Abstract In a recent work, The Poetry of Thought, the eminent critic and scholar, George Steiner, sets out to trace the style and rhetoric of thought, the music, implicit as otherwise, of discursive moves in the history of the Western tradition and canon. He speaks there, resolute and bold, as ever, of the ‘creativity of reason.’ He speaks of the “discovery” of ‘metaphor,’ as that which ‘ignited abstract, disinterested thought.’ These two (recent) statements may serve to sum-up what I show, reflectively and in concrete detail, in this paper – making use however of far earlier published works; namely, his intellectual memoir, Errata: An Examined Life, and a sample long short story, ‘Return No More.’ It is a thesis as old as modernism (Wilde, Nietzsche), that all works, including, say, literary-critical and creative writing, are ultimately autobiographical. I try to show this in this paper, parsed however by the more minor premise that critical writing is always a form of imaginative creativity, and that creative writing is informed, at its best, by analytical intelligence. I choose Steiner as a case study in this paper, not only because he does indeed offer a shining and telltale example of the cohabitation of critical and creative motives; the music of the mind: the mind in the music; but also because his now-seemingly-obsolete singularity as a polymathic intellectual, is lived-out in the singularity of his insights into the, or his, equally singular conception of the human condition. Steiner’s storytelling, in this view – whether it is a critical, non-fictional narrative or a more-nominally creative one – is seen to epitomize the true texture of historical experience, where temporal reality is a function of unique contingencies, but also susceptible to necessitating induction. As read here, in both form and content, Steiner provides an exceptional occasion for seeing and understanding these truths.

中文翻译：

---

来自批判想象的 F(r)ictions: George Steiner 的奇异案例

摘要 在最近的一部著作《思想之诗》中，著名的评论家和学者乔治·施泰纳着手追溯西方传统和经典历史中的话语运动的思想风格和修辞，音乐，隐含的以其他方式呈现。 . 他在那里一如既往地坚定而大胆地谈到“理性的创造力”。他谈到“隐喻”的“发现”，因为它“点燃了抽象的、无私的思想”。这两个（最近的）陈述可以用来总结我在这篇论文中所展示的内容，反思性的和具体的细节——尽管使用了更早的出版作品；即他的智力回忆录，勘误表：一个被审视的生活，以及一个长篇短篇小说，“不再回来”。这是一个与现代主义（王尔德、尼采）一样古老的论文，所有作品，包括文学批评和创造性写作，最终是自传体。我试图在这篇论文中展示这一点，但是通过一个更小的前提来解析，即批判性写作始终是一种富有想象力的创造力，而创造性写作在其最好的情况下是由分析智能提供信息的。我选择施泰纳作为本文中的案例研究，不仅是因为他确实提供了一个关于批判性和创造性动机并存的闪亮和有说服力的例子；心灵的音乐：音乐中的心灵；但也因为他现在似乎已经过时的奇点作为博学知识分子，在他对人类状况或同样奇特的人类状况概念的洞察力中得以体现。在这种观点下，施泰纳的讲故事——无论是批判性的，非虚构叙事或更名义上的创造性叙事——被视为是历史经验真实结构的缩影，其中时间现实是独特偶然性的函数，但也容易受到必要的归纳。在这里阅读，无论是形式还是内容，施泰纳都提供了一个特殊的机会来观察和理解这些真理。