Goethe's literary essays · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
MORE ABOUT A WORLD LITERATURE
_The Difficulties_ If a world-literature, such as is inevitable with the ever-increasing facility of communication, is to be formed in the near future, we must expect from it nothing more and nothing different from what it can and does accomplish. The wide world, extensive as it is, is only an expanded fatherland, and will, if looked at aright, be able to give us no more than what our home soil can endow us with also. What pleases the crowd spreads itself over a limitless field, and, as we already see, meets approval in all countries and regions. The serious and intellectual meets with less success, but those who are devoted to higher and more profitable things will learn to know each other more quickly and more intimately. For there are everywhere in the world such men, to whom the truth and the progress of humanity are of interest and concern. But the road which they pursue, the pace which they keep, is not to everybody’s liking; the particularly aggressive wish to advance faster, and so turn aside, and prevent the furthering of that which they could promote. The serious-minded must therefore form a quiet, almost secret, company, since it would be futile to set themselves against the current of the day; rather must they manfully strive to maintain their position till the flood has past. Their principal consolation, and indeed encouragement, such men must find in the fact that truth is serviceable. If they can discover this relation, and exhibit its meaning and influence in a vital way, they will not fail to produce a powerful effect, indeed one that will extend over a range of years.
_The Encouragements_ Since it is often profitable to present to the reader not one’s bald thought, but rather to awaken and stimulate his own thinking, it may be useful to recall the above observation which I had occasion to write down some time ago. The question whether this or that occupation to which a man devotes himself is useful recurs often enough in the course of time, and must come before us especially at this time when it is no longer permitted to any one to live quietly according to his tastes, satisfied, moderate, and without demands upon him. The external world is so importunate and exciting that each one of us is threatened with being carried away in the whirlpool. In order to satisfy his own needs, each one sees himself compelled to attend almost instantaneously to the requirements of others; and the question naturally arises whether he has any skill or readiness to satisfy these pressing duties. There seems to be nothing left to us to say than that only the purest and strictest egoism can save us; but this must be a self-conscious resolution, thoroughly felt and calmly expressed. Let each one ask himself for what he is best fitted, and let him cultivate this most ardently and wisely in himself and for himself; let him consider himself successively as apprentice, as journeyman, as older journeyman, and finally, but with the greatest of circumspection, as master.
If he can, with discriminating modesty, increase his demands on the external world only with the growth of his own capabilities, thus insinuating himself into the world’s good graces by being useful, then he will attain his purpose step by step, and if he succeeds in reaching the highest level, will be able to influence men and things with ease. Life, if he studies it closely, will teach him the opportunities and the hindrances which present or intrude themselves upon him; but this much the man of practical wisdom will always have before his eyes:--To tire oneself out for the sake of the favor of to-day brings no profit for to-morrow or after. _Other Considerations_ Every nation has peculiarities by which it is distinguished from the others, and it is by these distinguishing traits that nations are also attracted to and repelled from one another. The external expressions of these inner idiosyncrasies appear to the others in most cases strikingly disagreeable, or, if endurable, merely amusing. This is why, too, we always respect a nation less than it deserves. The inner traits, on the other hand, are not known or recognized, by foreigners or even by the nation itself; for the inner nature of a whole nation, as well as the individual man, works all unconsciously. At the end we wonder, we are astounded, at what appears.
These secrets I do not pretend to know, much less to have the cleverness to express them if I did. Only this much will I say,--that, so far as my insight goes, the characteristic intellectual and spiritual activity of the French is now at its height again, and for that reason will exercise soon again a great influence on the civilized world. I would gladly say more, but it leads too far; one has to be so detailed in order to be understood, and to make acceptable what one has to say. * * * * * It was not merely permissible but highly admirable that a society of Germans was formed for the special purpose of studying German poetry; since these persons, as cultured men acquainted with the other fields of German literature and politics both generally and in detail, were well qualified to select and judge works of belles-lettres and use them as a basis for intellectual, as well as pleasurable and stimulating, conversation.
French poetry, like French literature, is not distinct in spirit from the life and passions of the nation as a whole. In recent times it appears naturally always as the “Opposition,” and summons every genius to make the most of his talent in resisting the “powers that be,” which since they are endowed with force do not need to be intellectual or spiritual. If we follow this verse, which reveals so much, we see deep down into the soul of the nation, and from the way in which they judge us, more or less favorably, we can at the same time learn to judge ourselves. And it can do no harm to have some one make us think about ourselves. Whoever follows the course proposed above will very quickly become completely informed of all public affairs and semi-public affairs. In our present admirably managed book-trade it is possible to obtain books speedily, instead of waiting, as has often been my experience, until the author takes occasion to send his work as a gift, so that I have often read the book long before I received it from him. From all this it is evident that it is no light task to keep in touch with all the literature of the present day. Of the English, as well as the Italian, I shall have to speak again more particularly, for there is much more to be said.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.