From an interview with the philosopher George Steiner that was conducted in 2014 by Laure Adler, a journalist. The interview appears in A Long Saturday, which will be published in March by the University of Chicago Press. Steiner is the author of more than two dozen books. Translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan.

The Economist sent me across the Atlantic to cover the debate on American atomic power: was the United States going to share its nuclear knowledge with Europe? Under Eisenhower, the Americans decided they wouldn’t. It wasn’t a given; there was still hope that there…