Hafez, who belongs to the most significant Persian poets and mystics, has time and again exerted an astonishingly unbroken attraction on occidental thinkers and artists. And although, born in Shiraz 1320 and probably also deceased there at the age of 62, he may be so far from us temporally, he is yet mentally so close to us through his lyrics. Only then a work is universal, when it appears timeless and transfixes people today as much as 700 years ago and, by doing so, inscribes itself into the collective cultural memory of mankind. For Hafes this applies in a special way. Therefore it is no surprise when G\u00fcnther Uecker names his work cycle dedicated to the poet \u201cHomage to Hafes\u201d.\u00a0 Thereby Uecker orientates himself toward selected ghazals of Hafes. Ghazals are the poetic form developed during the 13th and 14th centuries in the Persian linguistic area that Hafes ultimately brought to their masterly perfection. Hafes\u2019 divan comprises about 500 poems most of which were written in the form of ghazals. Ghazals are based on a very complex network of form-and contextrelations. Every ghazal is dedicated to a certain theme and consists of up to 15 rhyming couplets with two hemistiches each of which the second always ends in the rhyme of the first stanza. In the lyrics of his ghazals Hafez treats the sensual pleasures of love, wine and the beauty of nature, while love and wine serve him only as metaphors for mystic drunkenness in the devotion to God. Solely love to God is the ecstasy that lasts forever. Through his poetry Hafez created a mystic alternative concept to the world of his time dominated by hypocrisy and the obsession for power.\u00a0 While ghazal-poetry in the centuries after Hafes spread over the Indian subcontinent and experienced its very affected and barely universally comprehensible late form, it reached Europe only in the 19th century, but then with enormous effect. Although Johann Wolfgang von Goethe discovered Hafez only at the more mature age of 65, he was overwhelmed of his poetry and writes about Hafes in 1815: \u201c… in the face of this I had to behave productively, because otherwise I would not have persisted before this powerful appearance.\u201d This huge compliment by Goethe describes the power that originates from Hafes\u2019 poetry. Inspired through Hafes\u2019 ghazals Goethe produced within the following years his by far most extensive poetry collection divided into twelve books. Among other things, it reads:<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knows himself and others,<\/em> These lines are expression to a congeniality that Goethe felt on the one hand towards Hafez, but that he also assigned to Islam in its entirety. Maybe Goethe\u2019s relationship to Islam represents one of the most astonishing facets in his life. In an announcement of the \u201cWest-Eastern Divan\u201d written by Goethe himself, one can read the surprising sentence that the author \u201cdoes not deny the suspicion that he himself was a Muslim.\u201d Goethe\u2019s appreciation of Islam had not only to do with his enthusiasm for Hafez, but derived from his early youth. Already as a 23 year old Goethe versified a hymn on the Prophet Mohammed, and his whole life long he kept confirming his adoration for Islam. In the Strasbourg winter of 1770\/71, Johann Gottfried Herder introduced Goethe to the reading of the Quran, and even if he was not able to read it in its original language, the high linguistic quality did not remain hidden from him. Furthermore, religious affinities may have served Goethe to feel appealed by Islam, as for example the fact that God revealed Himself to the people through messengers and many things more. Surely, it was this proximity to Islam that preceded the encounter with Hafez\u2019 poetry, a precondition for the later appreciation of the great Persian poet and, insofar, also for the creation of the \u201cWest-Eastern Divan\u201d. Even if Goethe\u2019s praise of Islam might have gone too far for many Christians in his time, in a certain way it is also a characteristic of the epoch of the enlightened upheaval at the end of the 18th century. Since Islam\u2019s hour of birth in the 7th century East and West, Orient and Occident had been antagonistic toward each other for almost one millennium. The constant military conflicts between Muslims and Christians, from the conquest of Spain and the threat of the Frankish realm by the Arabs in the 8th century, over the invasions of the Saracen on Sicily, the battles over the Holy Land in the age of the crusades, the conquest of Constantinople with the destruction of the Christian shaped Byzantine Empire up to the last siege of Vienna by the Turks in the year 1683 resulting in a permanent fear of the Turks in huge parts of Europe, contributed significantly to this world view. This changed only with the Age of Enlightenment; at least the 18th century provided several approaches to allow a more unbiased perspective on Islam\u2019s very nature. In Germany it were first and foremost Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Johann Gottfried Herder who were working in that direction and who were showing their commitment for a more open and more tolerant attitude toward Islam. Although Lessing\u2019s \u201cNathan the Wise\u201d is aiming at Judaism, the central message of his drama remains the claim for religious tolerance. And Herder \u2013 similar to Goethe later \u2013 acknowledges Islam for its high appreciation of the One-God-doctrine; on this issue \u2013 despite the resonance of a thousand years of warfare \u2013 one felt surprisingly close. It should be noted, however, that this unprejudiced approach characterised primarily the remarkable intellectual thinkers of the time, but had by no means reached the population at large, let alone that it was embedded; this new openness toward the foreign and the different remained the attitude of single people.<\/p>\n Impressive is the Goethe Hafez memorial of Ernst Thevis and Fabian Rabsch inaugurated in Weimar in the year 2000 that symbolises very impressively the deep congeniality of the two poets beyond all temporal, geographic, religious and cultural borders. Two over-dimensional chairs cut out of one large granite block are facing each other, two parts of a whole that, when put back together, regenerate the original granite block. They are placed in a west-eastern direction on a bronze pedestal with verses of Hafez and those of Goethe that invoke once more the spiritual kinship of Orient and Occident:<\/p>\n \u201cWith force far-flung the Orient rose<\/em> But not only Goethe was drawn in by Hafez. The great Persian poet had an unbroken effect also on the later 19th century. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche immortalised him in verse as well as the poet, linguist, translator and founder of German Oriental studies Friedrich R\u00fcckert. The poetic form of the Hafezian ghazal was very popular at the time to attest poetic virtuosity, and Theodor Storm, Gottfried Keller, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal and many others undertook an attempt. Some of the ghazals of R\u00fcckert and Keller were voiced by Gustav Mahler, and composers like Franz Schubert or Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg undertook an attempt in setting them to music. But also visual art of the time picked up the Hafez motif. Anselm Feuerbach, one of the most significant German painters of the second half of the 19th century, had been interested in Hafez since his youth and dedicated two of his paintings to him. The picture \u201cHafez in front of the Tavern\u201d shows a vividly narrating, maybe ghazal-reciting elderly man in front of an attentively listening audience. Another work \u201cThe Storyteller at the Fountain\u201d from 1866 shows a significantly more restrained, younger Hafez, the oriental references in terms of figure and picture composition are not so striking anymore and could also be borrowed from antiquity. Consequently, G\u00fcnther Uecker\u2019s \u201cHomage to Hafez\u201d can be located within a long and significant tradition. Characteristic for this tradition is especially the stimulating and creative power that emanates from Hafez\u2019 poetry. Whether poet, musician or painter, Hafez keeps inspiring great artistic innovations. This is also the case in terms of Uecker.<\/p>\n Why is this especially today more important than ever? Why is it important to become more aware again of the reception of the greatest Persian poet through the great names of 19th century German intellectual and art life? And why is it important that today artists like G\u00fcnther Uecker continue this tradition not less vividly? It is important because our era lacks more than ever the respect for the other and the foreign. Goethe respected the Jews because they were the people who created the Bible; and he respected Islam for creating the Quran. If our time of today is supposed to resolve formative confrontations between Orient and Occident, between Christianity and Islam, between terror or war and tourism, this relationship between East and West is in need of a new mental dimension that can only be based on more mutual awareness, not solely on the knowledge of facts alone, but on the knowledge about the essentials. Trying to answer the question of the essentials, art with its creative power is vital, no matter whether this creative power lies in writing, composing or painting. It can offer an orientation to face today\u2019s global world and to understand it better. Goethe\u2019s \u201cWest-Eastern Divan\u201d is an opus magnum of respect, the search for the common and uniting, and thus of cultural dialogue. Goethe\u2019s cultural comparison is based on the deeper and universal human values, common to all civilisations and religions, when he writes:<\/p>\n The folly! Every man in turn would still<\/em> But Goethe also pleads for a vehement view into the depth of history when he strikingly states again in the West-Eastern Divan:<\/p>\n Let him who fails to learn and mark<\/em> If we examine Europe\u2019s history it becomes very obvious what crucial achievements Islam has contributed to the development and cultural condition of what we call the West or Occident. The first Muslims in Germany were seven prisoners of war that the king of Asturias had taken captive in the course of an attack on Lisbon, and that he sent to Aachen as a gift of friendship for Charlemagne in 798. In a certain way they stand for a historic process in which, as a consequence of the Muslim-Arabic conquests in Northern Africa, in the Near East and up to Byzantium, the antique unity of the Mediterranean world had finally dissolved. Consequently, when we are looking for Europe\u2019s roots of civilisation today, our view must not solely be directed toward Greek art and architecture and Athenian democracy, but also toward a huge shift of the political, economical and also cultural force field of the Mediterranean arts further north toward the geographic centre of our continent. This \u201cContinentalization of Europe\u201d, as the historian Michael Borgolte called it, formed the basis for our world of today. Since it was a result of Islamic expansion, Islam became \u2013 unintentionally \u2013 a kind of assistant in birth for the modern Europe. But the Islamic world presented also a huge space for the distribution of goods, ideas, techniques and inventions on the one hand, and the mainly peaceful meeting of peoples, religions and cultures on the other. With the conquest of Byzantine cities and monasteries the Muslims gained access to antique science and philosophy that they passed on to us and developed further. The achievements and successes of the Islamic sciences also contributed to an upturn in trade and urbanism in our Christian Europe. Only with the conquest of Granada in 1492 and the expulsion of the Muslims from Spain in the west of the Mediterranean Sea, and with the conquest of Constantinople a few years earlier in 1453 by the Ottomans and the beginning expansion of the Turks on the Balkan peninsula, a new phase of segregation and rupture started that lasted for long and has remained formative until today. Hence it is worthwhile to dive deeper into history to understand also Islam\u2019s contribution to Europe\u2019s development.<\/p>\n The re-discovery of Hafez by Goethe marks the temporary end of this rupture. Whether intended or not, but with his respect for Islam and with his \u201cWest-Eastern Divan\u201d Goethe distinctly opposed the monopoly of the Christian churches and their exclusive claim on redemption from the evils of this world, and demanded \u2013 in conjunction with Herder, Lessing and others\u2013 a new openness and tolerance of thought. If more people had followed his request even more decidedly, on German soil a different freedom of religious thinking and acting could have developed. In a time as today, where millions of people with Islamic faith are living among us and new ones are arriving continually, he could have been able to facilitate their integration considerably, combined however with the prerequisite that the values of tolerance that Goethe once had recognised in the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed are given top priority. We have always been sharing our history and our culture with others. Openness and tolerance are the decisive cornerstones for a peaceful life together, as well as for future sustainability. But openness and tolerance cannot exist without knowledge and education. As already Hafez said:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is through knowledge that the human being attains humanity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prof. Dr. Hermann Parzinger
\nwill be recognise:<\/em>
\nOrient and Occident<\/em>
\nare not dividable any more.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAnd passed the Midland Sea! Alone<\/em>
\nFor him who Hafez loves and knows<\/em>
\nRing right the songs of Calderon.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nHis own peculiar notions magnify!<\/em>
\nIf Islam mean submission to God\u2019s will,<\/em>
\nMay we all live in Islam, and all die.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThree thousand years still stay,<\/em>
\nVoid of experience, in the dark,<\/em>
\nAnd live from day to day.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nPresident of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n