Writing the Dialectical Structure of the Modern Subject: Goethe on World Literature and World Citizenship

Abstract

Given the singular lack of clarity of the term Weltliteratur, it is remarkable that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (or Christoph Martin Wieland’s) neologism continues to be treated as a concept with explanatory force. It is probably safe to say that it is the one idea of Goethe’s that has proven most popular outside Germany and outside German studies. But what exactly did Goethe intend with this term? Why does he couch his ideas in a compound that places the vague notion of literature alongside the vague notion of world? If he wants to offer a solution to a perceived crisis in the national literatures of Europe (as his letters of 1827–31 seem to imply), then what is it about the concept “world” that might point to a solution? And if the crisis lies in perceptions of the world, why turn to literature for an answer? Goethe’s scanty notes and conversational references can hardly answer these, the simplest of the questions arising from his compound. Instead of a theory of Weltliteratur, Goethe sketched what Martin Bollacher refers to as “das tragende Gerust eines in der Gegenwart gegrundeten und in der Zukunft zu vollendenden Theoriegebaudes” (170). This certainly constitutes part of the continuing fascination of his ideas. But there is something else that keeps it alive and debated today, and that is a perceived affinity to the phenomenon of rampant globalization, which appears to place national cultures in the shadow of increasingly homogenized forms of expression. This has prompted Emily Apter to use it as shorthand for the progressive homogenization of world cultures in globalization. “I do harbor serious reservations about tendencies in ‘world’ Literature toward reflexive endorsement of cultural equivalence and substitutability, or toward the celebration of nationally and ethnically branded ‘differences’ that have been niche-marketed as commercialized ‘identities’” (2). In a similar vein, Herbert Uerlings understands Goethe’s conception of Weltliteratur in the sense of “eines durch Literatur gestifteten Kummunikationszusammenhangs. So verstanden gilt: Weltliteratur ist eine Form der kulturellen Globalisierung” (35). Goethe received this sentiment in its most powerful form from the young Herder during the short period of their intense friendship in Strasbourg. This was the time when Herder had begun thinking about what it means to speak of a common humanity in a