Weltliteratur, Mirovaia literatura, World Literature: The Task of Translation and the Literatures of East, 1919-1922

• In Event: Conceptual Migrations: Soviet Literary Theory in the Making

Abstract

Recent debates for and against World Literature, especially those animating the field of comparative literature, have explored the genealogy of the concept by turning back towards its elaboration by figures ranging from Goethe to Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer. The aim of this paper is to consider the post-Revolutionary period as part of this genealogy of the concept of World Literature, as it was elaborated not only by its most prominent proponent, Maxim Gorky, but also by figures such as the writer, critic, translator K. Chukovskii and the orientologists S.F. Oldenburg and B. IA. Vladimirtsov, among others. The focus of this paper will be to consider the problem of translation, which underpins this panel’s idea of "concept migration," as it formed a central term of the post-Revolutionary debate regarding the aims of mirovaia literatura and the literatures of the East.

Author

• Michael M. Kunichika, Amherst College