Goethe's literary essays · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I (1827)
Everywhere we hear and read of the progress of the human race, of the broader view of international and human relations. Since it is not my office here to define or qualify these broad generalities, I shall merely acquaint my friends with my conviction that there is being formed a universal world-literature, in which an honorable rôle is reserved for us Germans. All the nations review our work; they praise, censure, accept, and reject, imitate and misrepresent us, open or close their hearts to us. All this we must accept with equanimity, since this attitude, taken as a whole, is of great value to us. We experience the same thing from our own countrymen, and why should the nations agree among themselves if fellow-citizens do not understand how to unite and coöperate with each other? In a literary sense we have a good start of the other nations; they will always be learning to prize us more, even if they only show it by borrowing from us without thanks, and making use of us without giving recognition of the fact. As the military and physical strength of a nation develops from its internal unity and cohesion, so must its æsthetic and ethical strength grow gradually from a similar unanimity of feeling and ideas. This, however, can only be accomplished with time. I look back as a coöperator in this work over many years and reflect how a German literature has been brought together out of heterogeneous, if not conflicting, elements,--a literature which for that reason is only peculiarly _one_ in the sense that it is composed in _one_ language,--which, however, out of a variety of wholly different talents and abilities, minds and actions, criticisms and undertakings, gradually draws out to the light of day the true inner soul of a people.
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