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A World of David Damrosch’s literary global reach by Spencer Lee Lenfield

he résumé of Harvard’s Bernbaum professor of com- in one or two centuries of one or two regions; Damrosch’s work parative literature might create the impression that across time and space makes him an outlier. He says he tells people, “comp lit” means “the study of any literature from “I work mostly on literature between roughly 2000 and 2015. But Tanywhere, ever.” At various points in his career, David Damros- ‘2000’ means 2000 b.c.e.” ch has written about the , the Hebrew Bible, He is best known for his advocacy of “,” which the dramatist Ka-lida-sa, visions of medieval Belgian he defines in his (sensibly titled) 2003 bookWhat Is World Literature? nuns, Aztec , Kafka, the Chinese intellectual Hu Shih, the as “all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, and the oral either in translation or in their original language.” This does not of K’iche’ Guatemalan Nobel laureate and activist mean all literature ever created: some stays within the culture and Rigoberta Menchú. Most scholars define themselves as specialists language that produced it, and never leaves. World literature happens

48 September - October 2019 Photograph by Stu Rosner

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 when Russian remake ; when a Turkish twentieth-century writers in English, but what about those who writer takes inspiration from a Colombian writer; when Japanese wrote in Urdu or Albanian? You may enjoy the nineteenth-century critics review translations of Lebanese poetry. It almost always in- , but what about the poetry of eighth-century Persia? “North volves re-interpretation and misunderstanding: a Spanish monk American audiences, especially in the United States, tend to be quite sent to suppress Aztec literature ended up disseminating it instead; provincial—a kind of great-power provincialism, paying little at- subsequently, Aztec hymns envision a Christian God urging revolt tention to the rest of the world and poorly understanding it,” he against the Spaniards. World literature is also nothing new under reflects. “If the history of literature runs roughly 5,000 years, a lot the sun: Damrosch’s first ,Narrative Covenant, is about the in- of the time we just read work from the last 50 or 100 years, which fluence of a range of Mesopotamian from the first mil- is the most recent 2 percent of the history of literature.” He wants lennium b.c.e. on the composition of much of the Bible. to encourage readers to engage with the other 98 percent—“these The field first gained traction in American universities around earlier periods that tell us a lot more about the world.” the turn of this century. Damrosch’s book appeared within a few Such ambitions may sound unreachable; critics inside the field years of works by two other scholars commonly tied to the concept: worry they can collapse into dilettantism. Damrosch counters that the late Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters and Franco even though no one can read everything (“I’ve tried—and failed Moretti’s article “Conjectures on World Literature.” Though their completely!” he admits cheerfully), he wants to expand readers’ individual views differ, the three are often seen as the center of the sense of the dimensions of the literary universe. His own work is new global focus in . But Damrosch empha- littered with odd couples: Vladimir Nabokov’s Russian transla- sizes that he doesn’t want world literature seen as a purely aca- tion of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is invoked to make sense of demic notion. “One of the things that’s interesting about [it] is that ancient Egyptian love poems; Kafka’s sheds light on P.G. it didn’t come from elite graduate schools and percolate down, the Wodehouse’s. He believes ranging even a little more widely beyond way had,” he explains. “It’s much more bottom-up— one’s own era and language can in fact improve appreciation for from K-12 schools and community colleges, because they’re having and understanding of one’s home turf: “If you’re interested in a par- these influxes of people from around the world, and they wanted ticular period and a particular literature, if you can test it against to reach them. So they started teaching world-literature courses.” some knowledge of what’s outside, then you can understand better He also doesn’t want to be taken as a central figure in a move- what’s in the system you’re interested in.” ment, stressing that a lot has happened in the field since his 2003 The urge to push outward is, by his account, deeply dyed into book. He wishes other literary scholars would pay greater atten- his character. He grew up in Maine, the child of Episcopal mission- tion to studies of world literature more recent than his own, as aries who had returned to the United States after being interned well as work by scholars outside the old European imperial lan- by the Japanese in the Philippines during the Second World War. guages (English, French, Spanish, German). “If you’re in (Damrosch’s older brother, Leo, is Bernbaum research professor of English or French, you’re going to get more attention than if you’re literature emeritus at Harvard.) The family moved to New York City writing in Slovakian,” Damrosch notes. “We really need to look at as Damrosch entered high school; he enjoyed having regular access work that’s being done in Italian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and in to the Metropolitan Museum (where he developed a fascination Eastern Europe—in trans- with ) and at- lation if we can’t read it in tending a prep school that the original—and we need encouraged his ambitions: to be getting more transla- “In ninth grade, my Eng- tions of things that aren’t lish teacher gave me a copy translated...One of the of Tristram Shandy by Lau- things world literature has rence Sterne—a great eigh- to talk about is its own un- teenth-century novel, which even playing field.” was the first novel for real Damrosch’s writing, grown-ups that I had read. I teaching, and conversa- thought it was hilarious and tion heighten the contrast wonderful, and said, ‘Well, I between how much liter- want to read more like this.’ ature exists in the world, Tristram gives his life and and how little of it reach- opinions, and he says that es even voracious readers. his favorite authors are ‘my You may have read the great dear Rabelais and my dear Cervantes.’ I didn’t know The "Flood Tablet" of who those people were, but the Epic of Gilgamesh, recounting the gods' plan I thought, ‘If he likes them, to destroy the world in a I should like them!’ So then flood. The epic's oldest I got the Penguin Classics parts date to the twenty- of second century b.c.e.; this tablet is a copy made in and , and I read the seventh century b.c.e. ©THE BRITISH MUSEUM/TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM those. I really liked those, so

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 I said to myself, ‘Well, I like these A fragment of a funerary hilarious satirical works, so what papyrus with text from the ancient Egyptian else can I read?’ At the back of the in hieratic script (from the Penguin Classics there were these Late Period, late eighth century other ; I see this book called b.c.e. to 332 b.c.e.) the Divine , so I went, “Oh, I should read that!” I soon found it ing term,” he opined; “the epoch of wasn’t quite the knee-slapper that world literature is at hand, and ev- I thought it was. But one author led eryone must strive to hasten its ap- me to other authors, and then the proach.” Goethe could talk about publisher led me to other books, () alongside Hafiz and that had already brought me (Persian) and compare one of his to Europe.” own novels to fiction from England He also mentions two children’s and . His conception had its writers as influences on his early limits: distinctly elitist, distrustful years: Madeleine L’Engle (who of any kind of popular taste, and was one of his father’s parishio- convinced of the existence of sepa- ners in Manhattan) and J.R.R. rate national characteristics under- Tolkien—both builders of elabo- pinning the greater Weltliteratur. But rate worlds spread across it contrasted with the traditional many volumes who reveled in the way of studying literature one lan- abundance of languages, real and guage at a time—as though French fictional. “Gandalf is a philologist! existed in a separate box from Ger- And of course Tolkien was a phi- man and the two traditions never lologist…I was totally into that idea interacted. of a world with a deep history and The national approach neverthe-

many cultures, languages, and even GROUP/GETTY IMAGES IMAGES FORMAN/UNIVERSAL WERNER less won out for most of the follow- ways of writing.” ing century, as the modern research university consolidated and tended to organize the study of literature into language families— “Arabesques around the literary tradition” classics, Romance, Germanic, Slavic, et cetera—with scholars usual- The breadth of works on which Damrosch draws seems even ly specializing in a single language. The idea of comparative literature more expansive in light of comparative literature’s continuing focus gained currency after the 1886 publication of a foundational work by on European and U.S. works when he began graduate school at his H.M. Posnett; it made sense as a kind of reaction or complement to alma mater, Yale, in 1975. The department required proficiency in the language-family model. Departments of comparative literature French, German, and Latin before allowing students even to begin arose, but Goethe’s elitist notion of a world literature, with Horace the program. (He recalls that at the time he felt as if half his fellow and Hafiz considered side-by-side, lay mostly dormant. students were writing theses on Henry James.) By the 1970s, comparative literature, especially at Yale, tended to That focus reflected in part the impact of the Second World War. be concerned with the shape of literature abstracted from historical In its wake, reconstructing the idea of a Europe that was more context. The field emphasized formal and linguistic consideration than the sum of its nations held great moral urgency for comp- of works of literature as grounds for building general theories of lit researchers. Many of the field’s most prominent scholars were how literature creates meaning, built almost entirely on studies Europeans, often Jewish, who had fled the war. Erich Auerbach’s of modern European works. At the time, many schools of thought landmark 1946 book Mimesis, still regarded as a monument within within comp-lit were almost proud of their lack of interest in au- comparative literature, is subtitled “The Representation of Real- thors’ lives and literary history. ity in ,” but 13 of its 20 chapters cover Italian or Damrosch, however, focused on Egyptian, Biblical Hebrew, Old —a very small West, and certainly not the globe. Norse, and Nahuatl. (He currently works in 12 languages.) Hearing Damrosch mentions that when Conant University Professor emeri- him account for his linguistic development sounds like Friday at tus Stephen Owen, a scholar of Chinese poetry, applied to doctoral Babel (“Once I started studying Nahuatl, I realized I needed Spanish programs in comparative literature in the late 1960s, he was turned just to deal with dictionaries… One of my teachers said, ‘If you like away, despite knowing a dozen languages, because he wanted to Middle High German, you’d love Old Norse!’ So I did...”). He spent a work on Chinese, and that simply wasn’t done. (Owen had the last lot of time in the very different intellectual climate of Yale Divinity laugh, becoming one of Damrosch’s predecessors as chair of Har- School (for a time, he had considered entering a seminary), which vard’s comparative literature department.) encouraged an interest in historical context. These factors sometimes Yet the idea of a “world literature” encompassing the entire globe set him at odds with the comp-lit department. “My director of had first gained currency a century before. Most scholars, including graduate studies one year warned me that some hiring committees Damrosch, date the first use of that term to 1827, when Johann - might think I was only doing ‘arabesques around the literary tra- gang von Goethe started invoking Weltliteratur in conversations with dition,’” he remembers. “I thought that was an interesting phrase: friends and followers: “National literature is now a rather unmean- first of all, the idea that there wasone single literary tradition; and

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 second of all, ‘arabesques’ sounds sort of orientalist, as if I should have been doing This was an edgier version of world literature, Judaeo-Christian-esques within the tra- dition.” For a while, he considered other far more attuned to power and inequality, careers; uncertain of whether he would inflected by the new critical vocabulary of find a faculty job in the same city as his wife, the legal scholar Lori Fisler Dam- interactions among diasporic communities, rosch, he interviewed for the Foreign Service and was briefly a speechwriter postcolonial nations, and former empires. for President Jimmy Carter’s drug czar. Ultimately, he submitted an eclectic dissertation on ancient Egypt, in 2003, followed by How to Read World Literature in 2009, as well as a the Midrash, and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (the topic was the use pair of edited books, Teaching World Literature and World Literature in of scripture as a basis for fiction), and started teaching at Columbia Theory, that included various colleagues’ views of the subject. But after earning his doctorate in 1980. he may have exerted his widest influence as editor of theLongman Anthology of World Literature, which attempts—in about 3,500 pages— “Comparatists were always trying to save the world” to build a history for roughly four millennia of literature and four Discerning Damrosch’s specialties from his publication record continents, dropping off around the year 1700. The anthology is at can be difficult, but he says he continues to feel most at home in its most striking when it makes accidental neighbors between its two fields: English literature, and that of the ancient Near East regional sections: sits next to the Mayan Popol Vuh, the (Egypt, , Assyria, Israel). At Columbia, English and compara- Malian Epic of Son-Jara between and the Persian tive literature have been technically one department since 1910, (Book of Kings). so Damrosch enjoyed more freedom than he might have if he had This quality of chronological and geographical vertigo has pro- ended up in, say, a department of Egyptology. During the next 20 voked keen criticism from other comp-lit scholars, as well as from years, he wrote a characteristically broad range of articles, and two national-language and area-studies departments. Arguments dif- very different books—a monograph and a quirky campus novel of fer, but the most prominent concern reflects fear of a kind of “Ep- ideas—on academic culture and the humanities. cot lit”—raiding the globe for raw material that can be processed Around the same time, as the academic conversation on multi- and presented (at a profit) to readers and students, mainly in the culturalism and curriculum change accelerated, Goethe’s old term United States and Europe, to reassure them of their cosmopoli- “world literature” began to reappear with transformed meaning. tanism and broad-mindedness. Emily Apter, Silver professor of It no longer meant an aristocratic klatsch of literary elites, each French and comparative literature at New York University, makes representing a national language. the case in her 2013 book Against It also aimed to avoid being a sort World Literature that the concept of Cold War-era “United Nations can lead students to underesti- bookshelf” with a masterpiece mate the true extent of cultural from each country. Instead, it and linguistic differences, par- served as an analytical lens that ticularly by teaching texts in could cover old forms of interna- translations that conceal or omit tional exchange as well as new deep difference in cultural out- kinds of interactions among dias­ look. Aamir Mufti, professor of poric communities, postcolonial comparative literature at UCLA, nations, and former empires. This contends that the only ethically was an edgier version of world lit- viable form of world literature erature, far more attuned to pow- must confront the worldwide er and inequality, inflected by the history of “relations of force and critical vocabulary of the previ- powers of assimilation and the ous two decades. ways in which writers and texts Damrosch began to publish respond to such pressures.” Read- on the subject in the mid 1990s, ing Paradise Lost and the Popol Vuh leading to What Is World Literature? in the same way risks either un- derstanding neither, or else read- Page showing Aztec gentry ing the latter in a way that scrubs from book four of the sixteenth- away the distinctiveness of the century Florentine Codex, a history of the Aztec people society that produced it and its in the Nahuatl language modern descendants. that was compiled by the Comparative literature is a Spanish Franciscan Bernardino small world; Apter edited the se- de Sahagún with extensive help from Aztec informants ries that published Damrosch’s and artisans DEAGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES What Is World Literature? and has

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 served as a board member for the First page of the book of Genesis Institute for World Literature (see from the Xanten Bible, an illuminated Tanakh (Hebrew sidebar), as well as a keynote speak- Bible) completed by the scribe er; Damrosch’s enthusiastic blurb Joseph ben Kalonymus in 1294 for Mufti’s book Forget English! calls it “a vital contribution at the inter- true—for the individual reader, what section of postcolonial, compara- you read comes into your mind and tive, and world literary studies.” At can coexist. But it’s also true that times, he seems almost eager for the what’s able to come into your mind is chance to agree with his critics, or not merely your choice. So much de- at least meet them halfway. Mari- pends on cultural, political, and eco- ano Siskind, professor of Romance nomic factors that thinking critically languages and comparative litera- about those ellipses—the capitalist ture at Harvard, who has taught system that creates them, and the at multiple sessions of the Insti- colonial heritage and other politics tute for World Literature (which behind them—is very important.” Damrosch directs, see “Enlarging He teaches, for example, a semi- the Field,” opposite), says that his nar on “Peripheral Modernisms” that colleague “understands how im- flips the normal allocation of class portant it is to create a space that time to ask how the story of mod- is open to a wide diversity of posi- ernism changes when Brazilian and tions from which to study or ad- East Asian writers become the focus, dress world literature as a scholarly with European writers presented as critical problem.” context, or when Indonesian writ- Damrosch has often described er Pramoedya Ananta Toer is read at

the intersections where different NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS length and James Joyce studied only cultures’ literatures meet as the overlapping space between two el- through a handful of short stories. He writes in his foreword to Teach- lipses, one representing literature’s life in its home culture, the other ing World Literature, “World literature surveys can never hope to cover outside; in retrospect, he says, “I agree with the critiques that say too the world. We do better if we seek to uncover a variety of compelling often it looks as though these ellipses are all on a level playing field, works from distinctive traditions, through creative combinations and and it’s just a happy merger. Which I think to some degree may be juxtapositions guided by whatever specific themes and issues we

Enlarging the Field A number of IWL participants have described the experience as an important part of justifying and explaining the discipline in Since arriving at Harvard in 2009, Damrosch has attempted various ways. Karen Thornber, professor of comparative literature to open the conversation on world literature—and with it, the and East , taught environmental discipline of comparative literature—through a collaborative in- at past IWL sessions, and concluded, “It makes us better commu- ternational program, with 54 institutional affiliates, called the nicators. And that sounds kind of trite in a way, but I think one Institute for World Literature (IWL); it held its ninth summer of the challenges facing the humanities now is that we’re not as session in July. The four-week program assembles a core faculty clear as we might be about why the humanities matter and why of literary scholars and some 150 fellow scholars and graduate it’s important for students to study the humanities. Since the IWL students for a month of seminars on a range of relevant topics; takes place in different parts of the world, [students] learn how those for past sessions have included: “How Do Literary Works to become much better communicators about their own research. Cross Borders (Or Not)?” “ and the Imagination of We take them—and ourselves—outside of our research bubbles Planetary Futures,” “Environmental Humanities and New Mate- and talk more clearly.” rialisms.” “There’s a lot of interest in the idea of world literature, Rebecca Walkowitz, chair of the Rutgers English department, but at a lot of places, people are not really trained to work beyond who has taught a class on close reading and world literature at a single century in a single country,” Damrosch, who also directs two IWL sessions, notes that all universities pay lip service to the IWL, explains. “The institute is meant to train people”—not the goal of educating people for “global citizenship,” but “those just to pay lip service to “thinking globally,” but to urge schol- of us coming out of the humanities feel strongly that there is ars to “be in the world” and have conversations in person across no global citizenship without multilingualism: you can’t be an nations and languages. The venue of the IWL rotates in three- educated citizen if you only have encounters with the language, year cycles; for two years, it convenes at universities outside the literature, history, and culture of one place. The IWL, it seems to United States; the third year is always at Harvard. Past hosts me, is a chance to think about what the humanities can contrib- have included universities in Istanbul, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Hong ute, and shows how humanistic learning in multiple languages Kong, Beijing, and Lisbon. helps us understand what it means to participate internationally.”

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 wish to raise in a particular course.” Damrosch says the number of Damrosch is sanguine about the future of undergraduates taking classes and concentrating in literature has risen the field. “I think that globalization has been on modestly, bucking the trend across balance a positive challenge for comparative the humanities: “Our own enroll- ments are holding steady and have studies,” he avers, “opening up new possibilities actually been increasing over the last several years, in part because we’re and new problems of competence….” quite enthusiastic about general edu- cation…An increasing number of our concentrators are doing joint broadening linguistic range of the department’s core faculty, which degrees with [departments like] physics or statistics, as well as with now includes Polish, Malaysian, Wolof, and Korean. A current gradu- other literatures or arts. You get very smart students from a major ate student is, to the best of his knowledge, the first scholar to draw like biochemistry who are not afraid to ask very basic questions together Spanish, Mayan, and Basque literature in one study. “She about a text. They’re excellent students, and they read with great may be the only person in the world who’s a specialist in those three enthusiasm and care.” He sees this as a spur to re-evaluate the role things. And she’s doing fantastically interesting work.” of his field in students’ : knowledge of literature, he sug- Damrosch himself is finishing a book, tentatively titledComparing gests, offers less cultural prestige to today’s undergraduates than it the Literatures: What Every Comparatist Needs to Know. “A lot of my polemic once did, so faculty members “need to explain what we’re doing and is against picking sides narrowly and saying, ‘The kind of comp lit I justify it. And then it can relate to the rest of their do is the only kind to do,’ which I think is lives. It doesn’t have to be the [only] thing they do.” just self-defeating and unnecessary.” He Damrosch is sanguine about the future of the field envisions the department as a nexus for at large, as well. “I personally think it’s the most ex- approaches from dif- citing time in comparative literature since the 1870s, ferent languages and when they were really hashing out what the disci- methods. “What’s re- Visit harvardmag.com pline was going to be,” he avers. “I think that glo- ally good is that com- to read “Why Diverse Literature Matters,” balization has been on balance a positive challenge paratists today have by Josiane Grégoire, for comparative studies, opening up new possibili- the benefit of the the- J.D. ’92. ties and also new problems of competence, language, ory boom of the 1970s and politics...Many more and the postcolonial studies that rose in people are think- the 1980s, and we still have very seriously ing globally, [in- engaged work on the cluding] profes- that people like Emily Apter and my col- sors of French or league John Hamilton [Kenan professor of of English—but German and comparative literature] do. At now their work the same time, comp lit is opening to the has a global dimen- broader world.” sion, so it makes He remains confident that the study sense to have comp of literature has a role to in under- lit as a place to air standing and mending the world: “Lit- their views.” erature is not a simple mirror reflecting; He also feels the rather, it refracts the culture times have reinvigo- from which it comes. But it rated the field’s sense provides a way to think deep- that it is trying to ly—it’s a little bit like the slow find ways to address food movement in a world of fast real-world problems: foods. To read deeply and atten- “Comparatists were tively a rich work of literature always trying to save gives us a unique way of think- the world. In the years ing about ourselves and our place after the Second World in the world.”

© BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD War, that took the form of trying to put Europe Pages from the first Contributing editor Spencer Lee Lenfield back together. Now we increas- editions of various ’12 has previously profiled eighteenth- ingly find people working on is- volumes of Laurence century English literature scholar Dei­ sues [like] migration, diaspora, Sterne's novel The Life dre Lynch (January-February 2017) and and Opinions of Tristram ecocriticism, medical humani- Shandy, Gentleman, political philosopher Danielle Allen (May- ties.” He mentions the ever- dating from 1759 to 1767 June 2016).

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746