German Literature as World Literature ed. by Thomas Oliver Beebee (review)

This dynamic volume shifts the discussion from German literature as a national literature to German literature as world literature. The book’s chapters extend the dialogue that began with Goethe’s highly influential 1827 remarks to Eckermann concerning world literature. German literature is defined as “verbal art in a single language (allowing for dialectal variants) produced by subjects or citizens of at least five different nation-states (Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Lie chtenstein, and Luxembourg) and beyond that by a constellation of emigrés and adoptees” (3). The book is a “re-visioning of a specific ‘national’ linguistic canon as a particular nodal point of world literature’s international, intersystemic relations” (2). In his introductory comments, Beebee outlines five of the most popular definitions of world literature and offers a model of world literature that illustrates how literary zones intersect. He suggests that much more data is still needed to complete the model but offers it as a way to begin the analysis of German literature as world literature (13). The volume identifies the prismatic effects of relations between German-language literary texts and geographically separated literatures and spaces, including those in Latin America and Asia in addition to other Central European and immigrant communities (11). The book’s broad geographic scope distinguishes it from many other comparative and transnational studies.

The volume is separated into three parts: part 1, “Goethe’s Weltliteratur/World Literature”; part 2, “Ausstrahlungen/Emanations”; and part 3, “Schnittmengen/Intersections.” German Literature as World Literature provides both an index as well as a helpful bibliography of world literature scholarship.

The essays in part 1 work in tandem to provide an overview of Goethe’s early use of the term Weltliteratur as shaped by his engagement with Chinese literature. In “Reading Goethe’s Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften) through Cao Xueqin’s The Story of the Stone (Hong Lou Meng): Immanent Divinity, Vegetative Femininity, and the Mood of Transience,” Chunjie Zhang sees a connection between Goethe’s Spinozism and Chinese Buddhist-Daoist creational ideas that she labels “immanent divinity” (29). Together with her term “vegetative femininity” she not only offers a fresh reading of Elective Affinities but also illustrates the way in which Goethe conveyed an ecologically shaped aesthetics similar to that in Chinese texts. In “Goethe, Rémusat, and the Chinese Novel: Translation and the Circulation of World Literature,” Daniel Purdy provides the larger picture behind Goethe’s change in perspective toward Chinese literature and culture as well as valuable background information on Goethe’s private-public conversations with Eckermann. Part 1 is recommended particularly for Goethe scholars and is of interest more generally as an exploration of the tradition of intersections that Beebee discusses in his “World-Literature Model” (13).

Part 2 demonstrates the ways in which German literature truly is world literature. Topics include reconsidering canonical literature through fresh readings guided by postcolonial theories, the concept of Austrian-Hungarian spiritual pan-European unity, post-1989 memory, and the role of language in world literature. Simona Moti’s “Between Political Engagement and Political Unconscious: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Slavic East” is a well-argued essay. Informed by post-colonial theory and minority discourses, it presents a close reading of Hofmannsthal’s turn-of-the-century, pre–World War I Austrian ideas. David D. Kim’s “Militant Melancholia, or Remembering Historical Traumas: W. G. Sebald’s Die Ringe des Saturn” addresses how the melancholy narrative of German literature post-1989 remembers historical events and movements in its global community-building efforts. In “Rainer Maria Rilke: German Speaker, World Author,” Kathleen L. Komar writes of Rilke’s globally appealing qualities, including his ability to expand our understanding, possibilities, and imagination through his creative use of language. Her discussion of the translatability of language intersects with Purdy’s discussion of writing and translating in interesting ways. Lastly, Martina Kolb’s “Bertolt Brecht—Homme du Monde: Exile, Verfremdung, and Weltliteratur” is a highly informative essay that discusses Brecht’s concept of Verfremdung and his other contributions to...