On Small Literatures and their Location in World Literature: A Case Study on Luxembourgish Literature

Abstract

In their definition of world literature, Rene Wellek and Austin Warren use the metaphor of the great mountain range1 in order to describe the prominence of those writers that occupy ’the treasure-house of the classics’, meaning those writers that belong to the so-called canon of world literature: “It [world literature] thus has become a synonym for ’masterpieces’, for a selection from literature which has its critical and pedagogic justification but can hardly satisfy the scholar who cannot confine himself to the great peaks if he is to understand the whole mountain ranges [...]” (Wellek & Warren [1949] 1973: 49). The metaphor is taken up by the East German poet Durs Grunbein in his essay on the topic: “Zumindest in diesen Breiten ist man sich einig daruber: Es gibt einen Himalaya der Literatur, und seine Hohenzuge sind bestens bekannt. Dieses Weltgebirge wird unstreitig von einer Kammlinie aus Siebenund Achttausendern dominiert, die dort schon seit Jahrhunderten aufragen“ (Grunbein 2003: 23). Grunbein however does not only use the metaphor in order to comment on the peaks of world literature but, in expanding it further, it serves him to illustrate topographically the hierarchical structure underlying its canon. Thus, if Dante, Shakespeare, Rabelais and Cervantes adorn the peaks of the Himalayan Mountain range, Pushkin and Goethe crown those of the European Alps whereas the founding fathers of Western literature Aeschylus,