« Pour les Juifs, le Mot est la seule patrie »

Abstract

Born in Paris in 1929 from Austrian parents who fled to New York before the German invasion, George Steiner is situated at the crossroads of languages – he uses four : French, English, German, Italian. In terms of discipline, he is a novelist, a literary critic, a philosopher of language – and of cultures. He is a pure product of the old Europe whose diversity and history he appreciates although its culture didn’t avoid Nazi barbarism. Although he has been living in England for forty years, he does not feel he is “one of them”, but still in exile, like a guest on earth : to know as many languages as possible, to be always ready to get away, and to leave the « hotel a little cleaner than you found it », these are the three imperatives he taught his children.