George Steiner Quote

Fantasizing about action out there in the 'real' world, spinning dreams abut the secret centrality, about the occult importance of the labours in which he has interred his existence — labours that the vast majority of his fellow men would deem wholly marginal and socially wasteful if they knew of them at all — the pure scholar, the master of catalogues, can sup on hatred. At the ordinary level, he will exorcize his spleen in the ad-hominem nastiness of a book review, in the arsenic of a footnote. He will vent his resentments in the soft betrayals of an ambiguous recommendation or examination report and in the scorpion's round of a committee on tenure. The violence stays formal. Not, one supposes, in Professor Blunt.


"The Cleric of Treason" - George Steiner: A Reader (1984)


Fantasizing about action out there in the 'real' world, spinning dreams abut the secret centrality, about the occult importance of the labours in...

Fantasizing about action out there in the 'real' world, spinning dreams abut the secret centrality, about the occult importance of the labours in...

Fantasizing about action out there in the 'real' world, spinning dreams abut the secret centrality, about the occult importance of the labours in...

Fantasizing about action out there in the 'real' world, spinning dreams abut the secret centrality, about the occult importance of the labours in...