Acasă Articole RTR Personal Affinities and Professional Issues: Antal Szerb’s History of World Literature (1941)
Personal Affinities and Professional Issues: Antal Szerb’s History of World Literature (1941)
Rezumat
Abstract: Antal Szerb published his book A világirodalom története (The History of World Literature) in 1941. My paper shows that many elements of the “world literature discourse” that started with Goethe and continues to this day can be detected in Szerb’s understanding of world literature. Following Goethe, he emphasized the fading significance of national literatures, the proleptic character of world literature, and the importance of the international circulation of ideas, works, and goods. The question of “Great Books” also appears in his book. In his view, only the greatest classics, the great works of the “Western canon,” can belong to the realm of world literature. According to Szerb, canonical works are, on one hand, consensual, their exceptional significance being surrounded by public agreement, and on the other hand, they have universal significance and a message that is valid for all of Mankind. As a literary historian, he was influenced by German intellectual history, above all by Friedrich Gundolf and Fritz Strich, as well as by Tivadar Thienemann. His history of world literature should be read as a work shaped by his personal literary biases and the categories of comparative literature of his time (influence, adoption, success, transmission, reception). Szerb supplemented the perspectives of academic literary scholarship with the views of his favoured contemporary thinkers. Influenced by Oswald Spengler and Johan Huizinga, he regarded the movements of modern literature as an expression of the “European crisis,” no doubt sensing the threat of the approaching Second World War. Although Szerb considered the history of world literature to be fundamentally the history of European literature, and within that, the history of the great Western literatures, he also paid attention to the periphery, investigating the factors by which the periphery could break into world literature. He saw Polish, Russian, and Scandinavian literature as the best examples of this, and believed that the conditions for a breakthrough were a fortunate combination of the demands of the Zeitgeist of the age and the national character of the literatures in question.
Keywords: Comparative literature, German Geistesgeschichte (intellectual history), Hungarian Geistesgeschichte, European crisis, Great Books, Western Canon, globalisation, center and periphery
Bibliografie
Auerbach, Erich. “Philology and Weltliteratur.” Translated by Maire Said and Edward Said. In World Literature: A Reader, edited by Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 65–73. Routledge, 2013.
Babits, Mihály. Az európai irodalom története [The History of European Literature]. Nyugat Irodalmi Rt., 1934.
Bassnett, Susan. Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction. Blackwell, 1993.
Bermann, Sandra. “World Literature and Comparative Literature.” In The Routledge Companion to World Literature, edited by Theo D’haen, David Damrosch, and Djelal Kadir, 169–79. Routledge, 2011.
Bloom, Harold. “Elegiac Conclusion.” In The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, 517–28. Papermac, 1996.
Clark, Katerina. “Utopian Anthropology as a Context for Stalinian Literature.” In Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 180–98. W. W. Tucker & Co., 1977.
Cooppan, Vilashini. “World Literature and Global Theory: Comparative Literature for the New Millennium.” In World Literature: A Reader, edited by Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 176–97. Routledge, 2013.
Csúr, Gábor Attila. “Skandinavien som imago i det ungarske litterære tidsskrift Nyugat (1907/1908–1941): En kritisk læsning af nogle nationale stereotyper og deres efterliv.” Scandinavistica Vilnensis 17, no. 1 (2023): 119–36.
Csúr, Gábor Attila. “Szerb Antal és Skandinávia: Irodalmi élmények, források, képzetek és hatások” [Antal Szerb and Scandinavia: Literary Experiences, Sources, Ideas and Influences]. Filológiai Közlöny 65, no. 4 (2019): 71–91.
D’haen, Theo. The Routledge Concise History of World Literature. Routledge, 2012.
Ďurišin, Dionyz. “World Literature as a Target Category.” In World Literature: A Reader, edited by Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 150–59. Routledge, 2013.
Elias, Norbert. Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation: Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen. 2 vols. Haus zum Falken, 1939.
Emerson, Caryl. “Answering for Central and Eastern Europe.” In Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, edited by Haun Saussy, 203–11. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Engdahl, Horace. “Canonization and World Literature: The Nobel Experience.” In World Literature: A Reader, edited by Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 316–28. Routledge, 2013.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. “On World Literature.” In World Literature: A Reader, edited by Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 9–15. Routledge, 2013.
Gundolf, Friedrich. Shakespeare und der deutsche Geist. Georg Bondi, 1920. [V4]
Hayot, Eric. “World Literature and Globalization.” In The Routledge Companion to World Literature, edited by Theo D’haen, David Damrosch, and Djelal Kadir, 223–31. Routledge, 2011.
Huizinga, Johan. In the Shadow of Tomorrow. Translated by Johan Huizinga. W. W. Norton, 1936.
Hutcheon, Linda. “Comparative Literature: Congenitally Contrarian.” In Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, edited by Haun Saussy, 224–30. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Kettler, David, Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr. “Introduction: Karl Mannheim’s Early Writings on Cultural Sociology.” In Structures of Thinking, by Karl Mannheim, 11–29. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.
Kirby, John T. “The Great Books.” In The Routledge Companion to World Literature, edited by Theo D’haen, David Damrosch, and Djelal Kadir, 271–82. Routledge, 2011.
Korte, Hermann. Über Norbert Elias: Das Werden eines Menschenwissenschaftlers. Suhrkamp, 1988.
Kujundžić, Dragan. “Beyond Comparison: Auerbach’s Comparative Literature as a Diasporic Experience.” In Rebuilding the Profession: Comparative Literature, Intercultural Studies and the Humanities in the Age of Globalization, edited by Dorothy Figueira, 231–38. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020.
Lányi, Sarolta. “Mai orosz irodalom” [Contemporary Russian Literature]. In A világirodalom története, by Antal Szerb, 3:395–408. Budapest: Révai, 1947.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The Communist Manifesto.” In World Literature: A Reader, edited by Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 16–17. Routledge, 2013.
Mufti, Aamir R. “Erich Auerbach and the Death and Life of World Literature.” In The Routledge Companion to World Literature, edited by Theo D’haen, David Damrosch, and Djelal Kadir, 71–80. Routledge, 2011.
Pálfy, Eszter. “1941. Megjelenik Szerb Antal A világirodalom története című könyve” [1941. Antal Szerb’s Book A History of World Literature Is Published]. In Magyarország globális története, edited by Ferenc Laczó and Bálint Varga, 226–30. Corvina, 2022.
Pálfy, Eszter. “Afterword: Antal Szerb’s History of World Literature.” In A világirodalom története, by Antal Szerb, edited by Eszter Pálfy, 899–915. Magvető, 2021.
Petersen, Julius. “Nationale oder vergleichende Literaturgeschichte?” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 6 (1928): 36–61.
Pizer, John. The Idea of World Literature: History and Pedagogical Practice. Louisiana State University Press, 2006.
Pizer, John. “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Origins and Relevance of Weltliteratur.” In The Routledge Companion to World Literature, edited by Theo D’haen, David Damrosch, and Djelal Kadir, 3–11. Routledge, 2011.
Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. 2 vols. Alfred A. Knopf, 1945.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Death of a Discipline. Columbia University Press, 2003.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Planetarity.” In World Literature: A Reader, edited by Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 207–17. Routledge, 2013.
Staël, Madame de. De la littérature. 1800.
Staël, Madame de. De l’Allemagne. 1813.
Steiner, George. “A Footnote to Weltliteratur.” In World Literature: A Reader, edited by Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 114–21. Routledge, 2013.
Stockhammer, Robert. “Welt- oder Erdliteratur? Hinweis auf einen Unterschied.” Poetica 47, nos. 3–4 (2015): 135–50.
Strich, Fritz. Deutsche Klassik und Romantik oder Vollendung und Unendlichkeit. Meyer und Jensen, 1922.
Strich, Fritz. Goethe and World Literature. Hafner Publishing Company, 1949.
Strich, Fritz. Goethe and World Literature. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949.
Strich, Fritz. “World Literature and Comparative Literary History.” In World Literature: A Reader, edited by Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, 36–49. Routledge, 2013. Originally published 1930.
Szerb, Antal. Die Suche nach dem Wunder: Umschau und Problematik in der modernen Romanliteratur. Pantheon, 1938.
Szerb, Antal. Geschichte der Weltliteratur. Translated by András Horn. Schwabe, 2016.
Szerb, Antal. Hétköznapok és csodák: Francia, angol, amerikai, német regények a világháború után [Everyday Life and Wonders: French, English, American, and German Novels after the World War]. Révai, 1935.
Szerb, Antal. A királyné nyaklánca [The Queen’s Necklace]. Budapest: Bibliotheca, 1943.
Szerb, Antal. Letter to Sándor Sík, November 7, 1939. In Szerb Antal levelei, edited by Csaba Nagy, 105–6. Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, 2000.
Szerb, Antal. Magyar irodalomtörténet [History of Hungarian Literature]. Edited by Eszter Pálfy. Magvető, 2019.
Szerb, Antal. The Queen’s Necklace. Translated by Leonard Rix. London: Pushkin Press, 2010.
Szerb, Antal. Utas és holdvilág [Traveller and Moonlight]. Révai, 1937.
Szerb, Antal. A világirodalom története [The History of World Literature]. 3 vols. Révai, 1941.
Szerb, Antal. A világirodalom története [The History of World Literature]. Edited by Eszter Pálfy. Magvető, 2021.
Thienemann, Tivadar. Irodalomtörténeti alapfogalmak [Basic Concepts of Literary History]. Danubia, 1931.
Tihanov, Galin. The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond. Stanford University Press, 2019.
Tihanov, Galin. “The Location of World Literature.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 44, no. 3 (2017): 468–81.
Weisstein, Ulrich. Comparative Literature and Literary Theory: Survey and Introduction. Indiana University Press, 1973.
