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THE POETRY FROM OF THOUGHT HELLENiSM GEORGE TO TEl E E L N
Also by George Steiner The Poetry ofThought AVAILABLE FROM NEW DIRECTIONS From Hellenism to Celan My Unwritten Books George Steiner at The New Yorker George Steiner I A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK u
I For Durs Grunbein Copyright © 2011 George Steiner Poet &' Cartesian All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, televi- sion, or website review, no part of this hook may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any informa­ tion storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Published by arrangement with George Steiner and his agent, Georges Borchardt. PUBLISHER'S NOTE At New Directions' request, the author has provided translations of some of the longer passages quoted in the original in The Poetry 01 Thought. Manufactured in the United States of America New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper. First published as a New Directions book in 1.011 Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited Design by Erik Rieselbach Library of Congress Cataloging-in~Pub1ication Data Steiner, George, 1929­ The poetry of thought: from Hellenism to Celan I George Steiner. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8112-1945-7 (hardback: acid·free paper) 1. Literature and philosophy. 2. Philosophy in literature. I. Title. PN49· S742.011 801-dc23 1.011037840 13579 10 864 2 New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin by New Directions Publishing Corporation 80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Toute pensee commence par un poeme. (Every thought begins with a poem.) -Alain: "Commentaire sur 'La Jeune Parque/" 1953 II y a toujours dans la philosophie une prose litteraire cachee, une ambigui"te des termes. (There is always in philosophy a hidden literary prose, an ambiguity in the terms used.) -Sartre: Situations IX, 1965 On ne pense en philosophie que sous des metaphores. (In philosophy one thinks only metaphorically.) -Louis Althusser: Elements d'autocritique, 1972 Lucretius and Seneca are "models of philosophical-literary investigation, in which literary language and complex dialogical structures engage the interlocutor's (and the reader's) entire soul in a way that an abstract and impersonal prose treatise probably could not.... Form is a crucial ele- ment in the work's philosophical content. Sometimes, indeed (as with the Medea), the content ofthe form proves so powerful that it calls into question the allegedly simpler teaching contained within ie' -Martha Nussbaum: The Therapy ofDesire, 1994 Gegenuber den Dichtern stehen die Philosophen unglaublich gut angezogen da. Dabei sind sie nackt, ganz erbiirmlich nackt, wenn man bedenkt, mit welch durftiger Bildsprache sie die meiste Zeit auskommen miissen. (In contrast to the poets, the philosophers look incredibly elegant. In fact, they are naked, piteously naked when one considers the meager imagery with which they have to make do most ofthe time.) -Durs Griinbein: Das erste Jahr, 2001
I [ PREFACE What are the philosophic concepts of the deaf-mute? What are his or her metaphysical imaginings? All philosophic acts, every attempt to think thought, with the possible exception of formal (mathematical) and symbolic logic, are irremediably linguistic. They are realized and held hostage by one motion or another of discourse, of encoding in words and in grammar. Be it oral or written, the philosophic proposition, the ar- ticulation and communication ofargument are subject to the execu- tive dynamics and limitations of human speech. It may be that there lurks within all philosophy, almost certainly within all theology, an opaque but insistent desire-Spinoza's cona- tus-to escape from this empowering bondage. Either by modulat- ing natural language into the tautological exactitudes, transparen- cies and verifiabilities of mathematics (this cold but ardent dream haunts Spinoza, Husserl, Wittgenstein) or, more enigmatically, by reverting to intuitions prior to language itself. W~ do not know that there are any such, that there can be thought before saying. We ap- prehend manifold strengths of meaning, figurations ofsense in the arts, in music. The inexhaustible significance ofmusic, its defiance of translation or paraphrase, presses on philosophic scenarios in Socrates, in Nietzsche. But when we adduce the "sense" ofaesthetic 9 u