German Literature as World Literature

Thomas Oliver Beebee

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781501317712
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781623560539
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: German Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This new collection investigates German literature in its international dimensions. While no single volume can deal comprehensively with such a vast topic, the nine contributors cover a wide historical range, with a variety of approaches and authors represented. Together, the essays begin to adumbrate the systematic nature of the relations between German national literature and world literature as these have developed through institutions, cultural networks, and individual authors.

In the last two decades, discussions of world literature-literature that resonates beyond its original linguistic and cultural contexts-have come increasingly to the forefront of theoretical investigations of literature. One reason for the explosion of world literature theory, pedagogy and methodology is the difficulty of accomplishing either world literature criticism, or world literary history. The capaciousness, as well as the polylingual and multicultural features of world literature present formidable obstacles to its study, and call for a collaborative approach that conjoins a variety of expertise. To that end, this collection contributes to the critical study of world literature in its textual, institutional, and translatorial reality, while at the same time highlighting a question that has hitherto received insufficient scholarly attention: what is the relation between national and world literatures, or, more specifically, in what senses do national literatures systematically participate in (or resist) world literature?

Part One

Goethe’s Weltliteratur/World Literature

1

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

Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities (Wahlverwandtschaften, 1809) recounts a story in which a married couple, Eduard and Charlotte, fall in love respectively with another woman and another man while renovating and redesigning their garden and country estate. The garden’s flora and its transience not only offer a vegetative background for the entire novel but also serve as an exterior articulation of the characters’, in particular Charlotte’s niece Ottilie’s interior feelings and personalities. This latter function demonstrates Goethe’s perception of a close affinity and a mutual impact between nature and humanity. Published in 1791, about two decades earlier than Goethe’s work, Cao Xueqin’s (曹雪芹) classical Chinese novel The Story of the Stone (also translated as The Dream of the Red Chamber for Hong Lou Meng 红楼梦), also narrates love stories set in a garden—the Great Prospect Garden (da guan yuan大观园) of the aristocratic family Jia (贾). An examination of the female protagonist Dai-yu (黛玉) and of the mutuality between humanity and nature in The Story of the Stone discloses striking similarities with Ottilie in Goethe’s story, especially in the characters’ affinity with plants and their reflections on nature’s transience.

This resemblance, however, is not a literary and cultural coincidence between Goethe and Cao, living apart in geographically and culturally remote places—Weimar and Beijing respectively, around the year 1800. Nor does the resemblance show direct intertextuality between these two literary works, canonical respectively in German and Chinese cultures. The Story of the Stone was first translated into a common European language—English—by Wang Xilian (王希廉) in 1832, the year of Goethe’s death, while the book’s first translation into German by Franz Kuhn, who drastically abridged the book, was not published until a century later, in 1932.¹ Hence, Goethe could have known of neither the English nor the German translation while composing his Elective Affinities. However, much other textual evidence indicates that Goethe was actively engaged with the artifacts of Chinese culture available to him at that time. More importantly, not only the reigning Confucianism, favorably endorsed and recommended to European intellectuals by the Jesuit missionaries in China, but also the Jesuits’ intellectual rivals in China—the Daoists and Buddhists—drew Goethe’s sympathy. Hence, even if the way in which the Jesuits conveyed knowledge about China influenced its reception among European intellectuals, their views by no means excluded other possible interpretations. The Story of the Stone is strongly influenced by Buddhist and Daoist ideas and highly critical of Confucian state ideology and social values. In the story, for example, a Buddhist monk and a Daoist priest function as the chief emissaries between the human and the natural/divine world.

Hence, although The Story of the Stone and Elective Affinities do not make direct intertextual references to each other, I shall show that the idea of the divinity inherent within nature and humanity, contained in Goethe’s pantheist Spinozism and Chinese Daoism and Buddhism, connects these two works. More importantly, the symbolic comparison of women to plants, which I call vegetative femininity, and the mood of transience in the two novels construct the points of comparison and render visible the idea of immanent divinity. These aspects in Elective Affinities, I believe, also deserve more scholarly attention.² I will in the end stress that not only philosophical ideas or cultural history, but also, or even more importantly, the uniqueness of literature motivates this cross-cultural reading and enriches our debate about cross-cultural communication and transformation.

Immanent divinity

Günther Debon demonstrates that Elective Affinities, especially in its approach to the problem of marriage, repeatedly invokes the popular Chinese novel Hao Qiu Zhuan (好逑传), the novel Goethe probably had in mind when he famously talked about world literature with Eckermann. Edited and published in its entirety for the first time in London in 1761 by the writer and poet Thomas Percy, Hau Kiou Choaan, or the Pleasing History, was translated from English into German in 1766 by Christoph Gottlieb von Murr under the title Haoh Kjöh Tschwen, d.i. die angenehme Geschichte des Haoh Kjöh. A romantic story deemed second- or third-rate by its Chinese readership, Hao Qiu Zhuan delivers rigid Confucian moral messages about heterosexual relationships and celebrates sexual restraint and chastity before marriage.³ Debon meticulously proves that Goethe read and praised the restraint (Mäßigung) of the female and male protagonists in Hao Qiu Zhuan several times after 1796, as evidenced by his diaries, letters, and reports from contemporaries. Debon, however, also admits that the author of the Elective Affinities and the work itself do not unquestioningly defend the institution of marriage and female chastity, as Hao Qiu Zhuan does.⁴ Debon also quotes Goethe’s comments on the negative aspects of marriage to problematize the influence of Hao Qiu Zhuan on the Elective Affinities. Indeed, even though Ottilie’s resignation seems to “excuse” her behavior in “destroying” other peoples’ marriages, Goethe’s educated contemporaries, such as August Wilhelm Rehberg and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, accused the Elective Affinities of undermining public morality. Jacobi commented on Ottilie’s apotheosis toward the end of the novel as “Himmelfahrt der bösen Lust.”⁵ While Jacobi’s biting remark needs to be revised by more nuanced discussion, it also complicates a direct comparison between Hao Qiu Zhuan and the Elective Affinities from a moralistic perspective.

Katharina Mommsen briefly points out that in addition to Confucianism, Goethe was familiar with the close relationship between humanity and nature in Chinese Buddhism and Daoism.⁶ In a letter to Schiller on January 3, 1798, Goethe mentioned a dispute between a Chinese and the famous Jesuit missionary Mateo Ricci, documented in Neupolirter Geschicht-Kunst- und Sitten-Spiegel ausländischer Völcker fürnemlich Der Sineser, Japaner, Indostaner, Javaner, Malabaren […] (News about History, Art, and Custom of Foreign Peoples, especially of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Hindus, the Javanese, the Malabar […]), edited by Erasmo Francisco and published in 1670. Goethe comments in his letter to Schiller that the dispute between the Chinese and Ricci resembles the quarrel between the idealist philosophers of nature, presumably including Friedrich Schelling, and Karl Leonhard Reinhold, an advocate of popular Enlightenment and of the universal validity of critical philosophical principles.⁷ Goethe borrowed this book from the library in Weimar between December 6, 1797, and November 10, 1798. Ricci is well known for his active role in introducing Chinese Confucianism to Europe and for translating Christian works into Chinese around 1600.

In this dispute, the Chinese contests the Christian God’s omnipotence and God’s status as the sole creator of the universe. The Chinese does not deny that there might be such a regent of heaven and earth, but contends that every human, including himself, shares God’s creative power and is not inferior to him in any respect. When Ricci points to a frying pan and demands that the Chinese create the world, the Chinese protests and considers this request inappropriate. Thus the dispute enters a second round. The Chinese asks Ricci, when he talks about the sun and the moon, whether he ascends to heaven or these bodies descend to him. Ricci responds that neither happens—rather, when one sees something, “so entwerfen und reissen wir auf die Tafel unsers Verstandes, eine Gestalt deß angeschauten Dinges ab und wenn uns beliebt, von einer gesehenen Sache, zu reden oder daran zu gedenken. so schauen wir hinein, in unsere Sinnen und Verstand, fordern von denselben die empfangene Bildnissen und Gestalten wieder ab [we thus sketch out the tablet of our understanding, a form of the observed object, and when we wish to speak of something seen, we look inwards, into our senses and understanding, ask these to give us back the perceived images and forms].”⁸ At this moment the Chinese stands up and happily claims that Ricci has just created a new universe and, in the same way, he can create all other things. Ricci disagrees and contends that this act is merely a reflection of God’s creation.

The narrator’s rhetoric clearly supports Ricci, and describes the Chinese as an arrogant and brazen pagan. Obviously, the Chinese denies the external existence of God, and recognizes creativity and divinity inside every human being. In other words, he contends that human beings have an innate divinity shared within nature and can also articulate this divinity in a creative manner. I believe that the Chinese person’s argument reflects the idea of tian jun (天均) in Zhuang Zi (庄子), one of the Daoist canons. Hu Shi (胡适) explains tian jun against the backdrop of the nineteenth-century debate over Darwinian evolutionism, and argues that tian jun means that evolution and change come by themselves and govern themselves. This idea thus repudiates the existence of a metaphysical being, a God, as the creator.⁹

Ricci’s dispute is not just a random anecdote in the history of Jesuit missionaries in China. In fact, this story is a significant summary of the intellectual challenges and consequent political persecution the Jesuits encountered in China around 1600. The Chinese literati most sympathetic to Buddhist and Daoist thought, such as Huang Zhen (黄贞) and his influential An Anthology of Writings Exposing Heterodoxy (Po Xie Ji 破邪集), published in 1632, charged the Jesuits with destroying public morals and overthrowing the hierarchy of Chinese society. One of the major accusations against Christianity was that its monotheism placed God higher than family ancestors, which could potentially undermine Chinese ancestral rituals and the people’s consent to the imperial system. Facing these challenges, the Jesuits strategically allied with the school of Dong Lin (东林), a group of ambitious Confucian politicians, because the Jesuits saw in this school a trend toward monotheism and moral values compatible with their own Christianity.¹⁰ Owing to the Buddhist and Daoist attacks, and to the conflicts between Rome and the Jesuits, this Confucian alliance, in the end, could not save the Jesuits’ mission or prevent the Chinese state’s ban on Christianity around 1700.

Although the narrator clearly supports Ricci, Goethe sympathizes with Ricci’s Chinese opponent. He comments in his letter to Schiller that the Chinese shows his “Scharfsinn.” Goethe’s sympathy with the Daoist and Buddhist position, as articulated by Ricci’s Chinese opponent, corresponds with his Spinozism—a pantheistic immanentism. Goethe’s Spinozism recognizes that human existence is confined within nature and does not need guidance from a supernatural or metaphysical God. Hence, one must constantly reconstruct and cultivate one’s inner world through art and literature in order to more closely approach the natural world—but not necessarily revolutionize the social order, as the French Revolution had done. Jonathan Israel argues that Goethe’s Spinozism is an inward path toward a revolution of the mind and sensibility instead of an outward engagement to change society. This route, Israel further comments, transforms “the individual outlook, an artistic, cultural, and moral emancipation separate from social and political concerns, yielding no changes in laws and institutions but instead creatively elevating and inspiring a thinly spread cultural elite composed of the most creative, independent, and sensitive.”¹¹ Art, literature, and aesthetics became special media through which human beings can come closest to nature.

Hence, the idea that I call immanent divinity connects Goethe’s Spinozism with the Chinese Buddhist–Daoist idea of creation. This shared immanentism in both German and Chinese culture provides a common ground for reading Elective Affinities through the themes of vegetative femininity and transience in The Story of the Stone. I shall begin my discussion with vegetative femininity in both novels in order to illustrate the close connection between femininity and plants embodied in Dai-yu and Ottilie. This vegetative femininity is also subject to nature’s seasonal change and transitory loss in both novels. This is the second theme I will discuss. Transience is central to both novels in different ways. While The Story of the Stone, in a more pessimistic manner, presents the Buddhist conception of life as suffering in an aimless cycle, Elective Affinities, in a rather positive and affirmative way, apotheosizes Ottilie’s death after she recognizes the transitory nature of life and decides to turn away from Eduard’s love and her love for him. Ottilie’s apotheosis, corresponding to Goethe’s Spinozism, is an embodiment of the immanent divinity of nature.

Vegetative femininity

Ottilie has been one of the foci and, arguably, the most ambiguous aspect of the scholarship on Elective Affinities. Scholars see Ottilie as an adulterous woman, a moral and spiritual icon like the Madonna, a triumphant articulation of human will over passionate sexuality, a symbol for oppressive patriarchy because of her silence and obedience, a monastic figure, or the representative of the intellectual transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism.¹² I instead stress Ottilie’s vegetative femininity as seen through the prism of The Story of the Stone, in order to illustrate the entanglement between humanity and nature. Ottilie thus does not represent Virgin Mary, as many critics suggest, but rather proves a deist figure symbolizing immanent divinity.

One of The Story of the Stone’s central themes is vegetative femininity. At the beginning of the novel, the Daoist priest Vanitas ...

Table of contents

• FC
• Half Title
• Title Page
• TOC
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on the Text
• Introduction: Departures, Emanations, Intersections Thomas O. Beebee
• Part 1 Goethe’s Weltliteratur/World Literature
• Part 2 Ausstrahlungen/Emanations
• Part 3 Schnittmengen/Intersections
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page