“The aesthetic act of creation (I have tried to show this in Grammars of Creation) is experienced either as a mimesis, an imitation of the divine fiat or as a challenge to it. These two impulses, imitation and challenge, are often inseparable. For Tolstoi, at the pitch of creativity God is the jealous bear waiting to wrestle with him in the forest. …Wittgenstein spoke for countless artists, writers, thinkers “have dedicated to God” his Philosophical Investigations. What other true critic and complete reader have we? asked Coleridge and Gerard Manley Hopkins after him.”
George Steiner
