Zoom Lecture by Galili Shahar | Goethe’s Song of Songs: Translation, Confusion, the Angel

Via Zoom: https://yale.zoom.us/j/99311419412?from=addon 

Abstract: 

The engagement of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) with the biblical poem of Song of Songs, already during his early literary stages in the 1770s, and later, while composing the Westöstlicher Divan (1814-1819), was associated with his interest in world literature. Goethe’s translation of the Hebrew biblical poem can be considered as an early contribution to his plan of Weltliteratur. Our o study of Goethe’s Song of Songs presents an attempt of reorientation, associating Goethe’s project with its oriental contexts and its wider implications as an enterprise of word literature. The study of Goethe’s Song of Songs, while affiltied with the notion of Weltliteratur  and the concept of Übersetzung, translation, as reflected by Goethe himself, is associated with poetical figurations of confusion and getting lost, interwoven in Goethe’s work: It is the figure of Shulamit, the feminine beloved, kholat haahawa, the love-sick of Song of Songs, who stands as a key-figure in our reading. The discussion of the secular (profane) implications of Goethe’s enterprise leads us, in the second section of the study, to acknowledge the liturgical remnant – as embedded in the emergence of the angel in Goethe’s translation, hinting at the double bindings of his project.

Bio:  

Galili Shahar, professor of comparative literature, holds the Marcel Reich-Ranicki Chair of German Literature and currently serves as chair of the School of Cultural Studies at the Tel Aviv University. His area of studies includes German, Hebrew and Persian literatures.

* This event is being co-sponsored with the Yale Judaic Studies Program, https://judaicstudies.yale.edu/