A Survey Eastern Origins of World Literature from Goethe’s View Point

This paper explains the Eastern origins of world literature from Goethe’s view point. In 1813, Goethe became acquainted with Hafez's Divan through Hammerpurgestal's translation, and following Hafez, he composed his West-Eastern Divan. But almost a decade after the Divan was composed, in his conversation with Ackerman, Goethe used the term "world literature" for the first time, because he believed that national literature had lost its meaning and that the age of world literature had arrived. However, it seems that Goethe's invention of this term, did not take place independently and away from the influence of Eastern culture and literature, especially that of Hafiz's Divan. The argument is that Goethe's West-Eastern Divan is a work that has emerged through Goethe's encounter with the translation of Oriental literary works and, in particular, and most importantly, Hafez's sonnets. For Goethe, world literature is neither a body of national literatures nor a collection of the world’s literary masterpieces, but rather, a dynamic process of interaction between the world’s nations, with the aim of breaking down the walls of national prejudice that have damaged peaceful coexistence among the people of the world. Therefore, this paper explicates the status of world literature through Goethe's reading of Hafez.