The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany

's Literature on his Poetry-Interest in the Persian Poets-Persi

hraus, jahrein auf ihren grossen Schiffen die Sch?tze Indiens nach Hause geschleppt; wir Deutsche hatten immer das Zusehen. Aber die geistigen Sch?tze Indi

on him while he was a student at Bonn, in 1819 and 1820. Schlegel had just then been appointed to the professorship of Literature at the newly created university, and to his lectures Hein

characteristics of Sanskrit poetry, its tender love for the objects of nature, for flowers and animals and the similes and metaphors inspired thereby, and he invests them with all the grace and charm peculiar to his muse. Some of his finest verses owe their inspiration to the lotus; and in that famous poem "Die Lotosblume ?ngstigt,"-so beautifully set to music by Schumann-the favorite flower of India's poets may be said to have found its aesthetic apotheosis. As is well known, there are two kinds of lotuses, the one opening its leaves to the sun (Skt. padma, pa

d tales into each other's ears and the gazelles listen, while the waves of the sacred river make sweet music. And again in a series of sonnets addressed to Friederike (Neue Ged. vol. ii. p. 65) he invites her to come with him to India, to its palm-trees, its ambra-blossoms and lotus-flowers, t

the sage Vasi??ha for example is mockingly referred to in two stanzas (vol. i. p. 146).195 His own efforts to win the favor of a certa

ndia, which is anything but flattering to either. It is also not correct; he notices, to be sure, that in the Sanskrit drama (of which he knows only ?akuntalā and M?cchaka?ikā) the r?le of buffoon is assigned invariably to a Brahman, but he is ignorant of the origin of this singular custom.197 In his essay on the Romantic School, when speaking of Goethe's godlike r

tters clearly show. As early as 1821, he mentions Sa?dī with the epithet herrlich, calls him the Persian Goethe and cites one of his couplets (Gul. ii. 48, qi??ah; K.S. p. 122) in the version of Herder.198 In April, 1823, he writes from Berlin that during the preceding winter he has studied the non-Semitic part of Asia,199 and the following year in a letter to Moser200 he sp

never attempted anything like an imitation of this poetry, and Oriental form appealed to him even less. In the famous, or rather infamous, passage of the Reisebilder (vol. vi. pp. 125-149), where he makes his savage attack on Platen, he ridicules that poet's Ghaselen and speaks derisi

His later poems, Neue Gedichte (1844) and Romanzero (1851), on the other hand, show it unmistakably. The Persian ima

st ist dann,

htigall

osen mei

ng' ich Wun

erschiedene, No. 7, and in Romanzero (vol. iii.), pp. 42, 178, 253. Even in the prose-writings

ead ("Kluge Sterne," Neue Ged. vol. ii. p. 106), he is intensely Persian; stil

?nen, die

Reimes gol

htkunst gül

ied hervo

flame seems to have been in his mind when

ehren die Flam

ihre liebend

receding chapter, is the peacock ashamed of his ugl

tance, in the poem "Jehuda ben Halevy," cited before. In this Heine asks Hitzig for

alle Kn?

Hose de

?????? "the cowl of meditation" (Gul. ed. Platts, p. 4), ??? ??? "the carpet of desire" (ib. p. 113), etc., which are a particular ornament of the highly artificial rhymed prose, employed in works like the Gulistān and Bahāristān. I

chamber-musician: "Cypressenwuchs, Hyacinthenlocken, der Mund ist Ros' und Nachtigall zu gleic

to Persia's greatest singer and his tardy repentance. We may add that scholars are not inclined to accept this legend as historical in all its parts; certainly not in it

dinated to his own poetic individuality, and never dominating or effacing it, as is the case with most of the professedly "Persian" singers,-those "Perser von dem Main, der Elbe, von der Isar, von der Pleisse"-who thought, as has justly been remarked, that they had penetrated int

n deutsche

im deuts

die best

ch der mei

TNO

l. to Gesellschafter, No. 77. See also H. Heines Lebe

y Bhart?hari

en the night was spent and the moon, the lordly lover of the lotuses, was reclining on the crest of the western mountain...." Of other allusio

had been translated as early as 1816 by Bopp

works. Heine's acquaintance was due undoubtedly to Schlegel's transla

ect by M. Schuyler, Jr., in

mann, S?mmtl. Werke, Hamb.

. No. 15

No. 38, pp

n this the young bee, heedless of motherly advice, does not beware of the candle-flame and so "Flamme gab Flammentod." We at once recognize a familiar Persi

hlingsgarten von Mewlana Abdurrahman D

end see N?ldeke in Grdr. iran.