The "bulwark for private life"
"[T]he quality of silence is organically linked to the quality of language. You and I are sitting here, in this house surrounded by a garden, where there is no other noise other than the sound of our conversation. Here I can work. Here I can dream and try to think. Silence has become a huge luxury. People are living in a constant din. There is no more night in cities. Young people are afraid of silence. What will become of serious and difficult reading? Is it possible to read Plato while wearing a Walkman? I find this very worrying.
New technologies have transformed the dialogue with books. They abridge them, simplify them, and connect them. Our minds have become “wired.” We do not read in the same way today. The phenomenon of Harry Potter stands out as an exception. All the world’s children, from Eskimos to Zulus, are reading and rereading this ultra-English saga, with its rich vocabulary and sophisticated syntax. It’s wonderful.
Books are great bulwark for private life. England is still very respectful of privacy, a quality that can have its absurd side: you can have neighbours that live next door to each other for fifty years without ever exchanging a single word. And the cult of private life has an immense political value, because it is also a capacity for resistance."
Read the Presseurop interview with George Steiner here.Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily.
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