Goethe and "World Culture"

Is there or should there be a "world culture"? This question occurred to me as I searched the web for some ideas on translation in connection with Goethe. At the site Literary Translation, of the British Council, I found the following statement: "Translation has played and plays a key role in the development of world culture." Then, "It is common to think of culture as national and absolutely distinct."

Clearly, since Goethe lived "absolutely distinct" traditional cultures are going the way of the dodo. When I first went to Germany as a student, it was obvious to me that Germans were different from Americans and also from other Europeans I encountered. Swedish girls, for instance, were not to be confused with Italian ones. The same with the males of Europe. Goethe was aware of these differences. Thus his comment: "Every nation has its idiosyncracies which differentiate it from others and make it feel isolated from, attracted to or repelled by them. The outward manifestations of these idiosyncracies usually seem strikingly repugnant, or at best ridiculous, to another nation. They also are the reason why we tend to respect a nation less than it deserves."

It was the appreciation of these cultural differences, often repellant to outsiders, that Goethe saw as a benefit of world literature. He didn't envision that there would be a unified "world culture." In 1828, for instance, writing about the contribution of periodicals to world literature, he stresses that countries should think alike, only that they should be aware of one another. (There are inconsistencies or paradoxes -- aporias, as we like to say in academia -- in Goethe's comments on world literature; I will return to these at a later date.)

Festival of World Culture at Dun Laoghaire, 2006

About twenty years ago, however, I began to notice here in New York that I could no longer distinguish Germans from Danes from French and so. Only the Africans, standing on street corners selling "Gucci" bags or "Rolex" watches, seemed foreign anymore. There is now a "McEurope" (is that the effect of the E.U.?).

The concept of "world culture" (along with "multiculturalism") has certainly taken off in recent years. Again, I tie this spread not to a growth in humanistic thinking but rather to global commerce. The results (at least for those of us who care about "culture," "civilization," "Western values," and all that stuff that the world culturalists would like to usher off the stage of history) are quite sappy, as some of the pictures here vividly demonstrate.

Picture credits: Do-ho-Suh; Unity-and-Diversity World Council; the Dublin Community Blog; Explore and More

Oktoberfest 2009

Tomorrow is the last day of this year's Oktoberfest. Some great pictures can be found on The Big Picture site, including the above one of Munich mayor Christian Ude kicking off the event by tapping the first beer barrel on the first day of the festivities, September 19. I was never in Munich for Oktoberfest, but I did spent a raucous Fasching in Cologne many, many years ago. The festival originated in Bavaria, however, in the early 19th century, supposedly to commemorate the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Below the Oktoberfest at night with a view of the Löwenbräu tent. You can see that 6 million people could attend every year.

Photo credit: Uwe Lein

Goethe and World Literature

I would like to begin to tie together some posts about our modern "accelerated" culture (see last two posts) with Goethe's ideas on world literature. The speeding up of life is connected of course with the increased pace of technological progress and invention, the fruits of which are in turn speedily disseminated to all corners of the world. I have also been saying for a while (see, for instance, my essay in the fall 2008 issue of The Yale Review) that Goethe's ideas on world literature were connected with the progress of commerce and trade in his time.

Goethe's dinner table in Weimar, full not only of the produce of his own garden but also of the products of different European lands, was also the site of pleasant conversation, some of it with Europeans who had traveled to visit the poet in Weimar. And, indeed, world literature as Goethe conceived it concerned such intellectual commerce. In his introduction to the German translation of Thomas Carlyle's life of Schiller, he spoke of "free intellectual commerce" (freien geistigen Handelsverkehr). Besides enjoying visits from many Europeans, Goethe was also in correspondence with luminaries on the continent. His journal Kunst und Altertum -- you might call it an early 19th-century blog -- discussed literary developments and products in France, England, and Italy. He was also aware of more far-flung efforts (e.g., Serbian folk poetry) through translations. The Persian poet Hafiz, inspiration for the West-East Divan, had been read in translation. Indeed, in Goethe's telling Germany was a literary entrepôt. Reviewing Carlyle's German Romance (WA I, 41/2, 304-7), he wrote: "Whoever understands and studies German is at the market where all nations offer their wares."

In tracing this connection Goethe made between world literature and commerce, I have been immersing myself in various works, some of them popular, that offer insight into the global expansion of trade in the modern period, beginning shortly after Columbus' encounter with the "New World." One of these is A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World by William J. Bernstein.

Goethe did not use the term "free trade" (as far as I know). This policy, which allows traders to act and transact without government interference, was only gradually coming into intellectual purview in the 18th century. Adam Smith was one of the first to point to the benefits of free trade, namely, that economic and cultural flourishing went together. He cited the Mediterranean cultures of Greece, Egypt, and Rome, but also those of the East. In Europe until the 19th century, however, there were contending protectionist and isolationist arguments against free trade, including (nothing new here) the power of special interests. Thus European economic policy was generally characterized by mercantilism, the belief that a nation's prosperity is dependent on its supply of capital, which was seen as represented by bullion. This was a zero-sum game, since there was only so much gold, silver, and other trade value.

It was David Ricardo who came up with the "law of comparative advantage." As Bernstein writes: this law "tells us it is far better for the Argentinians to grow beef, the Japanese to make cars, and the Italians to turn out high-fashion shoes than for each nation to attempt to become self-sufficient in all three areas." Although free trade (and "globalization") is accused of creating a kind of McCulture, what I find interesting about this example from A Splendid Exchange is that it assumes that different nations have a specific identity or character. Herder had been writing about this for decades before Goethe's comments on world literature. His influence on Goethe is immense, including when Goethe emphasizes that by world literature he does not mean that all the nations should be alike: "We repeat," he writes in Kunst und Altertum in 1828 (I, 41/2, 348-50), "We are not saying that nations should think alike, but only that they should be aware of one another, understand one another and, if they cannot love one another, they should at least learn to be tolerant."

Goethe thought tolerance would be aided through commerce in the intellectual products of other cultures and nations. But it strikes me that appreciation for different cultures, especially those far from our own milieu, is really an acquired taste, like that for exotic foods. Most of us are "cosmopolitan" enough to appreciate Russian literature or the works of different South American authors, but how many of us have recently (or ever) read a novel written in the Telegu language (a Dravidian language spoken by 69 million people in southeast India)?

Picture credit: The Guardian; Barrie Maguire; Olga's Gallery; Adventures in Capitalism; Colleen Graham

Goethe and the Velociferic Tendencies of the Modern Age, 2

North and west and south are breaking,

Thrones are shattered, empires shaking:

Flee to the pure East, and there

Taste its patriarchal air;

Love, wine, song are waiting for you,

Khiser's fountain shall restore you.

This is the first verse (in David Luke's translation) of "Hegira," which opens Goethe's West-East Divan. Goethe has appropriated the term "Hegira," referring to the flight of Muhammed from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D. and the beginning of the Muslim era, for his own poetic flight to the lands of the East. The images in the opening lines -- of empires shaking and thrones shattering -- explain the reason for his flight. From 1789 and into the first decades of the 19th century, Europe was also entering a new era.

For Goethe, Napoleon epitomized the dynamic changes taking place in Europe. According to Manfred Osten, it was Napoleon who imposed on Europe a modern tempo, not only through the introduction of modern mobile warfare ("Bewegungskrieg") but also in his attempt to replace the ancient political and social order with a new universal government. But Napoleon could not have been as successful as he was had the age of technology not already begun, offering the instruments whereby a new tempo could be imposed on life.

It is said that the Napoleonic wars resulted in a dramatic rise in the price of fodder, making the the steam locomotive an "economic proposition." By the 1820s the railway in England had advanced so far that Manchester (a cotton manufacturing town) could be quickly linked with the port of Liverpool. Throughout the 18th century steamships were being developed, with Robert Fulton leading the way on the rivers of America. In 1815 Pierre Andriel crossed the English Channel aboard the steamship Elise, initiating the first sea-going use of a steamship. (The crossing took 17 hours, by the way!)

In Goethe's last decade there was already what we would call mass tourism, to which he reacted in this fashion: "Like a packaged, inanimate ware people propel themselves through the loveliest natural beauties. They don't get to know countries anymore. The fragrance of the plums is gone" (Einer eingepackten, willenlosen Ware gleich schießt durch die schönsten Naturschönheiten der Mensch. Länder lernt er keine mehr kennen. Der Duft der Pflaume ist weg). In a letter to Zelter he wrote the following: "Everything is now ultra, in thinking and in doing. We don't know ourselves anymore; we don't understand the element in which we exist and are active ... Young people are aroused [aufgeregt] and then swept into the contemporary whirlpool. The world admires wealth and speed, and everyone strives for both." He mentions the effect of the railroad, express mail, steamships, and other methods of modern communication.

"We don't know ourselves anymore." Such is the effect of the velociferic tendencies of the modern age, which, with their futuristic, forward dynamic, efface all the traditional ties that gives humans their sense of identity. Goethe's "therapy" was to study other cultures, especially those of the East. This study, for those who would engage in it, would slow down the velociferic tendencies of the West. Like Osten, I see the origin of these tendencies in the Enlightenment, which was not simply a movement of ideas.

(William Hogarth, A Harlot's Progress, 1733, Tate Britain)

The mistake of the great men of the Enlightenment was to believe that "progress" occurred when humans freed themselves of inherited traditions and allegiances (principally religious ones but also those of family and nation). As Kant put it, "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity." As if one could simply turn a switch on. But freedom, whether physical or from the opinions of others, has been made possible by modern progress in material conditions. Gradually, throughout the modern period, developments in technology made it possible for men, first, and, then, women, to become "emancipated." The modern work force requires individuals who can move from job to job, and, if growth is to continue, it requires women as well. Yes, we are definitely "freer" in 2009 than were people in 1809 or even 1909, but what is the price of such progress?

Much of the dissatisfaction with modern life -- note all the protests at the G20 summit last week -- stems from the unhappy fact that we have indeed lost much in moving forward. In sentiment the G20 protesters remind me of the Romantic movement in Germany. There is tremendous nostalgia mixed in with the revulsion at modern life and with what progress has brought us. For myself, however, I am happy for progress. It has made it possible for a person of my background to travel, learn foreign languages, get a Ph.D. And here I am, and living in New York City, too! Progress frees people to craft their own destiny.

The pictures of cargo ships and transport facilities are by Israeli-born photographer Shuli Hallak. The photos are the result of years of photographing at the New York container terminal on Staten Island. She also sailed aboard the M.V. Charles Island through the Panama Canal. I first saw Hallak's large photos early this year at the Moti Hasson Gallery in Chelsea and immediately thought that I would like to use them as illustrations in my book on world literature. It was because of the development of trade and commerce, via ships, that Goethe began to develop his concept of world literature. The free trade in goods went hand in hand with the free trade in ideas.

Goethe and the Velociferic Tendencies of the Modern Age

I have referred in earlier posts to Manfred Osten's work on Goethe, in particular the series of essays concerning what Goethe described as the tendency of the modern age, namely, that everything takes place "velociferically" The phrase occurs in a letter Goethe wrote to his grand-nephew Alfred Nicolovius in 1827. (I am relying on Osten here, since sovereign Goethe scholar that he is, he has neglected to give a reference and I have not been able to find the letter in the Weimar edition. Perhaps someone can assist me on this.)

In the letter Goethe writes that the greatest disaster of the present age, which allows nothing to mature, "is that one consumes the previous moment in the next one, wastes the day in the day, and thus always lives from hand to mouth" (daß man im nächsten Augenblick den vorhergehended verspeist, den Tag im Tage vertut, and so immer aus der Hand in den Mund lebt). Moreover, none of our activities are private anymore: "No one is allowed to be happy or to suffer, except to serve as a pastime for others." Goethe saw this tendency in global terms: "And so it goes from house to house, from city to city, from empire to empire, and finally from one part of the world to the other: everything "velociferically" or, in German, "alles veloziferisch."

"Velociferic" is a combination of "velocity" and "Lucifer." The latter, in the person of Mephisto, is the impresario for the "theater of impatience" that characterizes the Faust drama, the "modern world theater of impatience." The wager between Faust and Mephisto turns on Faust's inability to enjoy the present moment: "Fluch vor allem der Geduld!" And so Mephisto leads him through a journey of evanescent encounters (the Mothers, the Helena episode) and introduces him to a series of "instruments" by which time and experience proceed ever faster: the magic carpet, the rapid creation of money, and so on.

Goethe, according to Osten, anticipated the global reach of the media and information society, one that constantly creates and produces new "experiences" for us. (Indeed, Osten calls the episodes of Faust II "videoclips.") Impatience drives modernity, destroying what we cherished only a moment before (e.g., the final scene of Faust, when Philomen and Baucis are killed for their land) or insisting that we forget the past (Faust's guilt about Gretchen must be excised). By erasing all the associations that anchor one to the world and that give one an identity, we can proceed easily to the next distraction. Modern culture is dynamic: "alles veloziferisch."

Mark Helprin would seem to be channeling Goethe in an essay in a recent issue of National Review, a reply to the critics of his book Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto. The book was a response to attacks on Helprin for a 2007 New York Times op ed in which he defended the extension of legal copyright for authors. The op ed garnered 750,000 replies, mostly negative and illogical, demonstrating what Helprin saw as the entitlement of people educated to believe in "collaboration." For Helprin the theft of intellectual property represents a threat to an independent literary culture. Here are some excerpts from the NR essay, as I say "channeling Goethe," on the effects of the modern culture of impatience:

In 1807, Wordsworth held that the world was too much with us late and soon. Little did he know. What with BlackBerries, Blueteeth, iPhones, webcams, Twitter, and a never-ending creation of time-absorbing toys, intrusions, penetrations, and pre-cooked programs, the tyranny of which we are not supposed to notice, scores -- perhaps hundreds -- of millions of people no longer have a life of their own, and can neither sit still nor face a moment of solitude without the oxygen of an incoming or outgoing flicker. ... Too many people are in danger of becoming or have become what the Italians call industriali: extensions and servants of a machine culture of which they fancy themselves the master when in truth they are the slaves.

... I [do not] attribute to the past the perfection that some see so close at hand if their revisions are implemented, but to believe that at this moment the character, the art, the pace of things, and man's idea of his place in the universe, his powers, obligations, and destiny are sick and confused. Whereas in the past, burdened as it was by slavery, uncontrollable disease, and mass warfare, the tools of existence were largely capable of leading us out of them, the new tools of existence are capable of leading us back into them.

Goethe, according to Osten, suggested some "therapy" for this situation. It was called "world literature" and would serve to decelerate the velociferic tendencies of the West. More on this next time.

Picture credits: Highway Africa; the Louvre; Product Critic; Reviews U Can Use (2/24/09)

Back in New York

I spent three days this past week on Lake Sebago in Harriman State Park, enjoying the rustic benefits of a cabin belonging to the Yonkers Paddling and Rowing Club. Besides kayaking, I caught up on some canoeing. I also spent an afternoon touring the Rockefeller mansion, Kykuit, in nearby Tarrytown, New York. Amazing what one could build for a few million dollars back in 1907! On the way back to Manhattan, we exchanged cars in Matawan, New Jersey. Imagine, only an hour from New York, and you encounter real Americans: cheerful, hardworking, helpful people! It's good to get away from Manhattan now and then.

Yesterday Rick and I biked to the Battery and caught the ferry to Governor's Island, where we spent some time chilling out (as above). You get close views of the Statue of Liberty from the island. Now, it is time to return to serious work! Back to Goethe!

Goethe and Romanticism

Goethe is often considered a "Romantic" writer. He pointedly distanced himself from the literary movement that is usually referred to as German Romanticism and that includes such diverse writers as the brothers Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, Clemens Brentano, Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Hölderlin, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Wackenroder. Goethe was a bit closer intellectually (and perhaps by sensibility) to the philosopher Schelling, but he literally seemed afraid of "contagion" by the younger generation, many of whom had come of age just as the French Revolution occurred. What made things worse for Goethe is that the younger writers took him as their model. Goethe's early writings, after all, had produced a new epoch in German literature, but by the time the German Romantic writers appears on the scene, by the late 1790s, Goethe had turned away from his own youthful literary enthusiasms. As Nicholas Boyle writes (in the first volume of his Goethe biography), by the 1780s Goethe "became more closely identified with the court culture," while gradually "his attention was turning to the classical civilizations of the Mediterranean."

These thoughts on Romanticism are prompted by my viewing yesterday of the film Bright Star, directed by Jane Campion. My friend Elizabeth Denlinger, curator of the Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at the New York Public Library, invited me to a showing sponsored by the Pforzheimer and the Keats-Shelley Association of America. The preview was in conjunction with the release of the movie, after its showing at various film festivals, this week in the U.S.

The movie, which concerns the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, gives more attention to Fanny than is usually the case with accounts of Keats's life. That is to say, Fanny hasn't traditionally come off too well in biographies of Keats. Jonathan Bate, for instance, has referred to the relationship as pitiful. Campion's film is in some sense revisionist, drawing on the more sympathetic reading of Fanny in Andrew Motion's recent biography of Keats.

There are plenty of sources concerning the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, including this one, which I leave for readers to investigate. What interested me was the portrayal of what might be called Romantic sensibility. As I have often stressed, it is really impossible wholly to enter into the mentality or even the material conditions of the past. Yet we never cease making the attempt. In the case of Bright Star, I kept thinking of the Jena Romantic circle, both the intensity of the poetic vocation and the volatile romantic relationships.

Something of the influence of Romantic-period painting can be seen in the photo below of actress Abbie Cornish, who plays the role of Fanny Brawne in Bright Star. For Romantic-period paintings of similar "Rooms with a View," see my posting of February 1, 2009.