Goethes Berührungen mit China

Chinese Sympathies

“…As Wolf Kittler notes, both the parable and the narrator's knowledge of the message's intended delivery travel faster than the courier. 41 Within literary terms, the parable itself can be understood as a Botschaft. "Most of Kafka's stories and novels have to do with messages that move along long paths toward the intended recipient(s) from a hidden position or person, and that originate from some ultimate, obscure, distant authority, whether divine, legal, bureaucratic,…”

“…By allowing us to indulge in the similarities between Chinese and Austrian emperors, the text reinforces the idea that imperial states share certain structural features. 50 Indeed, the courier's inability to escape the confines of the court is reminiscent of eighteenth-century novels depicting the failings of aristocratic courts. The physical separation between the emperor at the center of his crowded court and the reader-recipient in his provincial abode is typical of both of Eu ropean Enlightenment and sentimental fiction, as well as sixteenthcentury Chinese romances that depict scholar-magistrates who retire from the imperial court but nevertheless receive news regularly.…”

“…Elida Maria Szarota, "Die Jesuitendrama als Vorläufer der modernen Massenmedien," Daphnis 4 (1975): 129-43. 19. Cited in Friedrich, " Communication and Bureaucracy," 50. made it all the more impor tant that Jesuits maintain a routine correspondence, even if it meant that letters were sent only annually.…”

“…For instance, Jesuit communication through missionary letters can be understood as a Mitteilung, an act of sharing that brings the receiver into the group of people who possess knowledge. 41 By distributing information about Asia, Jesuits were forming a community of those who agreed with the news they were receiving. The German word mitteilen operates with an accusative and a dative object, so that the verb means not just splitting something into parts but also involves sharing a portion of an abstract or specified quantity with someone; in this case, the " thing" is knowledge of the Catholic mission in China.…”

Epochenwechsel in China – mit Goethe: Guo Moruo, Richard Wilhelm und die Bewegung des 4. Mai 1919

“…Ich sehe mich daher gern bei fremden Nationen um und rate jedem, es auch seinerseits zu tun" (Wilhelm 1927, 316). -Auf sinologischem Terrain provozierte Wilhelms Rekonstruktion von Goethes "intuitiver" Nähe zur Ideenwelt des alten China skeptische und kritisch-relativierende Bemerkungen, zugleich jedoch eine vorsichtige Bestätigung der komparatistischen Befunde, so etwa bei Wolfgang Bauer (1972), Adrian Hsia (2010, 129-136) und Günter Debon (2000) und insbesondere dann bei Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer (2006, 83 und 95).…”