Hungarian Studies Review Vol. 6., 1979
No. 1. Spring - Articles - DIETER P. LOTZE: From the "Goethe of Széphalom" to the "Hungarian Faust": A Half Century of Goethe Reception in Hungary
Canadian-American Review of Hungarian Studies, Vol. VI, No. 1 (Spring 1979) From the "Goethe of Szephalom" to the "Hungarian Faust": A Half Century of Goethe Reception in Hungary Dieter P. Lotze The concluding chapter of Steven Scheer's incisive monograph on Kalman Mikszath starts with some reflections on what constitutes "world literature": No matter how eminent, there is a sense in which a Hungarian writer has no place in world literature. The school of thought that looks upon world literature from the point of view of Goethe tends to include in it the literatures of the major languages of the Western world, or, better, the literatures of the major nations. According to this school of thought almost nothing written outside of Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England, and the United States has a secure place in world literature. There is, however, another school of thought usually, though not exclusively, advocated by the scholars of those nations that have been omitted by the above. In this sense world literature is, as the name implies, the literature of the world.1 The concept of world literature attributed to Goethe in these lines seems unnecessarily restrictive. Goethe's extensive occupation with the literatures of non-Western cultures as well as his interest in the folk poetry of various nations — including Hungary — attest to a far broader view on his part. And while he never systematically defined the meaning of the term "Weltliteratur" which he had coined, numerous statements of his show clearly that he had in mind the active and creative relationship among different national literatures, facilitated, if possible, through personal contacts of their writers. In 1830, Goethe outlined this idea in his introduction to Carlyle's Life of Schiller: There has for some time been talk of a Universal World Literature, and indeed not without reason: for all the nations that had been flung together by frightful wars and had then settled down again became aware of having imbibed much that was foreign, and conscious of spiritual needs hitherto unknown. Hence arose a sense of their relationship as neighbours, and, instead of shutting themselves up as