Questioning Weltliteratur: Heinrich Heine, Leah Goldberg, and the Department of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Abstract:This article examines Jewish responses to the discourse of Weltliteratur and its universalist, humanistic underpinnings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It compares Heinrich Heine's polemical rejoinder to Goethe's use of the term in his long narrative poem "Atta Troll" (1843) with Leah Goldberg's comments on Goethe in a lecture on comparative literature in the 1960s, to make the point that Jewish authors repeatedly used Weltliteratur as a foil through which to think their ambivalent position within European literature. The article also presents a brief history of comparative literary studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to make the point that this field is a fascinating lens through which to consider the formation of the University and its role in the Zionist movement.