Anne Adams

In Globalectics, a book from 2012 on postcolonial literature, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o invokes Johan Wolfgang von Goethe to make the assertion that ‘the postcolonial is at the heart of the constitution of Goethe's world literature’ (55). He quotes Goethe's claim from the early nineteenth century that ‘ “[T]he epoch of world literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach” ’ (44). Ngũgĩ himself comments further:

Ngũgĩ does acknowledge, of course, that Germany's most revered poet ‘may have been thinking of Europe’. Indeed, if we regard Goethe's continued reiteration of the ‘world-literature’ concept up to the end of his life, we see that he clearly was equating ‘world’ with Europe: In the draft for one issue of his Kunst und Alterthum (1829), he wrote ‘Erste Fassung: “Weltliteratur.” Zweite Fassung: “Europaische, d.h. Welt-Literatur” ’ (‘First version: “World Literature.” Second version: “European, i.e. World Literature” ’).

Taking the liberty myself to extend the reflections of the twenty-first-century Kenyan being celebrated today on the ideas of the nineteenth-century celebrated German, I would add another Goethe statement on world literature, which adds a bit more substance to the concept, although this time, addressing journals (1828):