Henry H. Remak. ‘Comparative literature at the crossroads: Diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis’

Abstract

Henry H. Remak established his reputation as one of the active and productive participants in the comparative literature ‘crisis’ events, and it is no wonder that his extensive contribution prefaced the summing-up issue of the Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature (1960, Vol. 9, pp. 1–28) where the discussion started five years earlier. A Jewish émigré to the USA from the fascist Germany, Remak stood in the position that provided him an opportunity to bring together the approach and ideas advanced by American and European scholars. Ready to acknowledge the former French achievement, he avoided the extremes of its ‘old factualism’ and adopted a broader cultural position supported by analogy studies. He closed his article pinpointing general tendencies and embraced among them some Russian ideas concerning translation (the Russian formalists, Zhirmunsky) and ‘transition in cyclic stages’ (Plekhanov); though not directly, but through Gleb Struve, Remak was introduced to Aleksandr Veselovsky’s poetics of plot and his ‘theory of borrowings.’ Remak closes his article in hopes of growing cooperation in comparative literature, when many new factors would be brought in to provide a multidisciplinary character to this approach.