Shelf Life. - Review - book review

National Review, May 28, 2001 by Michael Potemra

Jesus and Socrates left no written works, and man has suspected ever since that oral communication reaches closer to truth than does writing. The publication of lectures is the intellectual's method of splitting the difference: Here's what I say to my students, but presented in a format that will persist.

Roberto Calasso's Literature and the Gods (Knopf, 212 pp., $22) is an example of the greatness that can be achieved in this genre. Based on the Weidenfeld Lectures Calasso gave at Oxford in 2000, the book is an exploration of the reemergence of pagan divinities in intellectual life in the last two centuries. Calasso characterizes the history of modern literature as an attempt to recapture the uncanniness-the non- domesticatedness-of the Divine after its dethroning at the hands of skeptical Enlightenment humanism: "The enchanter gods wander like 'rapacious ghosts' in a desolate world. The time has come for them to sound their 'rebellion against Man,' represented . . . by the eternal pharmacist Homais, who is still 'amazed' that he managed to chase the gods off in the first place while presently preparing to burden Humanity with the awkward weight of a capital letter."

Homais, a character in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, is the best-known literary exemplar of modern science and skepticism; he represents the capitalization of Homme-Man-and it is against his spirit, not the spirit of traditional Western religion, that the pagan gods are conducting their literary revolt. The rise of what Calasso calls "absolute literature" has been made necessary by the fact that "there is no longer a theological power capable of taking charge and putting [gods and phantoms] in order." This ordering task of literature is not entirely new; Calasso notes that as far back as the Hindu Scriptures, man has intuited that the Word is at the heart of reality. He quotes from the Satapatha Brahmana: "Meters are the cattle of the gods." Calasso explains that "to operate effectively," Mind and Word "must team up, yoke themselves together." This yoke-the word itself is related to yoga-is meter: the transformation of Word into literature.

Calasso's book is immensely rewarding; it requires attention and offers much in return. For a somewhat higher ratio of effort to reward, look at George Steiner's Grammars of Creation (Yale, 344 pp., $29.95), based on his 1990 Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow. Steiner contends that recent years have seen the most important shift in man's intellectual history: Our culture and values are now created more by science and technology than by art and literature, and the resulting changes are "probably the most comprehensive and consequential since homo sapiens' development of language itself." We are losing the privacy of "aloneness and reserve," and "what 'leaks' out of inner life is far more than any mundane secret. It is a confidentiality of being, where the etymology of 'confidential' encloses a triplicity: there is trust ('confiding'), there is hope ('confidence'), and there is faith (fide). Words do remind us unnervingly of our losses."

The book is, beyond doubt, an intellectual tour de force-Steiner, it is well known, has read everything and understood even more-but it is difficult to imagine writings of this density spoken effectively in lecture form. One example: "In the anthropology of Levi-Strauss, so direct if recalcitrant an heir to Frazer, the domestication of fire makes man 'transgress' into culture; it severs him from nature and impels him towards the solitude of history."

Consider, by way of contrast, the new paperback edition of The Roots of Romanticism (Princeton, 171 pp., $13.95), the transcript of Isaiah Berlin's 1965 Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Berlin was most famous for his conversation, and these talks-they are, indeed, talks-show him at his best. He traces romanticism from its roots in German pietistic faith through to its modern, unpredicted consequences:

The result of romanticism, then, is liberalism, toleration, decency and the appreciation of the imperfections of life . . . This was very far from the intentions of the romantics. But at the same time-and to this extent the romantic doctrine is true-they are the persons who most strongly emphasized the unpredictability of all human activities. . . . Aiming at one thing, they produced, fortunately for us all, almost the exact opposite.

Berlin's fluidity carries the reader along; he is, in the highest sense, a teacher. Like Calasso and, in a different way, Steiner, he demonstrates how much knowledge-and inspiration-can be imparted in the published lecture.