The Return to Philology and the Future of Literary Criticism: Reading the Temporality of Literature in Auerbach, Benjamin, and Dante

Abstract

Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives.--W. H. Auden, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" W. H. Auden's widely quoted assertion in his elegy for W. B. Yeats has occasioned much commentary, both contesting and confirming its slogan-like claim for poetry's impotence, but few commentators have followed Auden's thought beyond the wide-mouthed colon that follows its famous negation. 1 Auden's line not only registers resignation to poetry's powerlessness, but also affirms its ability to survive as "a way of happening, a mouth" even after the poet's death, when "the words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living." Literary works may make nothing happen and leave "the history of man materially unchanged," but they also change materially during their survival in history not only in the bodies of readers, but also in hands of their authors (Auden 2002, 7). A reading beyond the colon in the two major critical editions of his poems reveals that Auden was undecided about the modalities of poetry's survival. Does it survive "In the valley of its saying where executives / Would never want to tamper," as in The English Auden, or "In the valley of its making where executives / Would never want to tamper," as in the American edition? (emphasis added). 2 Rather than attempt to account for Auden's possible intentions in changing "saying" to "making," I take these variants as two poles for a possible future of literary criticism, which would explore how a work's "sayings," that is, its transformations at the hands not only of its author but also of its scribes, editors, and translators, might help critics to understand better its "making," that is, its poetics. The history of a work's survival, I argue, can help us understand its form.1 "A colon, says Karl Kraus opens its mouth wide: woe to the writer who does not fill it with something nourishing" (Adorno 1991, 91). For a review of some different readings of the first half of the line, see Robinson (2002, 53-55). 2 The history of Auden's own poem makes the point. First published in the March 8, 1939 issue of The New Republic, the poem originally consisted of only two sections, but, a few months later, Auden added as an intermediate section the stanza containing the famous hemistich quoted above. The revised version first "appeared in The London Mercury in April 1939 and in his next book of poems, Another Time, in 1940" (Mendelson 1999 and is published in The English Auden. The later version of the poem, which was first published in the 1958 W. H. Auden: A Selection by the Author, changes "saying" to "making," and omits three stanzas from the third section (Mendelson 1991), is published in the American edition.

Sablasti filološkog zadatka. S onu stranu povratka filologiji

“…npr. Altschul, 2010 Bajohr i dr, 2014;Bal, 1987;Beganović, 2016;Biti, 2014;Brebanović, 2021;Culler, 1990; Daston i Most, 2015;de Man, 1986;Eisner, 2011;Ferguson, 2013;Glavaš, 2015;Gumbrecht, 2003;Gurd, 2010;Harpham, 2009;Holquist, 1999Holquist, , 2000Holquist, , 2002 Holquist, i 2011Hui, 2017;Jacob, 1999;Johnson, 1990;Lönnroth, 2017;McGann, 2013;Messling, 2012;Momma, 2012;Nichols, 1990;Pollock, 2009; Pollock i dr, 2015;Said, 2004;Turner, 2014;Vadde, 2012;Warren, 2003 Warren, i 2010Watkins, 1990; 5 Od Nietzscheovih bilježaka o odnosu onodobne filologije, filozofije i obrazovanja(1973)(1974) 11875) preko "zlatnog doba filologije"(Holquist, 1999, 77) i djelovanja, između ostalih, L. Spitzera, E.R. Curtiusa, E. Auerbacha, W. Benjamina, E. Cassirera, do Auerbachove studije Filologija i svjetska književnost(1969, 11952) kontinuirano se obnavlja interes za metodološka, problemska i sadržajna pitanja filologije.…”

Filología y arquetipo

“…Específicamente, la reivindicación que Mendoza hace de la filología como una práctica o disciplina con potencialidades suficientes para representar una matriz interpretativa para las nuevas textualidades tiene una íntima vinculación con lo que autores como Eisner (2011) y Harpham (2009 llaman "el retorno a la filología". Estas nuevas representaciones podrían reunir estrategias que durante los siglos pasados parecieron irreconciliables: métodos historicistas y formalistas que podrían verse puestos en correlación para fundar una filología que se ocupe de "la clasificación de las relaciones entre documentos y las investigaciones de historiadores sobre la singularidad de esos documentos" (Eisner, 2011: 9).…”

Retorno à filologia e humanismo em Edward W. Said

“…É possível citar muitos trabalhos que, desde a década de 1990, vêm repensando a filologia. Nas áreas de estudo da literatura e da cultura, alguns dos trabalhos mais importantes são de Stephen Nichols 368 , Lee Patterson 369 , Peggy Knapp 370 , Abdellatif El Alami 371 , Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht 372 , William Robins 373 , Roger Sell 374 e Martin G. Eisner 375 .…”