The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany

erest in ?akun

d lived longer, it is not impossible that he too might have contributed to the West-Eastern literature. As it is, however, he died before the Oriental movement in Germany had really begun. At no time did he feel any particular interest in the East. Once, indeed, he mentions ?akunt

ama Schiller was indebted for the motive of his "Alpenj

e to the play, is genuinely Persian, Tūrān-duχt, "the daughter of Tūrān,"120 and although the scene is laid in China, most of the proper names, both in Gozzi and Schiller, are not at all Chinese, but Persian or Arabic. The oldest known model for the story is the fourth romance of Nidāmī's Haft Paīkar, the story of Bahrāmgūr and the Russian princess, written 1197.121 Whether Schiller was aware of the ultimate origin of the legend or not, he certainly made no attempt to give Persian local color to his piece, but on the contrary he studiously tried to impart to it a Chinese atmosphere.122 It is interesting

TNO

802. Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller u. Goe

Württembergs, XL. pp. 297-304. Against this view Ernst Müller in Z

is de La Croix, ed. Loiseleur-Desl

; Pizzi, Storia della P

Mohl i. p. 192 et passim; Pūrānduχt, daughter of Xu

r pers. Litt. in Grdr.

on Turandot in Schiller als

r, op. ci

bid.