World literature post-Goethe

Gillnet fishing at Bere Point

In his book on world literature, Peter Goßens discusses the reinterpretation of the concept in the years after Goethe's death, especially under the influence of Karl August Varnhagen, who saw in Goethe's last Wilhelm Meister novel a prefiguration of the doctrines of Saint-Simon. Varnhagen was a strong influence on other admirers of Goethe in Varnhagen's Berlin circle and had an effect on pre-1848 proposals for societal reform, which were strongly utopian. Thus, Marx's reference in The Communist Manifesto to world literature and Engels' ridicule of utopian socialists in Anti-Dühring (1878) were reckonings with such "amateur" socialists. In some earlier posts, I had doubted that Goethe had any utopian inclinations, in contrast to many of the thinkers of the 18th century, particularly in France. According to Cyrus Hamlin (quoted by Goßens), Varnhagen’s reading of the Wanderjahre are a “Gebrauchsanweisung für die zukünftige soziale Ordung Europas in 19. Jahrhundert,”

Mounty and Goethe Girl

The term was already widespread after Goethe's first reference in print in Über Kunst und Alterthum in 1828 and subject to discussion in European periodicals. Theodor Mundt, one of the writers influenced by Varnhagen,  mentions that knowledge of Goethe's term was so widespread in England in 1837 that he feared it would be brought up in conversation:

Auf allen meinen Reisen, wo ich mit geistreichen Menschen in irgend ein Gespräch gerathen, habe ich stets große Furcht gehabt, daß Einer von der sogenannten Weltliteraturidee, die durch Goethe in die Mode gekommen zu sprechen anfangen könnte, und meide dies Thema, zu dem man auf Reisen so leicht veranlaßt werden mag, immer mit sichtlicher Angst.

At the Sointula Salmon Days parade

The pictures here are some scenes and people from the past week or so. Only three more days before I return to New York.

Leaving Telegraph Cove in search of whales

On the lookout

With Heather and Joe

I was envious of these kayakers also on the lookout

Spotted!

Gervinus on Goethe

Alert Bay, B.C.

I am still working my way through Peter Goßens' study of 19th-century discussions among German literati concerning Goethe's concept of world literature. Last time I quote Wolfgang Menzel's exceedingly dismissive reaction to Goethe, but for the most part one comes away with the impression of Goethe's centrality and, indeed, of adulation toward him.  Goßens introduces some scholars whom one has heard of in passing (if one is a scholar of German literature, that is), but whom one has never read. One of these is Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805-1871), a historian and liberal politician. The Wikipedia entry on Gervinus list a slew of publications, including his edition of the Goethe-Schiller correspondence. The following is a quote from that edition, which gives an idea of the Goethe cult in the mid-19th century:

Er hat der Sonne einer neuen Weltweisheit, noch ehe sie aufging, sehnsüchtig entgegen geblickt, und ihre ersten Strahlen begierig eingesogen; er säumt nicht, die wirklich aufgegangene froh zu begrüßen, und die Mitwelt auf sie hinzuweisen, daß sie es ist, die er verkündigt hat, obgleich er zugleich unbefangen zu bekennen sich nicht scheut, daß von dem allzurasch eindringenden Licht sein Auge geblendet ist  und sich von diesem weg, nach dem farbigen Bogen auf dunklem Grunde wenden muß.

The pictures here (click to enlarge) are from Alert Bay, which we visited last week, an island a ferry ride away. It was once the home of a thriving First Nations community, traces of which are in the population of the island and in the cultural center we visited as well as the cemetery with its totems.

At the Alert Bay cultural center

Return to Sointula

World literature in the 19th century

I continue to make my way through Peter Goßens' books Weltliteratur: Modelle transnationaler Literaturwahrnehmng im 19. Jahrhundert. What I find interesting is the centrality of Goethe in literary and political discussions of the 1830s. The concept of world literature, for instance, in Goethe's lifetime already, played a role in utopian thinking among German writers and among proto-socialists and other sundry spirits hoping to reform society.

Sue admires the tree

Goethe scholar before large tree

 Prominent among these were the so-called "Young German" poets. A critic of Young Germans, because of their cosmopolitan orientation, was the critic Wolfgang Menzel. For Menzel, according to Goßens, Goethe was "eine Macht in Deutschland, eine dem äußern Feind [i.e., the French] in die Hände arbeitende, einer erschlaffende, auflösende Kraft, unser böser Genius, der uns mit einem phantastischen Egoismus, mit den Genüssen des Scheins and der Selbstvergötterung über den Verlust der Religion, des Vaterlands und der Ehre täuschte," and who made Germans to "Schwächligen ... während wir des Heldenmuths an meisten bedurften."

Very strong words

When I got home last evening there were more food gifts from my neighbor Wendy, beets from her garden and blueberries. Today I went out with the ladies for the Thursday morning walk. We went to see the largest tree in Sointula. On the way back, one of the ladies, Yolanna, gave me a bouquet of sweetpeas from her garden.