Erich Auerbach Quotes

The Western Canon does not exist in order to augment preexisting societal elites. It is there to be read by you and by strangers, so that you and those you will never meet can encounter authentic aesthetic power and the authority of what Baudelaire (and Erich Auerbach after him) called “aesthetic dignity.” One

Gertrude Stein maintained that one wrote for oneself and for strangers, a superb recognition that I would extend into a parallel apothegm: one reads for oneself and for strangers. The Western Canon does not exist in order to augment preexisting societal elites. It is there to be read by you and by strangers, so that you and those you will never meet can encounter authentic aesthetic power and the authority of what Baudelaire (and Erich Auerbach after him) called “aesthetic dignity.” One of the ineluctable stigmata of the canonical is aesthetic dignity, which is not to be hired.

The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us—they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.

It is only during the course of an eventful life that men are differentiated into full individuality.

… human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them to give birth to themselves. —Gabriel García Márquez

Abraham’s actions are explained not only by what is happening to him at the moment, nor yet only by his character (as Achilles’ actions by his courage and his pride, and Odysseus’ by his versatility and foresightedness), but by his previous history; he remembers, he is constantly conscious of, what God has promised him and what God has already accomplished for him—his soul is torn between desperate rebellion and hopeful expectation; his silent obedience is multilayered, has background. Such a problematic psychological situation as this is impossible for any of the Homeric heroes, whose destiny is clearly defined and who wake every morning as if it were the first day of their lives: their emotions, though strong, are simple and find expression instantly.

Interpretation reached such proportions that the real vanished.

It was Plato who bridged the gap between poetry and philosophy; for, in his work, appearance, despised by his Eleatic and Sophist predecessors, became a reflected image of perfection. He set poets the task of writing philosophically, not only in the sense of giving instruction, but in the sense of striving, by the imitation of appearance, to arrive at its true essence and to show its insufficiency measured by the beauty of the Idea.

The Bible’s claim to truth is not only far more urgent than Homer’s, it is tyrannical—it excludes all other claims. The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy.

Vico, who looks at the whole of human history and says, “mind made all this,

The writers of Scripture enter into the random everyday depths of popular life, taking seriously whatever is encountered there, clinging to the concrete and refusing to systematize experience in concepts.

Adil olanin pesinden gidilmesi dogrudur, en guclunun pesinden gidilmesi ise kacinilmazdir. Gucu olmayan adalet acizdir; adaleti olmayan guc ise zalim. Gucu olmayan adalete mutlaka bir karsi cikan olur, cunku kotu insanlar her zaman vardir. Adaleti olmayan guc ise tohmet altinda kalir. Demek ki adalet ile gucu bir araya getirmek gerek; bunu yapabilmek icin de adil olanin guclu, guclu olanin ise adil olmasi gerekir. Adalet tartismaya aciktir. Guc ise ilk bakista tartisilmaz bir bicimde anlasilir. Bu nedenle gucu adalete veremedik, cunku guc, adalete karsi cikip kendisinin adil oldugunu soylemisti. Hakli olanin guclu kilamadigimiz icin de guclu olani hakli kildik.

Erich Auerbach, bir başka meslektaşı olan Leo Spitzer’le birlikte ‘Weltliteratur’ yani dünya edebiyatı kavramını sistemleştirmeye çalıştı. Aslında bu kavram daha önce Goethe tarafından ortaya atılmıştı. Aynı zamanda bir filozof olan Goethe, ayrı medeniyetlerin yarattığı edebiyattan çok, dünyanın yarattığı edebiyatı anlamaya çalışıyordu. Bu nedenle ileri yaşlarında Farsça öğrendi. İranlı büyük şairleri, Hafız’ı, Sadi’yi, bu arada sizin ortak değeriniz Mevlana Rumi’yi okudu. Meşhur West-Östlicher Diwan’ını yazdı.” “Yani Batı-Doğu Divanı mı oluyor?” “Evet, tam çevirisi bu.” “Max, Mevlana’ya neden ortak değer dediniz?” “Çünkü Konya’da oturmuş ama Farsça yazmış. Eğer Türkçe yazsaydı, üzgünüm ama, dünyanın ondan pek az haberi olurdu. Baksanıza sizin büyük şairleriniz Yunus Emre, Şeyh Galip daha az değerli olmamalarına rağmen dünyada tanınmaz ama Ömer Hayyam, Sadi, Hafız, Rumi çok okunur. Bunda Farsça’nın ve elbette Goethe’nin büyük payı vardır.

Examining the Homeric epics from the perspective of when and by whom they were composed, Vico refutes generations of interpreters who had assumed that because Homer was revered for his great epics he must also have been a wise sage like Plato, Socrates, or Bacon. Instead Vico demonstrates that in its wildness and willfulness Homer’s mind was poetic, and his poetry barbaric, not wise or philosophic, that is, full of illogical fantasy, gods who were anything but godlike, and men like Achilles and Patrocles, who were most uncourtly and extremely petulant.

The effect, to be sure, is precisely that which they describe, and is, furthermore, the actual source of the conception of epic which they themselves hold, and with them all writers decisively influenced by classical antiquity. But the true cause of the impression of “retardation” appears to me to lie elsewhere—namely, in the need of the Homeric style to leave nothing which it mentions half in darkness and unexternalized.

To be sure, in the case of such long episodes as the one we are considering, a purely syntactical connection with the principal theme would hardly have been possible; but a connection with it through perspective would have been all the easier had the content been arranged with that end in view; if, that is, the entire story of the scar had been presented as a recollection which awakens in Odysseus’ mind at this particular moment. It would have been perfectly easy to do; the story of the scar had only to be inserted two verses earlier, at the first mention of the word scar, where the motifs “Odysseus” and “recollection” were already at hand. But any such subjectivistic-perspectivistic procedure, creating a foreground and background, resulting in the present lying open to the depths of the past, is entirely foreign to the Homeric style; the Homeric style knows only a foreground, only a uniformly illuminated, uniformly objective present.

Auerbach kitaplarından birinde, gözüme onun bir denemesi çarptı. Pascal üzerine yazılmış bu denemenin adı, "Kötünün Zaferi" idi. Auerbach'ın Pascal'dan alıntıladığı giriş bölümü beni çok etkiledi ve son günlerde çeşitli örneklerini öğrendiğim devlet zulmüne bir açıklama getirdi: Adil olanın peşinden gidilmesi doğrudur, en güçlünün peşinden gidilmesi ise kaçınılmazdır. Gücü olmayan adalet acizdir; adaleti olmayan güç ise zalim. Gücü olmayan adalete mutlaka bir karşı çıkan olur, çünkü kötü insanlar her zaman vardır. Adaleti olmayan güç ise töhmet altında kalır. Demek ki adalet ile gücü bir araya getirmek gerek; bunu yapabilmek için de adil olanın güçlü, güçlü olanın ise adil olması gerekir. Adalet tartışmaya açıktır. Güç ise ilk bakışta tartışılmaz biçimde anlaşılır. Bu nedenle gücü adalete veremedik, çünkü güç, adalete karşı çıkıp kendisinin adil olduğunu söylemişti. Haklı olanı güçlü kılamadığımız için de güçlü olanı haklı kıldık.

The Auerbach who is most familiar today is defined by a certain time period: he is the scholar who fled Germany and who wrote under duress in impoverished conditions (most memorably, but least significantly, without a research library) and then later reflected on this tumultuous era, the Auerbach of “Figura” (1938), Mimesis (1946), and “The Philology of World Literature” (1952).

uno dei grandi libri della critica letteraria, Mimesis di Erich Auerbach: fu scritto durante la guerra, a Costantinopoli, dove non esistevano biblioteche fornite per studi sui testi europei, e dove non esistevano nemmeno edizioni critiche fidate dei testi. E Auerbach dice: «Del resto, è possibilissimo che il libro debba la sua esistenza proprio alla mancanza d’una grande biblioteca specializzata; se avessi potuto far ricerche, informarmi su tutto quello che è stato scritto intorno a tanti argomenti, forse non mi sarei piú indotto a scriverlo. Sto cercando di dire che forse è addirittura grazie a quella sua parziale ma sperimentata superficialità che Fellini ha concepito un film cosí ambizioso con il rischio di sbagliarlo.

But the mentality has changed. More than heroism and great ideals, it is the sufferings of war, the trenches, the mud, the hunger, that are spoken of. And what is it all for? To live and work in freedom, bring up children and for them, assuming people behave rationally, prepare a future in line with the possibilities afforded by our civilization--that is what is desired. Does not the man on the other side calibrating his machine gun to kill me want more or less the same things? Are not his thoughts like mine? Do we have to kill one another for this? These, I believe, were the ideas dominant in Europe after the war. These were the ideas dominant in the books dealing with the Great War

The way in which we view human life and society is the same whether we are concerned with things of the past or things of the present.

Erich Auerbach, one of the greatest names in literary criticism, wrote his work Mimesis in Turkey.

Geçmişini değiştirmek isteyen bir ülkenin sorunlarına Erich Auerbach ne derdi acaba? Walter Benjamin’e yazdığı mektuplarda bu “aşırı değişim isteği”nden söz etmiş miydi? Demek ki biz fark etmeden sürekli bir kabuk değiştirme içindeydik. Bizans’tan kurtul, Osmanlı’dan kurtul, Arap kültüründen kurtul... Şimdi de yeni moda: “Kemalizm’den kurtul!” Mavi Alay’ı sakla, Struma’yı sakla, Ermeni olayını sakla. Bir ara Türkiye’de niye bu kadar çok Ereğli var diye sormuştum kendi kendime. Konya Ereğli’si, Marmara Ereğli’si, Karadeniz Ereğli’si! Sonra araya araya bunların eski “İraklion”lar olduğunu anladım. Aynen Bolu gibi. Bolu, İnebolu, Tirebolu, Safranbolu kasabaları, aslında poli yani Rumca “şehir” kelimesinden geliyordu. Geçmişini durmadan yeniden tanımlayan başka bir ülke var mıdır acaba diye düşünürken Akdoğanlar Sokağı’nı buldum.

The twentieth-century rediscovery of figural reading owes much to Erich Auerbach, a literary critic who detected in the Old Testament a distinct style from what he saw in other ancient histories like Homer’s: “Figural interpretation establishes a connection between two events or persons in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second involves or fulfills the first.”45

I do not believe that there is a single passage in an antique historian where direct discourse is employed in this fashion in a brief, direct dialogue.