Observer review: Grammars of Creation by George Steiner: “In Grammars of Creation, he puts pressure on us to consider the
various nothingnesses we live with. Not only are our individual
lives haunted by our forthcoming absence, but every work of art –
and art, for Steiner, is at once our grand inquisitor and the best
way life has come up with of justifying itself – is ‘attended by a
two-fold shadow: that of its own possible or preferable
inexistence, and that of its disappearance’.”