finally getting around to writing

Mike sends the following gem from Erich Auerbach. I’ll include Mike’s preliminary description of the passage as well. As for the Auberach passage itself, hang on for the final sentence.

Your recent posts made me think of this, which is taken from the Epilogue of Erich Auerbach’s Mimeses, one of the grandest and most distinguished pieces of literary criticsm/history ever written. Auerbach wrote it while in exile from WWII in Istanbul, and in many cases had to consult his memory rather than notes for the sources of certain arguments and ideas. All he had were excerpts from his favorite works of classical, medieval and modern European literature, and of course the free time granted to write from the terrible shadow of the war. There is a certain modesty here — mixed with terrific audacity — that is really singular.

“The individual chapters [of my book] treat individual epochs, in some cases comparatively short ones, as little as half a century, in others, much longer. There are frequent gaps—that is to say, periods which have not been treated at all: antiquity, for example, which I use only by way of introduction, or the early Middle Ages, from which but too little has been preserved. Additional chapters could have been inserted later to deal with English, German and Spanish texts. I should have like to treat the siglo de oro more extensively; I should especially have liked to add a special chapter on German realism of the seventeenth century. But the difficulties were too great. As it was, I had to teach with texts ranging over three thousand years, and I was often obliged to go beyond the confines of my own field, that of the romance literatures. I may also mention that the book was written during the war and at Istanbul, where the libraries are not well equipped for European studies. International communications were impeded; I had to dispense with almost all periodicals, with almost all the more recent investigations, and in some cases with reliable critical editions of my texts. Hence it is possible and even probable that I overlooked things which I ought to have considered and that I occasionally assert something which modern research has disproved or modified. I trust that these probable errors include none which affect the core of my argument. The lack of technical literature and periodicals may also serve to explain that my book has no notes. Aside from the texts, I quote comparatively little, and that little it was easy to include in the body of the book. On the other hand, it is quite possible that the book owes its existence to just this lack of a rich and specialized library. If it had been possible for me to acquaint myself with all the work that has been done on so many subjects, I might never have reached the point of writing.”