Goethe
Weltliteratur 1. “National Literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of World literature is at hand and everybody must strive to hasten its approach.” * Goethe, 1827
2. However, there were a few concerns that the term World literature, as coined by Goethe, failed to address: * When one says World literature, whose world? What sorts of literature is worth being labelled as World literature? * Although Goethe claimed that the local/national Literatures were going to be obsolete, they were still thriving. * Who had the power to decide what is worth being called World literature? Would the West still hold power in terms of that? * Would nascent mass culture get just as equal an opportunity as the elite productions to represent the genre?
3. Goethe might have had his conversations with Eckermann in the early 19th century, but the complexities, tensions and opportunities that he mentions are still applicable in today’s rapidly expanding world and its literatures.
4. “The daemons, to tease and make sport of men, have placed among them single figures (such as Mozart, Shakespeare, Napoleon) so alluring that everybody strives after them, and yet so great that nobody reaches them.”
5. The same was felt but Eckermann. He thought that the daemons had placed before him Goethe. He was too alluring to not strive after and was too great to ever be like him.
6. Marx and Engels in their famous book, Communist Manifesto, adopted Goethe’s term and said, “National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature.”
7. Once again, questioning the definition of the term World literature, Guillen asks, “What can one make of such an idea? The sum total of all national literatures? A wild idea, unattainable in practice…” However, the author, while accepting the fact that the argument was plausible,
2. However, there were a few concerns that the term World literature, as coined by Goethe, failed to address: * When one says World literature, whose world? What sorts of literature is worth being labelled as World literature? * Although Goethe claimed that the local/national Literatures were going to be obsolete, they were still thriving. * Who had the power to decide what is worth being called World literature? Would the West still hold power in terms of that? * Would nascent mass culture get just as equal an opportunity as the elite productions to represent the genre?
3. Goethe might have had his conversations with Eckermann in the early 19th century, but the complexities, tensions and opportunities that he mentions are still applicable in today’s rapidly expanding world and its literatures.
4. “The daemons, to tease and make sport of men, have placed among them single figures (such as Mozart, Shakespeare, Napoleon) so alluring that everybody strives after them, and yet so great that nobody reaches them.”
5. The same was felt but Eckermann. He thought that the daemons had placed before him Goethe. He was too alluring to not strive after and was too great to ever be like him.
6. Marx and Engels in their famous book, Communist Manifesto, adopted Goethe’s term and said, “National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature.”
7. Once again, questioning the definition of the term World literature, Guillen asks, “What can one make of such an idea? The sum total of all national literatures? A wild idea, unattainable in practice…” However, the author, while accepting the fact that the argument was plausible,