Poetologie der Stimmung. Ein ästhetisches Phänomen der frühen Goethezeit by Stefan Hajduk (review)

Abstract

and similitudes that future poets might emulate,” by the late twentieth century, Arab poets, according to Hassan, have increasingly thrown off the yoke of meter, favoring, for instance, prose poems, and thereby eroding the vibrancy of literary models that once characterized Eastern cultures. Bidney’s mammoth translation project includes a 200-page section of his own rhymed commentary on each of the twelve books of Goethe’s Divan, which indicates that English-language poets continue to experiment with foreign poetic forms in an aspirational manner. To the extent that such poetry enriches the resources of English as a poetic medium, the result may be reserved for cognoscenti. This is where Goethe’s use of the term epochs in connection with literary translation is apt. As Weidner writes, Goethe assumed that “languages and literatures follow a ‘natural’ course of development which is reflected . . . ultimately in a continuous assimilation of the various national literatures into each other, a process for which Goethe later coined the term ‘world literature.’” Did Goethe think that national literatures would die out, that they would be replaced by a world language, for example, by English, which is becoming the kind of “pure” language of which Benjamin wrote, one that could overcome “Babelesque linguistic diversity”? To the extent that English is on its way to becoming everyone’s “original,” Ormsby’s translation might be placed in Goethe’s third epoch.