ABSTRACT

In his writings on world literature, Goethe highlights direct ‘intellectual commerce’ between living authors while also emphasizing indirect exchange through intermediaries such as translators. This paper investigates whether book submissions to Goethe mirror these complementary modes on a material level. In our study, we map submissions in foreign literature and German literature in translation across time and space. We also attempt to determine the roles of the submitters with regard to the volumes sent. In practice, we demonstrate that the ‘intellectual commerce’ Goethe appreciated was mostly a domestic, indirect affair — a surprising result that raises questions with respect to the international reach of Goethe’s actual world literary practices.

摘要

歌德在其关于世界文学的著作中强调了在世作家之间的直接“智力贸易”，同时也强调了通过诸如翻译之类的中介进行的间接交流。本文研究了向歌德提交的书籍是否在物质层面上反映了这些互补的模式。在我们的研究中，我们将跨时空翻译外国文学和德国文学中的论文作图。我们还尝试确定提交者在发送量方面的作用。在实践中，我们证明了歌德所赞赏的“智力交易”主要是国内的，间接的事务–一个令人惊讶的结果，这使人们对歌德实际世界文学实践的国际影响力提出质疑。