The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · a book of poems in twelve books, each with a German title and a Persian one, with the prose Notes and Essays printed as its second half · first edition Cotta, 1819; enlarged in the Ausgabe letzter Hand, 1827 · scored on Goethe’s German in the 1827 text, read from knowledge; no text in hand, German quoted only where its words are certain, with the desk’s own English glosses
Mode
A lyric book in a borrowed form; love song, drinking song, maxim, parable, complaint and paradise poem under one mask
Mythos
The aged poet and the young beloved under assumed names; the flight into origins; the moth and the flame; a creation remade by lovers; the Seven Sleepers waking
Phase
From the flight out of Europe’s wars in the first poem to the gate of paradise and the sleepers in the last book; within the Suleika book, first meeting, separation and reunion
Presentation
Poems in twelve books, each titled in German and in Persian, very unequal in size; mostly German measures, with the ghazal’s repeated rhyme imitated in a few poems; a prose second half of Notes and Essays
Register
Light, exact and often trochaic, moving between play and gravity inside a stanza, from the epigram and the grumble to the love song and the cosmogony
Scale
Two civilisations, four faiths and the history from Timur to the wars behind the first poem, seen from a garden and a tavern
Governing Proposition
At sixty-five the leading poet of Europe put on the mask of a fourteenth-century Persian and answered Hafez, poem for poem, as an equal and a rival. The book he made is a divan, a poet’s collected verse divided by kind into twelve books under Persian titles, and its mask is its knowledge: the poet becomes Hatem, the beloved Suleika, and another poet’s verses stand in the book under the beloved’s name. Its wager is that a self can be renewed in age by taking another voice, that renewal is a law of dying and becoming that runs through breath, love and the making of the world, and that East and West are one inheritance.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The book opens with a flight: “Nord und West und Süd zersplittern, / Throne bersten, Reiche zittern”
“North and west and south are splintering, thrones are bursting, empires shaking.” The first poem, “Hegire”, takes its name from the flight of the Prophet and makes of it a poet’s flight, out of Europe’s wars and into the air of the patriarchs, toward origins. It is the founding gesture of the whole: a poet of sixty-five leaving his time and his manner to begin again in another voice.
The work is the West-östlicher Divan. It was begun in 1814, set off by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall’s German Hafez of 1812 and 1813, and most of its poems date from 1814 and 1815, the years of Goethe’s journeys to the Rhine and the Main. Cotta published it in 1819; the Ausgabe letzter Hand of 1827 enlarged it. It is in twelve books, each with a German title and a Persian one, from the Buch des Sängers (Moganni Nameh) to the Buch des Paradieses (Chuld Nameh), and they are very unequal: the Buch des Timur holds two poems, the Buch Suleika is the largest. The prose Notes and Essays, printed with the poems as the book’s second half, explain the East to readers who did not know it.
In the Buch Hafis the poet turns to the Persian master as an equal and a rival: “Hafis, mit dir, mit dir allein / Will ich wetteifern!”
“Hafez, with you, with you alone I will compete!” No book in European poetry had been made, whole, as an answer to an Islamic poet. The Hafez it answers is Hammer’s, received through translation, and the book discloses Goethe’s meeting with Hafez more than it discloses Persia. The line stays German, in trochaic and iambic quatrains, rhymed couplets and epigram; the ghazal’s repeated rhyme is imitated loosely in a few poems, and the Persian metres are not taken over. The swerve is of stance and architecture.
Movement II
In the Buch des Sängers stands “Selige Sehnsucht”, among the summits of German lyric. A moth, drawn to the flame, burns in it: a figure of the Persian tradition, made here to bear the weight of a law. The poem names the law in two words, “Stirb und werde!”
“Die and become!”, and closes hard on whoever has not learned it: he is “nur ein trüber Gast / Auf der dunklen Erde”
“only a dim guest on the dark earth”.
The poem has been read as mystical, as erotic, as Sufi, as Christian, and as a poetics of the creative act, and it holds each reading without settling into any. It is made to the highest standard of German verse, and its lightness is part of the making: a doctrine of death and renewal is carried without strain. It is the book’s law in small, and the old poet’s new beginning is the law applied to himself.
The same law runs through the breath. “Talismane” finds “zweierlei Gnaden”, two kinds of grace, in breathing, the air drawn in and given out. And it runs between the worlds: “Gottes ist der Orient! / Gottes ist der Okzident!”
“God’s is the Orient! God’s is the Occident!” Everything in the book divides and returns, East and West, poet and beloved, dying and becoming. It is what Goethe elsewhere calls Steigerung, and the masks of the book are the means by which one poet can live it through many voices.
Movement III
Between the framing books and the Suleika book lie the books of love, of reflection, of ill humour, of maxims and of Timur. Here the poet under his mask is Hatem, and Hatem can love, grumble, drink and pray because he is a role. The voice is wise and level, and for long stretches it does not try to lift. The Persian names, the wine, the roses and the nightingales are often the dress of the poems more than their structure.
The Buch des Unmuts holds the sharpest of them and the slackest. It sets a measure of three thousand years: “Wer nicht von dreitausend Jahren / Sich weiß Rechenschaft zu geben”
“Whoever cannot give himself an account of three thousand years”. Beside it stands grumbling at critics and the public that belongs to its decade. The Buch der Sprüche is a run of rhymed maxims, competent rather than charged, and a third of them could go without the book noticing.
The Buch des Timur is two poems, a gesture toward Napoleon and the winter of 1812 rather than a book. In this middle of the Divan its poems could change places among the books with little loss, and the law of the whole is under the maxims without being expressed in them. The divan form permits this looseness, since a poet’s collected book is divided by kind and not by argument, and the book takes the permission.
Movement IV
The Buch Suleika is the necessary core. Hatem and Suleika, the aged poet and the young beloved, speak in turn, and the exchanges answer one another with real wit in the turn of reply. The order carries a love from first meeting through separation to reunion. In “Gingo biloba” a leaf that is one and two becomes the book’s figure for its own voice: “Daß ich eins und doppelt bin”
“That I am one and double”.
The doubling is a fact of the book. Goethe met Marianne von Willemer in the years of the poems, and verses of hers, among them the songs to the east wind and to the west wind, stand in the Suleika book under the beloved’s name; Goethe chose them, placed them and in places retouched them. Her share was made public by Herman Grimm in 1869, after her death, on what she had told him. The discovery changed what the book is: the woman’s answers are in part her own, the dialogue is a dialogue, and the questions of authorship and of what the old poet took and gave are still open. The poems are part of the work and credited to it. Schubert’s two Suleika songs set her verses.
In “Wiederfinden” the lovers’ reunion is set against the creation of the world. Light parts from darkness, the elements fly apart, and love brings them back, until “Allah braucht nicht mehr zu schaffen, / Wir erschaffen seine Welt”
“Allah need create no more; we create his world.” The Suleika book closes with “In tausend Formen”, in praise of a beloved recognised in every form of the world. Here, more than anywhere, the book’s form is its argument: one poet writing as another and answered by a third voice.
Movement V
After Suleika come the tavern and the teaching: the Schenkenbuch, the Buch der Parabeln and the Buch des Parsen, whose “Vermächtnis altpersischen Glaubens”, the testament of the old Persian faith, makes fire and sun a worship. Religion is held in the book in four forms, Islam, the Parsi faith, the Christian legend and Goethe’s own pantheism, under one mask and one law.
The Buch des Paradieses brings the poet to the gate. In “Einlass” he argues with the houri at the gate, and argues his way in with a plea that is wit and claim at once: “Denn ich bin ein Mensch gewesen, / Und das heißt ein Kämpfer sein”
“For I have been a human being, and that means a fighter.” It is perfect light verse with weight beneath it. The book ends with the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus waking, a legend that Christian and Muslim tradition share, and the thesis that East and West are one inheritance is carried at the close in a single archetype.
The Notes and Essays follow the poems: the clear prose of a great prose writer, discursive and in places antiquarian, a frame for the poems more than their equal, and a document of how Europe learned to read the East. From the practice of the book grew Goethe’s idea of world literature, the word he would use in 1827. Two centuries later the Divan is in every collected Goethe and its songs are in the Lieder repertoire; Iqbal answered it from Lahore in 1923; and an orchestra founded in 1999 took its name.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test is where a lyric collection of this size is weakest, and the Divan fails it in particular places. The Buch der Sprüche is a run of rhymed maxims that could lose a third of its pieces without the book noticing. The Buch des Unmuts mixes the sharp with grumbling at critics and the public that is of its decade. The Buch des Timur, two poems, is a gesture toward Napoleon and the winter of 1812 rather than a book. Against this the Buch Suleika is close to necessary throughout: the exchanges answer one another, and the order carries a love from first meeting through separation to reunion. The Notes are long and in places antiquarian. The slack around the core is what holds the axis at 7.6, the lowest of the twelve.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The book states three things and makes them true in the making. A self can be renewed in age by taking another voice: the poet becomes Hatem and the beloved Suleika, and the doubling is a fact of the book, since another poet’s verses stand in it under the beloved’s name. Renewal is a law: the moth burns in the flame, and whoever has not learned to die and become is a dim guest on the dark earth. And East and West are one inheritance. The disclosure is of a condition, articulated, and it holds. Held at 8.6 because the East is Hammer’s East, received through translation, and the book discloses Goethe’s encounter with Hafez more than it discloses Persia.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The heights are real and they recur. The first poem, “Hegire”, opens at a high pitch, thrones bursting and empires shaking, and flies from Europe’s wars into the air of the patriarchs. “Selige Sehnsucht” stands among the summits of German lyric. “Wiederfinden” sets a lovers’ reunion against the creation of the world, light parting from darkness and the elements flying apart until love brings them back. “In tausend Formen” closes the Suleika book in praise of a beloved recognised in every form of the world, and the Paradise book rises again at the end with the Seven Sleepers. What holds the axis at 8.6 is frequency: the long middle stretches of maxim, parable and complaint are wise and level and do not try to lift.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The book builds a myth rather than borrowing one: an aged poet and a young beloved under assumed names in a borrowed East, the poet who must die to himself to be renewed. “Hegire” makes the flight of the Prophet a poet’s flight into origins. The moth and the flame, a figure of the Persian tradition, is made load-bearing in “Selige Sehnsucht”. “Wiederfinden” builds a cosmogony on a lovers’ meeting; the Parsi testament makes fire and sun a worship; and the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, a legend Christian and Muslim tradition share, carry the book’s thesis in a single archetype. Held at the gate, 8.5, because elsewhere the Persian names, wine, roses and nightingales are the dress of the poems more than their structure.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The departure is large. After Weimar classicism and the first part of Faust, the leading poet of Europe, at sixty-five, put on the mask of a fourteenth-century Persian and published a book of Persian-titled books, with an apparatus explaining the culture to readers who did not know it. Nothing in German or in European poetry had made a whole lyric book out of an answer to an Islamic poet as an equal, and the stake was the standing of the poet who made it. Held at 8.7 because the Persian form is taken as costume and frame more than as prosody: the ghazal is imitated in a handful of poems, the measures stay German, and the swerve is of stance and architecture more than of the line.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Another form would change much of what the book knows. The divan, the poet’s collected book divided by kind, lets Goethe hold love, wine, wisdom, complaint, history and paradise in named compartments under one mask, and the mask is the knowledge: a self that is one and double needs a form in which one poet writes as another and is answered by a third voice. The Suleika book’s dialogue is its own argument, since the beloved answers in a woman’s voice and in part in her own verses. The prose Notes complete the form’s claim that East and West must be explained to one another. Held at 8.3 by the looseness of several books, whose poems could change places with little loss, and by Notes attached more than fused.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Two centuries of return have not exhausted it, and the evidence is in the record. “Selige Sehnsucht” has been read as mystical, erotic, Sufi and Christian, and as a poetics of the creative act, and holds each reading without settling. “Gingo biloba” keeps its question of one or two open. The disclosure in 1869 of Marianne von Willemer’s share changed what the Suleika book is, and the questions it raises, of authorship, of dialogue, of what the old poet took and gave, are still live. Later debates on orientalism have returned to the book as a test case, and it has served both sides. Held at 8.6 because many poems of the middle books, the maxims and parables, give what they hold on the first reading.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The field is German poetry of the early nineteenth century, and with it European poetry’s relation to the literatures of the East. The intrinsic force is a reorganisation of possibility: a lyric book made as a dialogue with a foreign classic, and the practice from which Goethe’s idea of world literature grew, the word he would use in 1827. Held at the gate because the reach is narrower than that of Faust or Werther, and in German poetry the main line ran through Romanticism and Heine. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the German lyric of the East in the next generation, Rückert’s ghazals and versions and Platen’s ghazals; a vogue that ran down into second-hand orientalism; Schubert’s two Suleika songs, Schumann’s settings and Hugo Wolf’s Divan songs; and Iqbal’s answer from Lahore, Payam-i-Mashriq (1923).
Score: 8.5 / 10
The text survives whole in the author’s own last arrangement, with no problem of transmission beyond the known enlargement of 1827, and the authorship of the Marianne poems is a question of credit, not of loss. It has stood for 207 years. It is continuously in print in German, in every collected Goethe, and taught in German schools and universities; it has been translated many times into English and into Persian, Arabic, Urdu and other languages; its poems are sung in the Lieder repertoire; and its name was taken by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded in 1999. The charge is for presence: outside German, and to a degree within it, it is read more in the academy than by the general reader. That sets it at 9.0, at the foot of the band for texts of centuries.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Judged on Goethe’s German. The command is of the late manner: a light, exact, often trochaic line that carries an epigram, a love song and a cosmogony with the same ease, rhyme that seems effortless, and a tone that moves between play and gravity inside a stanza. “Wiederfinden” and “Selige Sehnsucht” are made to the highest standard of German verse. The Hatem and Suleika exchanges handle the turn of reply with real wit, and “Einlass”, the poet arguing with the houri at the gate of paradise, is perfect light verse with weight beneath it. Held at 8.8 because the craft is uneven across the books: the Buch der Sprüche and some of the Unmut poems are competent rather than charged, the ghazal imitations are loose, and the Notes, the clear prose of a great prose writer, are discursive.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: Timur’s winter campaign and the wit of “Einlass” at the gate of paradise; or the grumbling at critics in the Buch des Unmuts and the creation myth of “Wiederfinden”. One law holds them, polarity and renewal, what Goethe elsewhere calls Steigerung. Everything divides and returns: East and West, poet and beloved, death and becoming, the breath taken in and given out. The masks hold the range, since Hatem can grumble, love, drink and pray because he is a role. The law is plain in the framing books and the Suleika book and thinner in the middle, where the maxims stand under it without expressing it. The range is wide and largely held; the looseness of three or four books holds the axis at 8.4.
Score: 8.4 / 10
For a lyric book the orders held are many, and they are held under one mask and one law, not listed: the erotic and the ageing body; religion in four forms, Islam, the Parsi faith, the Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers and Goethe’s own pantheism; history and politics, from Timur to the wars behind “Hegire”; the nature of breath, light and fire; poetics and the poet’s vocation; the meeting of two civilisations; wine and the tavern; paradise. The Notes widen the ground to history, language and scholarship. What the book does not hold is labour, the family and society in its working detail; its world is seen from a garden and a tavern, and that is what holds the axis at 8.0.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.0, then The Made at 8.8 and The Swerve at 8.7. A text whole in the author’s last arrangement after 207 years, in print and in song in German and in translation across several languages; the late manner of German verse at its lightest and most exact, in “Selige Sehnsucht”, “Wiederfinden” and “Einlass”; and a departure without precedent, the leading poet of Europe making a whole lyric book as the equal and rival of an Islamic classic.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable at 7.6, held by the slack around a necessary core: the Buch der Sprüche, much of the Buch des Unmuts and the two poems of Timur could lose pieces without loss, while the Suleika book is close to necessary throughout. Next above it, The Encompassed at 8.0, for a world seen from a garden and a tavern, without labour or family, and The Living Form at 8.3, for books loosely bounded and Notes attached more than fused.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.6 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Made at 8.8, The Inner Law at 8.4, The Living Form at 8.3, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is met on all five: The Imperishable at 9.0, The Swerve at 8.7, The Unconcealment at 8.6, The Archetypal Deep at 8.5 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.5 clear the bar of 8.5, the last two exactly at it. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis it governs falls below 7.6, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.0. Every summit condition is met; the work is held below the summit by its aggregate alone, at 8.5.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan, scored as one work in its last arrangement: the twelve books of poems in the enlarged text of the Ausgabe letzter Hand (1827), which is the Cotta first edition of 1819 with further poems added, together with the prose Noten und Abhandlungen zu besserem Verständnis des West-östlichen Divans, printed with the poems in 1819 as the book’s second half and weighed as a frame for them. Poems Goethe withheld, printed later from his papers, are not part of the unit. The Suleika poems written by Marianne von Willemer and taken by Goethe into the book, among them the songs to the east wind and the west wind, are scored as part of the work and credited to it. Every axis is judged on Goethe’s German. No text was in hand; nothing was measured on a text, and no quotation was checked against a file. German is quoted only where its words are certain, and everything else is paraphrased. Every English gloss is the desk’s own, plain and literal, and none is taken from a published translation. Martin Bidney’s verse translation (2010) and John Whaley’s (1974) are the English versions known to this reading; neither is quoted, and nothing is charged or credited to either. The Buch Suleika, the framing books and the famous poems are known closely; the Buch der Sprüche, the Buch der Parabeln and the long run of the Notes are known in outline and in parts. Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Rückert, Platen and Iqbal are cited as the record of the book’s reception and are not part of the work. Facts that could not be verified, among them the number of poems in the book and in each book, the terms of its first reception and the sales of the first edition, are not given.