[Professor Steiner's most recent publications are On Difficulty and Heidegger. We do not yet know what his] next book will be 'about', but we may guess, on the basis of such texts as are available, that the aboutness will direct itself—will aim its most urgent responsions—towards some great zone of silence ('topic' would be too restricting a term, too banal and ungiving in its locality) about which we do not, as yet, 'know' anything at all.

You think I am mocking. Perhaps I am not. For such speculation is the favourite Steiner mode. It is true that knowledge and tradition have accumulated in this one mind to such an extent that the loss of that mind (one pictures for instance a number 11 bus, out of control, bearing down upon the Professor) would rank with the burning of the library at Alexandria. How remarkable, then, that everything...