THE GL•BAL CAN•N

Horace Engdahl, a Swedish literary historian and critic, has been one of the 18 members of the Svenska Akademien since 1997, serving as its permanent secretary from 1999 to June 2009. Since 1901, the Academy has selected the laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

A Nobel Sensibility Horace Engdahl

Because of the attention that the literature present, rather than crown masters for all prize attracts across the world and because time. As it turned out, the Swedish Acad- of its prestige, the Nobel laureates have emy gave the prize a distinctly monumen- inevitably come to be seen as forming a tal character. In doing so, it could appeal kind of modern canon. This has provoked to the wording of the Nobel Foundation’s the critical reproach that many of the statutes, the final document that directs 20th century’s greatest writers are missing the activity of the Nobel Prize committees. from the list, and that it includes too few According to the statutes, older works may women and not enough non-Europeans. be awarded, “if their significance has not I believe that the Academy members become apparent until recently.” This con- who comprised that first Nobel Commit- cession was used to motivate the practice tee in 1901 would have been terrified had of considering a lifetime’s creativity rather they realized what they were about to set than an individual work. The phrase “dur- in motion. Certainly in those first few years ing the preceding year” was interpreted no one thought of the prize as a means to in a broader sense, as a demand for the define a canon. (Nor was the concept of a continued viability of a work. canon applied to contemporary literature— Today, the annual crowning of a Nobel that is a late development.) Alfred Nobel’s laureate for literature—an individual often will intends to reward a literary work removed from the regions of the world published in the previous year—a single which are the focus of international inter- book, not a body of writing. Nobel clearly est, writing in a language outside the broad wanted the literature prize to act in the sweep of western literature—suggests

© 2010 World Policy Institute 41 that the concept of a single body of works winners, exile, whether internal or exter- that drives and defines global creativity nal, has been the inescapable condition of is an anachronism. If we want to consider their work. The reading public and literary the possibility of a truly Global Canon, it opinion-makers in their home countries might be best to look at the intellectual have generally preferred other writers to tradition from which Alfred Nobel inher- those selected by the Academy. In au- ited his idea of literature. thoritarian or strongly traditional societ- When Nobel was in the process of ies, laureates have often been perceived drawing up his famous will, his friend as outsiders or dissidents. The issue of a Bertha von Suttner, the peace activist and writer’s authenticity tends to be questioned writer, gave him the first issue ofMagazine as some sort of ideological crime, as two International, a journal first published in recent examples suggest. 1894 by an international artists’ union. His copy of the magazine is preserved in the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy. Exotic Guises? On the cover is the famous passage from In 2000, the Chinese government pro- Goethe’s conversations with his longtime claimed that Gao Xingjian was not a personal secretary Johann Eckermann, genuinely Chinese writer and congratu- where the term “Weltliteratur” appears for lated France on the prize. Conservative the first time:Nationalliteratur will jetzt nationalists in Turkey expressed similar nicht viel sagen, die Epoche der Weltliteratur ist sentiments in the case of Orhan Pamuk an der Zeit, und jeder muss jetzt dazu wirken, in 2006; they branded his work as be- diese Epoche zu beschleunigen. (“National ing too strongly influenced by western literature has no great meaning today; the values. Oddly enough, the same demand time has come for world literature, and for a writer to be loyal to his origins is each and every one of us should work to voiced by post-colonial western intellec- hasten the day.”) tuals. Critics with these convictions have In his will, Nobel declared that it was argued that, in giving the prize to writers his “express wish that in awarding the such as V.S. Naipaul, Gao Xingjian and prizes no consideration whatsoever shall be Orhan Pamuk, the Academy was actually given to the nationality of the candidates.” rewarding European literature (or today’s The prize is intended as an award for in- iteration of the longstanding western dividual achievements and is not given to Canon) in an exotic guise, thereby joining writers as representatives of nations or lan- forces with cultural imperialism. guages nor of any social, ethnic or gender But writing has always, in some sense, group. There is nothing in the will about required deserting one’s own kind. Great striving for a “just” distribution of the authors are often nomads, difficult to clas- prize, whatever that could be. What was sify ethnically or linguistically. It is strik- vital for Nobel was that the prize-winning ing how many prize-winners have had author should have contributed to human- problematic nationalities. Samuel Beckett ity’s improvement (“conferred the greatest was an Irishman who wrote in French. benefit to mankind”), not that the prize Elias Canetti was a British subject of Jew- should flatter any collective self-esteem. ish origin from Bulgaria whose literary The deficiency of a strictly nation- language was German. The Brodsky who based concept of literature is evident from won the prize no longer called himself a glance at the list of prize-winners from Iosif but Joseph and was bilingual as a 1901 to the present day. For several of the poet (Russian and English). Nelly Sachs

42 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2010 ©Carolyn Tubekis belongs to German literature but not to the term Weltliteratur in 1827, believed Germany, nor to Sweden, where she spent the time had come to establish a similar most of her life. Isaac Bashevis Singer was cross-border community for literature. anchored in Yiddish and in English, and Earlier, in her essays and novels, Mme de his imaginative recreation of the vanished Staël had attempted to interpret the great Jewish culture of Eastern Europe presup- European cultural nations. Prejudices were posed the distance of a foreign shore and a destroyed and literary news was suddenly modern, secular society. transported at great speed. This was the Despite the half century it took for internationalism lauded by Georg Brandes the Academy’s Nobel Committee fully to in the first part of his “Main Currents of accept literary modernism, the Nobel Prize the Nineteenth Century,” “The Emigré in Literature has from the very first been an Literature,” with Mme de Staël cast as the expression of modernity. The preconditions heroine. If we study the relevant part of for the award of the prize are the freedom Eckermann’s “Gespräche mit Goethe,” it of thought and the cosmopolitanism that transpires that Goethe’s “world literature” was upheld by the Enlightenment. In did not signify a huge compendium of all the field of scientific research, a kind of literature written by all peoples but rather international republic of learned people the possibility of dialogue between differ- developed as early as the 17th century, ent cultures through their great writers. In with Latin as its mother tongue. Bacon “West-östlicher Divan,” Goethe had set an and Descartes were among this republic’s example by playing with a double identity legislators. Perhaps Goethe, in minting as a German and a Persian poet.

A Nobel Sensibility 43 The intellectual underpinning for Center vs. Periphery the views expressed by Mme de Staël and Franco Moretti’s theory of diffusion Goethe was created around 1800, by the presents an influential description of the circle of German geniuses that centered literary inequality between center and on the brother poets and essayists Fried- periphery. Moretti maintains that the life rich and August Wilhelm Schlegel. For of literature consists of waves of influences the first time, the idea was expounded flowing from the center, disturbing local that western literature comprised a spiri- development. The result is a great degree tual whole with an autonomous, histori- of uniformity, as regions are progres- cal development. In his lectures, Fried- sively pulled into a common market of rich Schlegel described literature as an books and values. According to Moretti, enormous organism in which every part the phenomenon was first observed in the interacts with every other. In this magnifi- wave of Petrarchism that washed across cent historical-philosophical construct he Europe during the Renaissance. In the found room for the poets of antiquity, the 18th century, the poetry of all European Middle Ages and of the new age, and for countries was largely adapted to French both the Roman and the German peoples. models. But at the same time, the pattern (There was as yet little coming from the from the center was applied in different Slavic regions.) Thus he delineated what ways on the periphery, depending on local we regard as our Western Canon, stretch- traditions. The result is often a hybrid— ing from Homer to Goethe and onward. the center combining with material and A few decades later, German scholars narrative voice from the periphery. The tackled the immense chore of charting the barbarism of the fringes is revealed in literary development of all civilized peoples their inability to achieve the aloof aes- beyond the western sphere. The first “history theticism that characterizes the center’s of world literature” appears to be Karl Rosen- attitude. Moretti’s argument, drastically kranz’s “Handbuch einer allgemeinen Ge- paraphrased, is that literature is a spe- schichte der Poesie,” published in three vol- cial form of malevolence invented by the umes in Halle, Germany in 1832–33. Thus, French that the rest of the world tries to the idea of a Global Canon has antecedents learn with no definitive success. that go back at least two centuries. When But from the viewpoint of the Nobel the Nobel Prize was instituted in 1901, one process, the literary system in fact appears might have expected a more cosmopolitan far from unified and centralized. Every distribution of the awards, but as it turned nation seems to have its own idea of world out, the Europeans came to dominate dur- literature. There is no neutral ground or ing the first decades, a brilliant exception transnational vision shared by all. On the being the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, contrary, it can be seen everywhere that in 1913. Western dominance has never national canons pierce the international, quite faded from the list of literary laureates, not only in the sense that national writers although the exceptions have become more are granted a special place but also in the frequent since the 1980s. Indeed, in the cur- different choices of foreign classics. rent discussion of world literature, the idea In Sweden, for example, more authors of a center and a periphery plays a prominent from the Nordic countries become a part role. The Nobel Prize is often criticized as an of their own canon than enter the percep- expression of literary values characteristic of tion of readers in England or Italy. Such a the nucleus of the western cultural sphere. phenomenon also encompasses older clas-

44 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2010 sics. Chekhov is a more canonical author onto such a list is futile. Nothing would in the West than in Russia (in the sense be gained. The legitimacy of a balanced of being looked upon as a model author), canon would immediately be questioned, while the opposite is true for Pushkin. if it were the result of political pres- For an observer from a small country this sure or benevolent compromise. Literary effect is especially obvious, while critics recognition cannot be commanded or from the great nations are often convinced negotiated. Even with the support of the that the canon of their own country is the most favored source of cultural authority, universal one. As a member of the Nobel Committee, one cannot hope to Every nation seems to have its take a purely theoretical view of the subject. “World literature” own idea of world literature. shifts from a descriptive term There is no neutral ground or to something of a performative phrase. Rather than designat- transnational vision. ing the bulk of literature existing world-wide, it signifies a context into which we hope to bring the winning a work can fail miserably. body of work. Will there be a Global Canon? If so, it In what way, then, does the literary will have to base itself on other needs, and Nobel Prize herald the dawn of a future must assume other functions, than clas- Global Canon, a different kind of canon? sical canons. It will not be a hierarchy of First, simply by being an event—attract- works that serve to define a common ideal ing world-wide attention for its choices, of excellence, but rather a literary space—a thus giving support to the idea that a field of presentation larger than any par- great book, regardless of its language and ticular tradition or aesthetic creed. Such a background, belongs to the readers of all field exists and has existed for a long time, the world. Second, by looking at authors despite the obvious ethnocentricity of liter- as individuals and not as representatives. ary teaching, and despite the dominance of This not only means being open to good European models in much of the writing candidates from every corner of the earth. from the last hundred years. It also means turning a deaf ear to the de- World literature in the future will not, mands that the Academy should let itself as some people seem to imagine, be equiva- be guided by good intentions rather than lent to books written in English by authors good judgment. It means playing down of different nations. The working language the whole issue of origin. of international business, diplomacy, sci- ence, and entertainment holds no similar privilege in the literary field. In the realm An International Reading List of literature, there is no universal language A Global Canon of literature can hardly other than translation. A new canon with a take the form of a commonly accepted global perspective will not be the outcome international reading list, resembling the of a rejection of native tongues. On the curricula once designed to underpin the contrary, it will destroy the illusion of a pride and identity of nation states. The monolingual future. l hope of the periphery of working itself

A Nobel Sensibility 45