"East and West" and the Concept of Literature ¹

by

Wolfgang Ruttkowski

Summary:

By carefully comparing observations made by specialists in Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Western literature concerning problems of literary values, canon-formation, and the concept of literature itself, the author tries to answer some of the most pertinent questions in comparative aesthetics and ethnopoetics, specifically:

Are literatures of radically different cultures comparable regarding literary values?- Do "universal" literary values exist?- Do literary values remain the same within the development of one culture?- Does the fact that certain works of literature have been valued over centuries indicate that "eternal values" exist?-

Is the concept of literature the same in radically different cultures?- Does it remain the same within the development of one culture?- Are the basic genres (the lyric, epic, and dramatic) comparable?- Are certain analogous phenomena in Indian and Western literature indicative of basic similarities between these literatures?-

Is at least the theory deduced from these literatures similar?- Is a unified theory of literature desirable?- Are literary canons established mainly according to perceived aesthetic values in the selected works?-

If the answer to all of the questions above is NO, wherein lie the basic differences between Eastern and Western literatures?-

I

In a review of literature on the topic², Anthony C. Yu alerted us to recent attempts at applying Western critical vocabulary to Chinese literature. He defended this method. This makes us aware of two possible perspectives for evaluating literature, i.e., our present (mostly Western) one and a historical reconstruction of ways of viewing works that do not seem to fit our criteria.

We cannot take it for granted that such a "historically adequate" approach is at all possible for "comparative aesthetics" (Eliot Deutsch) or "ethnopoetics" (Tim Ingold). But even if it were, it would not enable us to explain why certain works of literature have been selected and passed on as exemplary, and others not. In some isolated cases, this central problem of canon-formation might be answered historically, if we know enough about the genesis and social surroundings of such works. But we will never be able to explain such choices and traditions with aesthetic criteria³, simply because in most cases the process of selection and tradition was not made according to such criteria⁴.

Most critics silently assume that all so called "masterworks" of literature in various cultures and periods have been selected based on more or less the same set of esthetical standards which are merely obscured by all kinds of circumstantial ("cultural") ballast. Once freed of the latter, their "eternal and universal values" will shine in beautiful self-evidence. - The comparatist experience should teach us precisely the opposite: Firstly, that "masterworks" have not been selected mainly according to esthetic standards, and secondly, that such standards are in any case not the same for sufficiently remote cultures. They even vary within such cultures.

What do we mean by "sufficiently remote" cultures? We mean precisely those cultures that had not yet reached the stage of mutual interaction, exchange, and influence that was meant by Goethe when he coined in 1827 his concept of "World Literature"⁵. As Horst Steinmetz has correctly established, Goethe "meant predominantly European literature" with his concept, not a list of "great books," comprising Arab, Chinese, Indian, Japanese or Persian ones, as would be taught nowadays at an American college. "World literature is, as a product of economical, historical, and intellectual development, primarily to be defined as a literature which transgresses and wants to transgress national and linguistic barriers from the outset. However, it does not do that because it excels in special literary or other qualities but rather primarily because it reacts to situations in life which increasingly resemble each other, in spite of differing national environments, especially in the so-called capitalist countries."⁶

We might just as well say: "sufficiently remote" cultures are those before (or outside) the Western domination in the colonial period. Certainly, there were also other kinds of "cultural colonialism" besides the Western one, e.g., that of the Arab culture in Mogul India and of the Chinese in all of its "satellite states."- But we are accustomed to distinguishing these "cultural spheres" as a whole, while we are not always aware of the far reach of our own cultural influence. Therefore, we tend to "universalize" our own cultural values.

To complicate matters, we also have to be careful about which stages of development of various cultures we compare. It seems to make sense to only compare literatures of a comparable period. But who is to decide which periods are roughly comparable? When Germany, after the confessional wars, made a first attempt at developing a kind of "national literature," the Indian "classicism" was long over. When in China the four great lyric poets of the T′ang period wrote their masterworks, the tribes of the Germanic migrations were merely dreaming of unifying into a united "Reich." Already in the 7th century, the library of the Chinese emperor contained 370 000 scrolls, while two centuries later, in the 9th century, one of the largest collections of the Occident, belonging to the monastery of St Gallen, could only boast of four hundred volumes.

II

It is not only the quality of esthetical standards that varies widely in different cultures, and within these cultures in various stages of development of these cultures, it is the concept of literature itself, which has to be examined comparatively. We have to ask: What makes (or since when is) literature "literature" in our sense of the concept? The same critics that assume a universal validity of aesthetic standards in all cultures usually also assume that the concept of "literature" means more or less the same wherever we look.

However, Wolfhart Heinrichs⁷ points to the "surprising fact that in classical Arabic there is no comparable concept to `literature′" and that "while the concept `literature′ in a Western context immediately evokes the popular trinity of epic, lyrical, dramatic, its application to the Arabic high literature yields two deficits (epic and drama), which leaves the third category not particularly effective."

Not only do variants in its sub-groups cause the concept "literature" to fluctuate, so also do the different meanings it receives from its social embedding. There are various stages of the latter to be observed which Rudolf Arnheim describes well: "In early societies, performers and art makers are so closely integrated in the community that their motivational objectives coincide with those of the group. At first, there may be no distinction between those who supply the arts and those who consume them. Performances of dances and other ceremonies are shared by all for a common purpose, and craft work is contributed by everyone. Even when the arts become specialities reserved for certain individuals, there is in early societies no noticeable distinction between the objectives of the artists and those of the community. Only in ages of individualism such as that of the Renaissance in the Western world do artists cease to be employed artisans like bricklayers or shoemakers and develop their own aesthetic values , which must try to cope with those of monarchal and ecclesiastical princes using their services. [...] In the nineteenth century, the artist, detached from the give-and-take of well-functioning social relations, is typified by isolated loners pursuing their own standard and taste, which more often than not are not shared by the public."- The situation first described might have been part of the fascination that, for example, the island of Bali exerted on anthropologists and especially artists.

[...]

NOTES

1 Portions of this article were presented in German at the 10th International Congress of the International Association for Germanic Studies, Sept. 10th to 16th 2000 in Vienna, under the title "Kanon und Wert." The full German version was published under the title "Kanon und Wert (10 Thesen mit Kommentaren)" in Acta Humanistica et Scientifica Universitatis Sangio Kyotiensis, Foreign Languages and Literature Series No. 28 (Kyoto, Japan, March 2001) 77-119. A different version in German appeared under the title "Kanon und Wert. Zur Kritik leitender Annahmen. Neun Thesen mit Kommentaren" in Jahrbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Intercultural German Studies Bd. 27 (München: iudicium 2001) 71-103. A different version in English was published in the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics Vol. XXIV, Nos. 1-2 (Sambalpur University, Jyoti Vihar, Orissa, India, 2001) 89-125.
All translations in this article are mine. In order to support my points I had to quote secondary sources more extensivley than I would have preferred. This was necessitated by the topic. No one can be at the same time a specialist in Indian, Chinese, Japanese and various other literatures and read the original source literature of all the scholars that I quoted. For this reason, it would be foolhardy to forego inquiry into comparative questions of the kind I have raised simply for lack of literacy and expertise in multiple languages.

2 Yu: "The use of the more peculiarly Western critical concepts and categories in the study of Chinese literature is, in principle, no more inappropriate than the classical scholar′s use of modern techniques and methods for his study of ancient materials. [...] Certainly, the problems of historical and cultural contexts, of linguistic and generic particularities, and of intended audience and effects must be considered, but a serious critic has every right to ask whether novel means may be found and applied in each instance, so that the work of verbal art may be more fully understood and appreciated."

3 Bush: "Certain characteristics of traditional Chinese criticism become clearer in contrast with Western models. For instance, a Western critic might consider political periodization an extrinsic type of classification when applied to the development of the arts, but in China art was generally viewed as an integral part of government and society, and there was no initial distinction between ethical and artistic standards of judgement [...] Rankings of poets in broad groupings are likely to have been influenced by extra-artistic factors such as social position or political career ...."

Similarly , Maureen Robertson: "From a modern Western point of view, period schemes borrowed from political and intellectual history are to be termed `extrinsic′, not being based on evidence taken exclusively from the art objects themselves. From a traditional Chinese point of view, the political periodization cannot be seen as wholly extrinsic to art history [...] Artistic activity was not felt to take place in isolation from the complex and powerful forces set in motion by the character and authority of individual reigning sovereigns, and periodization by political periods serves not only descriptive but explanatory functions in traditional historical thinking."

4 Comp., Rudolf Lüthe: "Underlying any statement with respect to the value of aesthetic experience lurks a normally not recognized decision of an anthropological order. The notion of man determines any correspondent theory concerning the value of aesthetic experience. Therefore this value is necessarily relative: there are as many valid decisions in respect to value as there are valid ideas of man. This forces us to acknowledge that we cannot finally give the answer to the question: What is the nature of the value attributed to the aesthetic experience? - All we can do is to draw logical conclusions from an accepted concept of man, which we must first decide on."

5 Haskell M. Block: "[...] most of us would agree that `World Literature′ is not a happy term."

Comp. Mihaly Szegedy-Maszak: "My perception is that the precise boundaries of Weltliteratur have not been sufficiently fixed. World literature has certainly more to do with different degrees of translatability than with immanent aesthetic values. [...] There are great works of literature which resemble wines that do not travel well."

6 Comp. H.S in:Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 37.

Interesting in this context is the following observation by Anita Silvers: "Ours is by no means the first age to be destabilized by the increasing prominence of multicultural diversity. In the eighteenth century, a similar phenomenon - a florishing engagement with non-European art - accentuated the fragility of the familiar idea of beauty. (It is at this time that the idea of Western culture as a distinct type appears.) To bolster the stability of a public sphere engaged with aesthetic value, eighteenths century convention fashioned an instructive set of models drawn from antiquity, namely a classical Western canon." We may assume that Silvers refers to the influence China exerted on Europa during the period of Enlightenment.-

7 For a more comprehensive discussion from the point of view of "Comparative Aesthetics" which "may contribute to the much-needed understanding of artistic and aesthetic phenomena from a pan-human perspective" comp. Van Damme, Wilfried; his paper contains the more recent relevant literature.