Eastern roses

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Title page of the 1822 edition

Oestliche Rosen (published in 1822) is the most extensive collection of poems by Friedrich Rückert . Rückert, an intimate connoisseur of Persian literature, has translated numerous works by Persian poets into German or "retouched" them with his own language. The Schahname , the Persian national epic , deserves special mention here, which Rückert translated into a German version in verse form in a poetic stroke of genius.

General

After an introductory poem, the Oestliche Rosen von Rückert contain another 356 poems, divided into three readings. The first reading contains 98 poems, the second reading 91 poems. The third reading comprises the largest number of 167 poems. This large number results from a collection of quatrains at the end of the volume.

In the opening poem Rückert refers to Goethe's west-eastern divan with the lines

Do you want to taste
Pure East,
Do you have to go from here to the same man
The one from the west
Even the best
Wine has always been given from a full pot.
When the west was tasted
Has he now degreased the East;
See, there he revels on the Ottomanne.

Goethe obviously took pleasure in Rückert's "Oestlichen Rosen", because in his magazine Über Kunst und Altertum a positive appreciation of the collection of poems appeared.

Although both works emerged from the reception of Persian poetry, Goethe's divan and Rückert's roses are fundamentally different. While Goethe had the entire oriental poetry in view with his divan, Rückert concentrated on Hafis in the "Oestliche Rosen" . This becomes particularly clear when he mentions him by name at the end of a poem:

The gas cell should jump
Return the greeting to the nightingale,
Sing when I was drunk
Passages from Hafisen's songs

In his poetry Rückert takes up the linguistic images of Hafe's rose, nightingale, wine, the locks of loved ones, love and transience and places his poetry in the tradition of his great role model Hafes. Right at the beginning of the collection of poems, he points out that dealing with oriental poetry requires a certain seriousness in order to grasp its mystical dimension:

O how should the nightingale?
Soul then fall in your ear,
If you're still in front of your ears
Hum the chatter of fools.
And how should the rose blossom
Really blossom in the mind,
Do you still want to look for shimmer
Not created by nature.
Do you want to be included
From the chaos on earth
Cheerful choirs in spring
So see and hear nothing else.
Do not seek distraction from us,
But eternal joy.
Come and drink with all your soul
Rose scent and philomele.

When in the German and Persian-speaking areas reference is made again and again to the fact that Goethe was inspired by Hafe's poems for his divan, then this applies far more to Rückert and his Oestliche Rosen.

Relation to Islam

While Goethe presents Muslim doctrines in his work, Rückert's work in this case is more comparable to Hafe's Diwan, in which a critical distance from "religious hypocrisy" is maintained. In the following poem, tulips and daffodils serve as examples of natural, intoxicating beauty, which, according to the "prevailing doctrine", could be punishable because of their intoxication without even knowing the Koran.

There you have the drinkers
Seized in the act.
The tulips hold the cup
Cut from light ruby.
So are the daffodils
So deprived of the senses
That they don't know from being intoxicated
Just hold her head!
Now let us, ye judges!
Don't miss a smart fetwa:
How do you punish the criminals
Who do not know anything about the Koran?

The critical distance to any kind of religious discipline is also expressed in the following lines:

Monk! I'll give you the sermon,
That can't be of any use to me.
Because a cup beckons me
And two beautiful eyes.

reception

With the Eastern Roses Rückert introduced his readers to the mysticism of oriental poetry. However, like Goethe's Divan, the Eastern Roses initially remained a work for lovers of oriental literature. In the course of the following years, Rückert translated numerous works of the poetic literature of the languages ​​of the Near East and Middle East that were accessible to him into German. Annemarie Schimmel , in a new edition of his translations "Oriental Poetry", praised the fact that he "summarized the entire knowledge of his century of oriental poetry and translated it into German poetry with almost uncanny ease".

expenditure

  • Friedrich Rückert: Eastern roses. Leipzig 1822.
  • Hans Weber (ed.): Eastern roses - Oriental poems. Leipzig, 1928. (selection)
  • Wolfgang von Keitz (Ed.): Eastern roses. epubli, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-8442-0415-5 . (Details)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang von Keitz (Ed.): Oestliche Rosen. epubli, Berlin 2012, p. 1.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang von Keitz (Ed.): Oestliche Rosen. epubli, Berlin 2012, p. 442.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang von Keitz (Ed.): Oestliche Rosen. epubli, Berlin 2012, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang von Keitz (Ed.): Oestliche Rosen. epubli, Berlin 2012, p. 442.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang von Keitz (Ed.): Oestliche Rosen. epubli, Berlin 2012, p. 30.
  6. ↑ Karl Schön: Ostliche Rosen  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.amobo.de