Anatoly Lunacharsky 1929

On Walter Benjamin’s Goethe article


Written: 1929
First published: 29 March 1929 (Letter of A. V. Lunacharsky to the editorial board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia concerning Walter Benjamin’s Goethe article.)
Source: Lunacharsky Archive
Translated by: Anton P.


Dear comrades, I ask you to forgive me for not responding to your letter and the material on Goethe sent to me for so long. Only now I have the opportunity to give you some feedback in this regard.

I completely agree with the characterization given in the letter to the editor-in-chief regarding Benjamin’s article. Indeed, this article is in no way suitable due to its “non-encyclopedic” nature. It is very talented and sometimes gives surprisingly apt remarks, but it does not come to any conclusion and does not at all understand the place of Goethe either in the history of European culture, or for us in our, so to speak, cultural pantheon, and at the same time it is sometimes extremely controversial.

I don’t know if you would like to use it, but just in case I make some private remarks. What is in parentheses on pages three through four should be omitted. The expression on the 5th page must not be allowed: “The German revolutionaries were not enlightened, the German enlighteners were not revolutionaries.” This most incorrect position is refuted by the author himself later, where he speaks of the consistent class point of view of Lessing, who, of course, was enlightened (or rather, an enlightener). On the same page, the formula against any revolution and against the state is full of ambiguities, and in no way is the deep reason for Goethe’s antipathy to Holbach’s materialistic world outlook noted. On page 6, meanwhile, there is a denial that Goethe’s protest came to a large extent from his inherent vivid sense of life in nature, feelings very akin to the dialectical view of matter. On page 8, what is given in parentheses should be issued in the same way on page 19; along the way, in different places, I made corrections for errors and mistakes. The idea in parentheses on page 59 is extremely unclear. One can hardly agree with the author’s judgment on page 2 of the second series that Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann are one of the best works of the 19th century. On the 6th page there is some kind of translator’s pass that needs to be restored.

In general, I repeat, I do not advise you to publish Benjamin’s article.

Even less relevant is Oskar Walzel’s article. In general, it is extremely hard to grasp the difficult and varied life of Goethe in such a way that, while paying due tribute to all its versatility, gradual layers and even contradictions, at the same time, to make one feel the deep unity that lies in Goethe, in his life, in poetic and scientific works, etc. Despite the fact that Walzel believes that he continues even in this article the case of Gundolf, as if correcting it, in fact it turned out not only into something ideologically unacceptable for a Marxist encyclopedia, but generally extremely fragmented.

Disappointing.

I can’t help. The Literary Encyclopedia wanted to entrust me with the article about Goethe, and I had the weakness to agree to this, but now I came to the conclusion that, given my workload, it would be simply dishonest to take on such a responsible matter.

By the way, the bibliographic index attached to Walzel’s article is undoubtedly valuable and, probably, can be successfully used.

People’s Commissar for Education

A. Lunacharsky