Skip to main content

WE ARE ALL GUESTS OF LIFE
George Steiner

A human being does not have any roots. He or she must make a pilgrimage through the human condition. That means we are all guests of life. Being is our host. We are life’s invitees. No-one has a right to be born. Everyone is a guest in life’s mysterium tremendum. The newly-born—Montaigne reminds us—is already old enough to die. Life means receiving an arbitrary gift.

How should a guest behave? He or she should leave the house in which time was spent as a guest somewhat cleaner, somewhat more beautiful, somewhat safer, than it was found. That is the profound meaning of ecology.

Pollution of the environment, exploitation, and desecration of our small, overpopulated planet have now become a suicidal frenzy. Tons of rubbish, of poisonous filth, lie at Mount Everest. Seas are dying. Innumerable plants and animal species are being destroyed. The guest has become a technologically intoxicated, blind vandal. He systematically wrecks the hostelry which had welcomed him. If we do not learn to be well-behaved guests within organic life, we will also besmirch other planets.

The environment will only recover after the self-destruction of a humanity made crazy by money mania. Only if we vanish does our planet have a chance.

Human beings are reciprocally guests and hosts—just as both are the guests of life. In Classical Greek the word xenos meant ‘stranger’ and ‘guest’. Of that splendid allegory all that remains to us is the word xenophobia. That is our history: from xenos to xenophobia.

THE FINEST PROFESSION

For fifty years I was a teacher of literary scholarship and philosophical hermeneutics. Outstanding thinkers and poets write the letters. The teacher, the interpreter, is the postman, the postino, who does his best to put these letters in the right boxes. A humble profession.
The great poet Hölderlin does not need Mr Steiner, but Mr Steiner passionately needs Hölderlin in order to be able to breathe in the realm of consciousness. These two activities should never be confused as too many of my university colleagues confuse them. I can tell you that many people take themselves very seriously in those surroundings.
A humble profession but perhaps the finest that exists. What does it mean to be a teacher? Dante’s answer is incomparable: m’insegnavate come l’uom s’eterna. Untranslatable: ‘Thou, my teacher, thou hast imparted to me how a human being turneth towards eternity, and maketh himself everlasting.’
How? Through study and commenting on texts, through the inexhaustible joys of learning by heart. (What one loves one learns by heart.)

George Steiner

How should a guest behave towards his host? He (or she) should attempt to do everything he can to learn about the host’s customs, convictions, beliefs, and, so far as possible, his language. If they are not morally unjust, the guest should obey the laws of the hostelry. The guest should contribute what lies within his power towards the well-being, the cultural proprietorship, and the prosperity of this host. On the threshold when leaving thanks should be mutual. Never forget that God is present in the unassuming ‘adieu’. This is an ‘until the next time’, sharing the miracle of life …

Being a guest is not an easy calling. Among the great majority of our species there often exists a brutal territorial atavism. We bare our teeth to the outsider. The average person has an almost panic-stricken fear of someone different, of someone whose way of life is not the same. Apartheid, involving living only among one’s own people, is a repulsive but almost organic lethargy of the soul. The stranger smells bad and migrant children shout too loudly and defoul the streets. For heaven’s sake why can’t these wretched people stay where they come from?

Guest and refugee, foreign workers and serf, are dangerously contiguous terms. What patience, what humility, what diplomatic tact and what discreet sensitivity are required before the guest is allowed to cross the threshold, let alone enter the host’s living area. And even if he receives a heartfelt welcome, he should always, showing due discretion, have his packed suitcase ready in a corner. I taught that to my children.

Extract from a speech of thanks for the Börne Prize Paulskirche, Frankfurt, 2003