THE MINOR ORIENTALIZING POETS.
SOME LESS KNOWN POETS WHO ATTEMPTED THE ORIENTAL MANNER.
To enumerate the names of all the German poets who affected the Oriental
manner would be to give a list of the illustrious obscure. Most of them
have only served to furnish another illustration of Horace's famous
_mediocribus esse poetis_. A bare mention of such names as Löschke,
Levitschnigg, Wihl, Stieglitz and von Hermannsthal will suffice.[222]
The last mentioned poet gives a striking illustration of the inanity of
most of this kind of work. He uses the _γazal_ form for stories about
such persons as the Gracchi and Blücher,[223] and, what is still more
curious, for tirades against the Oriental tendency.[224] A poet of
different calibre is Daumer, whose _Hafis_ (Hamb. 1846) for a long time
was regarded as a translation, whereas the poems of the collection are
in reality original productions in H̱āfiḍ's manner, just like Rückert's
_Östliche Rosen_.[225] Their sensuous, passionate eroticism, however, is
not a genuine H̱āfiḍ quality, as we before have seen. The same criticism
applies even much more forcibly to Schefer's _Hafis in Hellas_ (Hamburg,
1853).[226] Special mention is due to the gifted, but unfortunate,
Heinrich Leuthold, whose _Ghaselen_ deserve to be placed by the side of
Platen's. Like Platen and Rückert, he too proclaims himself a reveller:
Zur Gottheit ward die Schönheit mir
Und mein Gebet wird zum Ghasel.--
But these _Ghaselen_ do not attempt to be so intensely Persian as to
reproduce the objectionable features of Persian poetry. Thus Leuthold
sings:
Vor allem ein Lebehoch dem Hafis, dem Patriarchen der Zunft!--
D'rum bringe die liebliche Schenkin das Gold gefüllter Becher
hinein![227]
Evidently the poet sees no necessity for retaining the _sāqī_, but makes
the poem more acceptable to Western taste by substituting a "Schenkin"
for Platen's "Schenke."
The Oriental story was cultivated by J.F. Castelli. Many of the subjects
of his _Orientalische Granaten_ (Dresden, 1852) had already been used by
Rückert. Another Oriental storyteller in verse is Ludwig Bowitsch, whose
_Sindibad_ (Leipzig, 1860) contains mostly Arabic material. Friedrich
von Sallet has written a poem on _Zerduscht_[228] which gives the
Iranian legend of the attempt made by the sorcerers to burn the newborn
child.[229] It would, however, lead us too far were we to mention single
poems on Oriental subjects or of Oriental tendency.
* * * * *
Head and shoulders above all these less known poets towers the figure of
Count von Schack, who, like Rückert, combined the poetic gift with the
learning of the scholar, and who thus stands out a worthy successor of
the German Brahman as a representative of the idea of the
_Weltlitteratur_. A discussion of his work is a fitting close for this
investigation.
FOOTNOTES:
[222] On these see Paul Horn, Was verdanken Wir Persien, in Nord u. Süd,
Heft 282, p. 386 seq.
[223] Ghaselen, Leipz. Recl. Univ. Bibl. No. 371, pp. 96, 99.
[224] Ibid. pp. 49-54. An einen Freund.
[225] See von Schack, Strophen des Omar Chijam, p. 117.
[226] Horn in article cited, p. 389; Emil Brenning, Leopold Schefer,
Bremen, 1884, p. 135.
[227] Gedichte, Frauenfeld, 1879, p. 144 (xvi).
[228] Gesammelte Gedichte, Leipz. Reclam. Nos. 551-3, p. 128.
[229] See Jackson, Zoroaster, p. 29.