Where shepherds haunt would I be seen,
And rest me in oases green.
When with the caravan I fare,
Shawl, coffee, musk, my merchant's ware.
No pathway would I leave untraced,
To the city from the waste.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan, was written between 1814 and 1819 and is know to very few English readers. It was not until after the publication of Joseph von Hammer’s celebrated translation of the Divan of Hafiz in 1812 that Goethe became, as it pleased him to imagine himself, a merchant in the East, trucking his wares for those of Persian singers. An expanded version was printed in 1827. It is part of Goethe’s late work and the last great cycle of poetry he worked on.
… the Divan has had, as a whole, worthy lovers and diligent students.
The work can be seen as a symbol for a stimulating exchange and mixture between Orient and Occident while the expression west - eastern does not only refer to European - Middle Eastern, but also Latin-Persian, German-Turkish, Judeo-Christian-Muslim stimulus.
The twelve books consist of poetry of all different kinds: parables, historical allusions, pieces of invective, politically or religiously inclined poetry mirroring the attempt to bring together Orient and Occident.
Goethe turned to the East as to a refuge from the strife of tongues, as well as the public strife of European swords. There the heavens were boundless, and God -the one God- seemed to preside over the sand-waste…
Above all else the central inpiration of the poems is, in truth, love.
