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Weltliteratur from Voltaire to Goethe

Weltliteratur from Voltaire to Goethe RITCHIE ROBERTSON CLASSICAL HERITAGE OR IMAGINARY MUSEUM? Goethe is reported by his secretary Eckermann as saying on 31 January 1827: `National-Literatur will jetzt nicht viel sagen, die Epoche der WeltLiteratur ist an der Zeit'1 (`National literature no longer means much, the age of world literature is at hand'). We need to pause over this famous statement and look at it in its immediate and its wider context. Can we be sure that Goethe actually said it? How Eckermann composed his record of Goethe's conversations is far from clear, and the reliability of his record has been questioned.2 He was not like Boswell, who would sometimes annoy Johnson by going to the other side of the room to write down something that Johnson had just said. It seems that Eckermann often wrote down in his diary the key words of a conversation, sometimes a fuller, connected summary, soon after it had occurred, and then used his excellent powers of memory to reconstruct the conversation in full. Sometimes the reconstruction took place long after the event. The conversation of 11 March 1828, which stretches over ten pages, was written down fourteen years later, on the basis of four words Eckermann http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Critical Studies Edinburgh University Press

Weltliteratur from Voltaire to Goethe

Robertson, Ritchie
Comparative Critical Studies , Volume 12 (2): 163 – Jun 1, 2015
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© British Comparative Literature Association
Subject
Essays; Literary Studies
ISSN
1744-1854
eISSN
1750-0109
DOI
10.3366/ccs.2015.0165
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

RITCHIE ROBERTSON CLASSICAL HERITAGE OR IMAGINARY MUSEUM? Goethe is reported by his secretary Eckermann as saying on 31 January 1827: `National-Literatur will jetzt nicht viel sagen, die Epoche der WeltLiteratur ist an der Zeit'1 (`National literature no longer means much, the age of world literature is at hand'). We need to pause over this famous statement and look at it in its immediate and its wider context. Can we be sure that Goethe actually said it? How Eckermann composed his record of Goethe's conversations is far from clear, and the reliability of his record has been questioned.2 He was not like Boswell, who would sometimes annoy Johnson by going to the other side of the room to write down something that Johnson had just said. It seems that Eckermann often wrote down in his diary the key words of a conversation, sometimes a fuller, connected summary, soon after it had occurred, and then used his excellent powers of memory to reconstruct the conversation in full. Sometimes the reconstruction took place long after the event. The conversation of 11 March 1828, which stretches over ten pages, was written down fourteen years later, on the basis of four words Eckermann

Journal

Comparative Critical Studies – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Jun 1, 2015

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