Spektrum Iran

Abstract Living in our global world, with its daily increasing encountering, or meanwhile mutual penetrating, different cultures requires a permanent intercultural confrontation with the Other, the Foreign and the Non- familiar; an attempt to understand and recognize the Other in his being and so-being. This attempt aims at providing a possibility of horizon extension and thinking together, rather than discovering merely commonalities and differences,. Hereby is literature, as the general substrate, which exceeds the boundaries of all disciplines, the most important medium, of this encountering. Among all the literary genres is poetry, as an „eminent” text in turn, the most significant genre, which leads us to the deep roots of thoughts, feelings, views and beliefs of cultures. This attempt for mutual understanding, however, is accompanied by difficulties, obstacles, incomprehensions and misunderstandings. These disturbances emerge by trying to translate and interpret poetry, especially lyric poems, in foreign languages, which makes them almost untranslatable. We notice these barriers in the attempt of German authors in transmitting the Ghazals of the great Iranian poet Hafiz. This essay tries to show briefly, as an example, the various facets of these difficulties, taking to account a number of German translations of the Ghazal 152 in his Divan.

Abstract This essay examines the reception of Persian poetry by the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898-1977). This reception is relevant for a work-immanent interpretation of Jünger’s thoughts on poetry as well as in the sense of a (so far neglected) chapter in the history of the reception of Persian poetry in the German-speaking world. Jünger’s preoccupation with Persian poetry is focused on three main poets, namely Omar Khayyam, Saadi, and Hafiz, for whom Jünger showed the greatest admiration. After a historical-biographical localization of the topic, Jünger’s reception of these poets will be outlined in terms of content; not least, their influence on Jünger’s own poetical work will be examined. It will be shown how Jünger was particularly inspired by Hafiz, both in his theoretical reflections on the essence of poetry and in the composition of some of his own cycles of poems.

Abstract Interest in the Persian poet and mystic, Hafiz (1315-1390) increased in the
18th century in the West with the translations of Sir William Jones (1746-
1794) in England. The German translation by Baron von Hammer-Purgstall
inspired Goethe in the 19th century to write the West-Eastern Divan
(published in 1819). The poetry of Hafiz made Goethe so enthusiastic that
he referred to Hafiz as „Holy Hafiz” and „Heavenly Friend”. Inspired by
Goethe's „West-Eastern Divan”, a number of German poets, such as Rückert
and Graf Platen, wrote poems based on the model of Ghazal, a poetic form
that Hafiz had perfected in Persian literature. Wagner’s friend (and later
enemy) Friedrich Nietzsche can also be counted among the German
thinkers who were influenced and fascinated by Hafiz. After investigating
these historical statements, the article elaborates on how Wagner benefited
from the form and content of Hafez’s poetry.

Abstract The translation of Hafiz's Divan, which is rightly presented as a treasure trove of Iranian cultural memory, seems to be a difficult, if not impossible task. The prerequisite for a precise and comprehensive understanding of Hafiz’s poems is to enter the world of his thoughts, and recognize the tradi-tion and cultural context of his time. Joachim Wohlleben (1936-2004), the German philosopher and professor of literature at Free University of Berlin, presented a new translation of Hafiz's Divan into German in 2004. In his translation, Wohlleben endeavors to transform the poetry into prose, so that what he names a “sober translation” appears, without any priority to the form of Ghazal, in which the essence and the content of Hafiz's thoughts and ideas becomes understandable to the German audience. This article attempts to critically examine the mentioned assertion with particular em-phasis on ideas of Western thinkers such as Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, and with special regard to the rhetorical theories of ʻAbd al-Qāher al-Ğorğānī.