Customer Reviews

Lessons of the Masters (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures; 2001-2002)

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Let's get some things on the table. George Steiner can infuriate any reader. The sheer depth and scope of his reading can intimidate. He is opinionated, and often blunt about it: "Our heritage in the west is that of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome...Our alphabet of recognition is that developed by "dead white males." He finds inspiration in places that are simply not located on the maps that most of us use: "Today," he notes in passing, "only the classicist and the medievalist know of Stratius." (One wants to add, "yes, both of them.") Here's what you need to do: Completely set all of that aside and delve into Lessons of the Masters. I have never read a book that so accurately managed to explore the complex dynamics involved in the teacher/student relationship. And not just those relationships as maniffested in the standard classroom that readily comes to mind, but in the music conservatory (see the section on Natalie Boulanger) and the football field (see his discussion of Knute Rockne). Even Judas, whose betrayal will once again be under the micro-scope given Mel Gibson's forthcoming film, is explained in the master/disciple context -- a "flawed love for his master, a desire to be singled out..."

Steiner, almost alone as far as I can tell, has dared to account for the impulses toward fidelity, trust, seduction and betrayal in teaching and apprenticeship. "There is," Mr. Steiner maintains, "no craft more privileged than teaching." Mr. Steiner must have been a master teacher, if this book is any indication. Oh, to have been alive at that seminar....

A George Steiner book presents a certain source of excitement for me. This book collects the Norton Lectures Steiner gave on the relations between master and student, master and matter mastered, and masters and their ability to transmit mastery. Steiner's favorite familiar players Plato, Dante, Heidegger, Celan and Pessoa take various turns throughout the excogitations. The first two chapters, one on Plato and the other on Faustus, provided me with the most joy. I felt an odd sense of disenchantment in the chapter on native grounds, in which Steiner dissipates his energy on the American scene by discussing Knute Rockne and American football. This collection is necessarily selective. I imagine many others, though few as capable, would have chosen different masters and other relationships to discuss fruitfully. Steiner proclaims the essential validity of the face to face relations that can occur in a paedagogic setting of any sort and ubiquity of some form of erotics among the involved. Curious in their extended absences from the text are heroes Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound who did much to teach at least one generation writing.