With his hallmark forceful discernment, George Steiner offers The Poetry of Thought as his magnum opus: an examination of more than two millennia of Western culture that argues on behalf of the essential oneness of great thought and great style. Sweeping yet precise, moving from essential detail to bracing illustration, Steiner spans the entire history of philosophy in the West as it entwines with literature, finding that, as Sartre stated, in all philosophy there is "a hidden literary prose." "The poetic genius of abstract thought," Steiner believes, "is lit, is made audible. Argument, even analytic, has its drumbeat. It is made ode. What voices the closing movements of Hegel's Phenomenology better than Edith Piaf's non de non, a twofold negation which Hegel would have prized? This essay is an attempt to listen more closely."
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By Zoetrope
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Overall this is a great book. The scope of argument is astonishing and Steiner has the erudition to back it up. However I do have some questions regarding the work and would dearly love a response. Steiner makes it clear that he wishes to deal with poetry and philosophy as mediums which are best equipped to understand human thought or human experience through language, and towards the end of the book he concentrates on Heidegger and Borges amongst others. But I would have thought that chapter fourteen of Joyce's Ulysses would have merited close analysis? Joyce's rich experiments play with language and provide much material for the understanding of reality, or what we hope to understand of it. Surely these experiments were contemporaneous with Heidegger's Sein und Seit. He mentions Borges use of Vico's understanding of history as a recurring phenomenon, but he doesn't mention Finnegans Wake regarding this philosophy. These are not criticisms as I do not pretend to be an expert, merely questions. Great read and I really like Steiners economy and clarity, will now move on to some of his earlier work.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By G. Lachman
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
George Steiner is one of the few mandarins of western culture we still have with us, and practically anything coming from his pen is worth reading and re-reading. With Jacques Barzun passing away this year, and Leszek Kolakowski having left us a few years earlier, it is heartening that Steiner can still open up new passions of thought. (I was about to say 'fields' but Steiner himself said that 'cows have fields; I have passions', and who am I to argue?)I read this short but infinitely deep book while working on a book of my own during a holiday in Munich. I can only hope that some of Steiner's insight fed my own humble attempts at pinning meanings down. The Poetry of Thought is a profound look at how meaning and form, insight and language, are in a constant tension, forever wrestling, forever reconciling, forever leading the reader into virgin lands of thinking. What we want next, of course, is a book by Steiner on music. I hope he reads this review.
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4 reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Text
19 Jun 2012
By Steiner
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A great little book by critic and scholar George Steiner about the complicated relationship of literature to philosophy. Few are as well equipped as Steiner in divulging the history of the close moments of contact between the great thinkers of system and totality and the major poets of the West. Steiner takes us through an impressive tour of the emergence of philosophy in Greece (with excellent commentaries on Heraclitus and Plato), as he reconstructs the primal, philosophical disavowal, and banishment of the poets from Plato's great academy. Yet for Steiner, the fundamental necessity of such a collusion resides in the very fact of language-of the need to think and create poetically in language. Steiner is absolutely meticulous as he moves through the major titans of this special encounter: from Plato and the Greek Tragedians to Heidegger and Celan, this little text is a great gift for students and readers. While never overly technical, Steiner refuses to dumb down. This is essay writing as it should be.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fragments of Futurity
17 July 2012
By A. Doug Floyd
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
George Steiner opens this series of essays on the power of poetic speech with a contrast between the precision of mathematics and music and the imprecision and many weaknesses of language. Then he offers a resounding acclamation of language, proclaiming, "Words, imprecise, time-bound as they are, construct remembrance and articulate futurity. Hope is future tense." For me, this quote captures the force and call of this text. In one sentence, he captures the essential power of the poetic, the speech that creates the future and the world. I might cautiously compare Steiner to Eugen Rosenstock Huessy who suggested that true speech creates the future; all other talking is simply chatter. We live in a world of chatter with a deep need for rediscovering the voice.
The book is a delightful, challenging exploration of poetic force in human culture and particularly in Western philosophic thought. Highly recommended!
The book is a delightful, challenging exploration of poetic force in human culture and particularly in Western philosophic thought. Highly recommended!
2 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fine companion.
17 Aug 2012
By Tatjana Kazan
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have read George Steiner throughout my adult life. I was happy to see that he was still publishing his work, and immediately ordered The Poetry of Thought. Steiner is the kind of writer whose style matches the content of his ideas in depth, elegance, and allusiveness. The other day I began reading The Poetry of Thought. The pleasure of his company remains undiminished.
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