German Romanticism as Translational World Literature Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and Andrés Neuman’s El viajero del siglo

Abstract

World Literature theorists understand translation to be intrinsic to the creation of literature, over and above a necessary tool in its circulation. In dialogue with Emily Apter’s call for a “translational model of comparative literature”, this article proposes a re-reading of German Romanticism as translational World Literature, and argues that this model has been critically taken up in contemporary Latin American fiction. The German Romantic universe is a kaleidoscope where internal changes pay homage to overarching unity; these variations are present both within a single language, and when we translate between languages. Precisely because of the inherent flexibility of language, Romantic translation theorists doubt the need for absolute fidelity to the original, suggesting instead a new kind of writing that formally merges the foreign and the familiar. Within this context, Friedrich Schlegel’s 1799 novel Lucinde can be read as an allegory for translational literature. Schlegel’s protagonist Julius must learn to write his own subjective language and yet simultaneously speak in a new, objective way. This is a Romantic fusion of self and world that nonetheless respects and upholds differences. Lucinde’s linguistic model has recently been revived by the Argentinian-Spanish author Andres Neuman in his 2009 novel El viajero del siglo (Traveller of the Century), in which two translators celebrate not only foreign literature, but the strangeness of their own language. The foreignization of the familiar is a central tenet of Neuman’s literary aesthetic: translation is a metaphor for speaking poetic language in one’s own tongue. Translational World Literature begins at home; it can be produced within a single language. Moreover, since the category “Latin American Literature” relies on a similarity that transcends territorial, political, and cultural boundaries, the German Romantic model of difference-within-sameness resonates with writers like Neuman who cross borders within their mother tongue.