“Was bedeutet die Bewegung?”: Authorship as Movement in Goethe's West-östlicher Divan

Summary

Abstract: In his collection of poems, West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan), Goethe develops a novel concept of mobile authorship, which opposes the notion of a fixed, unified, and authoritative authorial voice. The poems in this collection thematize movement between East and West, and further envision this movement as a dialogue between poets, Persian and German, separated by time and space. While the untethering of words, or poetic voice, from the poet's physical body sets in motion the creative process that drives the collection, the ideal of poetic movement as an exchange among equals is not always realized: Goethe's authorial collaboration with Marianne von Willemer, including her authorship of certain poems of the Divan, remained unacknowledged and largely unknown until after his death. The poems of the Divan reflect on this tension between the poetic ideal of free movement as equal exchange and the threat of constraint or appropriation connected to the notion of mobile authorship.

Keywords: authorship, movement, poetic dialogue, translation, exchange, mediation, transcultural dialogue, appropriation

THE TITLE OF Goethe's cycle, West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan), suggests movement, implying that the collection initiates an exchange of ideas and literary practices between geographically and linguistically distant cultures. As the stated author of the cycle, Goethe occupies an ambiguous position between East and West, Persian and German identities, permitting a novel concept of authorship to emerge, one formulated not as a single fixed, unified and static source but rather as multivocal dialogue encompassing more than one linguistic and cultural perspective. This concept of mobile authorship promotes an ideal; it envisions a poetic exchange among equals. However, introducing movement into the concept of authorship also allows for unequal attribution or appropriation, the claiming of another's words as one's own, since poetry, developed through discourse among two or more participants, opens the possibility that the ownership of words and ideas can be contested. Furthermore, at certain points in the Divan, poetic dialogue among participants separated by time and space is only possible through a mediator, such as a translator, who bridges the linguistic and cultural divides and allows for the movement across divisions to occur.