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

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.