Sir, - I write in some bewilderment, having read Eileen Battersby's interview with George Steiner (The Irish Times, September 29th). I find it difficult to reconcile the portrait presented in that interview with the person whom I heard interviewed in the Edmund Burke theatre in Trinity College on the previous Friday.
In that interview, in addition to responding to questions from the interviewer, Steiner took questions from the floor. In a number of instances he disagreed strongly, even vehemently, with the point of view of the person putting the question; but, in spite of considerable difficulty in hearing one or two of the questions, at no time was he less than gracious in his response.
I am in absolute agreement with Ms Battersby that intellectual brilliance carries with it no dispensation in the area of courtesy. I am also prepared to allow that people do frequently present themselves quite differently in a public situation to the way in which they behave in a one-to-one interview.
Steiner is undoubtedly one of the most outspoken and one of the most provocative of literary critics. Coming from the superlatively literate tradition of the central European Jewish intelligentia, he is not afraid to stand outside the consensus and to pose difficult and large questions. Coming, as we do, from a strongly populist tradition, the uncompromising manner in which he presents his views can at times be startling and can certainly come across as arrogant and even as dismissive. What also comes across, whether one agrees or disagrees with him, is a quite extraordinary degree of intellectual deftness and of linguistic control and clarity, a scope of reference second to none and a willingness to take real risks. So little of this was communicated in the Irish Times that I greatly regret that the interview did "get off on the wrong foot".
Finally, on one point I would have to disagree with Ms Battersby - in respect of her judgment of Steiner's prose, which she describes as "not beautiful . . . . formal, dogged and mannered". It is, of course, impossible to prove whether or not anything is beautiful. For my own part I can think of no literary critic since Walter Benjamin who writes with such originality, energy and elegance. - Yours, etc.,
Moya Cannon, Henry Street, Galway.