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Goethe and Hafiz | Episode 04
PODCAST #4: GOETHE AND HAFIZ | be the scripture you sing
by
Martin Bidney
As be-loving imaginer I have no greater mentor-friend than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author of Faust and Germany’s number one poet. How did he set me an example in both life and art? When he read the 1814 edition of Hafiz’ Divan (or Collection) newly translated (for the first time into any European language!) by the marvelously talented scholar-poet Joseph von Hammer, Goethe decided this medieval Persian Muslim pub poet was his “twin brother” and worked for five years until at last his multicultural dialogue-reply was finished: the West-East Divan of 1819. The Hafiz masterwork had transformed Goethe’s life.
I am Goethe’s spiritual brother as he was twin brother to Hafiz – I’m brother to them both. Poem 2, “Hegira,” shows Goethe patterning the new book on the examples of the traveler Hafiz and of Muhammad himself, who journeyed from Mecca to Medina. So in my verse reply I show how I’m trying to “be the scripture I sing,” a fellow traveler with the two men throughout my book West-East Divan: The Poems, with ‘Notes and Essays’: Goethe’s Intercultural Dialogues.
In “Unbounded,” the poem where Goethe identified his “twin brother,” the German Hafiz-admirer declares the Persian mentor to be akin to him as poet, drinker, and lover. So I study what Goethe thought on all three topics. Medieval Persian society interpreted quite liberally Muhammad’s remarks on wine, tending to see them as warning about excess, not as commanding abstention. In Poems 197-200, I show how Goethe shares the Hafizian light-hearted attitude to drinking.
In this last poem of this group, “Cupboy, come! Another cup!” I note two kinds of breakthrough. (1) Goethe wittily confides that Muhammad’s dissuasion from wine-indulgence was brought on by the Prophet’s wish to be the only one drunk – drunk on God. Second, there’s a hint of homoerotic love in the relation of the tavern customer in the lyric to the tavern waiter he’s conversing with.
Therefore, to elucidate Goethe’s attitude of bisexual inclusion and acceptance, I study poem 8 by Hafiz, in Poems of Wine and Romance, which contains 103 Hafizian lyrics I translated (with a verse reply to each). Of course Goethe, Germany’s greatest love poet, also shines in love lyrics addressed to women, as we see in Poem 227, “It is good.”
In poem 13, “Past and Present,” we find the aging Goethe, who’s over sixty, enjoying pleasurable memories and again paying grateful tribute to Hafiz, the master enjoyer. I conclude with Goethe’s finest love poem of all, “You in a thousand forms may hide,” where the beloved lady is said to deserve a multitude of laudatory names, comparable to the 99 which – as Hafiz had known well – the Qur’an gives to God.
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By Martin Bidney
5
11 ratings
PODCAST #4: GOETHE AND HAFIZ | be the scripture you sing
by
Martin Bidney
As be-loving imaginer I have no greater mentor-friend than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author of Faust and Germany’s number one poet. How did he set me an example in both life and art? When he read the 1814 edition of Hafiz’ Divan (or Collection) newly translated (for the first time into any European language!) by the marvelously talented scholar-poet Joseph von Hammer, Goethe decided this medieval Persian Muslim pub poet was his “twin brother” and worked for five years until at last his multicultural dialogue-reply was finished: the West-East Divan of 1819. The Hafiz masterwork had transformed Goethe’s life.
I am Goethe’s spiritual brother as he was twin brother to Hafiz – I’m brother to them both. Poem 2, “Hegira,” shows Goethe patterning the new book on the examples of the traveler Hafiz and of Muhammad himself, who journeyed from Mecca to Medina. So in my verse reply I show how I’m trying to “be the scripture I sing,” a fellow traveler with the two men throughout my book West-East Divan: The Poems, with ‘Notes and Essays’: Goethe’s Intercultural Dialogues.
In “Unbounded,” the poem where Goethe identified his “twin brother,” the German Hafiz-admirer declares the Persian mentor to be akin to him as poet, drinker, and lover. So I study what Goethe thought on all three topics. Medieval Persian society interpreted quite liberally Muhammad’s remarks on wine, tending to see them as warning about excess, not as commanding abstention. In Poems 197-200, I show how Goethe shares the Hafizian light-hearted attitude to drinking.
In this last poem of this group, “Cupboy, come! Another cup!” I note two kinds of breakthrough. (1) Goethe wittily confides that Muhammad’s dissuasion from wine-indulgence was brought on by the Prophet’s wish to be the only one drunk – drunk on God. Second, there’s a hint of homoerotic love in the relation of the tavern customer in the lyric to the tavern waiter he’s conversing with.
Therefore, to elucidate Goethe’s attitude of bisexual inclusion and acceptance, I study poem 8 by Hafiz, in Poems of Wine and Romance, which contains 103 Hafizian lyrics I translated (with a verse reply to each). Of course Goethe, Germany’s greatest love poet, also shines in love lyrics addressed to women, as we see in Poem 227, “It is good.”
In poem 13, “Past and Present,” we find the aging Goethe, who’s over sixty, enjoying pleasurable memories and again paying grateful tribute to Hafiz, the master enjoyer. I conclude with Goethe’s finest love poem of all, “You in a thousand forms may hide,” where the beloved lady is said to deserve a multitude of laudatory names, comparable to the 99 which – as Hafiz had known well – the Qur’an gives to God.