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It is at this point that Georg Brandes interacts with Goethe further developing the latter’s idea of world literature in the short article “Verdenslitteratur” (World Literature, 1899). Goethe walked a tightrope between classical universalism and a modern global perspective that takes into account both the local and the universal: in the universal perspective, the human being addresses the ideal or divine dimension of life, or, alternatively, God or nature speaks to us through poetry. For Brandes, however, the heart of the matter is that through literature and across languages and cultures human beings share common issues and concerns, yet remain fully aware of their local differences and varieties. This represents a modern global perspective.

Brandes begins by reminding us of the progress of science as a global intellectual process and in this regard mentions the travelogues of nineteenth-century scientific expeditions. He adds that transport, communication, the modern press and the translations of texts all serve to accelerate the global process, and he might also have listed the newly established international time zones, telegraph lines and world fairs. What is at work here is not a universalist idealism, but concrete global cultural contacts and interactions. Brandes shifts the focus away from the universal content of world literature, which Goethe saw as transcending the boundaries of the national literatures. World literature in Goethe’s sense, which is supposed to be immediately comprehensible everywhere, may for this very reason be deprived of all “vitality and power” (28), simply because it is not rooted in a particular time, place and culture. Consequently, if a given text is written in order to be marketed as world literature, it is highly probable that it will fail to capture anyone’s attention. Brandes’ world literature is primarily seen as a local literature that just happens to be written in a language – such as French – that for the time being, and more or less accidentally, enjoys a global reach. Minor languages may therefore conceal works that actually have world literature quality, but which, by the accident of language, are known only to a few. The point Brandes wants to make is that the world literature perspective emerges inside rather than outside the national and local literatures:

The more strongly it represents the national particularity and the more diversified it is, the more appealing the world literature of the future will be, but only when, as art and science, it also has a general human dimension. (28)

World literature consists not in a specific group of texts, but rather in certain effects that literature produces when we read it in different, concrete contexts and in conjunction with other texts and cultural phenomena. It creates a unified perspective through different texts – as happens, for example, when literature becomes a cognitive model for global thinking and opens windows, doors and barriers, allowing the wind from the great world to blow into the specific locality where each of us lives.

This view of world literature is shared by more recent researchers such as David Damrosch in What is World Literature? (2003):

World literature is an elliptical refraction of national literatures. World literature is writing that gains in translation. World literature is not a set canon of texts but a mode of reading: a form of detached engagement with worlds beyond our own place and time … This refraction is double in nature: works become world literature by being received into the space of a foreign culture … Even a single work of world literature is the locus of a negotiation between two different cultures … World literature is thus always as much about the host culture’s values and needs as it is about a work’s source culture; hence it is a double refraction. (280, 283)

Although Damrosch was not familiar with Brandes’ essay when he wrote his book, he exemplifies Brandes’ viewpoint: thus Brandes’ and Damrosch’s texts are themselves examples of different texts that offer a unified perspective.

Damrosch furthers Brandes’ point by emphasizing that the label ‘world literature’ depends on more than the text itself. It is a qualification that follows from the way we read and use literature, based on the concrete possibilities offered by textual structures. Literature consists of texts without borders only in so far as our reading actually opens the borders. However, to read all texts from that perspective does not entail that all texts are equally relevant or valuable – that they all have sufficient “vitality and power” to be outstanding world literature. Literature becomes world literature with a cultural impact only when it enables us to open the gates to the world around us, irrespective of the language and place in which it was written.