John Le Carré speaks German

And quite good German at that.

I was going back through some videocasts of Druckfrisch, a German TV show devoted to contemporary literature, hosted by the genial Dennis Scheck. I came across his interview with John Le Carré on the occasion of the publication of the German translation of Our Kind of Traitor (Verräter wie wir). The interview took place in Bern, Switzerland, in October 2010, and for those who would like to watch. it can be found at ARD until November 1; but if you miss it there, a site called "Verpasst.de" (great name!) has the interview available at an time.

Dennis Scheck

Scheck goes on location often, even to the U.S. : the most recent program is his interview with Salman Rushdie in New York. On these occasions he speaks English with his guests (Kinky Friedman!), with voice over in German, but no translation was necessary for Le Carré's. His German was very good, and he had no trouble discussing his career and his books.

Just the other day on one of my German podcasts, I heard an interview with the former director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, who is now in Berlin, where is playing a major role in the "Humboldt Forum." He was interviewed on the podcast about an exhibition he had organized at the British Museum: Germany: Memories of a Nation -- A 600-Year History in Objects. He too spoke German, and well he might, as he will be living in Berlin. But, although he understood the interviewer's questions perfectly, his German was not as fluent as Le Carré's. Still, I am sure he will get the hang of it.

Two posts on this blog (see here and here) have mentioned Le Carré in connection with Fritz Strich, with whom the very young Le Carré (actually David Cornwell) studied in Bern when he was still a teenager. Deutschlandfunk has the written text of the interview with Dennis Scheck, which includes a portion of text that does not appear in the videocast. Here is that text, which tells how important German was to him, even for his novels. Imagine: he is familiar with Wolfram von Eschenbach!

Ich war damals 16 Jahre alt und war seit meinem fünften Lebensjahr in Internaten und Institutionen. Meine Mutter war verschwunden und mein Vater war ein komplizierter Mann, manchmal im Gefängnis, manchmal nicht. Dann kam ich praktisch als Flüchtling hierher und wollte Deutsch lernen. Ich hatte einen sehr guten Deutschlehrer in meiner Schule in England und ich dachte, als guter rebellischer Halbstarker, wenn die ganze Welt die Deutschen hassten, müssen sie auch anständig sein, irgendwo. Und dann habe ich mich, wahrscheinlich sehr naive und einfache Art, in deutsche Kultur eingetieft. Man könnte fast mit dem Nibelungenlied von Wolfram von Eschenbach auch beginnen. Die haben auf mich einen großen Eindruck gemacht in meinem Roman. Wenn es eine Formel gibt: "Take somebody, who knows nothing", und dann: "teach him something." Sogar im "Spion, der aus der Kälte kam: Er lernt am Ende, auch wenn es ihn das Leben kostet, die Menschlichkeit. Ich erinnere mich, ich glaube, das war in Parzival von Wolfram von Eschenbach. Es gibt einen Augenblick, wo er diesen alten Mann Anfortas wiedertrifft und er sieht ihn, das ist das zweite oder dritte Mal, dass er ihn sieht, und er hat inzwischen furchtbare Erfahrungen gemacht, Parzival, und er sagt, wie ist es mit dir, wie geht es dir, und dazu Anfortas, jetzt lernst du die Menschlichkeit, das ist das erste Mal sozusagen, dass du nach meiner Gesundheit gefragt hast.

Picture credits: ARD; Boersenblatt.net

World Literature

David Cornwall, aka John le Carré, has just been awarded the Goethe-Medaille 2011, along with the Polish writer Adam Michnik (both pictured above) and the French avant garde theater director Ariane Mnochkine. The ceremony took place in the "Residenzschloss" in Weimar. They were distinguished for their contributions to German letters as well as in connection with the focus of this year's awards, namely, "the cultural future of Europe."

According to the account in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, Michnik is optimistic about such a future, while Le Carré is more skeptical, sounding a note that I often invoke. He is quoted as saying that a united Europe remains a project of elites, its institutions far removed from the concerns of citizens and dominated by economics: "What is needed is a peaceful revolution of the middle classes."

I think it was the advent of a "united Europe" in Goethe's time, which was not so much cultural as economic, that determined Goethe's own thinking about the prospects of what he called world literature. Goethe didn't imagine that the nations of Europe would give up their individual destinies or particular character; he hoped, as he wrote, that they would simply learn to get along, which he thought would be helped by acquaintance with the various literary products of the nations. Franco Venturi, in the book on which I posted yesterday, writes that a characteristic of the surviving republics in pre-revolutionary Europe -- e.g., Holland, Venice, Genoa -- was the desire for for peace and harmony. Though he mentions the commercial nature of these republics, he does not stress the connection between a "spiritual ideal" -- harmony, tolerance, etc. -- and the material conditions -- economic prosperity -- that make this ideal possible. Thus, though I would agree with Le Carré concerning the elite nature of the project of united Europe and its appalling "democracy deficit," I think he underrates how much affluence and prosperity make Western ideals possible. Well, as far as I can discern he remains an unreconstructed Leftist.

A year ago, while doing research on my world literature project, I discovered that Le Carré had become acquainted while a student in Berne with Fritz Strich, the "father" of modern studies on this subject. Until Strich's 1946 work Goethe und die Weltliteratur, this aspect of Goethe's oeuvre was practically neglected; starting in the early 1950s, however, that work begat an industry in world literature. As I posted earlier, our understanding of world literature would be assisted by studying the background of how Strich came to his subject. Thus, I was interested in whether Le Carré had any particular memories of Strich and wrote to him. His response, which I am paraphrasing, was as follows:

While he was pleased to learn that the work of Strich was of interest to Germanists, he could not help me in any meaningful way. He was barely seventeen when he attended Strich's seminars, and his German was "indifferent," and much of what was said "went over" his head. However, Strich had "the humanity to notice this" and allowed him to stay behind at the end of his seminar for a few minutes, instructing him in the groundwork of German literature that might enable him to rise to Strich's own level. Le Carré followed his instruction, and by the time he left Bern was equipped with the tools with which he could one day appreciate Strich's eminence. In his note to me, Le Carré confessed that he was a "broken reed" when it came to "the finer points of his [Strich's] theses, or indeed the substance of them" -- meaning world literature. His lasting impression was of "an elderly, distinguished gentleman who had spotted a student who was completely out of his depth" and to whom Le Carré found himself greatly indebted when he returned to German literature.

The substance of this response has been reported in other newspapers and reports in Europe in recent years, including here, on the occasion of the speech Le Carré gave in 2009 at the celebration of the 175th anniversary of the University of Berne. In it he again gives due credit to Fritz Strich.

What particularly touched me about Le Carré's response was its similarity to mine at the age of seventeen, when I too went off the university. I come from a really white-bread American background. For instance, before college the only plays I had ever seen performed live were high school productions (though back in my day they were quite professional), and I had never been to a museum. My decision to study German in college was solely determined by my fondness for a history teacher in my last year of high school, who had the intriguing last name of "Braeutigam." I started making up for my intellectual deficits in college, but probably the most formative experience was the year I spent studying in Marburg as a junior in college. Though I didn't study with anyone as eminent as Strich, I had the same experience, not only with professors but also with German students, who went out of their way to assist me in the fine points of the German language and its history. And, of course, they took me into their homes and their activities. For instance, I learned to drink beer and wine!

Photo credit: Breitbart; Modern Alliance; Trübe-Linse

Fritz Strich and Goethe's concept of world literature

Because of my editorial duties in connection with the book on the history of freedom of speech -- the title, by the way, will be Freedom of Speech: The History of an Idea -- I have not been able to get to my real area of scholarly interest for some time, namely, Goethe and world literature. I have also been detoured by another topic, this time at least on a Goethe subject, the sublime. I first began working on the latter when writing on Goethe's geology; the result was an article in the Goethe Yearbook a few years back. And because of that article, I was asked to participate in a panel at the recent German Studies Association conference on the pre-Kantian sublime, which, in turn, took me further away from world literature. Still, as I gradually put the free speech volume and an article on the sublime behind me, I look forward to getting back to world literature in the New Year.

In this connection, I was recently reminded of Fritz Strich, who was the scholar who put world literature on the academic map. A strange aspect of world literature, which Goethe began to speak and write about in the 1820s, was that the idea lay fallow for another half-century. True, since Goethe had utter the oracular words, there was some attention to the concept in the late 19th century, but it wasn't until the discipline of comparative literature began to be established that world literature was drafted to talk about the scope of the new discipline. Still, everyone got it wrong, speaking of world lit as if it stretched back in time, back to Homer or Gilgamesh, or extended to other parts of the world, encompassing, for instance, Chinese or Indian literature. Goethe was speaking of a future phenomenon. More about that at another time.

Before World War II, there were a couple important articles on world literature, but the first major publication on the subject appeared in 1946, with the first edition of Goethe und die Weltliteratur, by Fritz Strich. An academic growth subject was born, and by the 1950s the industry began. The concept of world literature seems to fill a conceptual need, much as did "the sublime" in the 18th century, when that term was drafted to express the new aesthetic consciousness. After all, Longinus's treatise on the sublime (written in ca. 80 A.D.) had been around in Europe since the first editions in the 16th century. It was not until the beginning of the 18th century, however, especially with Joseph Addison's essays on the imagination, that the concept really took off and dominated theoretical discussions through the century, culminating in the works of Schiller and Kant.

A few years ago I placed an inquiry in the Times Literary Supplement concerning Fritz Strich, asking for personal reminiscences of Strich. From a scholarly and an intellectual point of view, Strich has certainly been as important as, say, Erich Auerbach or Ernst Robert Curtius, whose works are familiar to many outside of Germany. Besides his study of world literature, Strich is almost single-handedly responsible for the rediscovery of German Baroque literature, with an essay on that subject in 1916. Nevertheless, aside from a small Festschrift honoring Strich, there has been no work on him as a person. At the time of my TLS inquiry, however, I received no responses.

Much to my surprise I recently received a letter from Switzerland, from Heinz Günter, an English translator who works in Berne. Mr. Günter, who had saved my TLS inquiry, now sent me a speech given by the novelist John Le Carré on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the University of Berne. Le Carré, it turns out, had as a young Englishman (his name is actually David Cornwell) studied in Berne and had some very kind words to say about Fritz Strich, especially about Strich's encouragement of him. Indeed, Le Carre's tribute to the university and to Strich reminded me very much of my own experience as a student in Germany in the late 1960s. Though I was not so fortunate to have a professor like Fritz Strich take an interest in me, I did have many German friends who initiated me into German ways and also helped me to become a capable speaker of German. Unfortunately, after three-quarters of a century, Le Carré was unable to provide any specific details about the lectures he attended. The impression remains, however, of the kind, polite nature of Fritz Strich. (Here is a link to an article in English, which makes many of the same points as in Le Carré's Berne talk.) I am still hoping for reminiscences from others, though I suspect I may one day have to go to Berne and do some research in the archives that contain Strich's papers.