ABSTRACT
Comparative Literature —for which to our knowledge only the Germans, French and Italians already have an established designation-is nevertheless by no means a fully defi ned and established academic discipline. As a matter of fact, it is still far from that goal. The task, therefore, of an organ of this slowly emerging discipline of the future should not so much consist in defi nitely comparing the vast (though still insuffi cient) material at hand as in adding to it from all sides and in intensifying the effort, directly as well as indirectly. A journal like ours, then, must be devoted at the same time to the art of translation and to the Goethean Weltliteratur (a term which German literary historians, particularly Gervinus, have thoroughly misunderstood). Literature and language are closely related; the latter being substantially subservient to the former, without which the servant would have not only no autonomy but no existence at all. Therefore it should be understood that linguistic problems will also be touched upon now and then (though not methodically discussed), particularly with regard to exotic peoples. For similar reasons Comparative Literature touches upon the fi elds of philosophy, esthetics, even ethnology and anthropology. Without ethnological considerations, for instance, the literatures of remote regions could not be fully understood.
