As it is not possible for me to summarize in five minutes the whole body of George Steiner’s work without travesty, or at least with greater aphoristic skills than I possess, I should like therefore (as Frederick Maurice said of Coleridge) to put you in “a way of reading” by offering a maniple of brief points.

First: that the breadth and scope of this Living Literacies conference in which you have participated realizes Professor Steiner’s armed vision that “specialization has reached moronic vehemence. Learned lives are expended on reiterative minutiae.” Write that in your commonplace books!

Second: if you are starting out to explore his works, perhaps you may begin with “The Uncommon Reader” in the book of essays No Passion Spent. It is clear, careful and challenging – and to be challenged. Or treat yourselves to Language and Silence, a book that was appropriated by everyone and his partner in the ’60s, one which passed into the general academic consciousness – often without acknowledgement

Third: just listen to these sentences!”

“Literary criticism should arise out of a debt of love.” (1959)

“We are entering on large difficult ground. There are landmarks worth noting from the outset.” (1961)

“When he looks back, the critic sees a eunuch’s shadow. Who would be a critic if he could be a writer?” (1966)

“That it is untranslatable is one of the definitions oVered of poetry. What remains after the attempt, intact and uncommunicated, is the original poem.” (1966)

“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.” (1971)

“Historians and sociologists agree, and after all we should sometimes believe them too, that there has been a marked decline in the role played by formal religious systems, by the churches, in western society.” (1974)