Ah, Steiner draws a line in the sand.  Young and Old; East and West; Art and Science.  “Two worlds,” “Two traditions.”  Worlds that we mortals must choose between, while the polymath Steiner finds himself “hopelessly vulnerable” as an “outsider” whose lot in life is knowing a lot about everything.  It is hard to feel sorry for the polymath, which might account for the slightly sarcastic tone.  What a place to find yourself in—caught between worlds, where you have the chance to act as a connector, a translator between languages.  

I think if I had to put words to what I want to do with my life, it would be that I want to be a translator. There is never a job listing for the “translator” in the sense that I would want it to mean, so it is a risky aspiration.  I want to be something that doesn’t exist!  This seems to be the position that Steiner finds himself in and he has chosen to write and teach.  This is a good place for the “translator” wannabe to find herself.  Both writing and teaching are fertile grounds on which to search for and find solidarity with even the greatest of opposites.  Both require you to come face to face with opposing forces on a regular basis—there is no hiding.  We have to face our students and our readers (at least if we want to continue writing) who will question us and challenge us.  We are asked to continually revise ourselves; to figure out where we belong; and I am guessing that many of us who pursue these paths find ourselves in the middle—not wanting to choose sides. 

There is no place more polarized than what we call “discussion.”  While we think we are listening to what others are saying, we are really thinking about what we want to say.  It makes me think about when a student in my class says something during a discussion in which the rest of the class cringes.  Rather than avoiding the statement, I try to figure out how to explain to the rest of the class where I think this person is coming from—even if I personally disagree.  It is as if for that moment I am not myself, I am just the translator.  I try to put the words of this student in a way that the rest of the class will understand, not so they will necessarily agree, but so they can share in the fruit which is: knowing beyond oneself—so they can see in another world.  Then when I least expect it, I find students who are doing this for each other.  Through my teaching I hope I am able to model translation.  And this seems greater than any words I could say. 

Maybe this is what we, on the English/humanities side, can take from the sciences, as I think Steiner is trying to point out.  Maybe we can let others learn by watching us and working with us rather than having to keep up an air of the “teacher.”  In the case of Richard Feynman, “it was his own collaboration with them, [the science giants,] rather than formal teaching, that inspired [him]” (167).  I always found it surprising how much my 5^th graders loved when I wrote with them and shared my own writing with them.  This was a vulnerable position to put myself in—my first drafts could be really scary at times, something I didn’t really want to share with anyone.  Images would flash through my head of my students laughing at my misspelled words—what kind of teacher can’t spell!  And thoughts of losing my job when parents heard of my inadequacies ran rampant in my mind.  But every time I did, it went fine.  I was able to take what I knew as an “adult” writer and translate it to the eleven year old writer.  And they always got it. 

Yeats’ poem, “Sailing to Byzantium” which the chapter title Unaging Intellect is borrowed from, is, in short, about the speaker’s desire in his old age to leave the place that seems only for the young.  It is a place that “neglect[s] monuments of unaging intellect.”  Steiner, I believe, sees a place for the sage that is not with other sages, but with the young.  I would suggest the sage cancel his trip to Byzantium.                       

It is good to be home again.  Just as after a long vacation, I find myself asking, now what?  We are dropped back onto America territory in the chapter On Native Ground.  Steiner seems a little uncomfortable here though (hearing the words paideia and football all mashed together makes for interesting reading).  He is quick to point out what we have been thinking all along: “”Master” carries the stain of slavery.” Not only does it hold this image for American culture, but it goes against our independent nature.  Americans shudder for fear of being “mastered” or somehow “owned.”  Of course, we might want to “own” or “master,” but certainly not be the receiver.  We want our talents to be “self made” and not “doctrinally schooled.”  But Steiner is all ready to talk about American masters for a whole chapter, so some sort of master must exist in a culture that intends to deny them.  Steiner has shaped his image of the master (and by now, ours as well) into unrecognizable forms and I am certain he will be making more alterations to the term “master” when he looks at the American culture. 

 We find in Henry James something similar to Nietzsche—a man who is a master without discipleship.  James, however, finds that he needs only to master himself.  As Steiner shares, “[h]is journals read like tutorials of the self, the critic instructing, encouraging…”  His writing is a warning to those who engage in a master/disciple relationship.  The young novelist in The Lesson of the Master is willing to do what the master tells him despite the fact that the master tells him that he is a “weary, wasted used-up animal” and that he should never try to be like him; so the lesson here is to not be like the master, meanwhile, this appears to be all that the disciple wants (125).  Is a master actually mastering the disciple if the disciple does not follow the master’s orders?  But then again, the master is making clear he is not much of a master. 

It reminds me of the idea in the previous chapter of the master “training his disciple for dissent.”  Maybe James is choosing to master only himself as a way of avoiding this dilemma.  Does he believe that there is less harm done if he is “left alone” as his master character states?  In the case of Nietzsche, we cannot say there is no harm done by avoidance.

In Nadia Boulanger we experience the reluctance to master, but we do see what can be done if one chooses to share their knowledge.  And by doing so, she has done much more good than harm.  It appears she did not enter the world of teaching with great joy.  She wanted to compose, but  chose not to as she was in her younger sister’s shadow.  Instead, she “would be nothing but a supreme teacher” (134).  This makes an interesting point for the idea that one must be “called” to teach.  By not being able to do what she wanted to do in life, she “resigned” to the role of the teacher.  Maybe this is where her success as a teacher comes from though—she isn’t trying to be a great teacher and therefore sidesteps some of the common dangers associated with teachers who think that they are great.  I’ve heard many individuals say they never thought they would be a teacher and ended up being one of the best.  It is as if a lack of awareness of the act of teaching leads to more genuine pedagogy.   Boulanger knew music and through this came to know teaching.  She began teaching young and may not have had grand images of what a teacher was supposed to be.  While she may be somewhat “above” her students when it comes to knowledge of music, she certainly has an ability to put herself on the level of her students as a teacher: “May I have the power to exchange your best with my best” (136).  She uses metaphors to describe her role as the teacher that beg the image of a humble servant, a patient farmer: “The teacher is but the humus in the soil.  The more you teach, the more you keep in contact with life and its positive results” and “When I teach, I throw out the seeds.  I wait to see who grabs them…”(136, 137).  This is how she “spellbinds” her students—who would expect someone so ordinary to do something so extraordinary? 

This may be the persona of the teacher that sells with the American public.  One who masters by not appearing to master.  Master without the pomp and circumstance.  Steiner’s discussion of Knute Rockne exhibits this effective lack of “superiorness” as well.  Rockne was a master who acted as if he was on the same level as his team: he “regarded his disciples as family.  He maintained close personal touch…”(139).  Yet, his coaching philosophy went on to transform the world of football and he inspired two hundred of his own athletes to become coaches themselves. 

In some way, this reminds me of the advertisements for being a Big Sister/Brother.  Something about that you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to know how to be yourself.  We imagine the master as this perfect, “supreme” being and we fear being that.  Not only do we fear it, we don’t imagine that we can be that way.  We have Socrates, Jesus and Knute Rockne for competition.  Maybe that is where we go wrong.  We forget that most of our masters and teachers are just people.  People who are willing to be themselves to other people.  And when we are ourselves, we are putting ourselves in danger.

Seekers

A philosophy student friend of mine and I were making the dark and winding journey back from Big Sky one January evening when he suddenly broke the tense silence that had been lingering for the last twenty minutes.  “It is all really down to two choices.”  I looked at him apprehensively, knowing that he had been working on this for the last twenty minutes, while I had been thinking about something like a really crispy piece of cheese pizza, and prepared myself jump on board his train of thought—wherever it was at that moment.

“Do you choose to pursue knowledge or peace?” He shot out.  “Because really, that is what it comes down to in life.”

I had never been asked a question quite like this before and had no instant answer.  And at the time, I didn’t know where a question like this had come from.  But in Steiner, we find ourselves facing some sort of a similar dilemma.  As Dr. Sexson and KJ posed to us at the end of class, what is the relationship between knowledge and faith?  Can a person pursue both whole heartedly?  Or does one eventually fall to the other in the end?

We hear in Steiner a cautionary tone, and yet a somewhat approving tone toward the adamant pursuit of knowledge.  And yet, he himself is a member of the Jewish faith.  He uses both those who have pursued primarily knowledge, as well as those who have pursued primarily faith (I use these knowing they cannot in truth be completely defined or separated) to explore the nature of the Master.   Both, in some way could be considered on a search for Truth/truth.  Steiner points out, that to pursue knowledge is to be in a constant state of grasping for something that can never be completely known: “Neither human will nor systematic exploration can attain the final mysteries or any complete grasp of natural phenomena.  Frustration is inscribed in reason,” (65).  For the most part, this could also apply to the idea of faith.  As Saint John Chrysostom wrote, “Let us invoke him as the inexpressible God, incomprehensible, invisible, and unknowable… He eludes the grasp of every mortal intelligence.”

As I find the question of the “relationship between faith and knowledge” to be a sticky one, I see the best way to go about exploring this idea is to observe how those individuals we are reading about seek knowledge or faith—how does their relationship appear to the reader?  We cannot be too certain about the pursuits of a person as in the case of Steiner.

Socrates supposedly made a “commitment to the life of the mind.”  But he was also known for his constant ability to contradict himself.  As Steiner says, “Certain Church Fathers were to concern in Socrates a creature of the devil; others hailed him as sanctified” (24).  However, in Plato’s, The Apology, we hear Socrates stating that, “the word of God…out to be considered first” and claiming he is “obedient to the god.”  This could be viewed from several different angles however.  Possibly Socrates knew that this sort of rhetoric would be most impactful to his listeners.   

It is difficult to label Jesus as a “faith seeker” because this depends on how a person views Jesus, but if Jesus has to be on a team, let's say it's the faith side of things.  So now I am wondering what knowledge is for Jesus?  Does he seek it out as well?  I could look at the idea that Jesus took up a calling to carpentry as a way of seeking out to know how to construct.  “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?” Matthew 13:54-56.  If Joseph was a carpenter and had to pass his trade down to Jesus, wouldn’t there be some knowledge passed down from a Master carpenter to a disciple?

While it may be easy to read Steiner and find many examples of those who sought out the life of the Master in return for eternal damnation—we have to remember, this is just one perspective.  It seems to me that true masters are able to live in the realm of both faith and knowledge if they so choose to.  I believe that to be able to successfully pursue peace, there has to be knowledge behind it.  Ghandi knew law before he was able to promote his idea of non-violence.  Dr. Martin Luther King received his Doctorate in Philosophy of Systematic Theology before he became a key figure in the Civil Right’s Movement.  It was Budda who was known for stating:

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.