“Do the identifications with fictions, the inner, tidal motions of pathos and libido which the novel, the film, the painting, the symphony unleash within us somehow immunize us against the humbler, less formed, but actual claims of suffering and of need in our surroundings? Does the cry in the tragic play muffle, even blot out, the cry in the street?”

— George Steiner

Source: Real Presences (1989), III: Presences, Ch. 1 (p. 144).

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George Steiner 74

American writer 1929–2020

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