In Grammars of Creation (Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 84-85), in making note of the ‘anxiety of influence,’ and the valorization of solitary creativity, George Steiner writes: I want to point to the elected presences which makers construe within themselves or within their works, to the “fellow-travellers,” teachers, critics, dialectical partners, to those other voices withinContinue reading “George Steiner On The ‘Unvoiced Soliloquy’ And Collaborative Creativity”
Tag Archives: eccentrics
Constantine Rafinesque’s Anticipation of Evolutionary Theory
The opening paragraph of the Wikipedia entry for Constantine Rafinesque notes that he was: [A] nineteenth-century polymath who made notable contributions to botany, zoology, the study ofprehistoric earthworks in North America and ancient Mesoamerican linguistics. It then continues: Rafinesque was eccentric, and is often portrayed as an “erratic genius”.[1] He was an autodidact who excelled in various fields of knowledge, as a zoologist, botanist, writer and polyglot. HeContinue reading “Constantine Rafinesque’s Anticipation of Evolutionary Theory”
My Imagined Interlocutors
Sometimes I find myself conducting arguments with myself; ‘in my head’, as it were. I walk along the streets, running their premises and conclusions through my mind; I refine their rhetorical pitch, I rehearse them; sometimes, I find myself overcome by the emotion associated with their content; indeed, one of the reasons I write hereContinue reading “My Imagined Interlocutors”
Samir Chopra 