To George Steiner with love
The title is a bit misleading because I do not want to write about people but about an essay written George Steiner. I would like to answer to the problem of the cacophony of languages. George Steiner wrote about this problem a lot, for example in his essay titled "The talking animals", and it is also raised in his book titled "After Babel". The diversity of languages and thus the need of the process of translation are obstacles to human development, according to George Steiner. With these thoughts I want to argue, more precisely I would like to add a reassuring answer to what the writer says:
“... ... Any information theory, or a single model of awakening of human consciousness will not be convincing until they will not account for the deeply shocking antieconomical diversity of spoken languages on this crowded planet.”1
Steiner's approach is just the misunderstanding as it is in the ancient Babel story. Thousands of years ago people raised the tower to reach heaven according to the story of the Tower of Babel. God confused the languages of people to punish them for their pretension, so God inhibited people from reaching his residence in the sky. The image of avenging God can be found in this archaic tale, and it is well explained by the early struggle of humanity against the forces of nature.
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1 This is not the original text of George Steiner from his essay titled “The language animal”. I translated it from Hungarian language.
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