Part 12 (1/2)

[196] Mahabh. iii. 108, 109; Ramay. i. 42, 43; Marka??eya Pur. and other works. Heine's acquaintance was due undoubtedly to Schlegel's translation in Indische Bibliothek, 1820. (Aug. Schlegel, Werke, iii.

20-44.)

[197] See article on this subject by M. Schuyler, Jr., in JAOS. vol. xx.

2. p. 338 seq.

[198] Letter to Friedr. Steinmann, Sammtl. Werke, Hamb. 1876, vol. xix.

No. 7, p. 43.

[199] Ibid. No. 15, p. 80.

[200] Ibid. No. 38, pp. 200, 201.

[201] One poem of his earliest period, Die Lehre (vol. iii. p. 276), published in Hamburgs Wachter, 1817 (Strodtmann, op. cit. i. 54), does seem to show it. In 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 Persian thought, and are reminded of Goethe's fine line, ”Das Lebend'ge will ich preisen das nach Flammentod sich sehnet.” (Selige Sehnsucht, ed. Loeper, iv. 26.)

[202] O.M. v. Schlechta-Wssehrd, Der Fruhlingsgarten von Mewlana Abdurrahman Dschami, Wien, 1846. Persian text, p. 38.

[203] For a discussion of the legend see Noldeke in Grdr. iran. Phil.

vol. ii. pp. 154, 155, 158.

CHAPTER X.

BODENSTEDT.

Lieder des Mirza Schaffy--Are Original Poems--Nachla.s.s--Aus Morgenland und Abendland--Sakuntala, a Narrative Poem.

The H_afi? tendency was carried to the height of popularity by Friedrich Martin Bodenstedt, whose _Lieder des Mirza Schaffy_ met with a phenomenal success, running through one hundred and forty editions in Germany alone during the lifetime of the author, besides being translated into many foreign languages.[204] These songs have had a remarkable career, which the author himself relates in an essay appended to the _Nachla.s.s_.[205]

According to the prevailing opinion, Mirza Schaffy was a great Persian poet, a rival of Sa?di and H_afi?, and Bodenstedt was the translator of his songs. Great, therefore, was the astonishment of the European, and particularly the German public, when it was discovered that the name of this famous poet was utterly unknown in the East, even in his own native land. As early as 1860, Professor Brugsch, when in Tiflis, had searched for the singer's grave, but in vain; n.o.body could tell him where a certain Mirza Schaffy lay buried. At last, in 1870, the Russian counsellor Adolph Berge gave an authentic account of the real man and his literary activity.[206] Two things were clearly established: first, that such a person as Mirza afi? had really existed; second, that this person was no poet. On this second point the few sc.r.a.ps of verse which Berge had been able to collect, and which he submitted in the essay cited above, leave absolutely no doubt. So, in 1874, when Bodenstedt published another poetic collection of Mirza Schaffy, he appended an essay wherein he explained clearly the origin and the nature of the original collection bearing that name.

According to his own statements, these poems are not translations. They are entirely his own,[207] and were originally not an independent collection, but part of the biographical romance _Tausend und ein Tag im Orient_.[208] This should be kept in mind if we wish to estimate them at their true value.

Nevertheless the poems are genuinely Oriental and owe their existence to the author's stay in the East, particularly in Tiflis, during the winter 1843-44. But for this residence in the Orient, so Bodenstedt tells us,[209] a large part of them would never have seen the light.

In form, however, they are Occidental--the _?azal_ being used only a few times (e.g. ii. 135, or in the translations from H_afi? in chap. 21: ii.

70=H_. 8; ii. 72=H_. 155, etc.) In spirit they are like H_afi?. ”Mein Lehrer ist Hafis, mein Bethaus ist die Schenke,” so Mirza Schaffy himself proclaims (i. p. 96), and images and ideas from H_afi?, familiar to us from preceding chapters, meet us everywhere. The stature like a cypress, the nightingale and the rose, the verses like pearls on a string, and others could be cited as instances. Other authors are also laid under contribution; thus the comparison of Mirza Schaffy to a bee seems to have been suggested by a maxim of Sa?di (_Gul._ viii. No. 77, ed. Platts; K.S. p. 268), where a wise man without practice is called a bee without honey, and the thought in the last verse of ”Die Rose auch”

(vol. ii. p. 85), that the rose cannot do without dirt and the nightingale feeds on worms, is a reminiscence of a story of Ni?ami which we had occasion to cite in the chapter on Ruckert (see p. 43). In one case a poem contains a Persian proverb. Mirza Schaffy criticises the opinions of the Shah's viziers in the words: ”Ich h.o.r.e das Geklapper einer Muhle, doch sehe ich kein Mehl” (i, 85), a literal rendering of

Of course the _mullas_ and hypocrites in general are roundly scored, especially in chapter 27, where the sage, angered by the reproaches which the _mustahid_ has made to him for his bad conduct and irreligious poetry, gives vent to his sentiments of disgust in a number of poems (vol. ii. p. 137 seq.). Bodenstedt undoubtedly had in mind the persecutions to which H_afi? was subject, culminating in the refusal of the priests to give him regular burial and giving rise to the famous story of the _fatva_.

The tavern and the praise of wine are, of course, bound to be prominent features. In the same _credo_ where Mirza Schaffy proclaims H_afi? as his teacher he also proclaims the tavern as his house of prayer (i. p.

96), and so he celebrates the day when he quit the mosque for the wine-house (i. p. 98; cf. H_. 213. 4). The well known poem ”Aus dem Feuerquell des Weines” (i. p. 106) is in sentiment exactly like a quatrain of ?Umar Xayyam (Bodl. ed. Heron-Allen, Boston, 1898, No. 78; Whinfield, 195); the last verse is based on a couplet of Sa?di (_Gul._ i. 4, last _qi??ah_, Platts, p. 18) which is cited immediately after the poem itself (i. p. 107).

A collection of Hafizian songs would scarcely be complete without a song in praise of s.h.i.+raz. This we get in vol. ii. p. 48, where s.h.i.+raz is compared to Tiflis; and just as the former was made famous through H_afi?, so the latter will become famous through Mirza Schaffy. Little did the worthy sage of Ganja dream that this would come literally true.

Yet it did. The closing lines of the poem--

Beruhmt ist Tiflis durch dein Lied Vom Kyros bis zum Rhein geworden--