Auerbach on World Literature

Marie & Edward Said, translating Auerbach's essay on 'Philology & World Literature, explain that 'the latter is Goethe's own word (which he used increasingly after 1827) for universal literature, or literature which expresses Humanität, humanity, and this expression is literature's ultimate purpose.'

Goethe, writing to Eckerman, had said '“National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.'

A national literature might feature 'shibboleths'- things unmeaning in themselves but serving to set a people apart from other nations- whereas, Goethe believed, it would increasingly be the case that writers would no longer consider themselves as serving to reinforce a national feeling of being different to, and finding alien, the thoughts and aspirations of other peoples.

This would involve rejecting the vulgar version of Herder's philosophy of language whereby the nation's language determined the thoughts and modulated the desires of its people. The corollary to this would be a rejection of the notion that the literature of foreign peoples, or those of our own ancestors in previous epochs, must be terribly difficult to interpret or translate.

On this view, if Goethe was right about World Literature, then everything derived from Continental literary theory, including Said's own brand of Post Structuralism, and, needless to say, Post Colonial theory, would be arrant nonsense.

The Saids write-

Weltliteratur is therefore a visionary concept, for it transcends national literatures without, at the same time, destroying their individualities.

What Goethe actually wrote suggests the opposite. Weltliteratur is a leveling concept. Good poets or other types of writers can crop up anywhere on in any epoch. Improved communications meant that writers had become aware that there was nothing exceptional about their own milieu. They therefore would seek to learn from or inform their peers across national boundaries in the same way that merchants were forging relationships across oceans and continents.

The past is not different to the present though, no doubt, material conditions might differ. Since China attained material prosperity before Germany, Goethe refused to label the Chinese novel he was engrossed by as representing anything transcendent or consummate.

Hendrik Birus writes-

Eckermann's diligent question whether the novel of manners of the Ming Era, Yü-chiao-li, with which Goethe was so preoccupied was not "perhaps one of the era's finest" is accorded the casual answer: "Not at all. The Chinese have thousands of such novels, and had them while our ancestors were still living in the forests" 

Goethe was an actual writer. All he is saying is that talent is more common than is supposed by pedants. A book may be very good indeed, but it's just a book. Clearly there is no 'visionary concept' or transcendence here.

The Saids thought differently-

Moreover, Weltliteratur is not to be understood as a selective collection of world classics or great books—although Goethe seemed often to be implying this—but rather as a concert among all the literature produced by man about man.

The musicians in an orchestra coordinate their actions- if they didn't there would be, not a concert, but cacophany. It is a different matter that individual musicians produce sounds pleasing to the ear independently of each other. That is not a concert any more than the fact that I'm eating a slice of pizza in between typing this, means that I'm attending an Italian banquet along side millions of others across the globe who happen to be chomping on a similar comestible.

Goethe may have said some silly things but he never said anything as silly as what the Saids imply he did.

Turning to Auerbach's essay, this is how it opens-

It is time to ask what meaning the word Weltliteratur can still have if we relate it, as Goethe did, both to the past and to the future.

The answer is, it can have Goethe's own clearly stated meaning-  not some stupid shite concocted by a worthless pedagogue who never wrote a line worth recalling.

The World actually exists. Literature can exist everywhere upon it if the conditions for its salutary supply and demand are met. This is a purely idiographic, empirical, matter. Nothing nomothetic is involved. Faust ended his days as a sort of engineer.

Our earth, the domain of Weltliteratur, is growing smaller and losing its diversity.

Fuck off. The underlying market is characterized by 'Monopolistic Competition'. Product differentiation increases as Incomes rise. It can't fall unless new barriers to entry are coercively created.

Yet Weltliteratur does not merely refer to what is generically common and human; rather it considers humanity to be the product of fruitful intercourse between its members.

Goethe wasn't that stupid. He understood that humanity is the product of 'games against nature' and that 'fruitful intercourse between its members' is only important in so far as it represents an efficient,  ultimately 'regret minimizing', search procedure upon a fitness landscape.

Auerbach wasn't considered a real smart guy by his own people. Why? He wrote stupid shite of a pedantic and wholly derivative sort.

The presupposition of Weltliteratur is a felix culpa: mankind's division into many cultures.

Only if you are as stupid as shit and believe in some story about the Tower of Babel or Neo-fucking-Liberalism or nonsense of that sort.

Today, however, human life is becoming standardized.

Fuck off. Economic growth means that where there are convexities- e.g for positional goods- there will be Tardean mimetic processes away from those areas to others where increasing returns to scale or scope obtain.

That's why rich kids of all countries, ten years after Auerbach's death, were wearing blue jeans and grooving to the Beatles. This was not standardization. It was the damming up of capacitance diversity upon an increasingly uncertain fitness landscape. Why? Technology- games against Nature- was changing in a manner that made non-STEM pedants wholly irrelevant.

The process of imposed uniformity, which originally derived from Europe, continues its work, and hence serves to undermine all individual traditions.

Perhaps Post-War Europe or Eisenhower's America had this appearance of conformity and mass markets. But our own internet age has the opposite appearance precisely because technology has lowered barriers to entry and so 'Monopolistic Competition' featuring product differentiation has burgeoned more than ever previously thought possible.

To be sure, national wills are stronger and louder than ever, yet in every case they promote the same standards and forms for modern life; and it is clear to the impartial observer that the inner bases of national existence are decaying.

Auerbach was Jewish. He died in 1957. Would he be surprised that the 'inner bases of national existence' of Israel has rather burgeoned than decayed?

The European cultures, which have long enjoyed their fruitful interrelation, and which have always been supported by the consciousness of their worth, these cultures still retain their individualities.

And do so sixty years later like every other culture under the sun. Auerbach was simply wrong to think Indians would become culturally indistinguishable from Chinese or Nigerian people simply because, unlike European cultures, those of Africa or Asia might have lacked a 'consciousness of their worth'.

Nevertheless, even among them the process of levelling proceeds with a greater rapidity than ever before. Standardization, in short, dominates everywhere. All human activity is being concentrated either into European-American or into Russian-Bolshevist patterns; no matter how great they seem to us, the differences between the two patterns are comparatively minimal when they are both contrasted with the basic patterns underlying the Islamic, Indian or Chinese traditions.

The Russian-Bolshevist pattern disappeared about 30 years after Auerbach wrote this. Europe and America- being racially similar- were always similar culturally. Islamic, Indian and Chinese traditions have grown stronger and more different from each other as Incomes have risen and Economic development has burgeoned.

Should mankind succeed in withstanding the shock of so mighty and rapid a process of concentration —for which the spiritual preparation has been poor—then man will have to accustom himself to existence in a standardized world, to a single literary culture, only a few literary languages, and perhaps even a single literary language.

Right! That's gonna happen.

And herewith the notion of Weltliteratur would be at once realized and destroyed.

If writers stop being any good, Weltliteratur would disappear. But so would National Literature. Perhaps that's already happened. What is certain is that 'Philology' and 'Literary Theory' are as brain dead as the dodo. Why? They assume Language shapes thinking. It does not. Only the fitness landscape matters and it changes unpredictably all the time. That's why 'historicism' is shite. Erogdics dominates hysteresis, though, no doubt, there are epigenetic effects which might last a couple of generations before vanishing without trace. Also there are academic availability cascades which trundle on from decade to decade because of imperfections in the market for Credentials. But, neither phenomena has any material impact.