Anno Domini

by George Steiner

"Sous la violence de l'effort, il avait la tête enfoncée dans les épaules comme s'il portait une armure et, à chaque pas, des gouttes de sueur perlaient à la limite de sa chevelure rousse. La douleur ainsi que l'attention constante qu'il portait à son précaire équilibre embrumaient si bien son regard que ses yeux avaient pris une teinte grise indéfinissable. Mais lorsque, posant sa valise par terre, il reprenait son souffle en s'appuyant sur sa canne comme le héron sur ces longues pattes, alors ses yeux retrouvaient leur couleur naturelle, un bleu dur. Le visage à la bouche fine, à l'ossature délicate, jurait avec sa démarche contorsionnée. L'homme était beau, mais d'une beauté lasse."

Genres: Fiction

205 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 1964

About the author

George Steiner was a French and American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator whose work explored the relationship between language, literature, and society, with a particular focus on the moral and cultural consequences of the Holocaust. Multilingual from an early age, Steiner grew up speaking German, English, and French, and studied the classics under his father, while overcoming a physical handicap with his mother’s encouragement. His family relocated to the United States during World War II, an experience that shaped his lifelong reflections on survival, morality, and human cruelty. He studied literature, mathematics, and physics at the University of Chicago, earned an MA at Harvard, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Steiner held academic posts across Europe and the United States, including Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva, Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative European Literature at Oxford, and Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard, teaching in multiple languages. A prolific writer, he produced influential works in criticism, translation studies, and fiction, including Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, The Death of Tragedy, After Babel, and The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., blending historical insight with philosophical reflection. His essays and books explored the power and ambivalence of human language, the ethical responsibilities of literature, and the persistence of anti-Semitism, while his fiction offered imaginative examinations of moral and historical dilemmas. Steiner was celebrated for his intellectual breadth and lecturing style, described as prophetic, charismatic, and sometimes doom-laden, and he contributed extensively to journals such as The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and The New Yorker. He was married to Zara Steiner, with whom he had two children, David and Deborah, both of whom pursued academic and public service careers. Steiner’s work remains widely respected for its integration of rigorous scholarship, ethical inquiry, and literary sensitivity, marking him as one of the foremost thinkers in twentieth-century literature and comparative studies.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The three long stories that comprise Anno Domini by George Steiner focus on WWII and its aftereffects on survivors: the guilt-ridden, the traumatized, and the haunted. I had read lots of Steiner's brilliant criticism and didn't know he wrote any fiction until I came across this volume a few weeks ago in the USED BOOKS section of Flyleaf in Chapel Hill.

Initially, I thought "Return No More," the first piece, explained why Steiner mostly wrote criticism. The prose stuttered, and the action and plot seemed abrupt and forced. Who would believe a German officer would return to a French village after the war and hope to marry the sister of a man he had had hanged for treachery against the Wehrmacht? Well, maybe no one, but the ending of this piece is brilliant and chilling, like something out of Shirley Jackson.

"Cake" is more fluidly written, very well-written. Again, the premise is forced: a young American literary scholar decides to stay on after WWII's outbreak and becomes active in the French Resistance and then is hidden away in a Belgian insane asylum (that's what they were called back then). There he encounters a group of intriguingly sick folk and a lissome Jewish girl, not at all mentally deficient, with whom he falls in love. Ultimately things do not turn out well, as one would expect, but the portrait of the girl is superb, and there are stretches of dialogue that are preternaturally good--full of insight casually shared.

Generally, Steiner has a phrase maker's brilliance. He is adept at compressing his erudition into a sentence, or a clause, while moving the story forward. These observations are psychological, historical, and aesthetic; they're always apt and make you blink with gratitude.

"Sweet Mars" sweepingly recounts the fates of privileged schoolmates, now hurled on the rocks of modernity by the storms of World War II. It's beautifully written. One minor character, who gets chucked out of the story by a divorce, an American named Vi, is more or less at the apex of bit parts in fiction. She's just so annoyingly smart. The two mates most attended to have more depth, great depth. Their school year friendship makes sense, their dilemmas post-war make sense, the pain they suffer makes sense. Here we have Steiner demonstrating how wars demolish souls. Writing against the grain of soldiers typically pounded into silence after their wars, Steiner opens up wretchedness as it is felt, a constant rain of misery, marriages destroyed, livers vanquished, ideals trampled, achievements belittled. At one point, Steiner raises the question of who is dead, after all--the survivors or the departed? Maybe the survivors, he suggests.

Toward the end of the piece, Steiner writes himself into a box he breaks out of in an odd way that I felt signaled a final downpour of drivel, but he recovers, and the final passages, the incomplete reconciliations, the returns to the scenes of battle, and the inevitable surrender are convincing, poignant and masterfully delivered.

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll be frank — I only read Return No More for my Creative Writing class, but WOW. George Steiner’s writing style is eloquent and vivid in a way literally no other writer could ever dream of emulating, and I’m so impressed and jealous all at once. I have to go back to this and take notes. Phenomenal

[Ana Builes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una serie de relatos muy buenos. Sin lenguaje complejo, sin mucha referencia, historias de una guerra, fuera de ella.
Personalmente, el mejor, fue No regreses Nunca.