Renowned Critic Concludes Lectures on ‘Art of Teaching’

George Steiner, renowned writer, scholar and critic, gave his sixth and final lecture, titled “Unageing Intellect,” as the 2000-2001 Charles Eliot Norton professor of poetry last night to great applause before an overflow crowd in Sackler Lecture Hall.

“This was Dr. Steiner at the top of his form, and the Norton lectures at their most sublime,” said Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., Du Bois professor of the humanities.

In selecting Steiner for the Norton professorship, the search committee lauded his “remarkable fluency in many languages, and his deep learning in the literatures and philosophies of various cultures,” and both qualities were clearly on display last night.

“The word rabbi means teacher, nothing else,” Steiner said as he delved into the “masters” of teaching and literature in the Jewish culture and tradition.

Steiner’s lecture included a wide range of “masters” from across history and cultures, from the biblical patriarch Abraham to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche.

At a few points throughout the lecture, the audience was even able to catch a glimpse of Steiner’s humor.

“I have been persuaded of this my whole life—do not trust the teacher who has tenure,” he joked.

Steiner’s lecture series—six talks over the course of the semester—covered “the art of teaching, from the Platonic Socrates to Wittgenstein and Ionesco,” as advertised by the English department.

At the end of the lecture, Loker Professor of English Robert J. Kiely ’60 thanked Steiner for his insight into the “art of teaching, the psychodynamics, the anthology and pathology of the relationship between teacher and student.”

Steiner joined Harvard this year from the University of Cambridge, where he is the Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College.

Among other honors, Steiner serves as a fellow of the British Academy, is a recipient of France’s Legion of Honor and the Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award, and has been named an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Founded in 1925, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship was named for Harvard College’s first professor of the history of art and was established through a gift from Charles Stillman, Class of 1898.

Past recipients of the Charles Eliot Norton professorship of poetry have included such luminary figures as Leonard Bernstein ’39, Jorge Luis Borges, e.e. cummings ’15, T. S. Eliot ’10, Robert Frost, Frank Stella and Igor Stravinsky. Musicologist Joseph Kerman was the most recent Norton professor, serving for the 1997-1998 academic year.