National peculiarities in approaching the Classics: The case of Catullus with Hungarian modernism

Abstract

The Greek and Roman classics seem to be naturally included in any concept of world literature, be it a supranational canon, the sum of works circulating outside their context of origin, or a global economy of publishing literary texts. Although this usage is obviously Eurocentric, the central role they play in the Western literary system can be paralleled by that of the respective classics in other systems.1 In his conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann on January 31, 1827, Goethe emphasized the special importance of the Classics: the epoch of world literature might have been at hand, and people might have looked about themselves in foreign literary works, but the Greeks were to continue to function as the only universal and eternal standard of evaluation (Goethe 2013, 19–20). If literary value depends on a comparison with the Classics, then they also function as a language of comparison between various national literatures.