Abstract
Based on Johann Peter Eckermann’s Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens 1823-1832 [Conversations with Goethe in the last years of his life 1823-1832] (Leipzig, 1836), until its publication in the Revista Americana (Bahia, 1848) under the title “Conselhos de Goethe aos homers de lettras”, we show an example of German-Brazilian cultural transfers in the mid-nineteenth century. The focus is on the first dynamics of translation and cross-cultural circulation of the Gespräche and the image of the intellectual Goethe regarded as “colossal” far beyond the national. The suportes Foreign Quarterly Review and Revue britannique played an essential mediating role as platforms for the translation, transfer, and circulation of the work. Besides the resemantization of Goethe’s ideas in each cultural context, here especially his idea of freedom, it became visible at the same time as their transculturality and the role of translations in the Brazilian cultural space, forming from early on the foreign cultural memory of Brazilian literature.
Key Words
Cultural Transfers; Translation History; Periodicals; Johann Peter Eckermann; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe