Goethe and the "task of the translator"

A good translation, according to Goethe, has "to raise the irresistible des ire the see the original". Is this conception, which makes a go-between of the translator, Goethe's last word on the praxis and the theory of translat ion? An early example - a scene from Corneille's Le Menteur, translated by Goethe - shows how the poet succeeds in combining literalness and inventive ness. But it is only when he discovers Oriental poetry and composes the Div an that his theory deserves to be compared with Benjamin's provocative defe nce of translation as "the interlinear version of a holy text", and prepare s the way for the new ideal of "world literature" (Weltliteratur).