Universal literature

If it is titular Ulises’ scar. Horizontes de la literature universaland is listed in the edition of Matthias Bormuth, also the author of the introduction. All the collected materials are of great value, but here I want to highlight in particular the essay “Philology of Universal Literature” from 1952.

The idea was Auerbach’s contribution to a volume written by Fritz Strich, a literary historian known, among other things, for his work around the concept Weltliteraturwhich I use in circulation no less than Goethe in the famous passage of his conversations with Eckerman.

In the passage Goethe declares: “National literature today does not want to decide much.” It marked the era of universal literature [Weltliteratur]and in each case something must be placed on one side to hasten the event”.

From the moment those words were spoken, streams of color swirled around their intentions and their words. More than a century later, Auerbach revisits the idea in a profoundly transformed world.

It is impressive to see 50 intelligent minds trying to understand the many issues that define our present

It is impressive to see time and time again how in the fifties some intelligent people tried to clearly understand the many problems that define our present. Auerbach deals with the concept of universality in the face of emerging globalizationbecause recently the concepts of cosmopolitanism and internationalism have been contrasted.

Auerbach’s reflections retain current relevance. If, on the one hand, it is a matter of the knowledge of universality which the event Goethe celebrated, it is so able to preserve the variety and diversity that attracted him so much, or to introduce a process of uniformity which works in exactly the opposite direction. And as for having it, once in a while yes a constant and brumadorous increase of documents of all kinds that there is no need to close archives and libraries, thanks to the offer of very specialized knowledge, it enables any type of open perspective, integrated synthesis and for the same fruit, or We read an indiscriminate list, an encyclopedia.

By the author mimesis (1946), thoroughly a paradigm of universalist criticism, sows these disorientations with subsequent dramatism, an open hope that some of the young personalities of his time will be lost. “In all cases – he concludes – our philological homeland is the whole Earth; you can’t protect the nation now. It is certain that the most valuable and indispensable thing that a philologist inherits is the language and culture of his nation, but this inheritance is effective only in unlearning, in overcoming. If the circumstances change, we must return to what the pre-national culture of the Middle Ages established, to the knowledge that the spirit is not national”.

Read this text in an abridged version by the same author Pablo Gianera for an Argentinian magazine Poetry Diary (number 81, 2011). It was presented here with an excellent introduction by María Teresa Gramuglio, who emphasized the acuteness of the problem discussed by Auerbach and brought his understanding to the discussion with two key contributions: La República mundial de las letrasPascale Casanova (1999, translated into Anagrama de 2001), and the first work on the subject by Franco Moretti (in New left review).

These and other clues Gramuglio has provided are worth following Immerse yourself in the question and engaging debate about what doesn’t matter as it grows and becomes more complicatedin accordance with the process of cultural globalization, it will merge with the development of new technologies and artificial intelligence.