In Bluebeard's castle;: Some notes towards the redefinition of culture (The T. S. Eliot memorial lectures)

Four impressive lectures about the culture of recent times (from the French Revolution) and the conceivable culture of times to come. Mr. Steiners discussion of the break with the traditional literary past (Jewish Christian Greek and Latin) is illuminating and attractively undogmatic. He writes as a man sharing ideas and his original notions though scarcely cheerful have the bracing effect that first-rate thinking always has. New Yorker In Bluebeards Castle is a brief and brilliant book. An intellectual tour de force it is also a book that should generate a profound excitement and promote a profound uneaselike the great culturalists of the past. Steiner uses a dense and plural learning to assess his his book has the outstanding quality of being not simply a reflection on culture but an embodiment of certain contemporary resources within it. The result is one of the most important books I have read for a very long time. New Society