DA ACCESIBILIDADE NAS PRAIAS DO PAZO E DA TORRE”

5

The first steps of the new discipline are well known. Alexandra Cioranescu describes them very well in the first chapter of his Principios de literatura

comparada (1964). In his view, two preoccupations stand out during the

Romantic years: the reestablishm ent of the unity of literature (threatened, as we saw earlier, by the abandonm ent of traditional poetics) and the study of the relations between one nation and another, an easily accessible activity th at gave rise to such im portant books and courses as those of Abel Fran­ çois Villemain, Philarète Chasles, o r Jean-Jacques Ampère. The first com­ paratists were above all ambitious. Dazzled by the possibilities open to them, no horizon seemed unattainable.

Chasles (1798-1873) w rote more than forty volumes of criticism. Anglo­ phile, with a sharp and facile pen, and possessing a good knowledge of Spain, he w rote ab o u t Rabelais, Aretino, Shakespeare, Alarcon, Antonio Pérez, C alderón, C arlo Gozzi, Hölderlin, Jean-Paul, Coleridge, Dickens, Oehlenschläger, Turgenev, and many others.1 His preferred field of study was intellectual history, which he combined with poetical history. “ I have little esteem for the word literature, ” he wrote once. “The word seems de­ void o f sense to me; it has been hatched out of intellectual deprivation.” 2 His basic point o f departure is the idea of national character. The Romantic dialectic sketched earlier, open as it is to the impulse for synthesis and the perception of national differences, is left diminished or mutilated. Chasles

34 The Emergence of Com parative Literature

juxtaposes authors, countries, literatures. “The German should clarify his style, the French make his more solid, the English make his more organized, and the Spaniard calm his dow n.” i As an example, we observe Chasles's characterization of the unm istakable French genius:

Our country, as is well known, is the congenial country par excellence. France rejects nothing, not even folly. She has emotions for all emotions, and can understand all thoughts, even absurd ones. We have seen her in association with all civilizations since her beginnings . . . That central and nurturing mission of France sets us apart from all other peoples, while allowing us to understand them all.4

Ampere (1800-1864) likewise preferred to introduce and interpret coun­ tries and authors one by one, with as broad a perspective as that of Chasles. A Latinist as well as a G erm anist, he was also interested in Oriental litera­ tures {La science et les lettres en Orient, 1865), as well as those of Scandi­ navia and Czechoslovakia (Littérature et voyages, 1833). After his decisive meeting with Goethe (who talked about it with J. P. Eckermann on May 3, 1827), Ampère, a keener thinker than Chasles, would go on to develop a unitary conception of the tw o fields th at he considered fundam ental: his­

toire littéraire and philosophie de la littérature.5 So it happened th at his

youthful am bition, expressed in a letter to his famous father, the physicist Andre-M arie Ampère, was not frustrated: “ O h, my father, my dear father, w on’t you understand my mission as 1 do? To trace the panoram a of the history of the hum an im agination, discover its laws, isn’t that enough to fill a man's career?” 6

O ther historians, equally am bitious, would scan entire literatures in books “ from top to bottom ,” in Cioranescu’s w ords.7 It is “ l’ère des grandes constructions,” * of diffuse synthetic panoram as, th at today seem to us pre­ m ature and hurried. Good examples of this tendency are the works of A. L. de Puibusque, Histoire comparée des littératures espagnole et française (1843); the lucid essays of Saint-Rene Taillandier in his Allemagne et Russie (1856); and E. J. B. Rathery, Influence de l’Italie sur les lettres françaises,

depuis le X l lle siècle jusqu'au règne de Louis X I V (1853). The two volumes

of Puibusque offer a “ parallel” with antiquity, no longer between poets but between literatures, characterized psychoethically: “ In Spain all th at is pas­ sion unfurls and is colored with the speed of electricity; in France all that is thought is summarized and form ulated with a precision that one might call geometric.” * This statem ent occurs in a long essay with a view of the whole, not at all similar to the analytic studies th at some com paratists were begin­ ning to cultivate.

The Compromises o f Positivism

In fact, the com paratists quickly go on to an examination of individual authors, o r of one m asterw ork that reveals and pulls together a range of influences: J.-J. Jusserand’s Shakespeare en France sous /’Ancien Régime (1856) and Pío R ajna’s Le fo n ti dell'O rlando furioso (1876) reflect a scien­ tific orientation and the trium ph of studies of sources and influences, clearly characteristic of the second half of the nineteenth century. Rajna’s book, superior to many others, is an authentic work of investigation, but its au­ th o r does not get lost in details, since w hat he wants to highlight is the

invenzione (fabrication) of the totality of the great poem. And after consid­

ering his sources, Rajna concludes that the essence of Arioso is the contam-

inatio (blend) th at he achieved and the embellishment that he added.10

A new turn is taken by com parative studies around 1850, ushering in a period in which positivist theories and tendencies predominate. “ Around 1850 the atm osphere changed completely.” 11 René Wellek highlights two aspects of this shift th at we m ust be careful not to confuse. In the first place, w h at Wellek calls factualism predom inated: the triumph of facts, of tangible happenings, of copious “events” o r supposed events. And in the second place, scientism: faith in the unlimited validity and general applicability of the exact sciences, above all the biological sciences, as a way of explaining literary history, how literature is produced and how it changes.12 The sci­ ence of psychology of this era— opposed by Freud— and the naturalism of contem porary novels would stress the hereditary origins of human conduct. Gustave Le Bon would emphasize patterns of mob psychology, the deter­ minism of La psychologie des foules ( 1890). Nothing is more typical of this time than the obsession with causality. “W hether events are physical or m oral docs not matter,” Hippolyte Taine maintained; “they always have causes.” ” O f the three best-known causes which Taine cites at the outset o f his w ork on the history of English literature— race, milieu, m om ent— the idea of “ race” is clearly of most concern to us here; that is, the concept o f nationality th at had been only one of the building blocks of Romanti­ cism. The new direction taken by comparativism amounted to something like a pulling back, a retreat, or a serious impoverishment of those aspira­ tions.

At the end of the century com paratists adapted Romantic international­ ism and syncretism in this retreat in order to reconcile the two predominant tendencies of the time: the insistence on a national characterology and on the prestige of the biological sciences. It was believed that every literature exists, breathes, grows, and evolves like a living being, its roots anchored in a certain social subsoil and certain national idiosyncrasies. Expressed an o th er way, here are the words of Joseph Texte:

1 he hmergence ot c o m p aran ve Literature

In order that studies of the type we are discussing may be carried out, it is in fact necessary that a literature be considered as an expression of a defi­ nite social state, tribe, clan, or nation, whose tradition, genius, and hopes . . . it represents. In a word, such literature must constitute a well-defined

genre in the great species of the literature of humanity.14

The literature of a country thus became a biological variety, a subspecies of universal literature; and the task of the com paratist was to be the elucida­ tion of the cross-fertilizations and other grafts th at link these subspecies and give rise to their m utations, hybridization, and growth. The integrity of the individual com ponents o f literature was not in doubt, owing to a firm belief in the uniqueness of the character of each people. A considerable number of historians who held to this belief kept silent about the evident unity of medieval European literature. To quote the words of Fidelino de Figueiredo, a “sort of all-absorbent spiritual imperalism prevailed over the past.” 15 The ideological conditioning of the concept of national literature was not under­ stood at that time, nor the fact that the concept had been broadened retro­ actively: interests and designs of the nineteenth century were projected onto the defenseless M iddle Ages. Thus nationalism and Romantic internation­ alism were perfectly reconciled. Com parative literature combined all the characteristics of compromise and halftones.

Weltliteratur

6

So it was th at the idea of Weltliteratur was left far behind, its outlines blurred. It is well know n th at Goethe coined the term in his old age, in the year 1827, when a French adaptation of his Torquato Tasso appeared: ua general Weltliteratur is in the making in which an honorable role is reserved for us G erm ans.” 1 Equally certain are the eighteenth-century origins of such an idea: Voltaire, J. G. H am ann, Herder. It was commonplace to use the term “ the Republic o f Letters,” whose aim, according to the Abbé Prévost, w ould be “ to bring together into one confederation all the individual repub­ lics into which the Republic of Letters can be divided up to the present time.” ’ N ote th at the existence of individual republics is pointed out in passing. Indeed, in order for the concept of a world literature to develop it was necessary to describe first the diverse charactcr of literature, that is, the insufficiently representative character of any one of its components alone, the limited nature of the contributions of any one nation or era to the cul­ ture in question. Something similar had happened in connection with the possibility of a universal history. Jacques Bénigne Bossuet in his Discours

sur l ’histoire universelle (1681) considered only those who in his judgment

had raised their voices in song as part of G od’s design— the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and French. N o t so Voltaire, who treated the Christian faith in a relativistic fashion in his Essai sur les moeurs (1753-1758), thus opening the do o r of the world community to China, India, and the Arab countries.3

38 The Emergence o í Com parative Literature

The term Weltliteratur is extremely vague— or should we say in a more positive way, it is too suggestive, and is thereiore open to many m isunder­ standings. Let us look at three accepted meanings. In German, the juxta­ positions of tw o nouns can lend an adjectival function to the first noun. In such a case the range of meaning of the synthetic adjective can go so far as to imply that literature itself is worldwide, o r that all literature is, or that only literature th at is totally worldwide can be considered to be literature. W hat can one make of such an idea? The sum total of all national litera­ tures? A wild idea, unattainable in practice, worthy not of an actual reader but of a deluded keeper of archives w ho is also a multimillionaire. The most harebrained editor has never aspired to such a thing.

As for the second meaning, one might think of a compendium of master- works o r of universal authors, if such words were understood to apply to those works th at have been read and appreciated beyond the frontiers of their countries o f origin: in sum, those authors hallowed either by a few respected critics, o r by m ultitudes of readers. Q uite a few historians have held this opinion, for exam ple, Ferdinand Brunetière. Here is his definition of littérature européenne: “The works of a great literature belong to us only insofar as they have come in contact with other literatures, and to the extent that the contacts o r encounters have had visible results.” 4 At bottom he is speaking o f European literature, and let us not call it world literature, a concept that, according to Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, came to be accepted in France. A disagreeable idea, in my opinion, and snobbish too, th at recog­ nizes success, and success only, together with its political, ephemeral, or contingent causes. It would be foolish of us to tell the history of our past in that manner, emphasizing its w orst side: Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Emil Lud­ wig and Erich M aria Rem arque, Vicki Baum and Hans Fallada, Eugene Sue and Paul de Kock, M argaret Mitchell and H arold Robbins, Lajos Zilahy and Emilio Salgari and Corin Tellado. As far as our present-day evaluations of literature in Spain are concerned, it is more im portant th at Juan Goyti- solo adm ire and com m ent on the Lozana andaluza of Francisco Delicado, ignored in his own time, o r on Estebanillo González, or the letters of Blanco White. Otherw ise we find ourselves faced with the sad recapitulation of one trivial status quo after another, each one based on the influences and the influential writers of the past, and, of those, only those most visible and m ost widely known. T h at is w hat Guillermo de Torre, in an essay in Las

m etam orfosis de Proteo (1956), called “cosm opolitan literature,” a litera­

ture th at in many cases can hardly be considered even literary. U nfortu­ nately this conception is still bothersom e as relic and bad habit of the old attachm ent of com paratists to the study of influences.

Weltliteratur 39 But there is more. There is a third accepted meaning of Weltliteratur that cuts across the second one, limiting it to the works of writers of the first or very highest rank. With m ore reason, the proposal is made to select great universal classics, as M artín de Riquer and José M aria Valverde write in the prologue to their Historia de la literatura universal (1957-1974): “under­ standing as universal every literary creation capable of being of interest to everyone.” The universities (in the United States, the Great Books program of Chicago o r of St. Jo h n ’s College, the courses of general education) and certain publishers put this attitude into practice. I am not questioning their pedagogical virtues. The Cyclopean task of writing a universal history of literature has produced some valuable results, such as the Historia of Ri- qucr and Valverde, livelier and closer to the original texts than others, al­ though it does not include O riental literatures; and then there are Giacomo Pram polini’s overwhelm ing far tomes stuffed with know ledge/ But one should reread or take note of Etiemblc, for whom the adjective “w orld” or “ universal” rum s out to be hyperbolical most of the time.* Can one call the collection of “ La Pléiade” classics universal? It is no less Gallic-centered than the inquiry carried our some years ago by Raymond Queneau, who asked sixty-one w riters w hat their “ideal library” would be. Since fifty-eight of those asked were French, the results surprised nobody.7 And looking back, the historical perspectives— that is, looking at the past from the p ast— on the whole have been narrow and restrictive. The works of neither D ante nor Shakespeare nor Cervantes were considered classics by many European readers until well after the beginning of the nineteenth century. V ittorio Alfieri was of the opinion that in his day it would have been diffi­ cult to find m ore than thirty Italians who had read the Divina commedia. The chapter “Curriculum A uthors” in Curtius’ great book, translared as

European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1973), brings out unex­

pected facts. As an example of historiographic method, there are more com­ m endable ways to examine the past. And we would not think of implying th at our ow n era is exemplary. However difficult it may be to learn H un­ garian, isn’t the quality of the poetry of Endre Ady (1877-1919) amazing even in translation? W ithour going farther afield, why don’t we read Max

Havelaar (1860), the charm ing and powerful novel by Multatuli of the

N etherlands?

The attitudes th at we have been discussing have little or nothing to do with G oethe, who had in mind the peculiarities of his own time and above all was looking tow ard the future. To come closer to his meaning, perhaps we should translate Weltliteratur as “ literature of the world.” And we should

40 The Emergence of Com parative Literature

remember th at Goethe started from the existence of some national litera­ tures— thus making possible a dialogue between the local and the universal, between the one and the many, a dialogue that from that day to this has continued to breathe life into the best comparative studies. We are con­ fronted then by three other groups of meanings. First: the presence of some poets and some poetries th at can be uof the w orld” and for all the world, for everybody. N ot limited to w-atertight national com partm ents, literatures can be accessible to future readers of a growing num ber of countries. The universality of the literary phenom enon is increasing. Second: works that in their real itinerary, their acceptance o r rejection by different readers, crit­ ics, or translators, have circulated throughout the world. These necessarily include translations, transits, studies of reception aesthetics, close to w hat the first French com parative studies would become, a theme intertwined with the second accepted meaning of my previous paragraph but w ithout normative, valorative, o r anthoiogical intentions— w ithout bells and whistles. Bridges are built from country to country. János Hankiss once asked himself w hether a universal literature could exist in the organic sense, in the truly unified sense of the term.* There is no such evidence for the idea which we arc discussing, whose foundation is pluralistic.

And the third meaning: poems th at reflect the world, that speak perhaps for all men and all women of the deepest, most common, or most lasting hum an experiences: the rom antic exaltation of the poet, his symbolizing imagination, which may, as Coleridge w rote, “ make the changeful God be felt in the river, the lion and the flame,” the dream of historians such as Arturo Farinelli.1' Thus we have three accepted meanings of “ literature of the world,” in brief outline, two of an international nature, and the third and last one better characterized as supranational.

In his conversation with J. P. Eckermann on January 31st, 1827, Goethe secs “ more and m ore” that poetry is the universal possession, or common patrim ony (G em eingut), of humanity, and that poetry reveals itself every­ where and in all eras, in hundreds and hundreds of men. (Herder had al­ ready emphasized this fact: the romances, folk songs, and other forms con­ served by the common people show very clearly the widespread nature of this “ poetry of the world,” Weltpoesie.10 T hat was the lesson of eastern Europe, from Latvia to Serbia. Vuk Karadzic, established in Vienna since 1813, had begun to publish his collections of popular Serbian poems with