WORKS CITED
Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum [ACLV], NS.
Burckhardt, Jacob. Reflections on History. Trans. M.D. Hottinger. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1979.
Damrosch, David. “Rebirth of a Discipline: The Global Origins of Comparative Studies.” Comparative Critical Studies 3 (2006): 99-112.
Ferris, David. “Indiscipline.” Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization. Ed. Haun Saussy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006: 78-100.
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. “The Future of Literary Studies.” The Future of Literary Studies. Eds. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Walter Moser. Canadian Comparative Literature Association, 2001.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of History. Trans. John Sibree. Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001.
Meltzl de Lomnitz, Hugo. “Present Tasks of Comparative Literature.” Comparative Literature: The Early Years. An Anthology of Essays. Eds. Hans-Joachim Schulz and Phillip H. Rhein. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1973.
Rorty, Richard. “Looking Back at Literary Theory.” Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization. Ed. Haun Saussy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006: 63-68.
Saussy, Haun. ed. Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.
______. “Exquisite Cadavers Stitched from Fresh Nightmares: Of Memes, Hives, and Selfish Genes.” Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization. Ed. Haun Saussy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006: 3-42.
1 I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Damrosch for allowing me to read the manuscript version of his essay.
2 Among others, Nietzsche might have heard about Petőfi from Meltzl.
3 Theories about Petőfi’s death as well as the location of his corpse also appeared on the pages of Meltzl’s journal; one reader, writing about Petőfi’s death at Segesvár, notes that while Goethe was dreaming about Weltliteratur, Petőfi was dreaming about world-freedom, but he also died for it (ACLV XIII, 1-2: 25-26).
4 Here I rely on Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s argument in “The Future of Literary Studies,” although I take responsibility for the statement that literary studies survived their own death.
5 The fascination, it seems, was mutual: Derrida was perplexed by what he considered the apocalypticism of America. Derrida’s fascination with the apocalyptic in the U.S. is visible from his work on the rhetoric of nuclear politics as well as his essay on Kant’s critique of apocalypticism.
6 I am aware of the anachronistic connotations of these terms here. I merely want to indicate that whatever we understand by “cosmo-,” its genesis and logos will always be self-containing, unified, coherent in itself. We may call them, therefore, metaphysics, and if my argument requires the identification of any philosophy with metaphysics, I am more willing to accept this consequence than to give up the thesis of unity and coherence.
7 Many of the philosophies appropriated in this way were indeed theories of language, signs, even reading. Deconstruction, to mention the most obvious, is undoubtedly a theory (or in any case also a theory) of signification and signs, and as such it constitutes an important challenge to all other theories of meaning that are explicitly or implicitly based on hermeneutics. Yet even in this case there is a considerable gap between a complex theory of how meaning emerges and the actual analyses of texts, and this gap has only rarely been successfully bridged by anything other than political and ideological considerations.
8 “We shall make no attempt at system, nor lay any claim to ‘historical principles.’ On the contrary, we shall confine ourselves to observation, taking transverse sections of history in as many directions as possible. Above all, we have nothing to do with the philosophy of history” (Burckhardt 32).
9 “In this science it would seem as if Thought must be subordinate to what is given, to the realities of fact; that this is its basis and guide: while Philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced ideas, without reference to actuality … But as it is the business of history simply to adopt into its records what is and has been – actual occurrences and transactions; and since it remains true to its character in proportion as it strictly adheres to its data, we seem to have in Philosophy, a process diametrically opposed to that of the historiographer. This contradiction, and the charge consequently brought against speculation, shall be explained and confuted” (Hegel 22).
THE PAST AS A FORBIDDEN FRUIT: NOSTALGIA’S ETHICAL AND UNIVERSAL POTENTIAL IN TRANVÍA A LA MALVARROSA BY MANUEL VICENT
Fiona Schouten, Radboud University Nijmegen
NOSTALGIA AS A UNIVERSAL PHENOMENON
In What is World Literature? David Damrosch answers his own question by proposing a threefold definition of the phenomenon. Damrosch argues that world literature is “an elliptical refraction of national literatures”; that it “gains in translation”; and that it is “not a set canon of texts but a mode of reading” (Damrosch 281). World literature, in other words, rises beyond its national and local origins. In doing so, it may change in meaning as it changes contexts, but this is an enrichment rather than a loss. At the same time, moreover, it starts “resonating” with other, similar works, so that “we encounter the work not as the heart of its source culture but in the field of force generated among works that may come from very different cultures and eras” (300).
It is doubtful whether Tranvía a la Malvarrosa by Spanish author Manuel Vicent would qualify as world literature in Damrosch’ eyes. It is not its rootedness in national Spanish and local Valencian culture that might disqualify the novel; rather, it is the very fact that it has not been translated (from the original Spanish) into any other language. Of course, there is still a large potential (and actual) audience in other Spanish-speaking countries and communities; but to the English-speaking world, among others, the novel does not exist. Therefore, it has not managed to rise above its national embeddedness or to bring about its own “elliptical refraction”. The problem we are faced with here is that, although Tranvía a la Malvarrosa might “gain” in translation, we cannot be sure, since it has not yet been translated. This in itself, however, suggests that the work is not all that suitable for translation, and that it is likely to remain fixed in its strictly national setting.
Damrosch asserts, on the one hand, that only works that are read and appreciated in other contexts than the original can be called world literature. On the other hand, he argues that any given work can in principle inscribe itself into world literature; what it needs is a certain quality that makes it rise above its regionality, that opens it up to trans- and international, out-of-context readings. Damrosch points out, for example, that Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake is “so intricate and irreproducible that it becomes a sort of curiosity in translation”, whereas Dubliners by the same author is much more “viable” as world literature (Damrosch 289). By this definition, even an untranslated novel such as Tranvía a la Malvarrosa may have world literature potential, which would be activated as soon as it was actually translated.
Locally grounded though Vicent’s novel may be, I want to argue here that it contains at least one element that makes it potentially eligible for the title of world literature: namely, nostalgia. Tranvía a la Malvarrosa is, in fact, a thoroughly nostalgic
