steiner was born on the 23rd of April 1929 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. He grew up in France after his father moved the family from Austria to escape anti-Semitism five years before his birth.
What happened to George Steiner during World War II?
George Steiner survived the war as one of only two Jewish children in his school class while the Nazis occupied Paris. His family fled to New York in 1940 just before the German invasion, and this experience made him feel like a survivor who profoundly influenced his later writings about death and the Holocaust.
Which academic positions did George Steiner hold at Cambridge University?
George Steiner became a founding fellow of Churchill College Cambridge in 1961 but was never appointed as a full professor with the right to examine students. He held various posts including the Gauss Lecturer at Princeton and taught in four languages at the University of Geneva for twenty years starting in 1974.
What is the main theme of George Steiner's book After Babel published in 1975?
After Babel published in 1975 serves as an early and influential contribution to the field of translation studies by exploring art and thought unbounded by national frontiers or academic disciplines. The work advocates generalisation over specialisation and insists that literacy must encompass knowledge of both arts and sciences.
Who were the parents of David Steiner and Deborah Steiner?
David Steiner and Deborah Steiner are the children of George Steiner and Zara Shakow whom he married in 1955. Their son David served as New York State Commissioner of Education from 2009 to 2011 while their daughter Deborah became Professor of Classics at Columbia University.