Marisa Siguan: “In a more and more globalised world, language diversity is absolute necessary because keeps us away from single thought”

Marisa Siguan.
Marisa Siguan.
Interviews
(22/05/2014)

On Friday 23 May, Professor Marisa Siguan pronounces a speech after joining the German Academy for Language and Literature (DASD) last October. DASD is a German institution that gathers writers and scholars with the aim of preserving, disseminating and promoting German language and literature. It was founded in 1949 to commemorate the 200th birthday of Goethe and its headquarters are located in Darmstadt (Hesse).

Marisa Siguan.
Marisa Siguan.
Interviews
22/05/2014

On Friday 23 May, Professor Marisa Siguan pronounces a speech after joining the German Academy for Language and Literature (DASD) last October. DASD is a German institution that gathers writers and scholars with the aim of preserving, disseminating and promoting German language and literature. It was founded in 1949 to commemorate the 200th birthday of Goethe and its headquarters are located in Darmstadt (Hesse).

Siguan is professor of German Literature at the University of Barcelona (UB) and external fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. She has coordinated the doctoral program Construction and Representation of Cultural Identities at the Faculty of Philology of the UB since 2000, and she has participated in the master's degree Construction and Representation of Cultural Identities of the UB since it was created. Her areas of research and teaching focus primarily on the German-Spanish literary relationships at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, German literature of the modern period and the relationship between traumatic memory and writing in the 20th and 21st centuries. She has published, among others, La recepción de Ibsen y Hauptmann en el modernismo catalán, Historia de la literatura en lengua alemana (co-authored with Hans Gerd Rötzer), Transkulturelle Beziehungen (co-authored with Karl Wagner), and Goethe: obra narrativa. She has been invited to teach and lecture at several universities including those of Santiago de Compostela, Seville, the Basque Country, Complutense of Madrid, Valencia, Trier, Vienna, Freiburg, Würzburg, Zurich, Rome III, London and Wisconsin-Madison. She is a founding member of the Association of German Teachers in Catalonia and the Goethe Society in Spain, where she is the president. She belongs to the international scientific committee of the Institute for the German Language.

 

What role does the German Academy for Language and Literature plays in German society and culture?

The Academy plays a major role in German literary scene because it gathers prestigious writers and experts on German language. Unlike the Spanish Academy, it does not edit grammars or dictionaries, but it encourages literature communication and reflection. It organises academic meetings. Every autumn, headquarters in Darmstadt host a session in which the Georg Büchner Prize is given to people who outstand in the field of German literature. In spring, it organises another session to analyse aspects related to German literature; this session takes place in a different town every year.

 

What does it mean for you to be a member of the Academy? What are your contributions?

To be member of the Academy means an honour and a joy for me. It recognises my career and promotes German Studies in our country, even if now they are being developed in worse conditions. That makes the recognition more important for me. I think that I can contribute a different perspective of German literature and an intercultural perspective.

 

What is your opinion about the present situation of German culture and language?

German language and culture are in a good situation; they are bursting with vitality. It has Nobel Literature Prize winners and citizensʼ daily life include debates on literature. Authors who come from multi-lingual environments and write in German are also present; they foster German language creativity. Moreover, historical memory is a recurrent topic in present literature production.

 

What confers importance to languages? What factors influence language maintenance and expansion?

In my opinion, the cultural importance of a language is its ability to cross the borders of literature production and written thought, its ability to become a model for the thought of a certain period of time. Regarding sciences, English is the language use in communication. Non-scientific aspects, life in general, people communication are based on language diversity. There is hope for the rest of languages.

German is the language with the highest number of speakers in Europe. This should be enough to prove its importance, but there is also an enormous production of literature and thought in German. In a more and more globalised world, language diversity is absolute necessary because languages are cultural expressions and language diversity keeps us away from single thought. Interpersonal relationship happens among people from different cultures who speak different languages: language survival is determined by the use of all communication pathways.

 

Does our society know German literature? What role does German literature play in the history of European literature?

German literature ―and philosophy― have been crucial for the development of European thought. For example: German romantics and the relationship they established between language and people, a key concept in the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe.

In the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries, we find German-writing authors who played a decisive role in modernity: Kafka, Thomas Mann, Broch, Musil, etc. We find representative examples also in theatre, authors like Thomas Bernhard, or writers who showed the relationship between literature and history from a womenʼs perspective, like Christa Wolf. In our country, we know them and an important and praiseworthy translating activity is carried out; however, only the most popular authors are known.