“World Literature” and Communication: Literary Connections, Reading Practices

Abstract

The article focuses on the communicative aspect of “world literature”. Covering the history of the idea from Goethe’s concept to the modern criticism of “world literature”, the author analyses four episodes which are significant in terms of changes in the communicative environment. Initially, the idea shaped within the emerging bourgeois culture and transition from intensive to extensive type of secular reading and developing book industry in Europe. According to Goethe, the establishment of a close relationship between nations and eras through literature, the cosmopolitan community of writers and their close creative communication were a source of internationalization and unity of literature. The ideas of capitalist cultural expansion were introduced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels within the theory of materialism. Litera ture was thought of as spiritual production, which was the object of capitalist relations and depended on the economic system. Marx associated the creation of “world literature” with the influence of the global market, rather than with the voluntary activities of the enlightened bourgeoisie and aristocracy (implied by Goethe). The communicative aspect of “world literature” was not considered a positive phenomenon and a factor in the overall cultural development. The Soviet project of “world literature” supported literary communication. The project to create the Soviet canon of “world literature” combined Goethe’s thesis about the need to look back at the literary past and present of other nations with political tasks and propaganda of the Marxist views. Literature per se had a utilitarian function and was seen as an instrument of primarily ideological struggle. Modern Western theories and practices of “world literature” seek to destroy the old canon dominated by English and West European literature to implement a project of “world literature” aimed at the inclusion of literatures of smaller European, Oriental, and Asian countries. In the vein of pragmatism of American comparativists, translation is an intermediary for a more balanced canon, which inevitably increases dependence on the English language. Critics of globalization viewed “world literature” publishing projects as a commodification of literature through a convenient and easily digestible canon. Proceeding from a critical view of the current state of discipline, most researchers have to acknowledge that real practices and approaches to “world literature” have not reached Goethean utopian ideal of cosmopolitan project for the development of international communication within the humanitarian field in the era of globalization. Scholars are primarily concerned about whether it is possible to build an area of study of world literatures that would recognize the plurality of national literatures and include them without eliminating regional features, so that emerging identities would not be appropriated by global uniformity. Therefore, the translation and cultural policy of transmitting and receiving texts are the most important issues in the framework of rethinking the idea of “world literature”.