tHe CHALLENGE oF CLAUDIO) GUILLEN KR http://www.dztsg.net/docThe Challenge of Comparative Literature Claudio Guillén Translated by Cola Franzen Harvarp UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 1993 KSRGRE htt .dztsg.net/docCopyright © 1983 by the Praiden ond Fellows of Harvard College All ights reserved Printed inthe Une States of America w9s76s4321 Originaly published as Ee fo wo er lo divert ntodcein 4 k bteataracomparada ‘© Eaicril Citic, Barcelona, 1985. “Transaton of this volume has beo auto bya rant from the Program fr Calta Cooperation heeween Spain's Minstey of Culture and United States Universiti. “Ths hook is primed on ackl-re paper, and ies binding materials have been chosen for strength and durably: Libracy of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data ails, Claodo. [Eno uno yo dives Egish) The challenge of comparative Irersture/ Clann G sransoted by Col Feanaen Pe cm — (Harvard sides in comparative literature 42) ‘Teansation of Ealee lo une yo divers Includes bisographial references snd index. ISBN 6.674.10687-3 (acid-re paper cloth) ISBN 0-674-10688-1 (paper) 1. Lieratite, Comparative. 1. Tide, Sei. PNE6S.GHSI 1995, 92-16810 508120 ae KARE htt For Harry Levin and René Wellek, with all my gratitude .dztsg.net/docContents Preface ix Part L. The Emergence of Comparative Literature Fist Definitions 3 ‘The Local and the Universal 5 ‘The One andthe Many 13 Romantic Ideals 24 ‘The Compromises of Positivism 33 Welditeratur 37 ‘The French Hour 46 ‘The American Hour 60 Littérature Générale and Literary Theory 63 10. Three Models of Supranationality 6 yeNaAnee pe LL. Taxonomies 93 Part Il. The Basic Issues 12. Gences: Genology 109 13, Forms: Morphology 141 14, ‘Themes: Thematology 191 15. Literary Relations: Internationality 240 16. Historical Configurations: Historiology 288 KRGRE http: .dztsg.net/docAbbreviations 341 Notes 343, Bibliography 389 Credits 431 Index 433 KRESS htt Preface ‘This presentation of perturbing problems and topics of concer to students ‘of comparative literature began with lectures I gave at the March Founda- tion in Madrid in January 1980. I still remember that occasion with grati- tude for the warm welcome extended 9 me by José Luis Yuste and Andrés ‘Amords. In March 1982 1 expanded the material for a series of lectures aiven in the People’s Republic of China—Beijing, Jinan, and Shanghai — before audiences of tireless listeners. I can recall today the extraordinarily close artention paid by those young Chinese students, And because of the {generous encouragement of friends and colleagues in Spain as well as in ‘other countries, [ave had to continue, Finally the time has come for me t0 gather and express the few things [have learned or taught. Roland Barthes, who was of course a great writer, once said that one should cite other writers the way one cites® a bull. One person who under- stood a great deal about both citations and bulls was José Bergamin, who spent his life, inter alia, modeling and remodeling strange words, idiomatic expressions, the voices of the greatest creators. I appeal here to such ills: trious forehears to placate those who may be annoyed by the superabun- dance of eiations in this volume. Since we are dealing with comparative literature, I hope that the reader will admit oat these citations are fanc- tional, even usefsl. Criticism, which is aso autobiography, comes out of 2 personal selection of citations. I have looked at the literatures of many countries of Europe as well as those of other continents, drawing close 0 them, listening ro them, yiclding to their best voices, reproducing when pos- Citar in Spanish, citer in French, and cite in English all mean to ete, quote, some: other weiter of auchority, and all are also used as a bullfighting term, 10 signify the gesture a bullighter makes with the cape co call che bull, when the bull as strayed r00 far away ot his asention has wandered, In English we might say he ‘nites or excites the bull. Trae. .dztsg.net/docsible their exact words. Most prose passages are given in English translation ‘nly, bue poetry is printed bilingwaly. “Anticipating the first chapter, I would like to offer here a definition of a comparatist: a. comparatist is one who dares to pester friends and col leagues, not just once but over and over. An enterprise like this one could not have been completed without consulting experts in many diferent fields, languages, and specialties. Fortunately, I did not lack for learned and generous colleagues both at Harvard University and in Barcelona, remem ber the following with gratitude (and may those not mentioned here forgive ime); Aleksandar Flaker, Tibor Klaniczay, ¥. Vipper; Ralph Bogart, Gregory. Nagy, Stephen Owen, Richard Sicburth, Piotr Steinkeler, Jurj Striedter, Susan Suleiman, Wiktor Weincaub; Haskell Block, Ellen Friedman, Paola Mildonian, Janice Osterhaven; Alberto Blecua, José Manuel Blecua the younger, Mario Hernandez, Carmela del Moral; and my wife, Yelena Sa- marina. And I cannot fail to add a special greeting to my students at che Universidad Autonoma of Barcelona, who participated with such good will in the frst presentation of many of these reflections ducing the academic year 1983-84, From the bottom of my heart, my thanks to all KRESS http: The Challenge of Comparative Literature .dztsg.net/docPart I The Emergence of Comparative Literature K What Naples was for Cervantes and Garcilaso, Paris without any doubs was for Rubén Dario, butt to an even greater degree, sinoe France—acting as intermédiaire, as the comparatists would say—also introduced him ro Greece, to Rome, t0 the Mediterranean cultures, In Paris, the capital of capitals in 1895, Rubén would recount later, “I had seen the old faun Ver- laine, knew of the mystery of Mallarmé, and was a friend of Moréas.”® And one should mention many others: Théodore de Banville, Catulle Mendes, Laurent Tailhade, Rémy de Gourmont (Le Latin mystique), Joris Karl Huysinans (La eathédrale), Edgar Allan Poe, Dante Gabriel Rosset, tnd Gabriele D'Annunzio. All these contacts enriched Rubén’s methods of versfication enormously, as shown by his return to the Latin hexameter, which he defends in his prologue to Cantos de vida y esperanza (19053 Sonis of Life and Hope). Born in a small Central American country, Rubén never stopped traveling to other countries—Chile, Argentina, Spain, Cuba, and various others—where other poets in very different circumstances were ‘working in the same language. As a wanderer, then, Ruben Dario fulfilled his destiny as an American writer. Created in the image and likeness of che European writer the Latin American poet must distance himself from his www.dztsg.net/docde ‘The Emergence of Comparative Literature historical conditioning so that, liberated, he can retutn to his roots—roots that inelude indigenous cultures, Nahuatl poetry, African rhythms. So ex. plains Octavio Paz ‘The experience of chese poets and writers proves that inorder to return to ‘our house itis frst necessary for us to risk abandoning it, Only the prodigal son returns. To reproach Latin American lteracure for its upeootedness is to ignore the fact that only uprootedness allows us to recover our portion of reality. Distance was the necessary condition for discovery ... Neruda hhad to write Tentativa del hombre infnito, a suttealist exercise, before arciving at his Residencia on la tierra. Which earth is it? Its America and at the same time it's Calcutta, Colombo, Rangoon . .. A book by the Ar- Bentinian Enrique Molina is called Costumbres errantes o la redondes de (a terra (Exrant Customs or the Roundness of the Earth. )* No one insists more scrongly on the peculiarity of Latin American reality than Gabriel Garefa Marquez, but his frequent allusions to “my master William Faulknes” allow us to understand better what was needed in order for him ro reinvent i. I dare to think that the eomparatist—herdsman of Poets—tends to resemble the writer. Throughout the centuries, aceording, to what has becn known since Aristowe’s Poetics, iis writers who have fele ‘most profoundly the tension between the particular and the general, or if you prefer, between the local and the universal KARE htt 3 The One and the Many ‘wll ouch upon the problem mentioned earlier in only a preliminary and ao eescty nthe Form of suggestion ahs cne isa question ff horizon more than a premise of comparative studies—the horizon of the ‘critic and historian this time—a condition of modern culture, a theme of final efi, 1a refrcng 1 someting he 2 elng of ess and 2 range of thought that would bring al its critical atension to bear on the tipictys oF if you prefer, between monism and pluralism, To make these ideas more vivid, [offer two citations. Borges writes in Orber Inguisitions: “We must suspect that thete is wo Universe in the organi, unifying sense inherent in that ambitious word [Notice that Borges does not say world but universe that is, a world not ‘essentially disunited or diverse but considered as a unified and integrated totaly. A fist plance these words shock ws even ita us, perhaps be- cause of the negative tum of phrase used—“there is no universe” expressed that way, the contrary idea would seem more surprising. The experience of multiplicity in the universe is common and easily observed, whereas the concept ofthe universe in ts organic and unifying aspect does in faet appear highly ambitious to us as soon as we leave aside the laws of the natural sciences and instead begin to consider historical events, social or political institutions, cultural ereations, and, among these last literature—whose b .dztsg.net/doc4 ‘The Emergence of Comparative Literature tunity is debatable from the point of view of the majority of those who. dedicate themselves to studying it, comparatists induded, ‘As my second example Iwill cite a few words of llya Prigogine, the emi- nent Belgian scientist, a Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry. During an int view in 1979 Prigogine stressed the importance of time in the naturals ences and specifically in molecular systems, whose equilibrium is affected by bifurcations of chance and the influence of other systems thus the per ‘inence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: that entropy increases as Wwe pass from one transformation to anothers that is, energy is degraded. As 4 consequence of this principle, the interviewer asks: Should one believe | that the universe as a whole, and in spite of its diversity, its partial successes, is cooling down and tending toward a definice end? And Prigogine re- sponds: “I cannot give you an answer. If all the things that exist are linked, if there really is a universe, then yes, certainly, the Second Law applies. But viewed from where we now stand, I am not in a pesition to tell you ifthe notion of a universe sill has a meaning."® ‘The revelation of the unity of literature, going beyond historical and na- tional differences, was a Romantic enterprise. Alexandriy Cioranescu de- scribes it very well Jin Romantic spits, shose characterized by an excxptional breadth ‘of historical vision, the idea was taking root of an underlying unity of al literatures, above boundaries of peoples and their languages. The existence ‘of « European literary republic, whose cammon ideals have apparently sur vived all the vicissitudes of history, the presence of a more or less common ‘ideological stream, caused those secutinizers of the destinies of humanity to think that below the accidencal forms of culture there ought to exist a fandamental, natural unity, one not conditioned by contacts, interchanges, or peculiar cases of influence oi This search for essences and substrata—a centralizing ideal, example of extreme monism, little less than a neo-Platonic belief in the existence of some forms in which the individual expressions of the culture share—will cause some of the founders of comparative ligerature studies to feel uncasy. For example, in his inaugural lecture in Turin in 1876 Arturo Graf upheld the necessity “to search out in the various and the diverse the constant and the enduring." Viewed from such an angle or with such a purpose, the historian of literature clearly comes very close either to the pure scientist — the discoverer of laws and prevailing regularities of historical time and of singular events—or to those thinkers and poets who delve into individual KARE htt ‘The One and the Many Is experiences in order to discover universal and even "etemal” val Re the young Orga y Cass, the autor ofthe “Teoria del ve > (807), who postulates an immanent ebins in sey mons 2 eet Ore ho later sug tha: an cs within tot are tune posty "a stre of supraindividual knowledge tat the Iimset ve would express: “every great poet plagirizes us.”* And think of a at En toro al castiiamo (1895), enemy ofthe disincion the Una (zo and te imernationl, determined to find the onginal Beene inthe most vivid reality, "what i the orignal, the esse a ean the exernal tadon” that erie the presen he sa enrol anpuleand eat teenth ihe waves fines “nay a erator nd tary ce the eo terms ae on erable) hasits own character and undertake specific asks. The uae of per cannot and shouldnt be cones wih a sient nor ibe philsopner, abo angus dha ef to emporl and wi Tat mensions hs bie of say, Compare erator has een a Tes Hea dc he respons campy on ‘Sand al superior 0 tlistorcl premie yhat sles am cpl In addin, every Wali posre—neo Katian or eo Flatoiecisdinal of nivel ierencs, of the appearance or surface things iemedisly a variance ith itis ofthe arpa Srhtectare, ms erste, alle cnematograpy, ano forth. nese Sipe of cle, wl be absurd orga work asd on esonal seienc, the seed and sensual perception without which a work of art comes worthless and fades aay There so oer wan, afer al, xcept the wan thar Burm One cannot follow Arturo Graf's proposal and erase the sonety and the changeable character of ar without also doing aay wih the pleasre of the spectator o reader. : Se ee ill ox iba oeeaioe We aoa sen the choi of einintng ete india dferenes or oni pepsin; seer th singltaesteccmotion nor he ating ult The ark ofthe comparatit sa daietical one Fr that eso, i thar tis tsk is characterized by the constant awareness ofa problems be crete egcont dik anise ch ut ception of the constuent elements. On the one hand, noc eveything t Ini duality onthe enchanted island that 2 Iiterary work or we would fll nto an ingenuous formalism), On the orher hand itis even more ob- vious that what may acem t us ike 2 dimension ora universal component Oley history oF as aking from this always-changng and renascent .dztsg.net/doc16, The Emergence of Comparative Literature morass that we call literature, isnot a finished premise, easily accepted, but rather a working hypothesis, needing proof, analysis, anda body of cultural tools and knowledge much greater than we now possess. Above all else, we find ourselves facing a project, 2 deste, inspired by an agaccgate of prob- lems. And the witty Fernando Pessoa, with his caustic bent, wasn't far from the truth when he wrote: “since we can never know all the factors involved in an issue, we can never resolve it.”* Fortunately, the elements of the question hecome more numerous, more saried, more suggestive with each passing day, In 1971 the frst interna tional Congress of Comparative Literature to be held in Asia met in Fore ‘mosa. As in other similar colloquia held in Hong Kong, North America, and Europe, the presentations included not jus fats, but new proposals as well, belonging to an area that has come to be called East/West studies, The present-day leaders of comparative literature, those who have cultivated East/West studies for years, are probably the most daring scholars in the ficl, above all from a theoretical point of view We will look at some ex. amples and comment on them later. For now it is enough to note that the ‘pening to Oriental literatures provided by East/West studies implies a m ualitatie change. The work is not aimed at simply translating or special izing in Far Eastern literatures, thus perpetuating their separation, but is ‘meant to integrate them into a single body of learning, or eather to include them in a single interrogation. The students of East/West horizontal axis of distant as well as distinct civlizations—on the one hand exatnine the literatures of Europe and America as one subject and, on the other hand, consider the specific literatures of Asia and Africa—Arabie literatures, those of India, the Chinese, and the Japanese, just ro mention the principal cones. Up to now, most attention has been focused on China and Japan, the literature of China being studied with special intensity, a literature so. an cient, so rich, and at the same time one that has remained so totally inde- pendent (10 a much greater degree than the Arabic) from influences and