Speech, Writing, and Identity in the West-Östlicher Divan

BENJAMIN BENNETT Speech, Writing, and Identity in the West-Östlicher Divan ι IN the Noten und Abhandlungento the Divan, Goethe suggests repeatedly that poetry should be regarded as a natural function of the Ufe of its language, rather than as an expressive endeavor carried out by an individual Ui language considered as a neutral or transparent medium with no inherent content of its own. "Hier sieht man, daß die Sprache schon an und für sich productiv ist," he says, about Arabic as a poetic language, "und zwar, Ui so fern sie dem Gedanken entgegen kommt, rednerisch, Ui so fern sie der EUibUdungskraft zusagt, poetisch."1 He asserts, "daß... die Sprache als Sprache die erste RoUe spielt" (7:106), and suggests that even our personal feelings, our putatively unique experiences as individuals, are "ewig wiederkehrend" (J: 130), and so may plausibly be regarded as Ui truth the property of a communal order of which language is the primary outward form and our individuaüty merely an organ. Nor may we dismiss this idea as referring only to near eastern poetry. Auch wir vor fünfzig Jahren, als Jünglinge, die einheimischen Dichter verehrend, belebten das Gedächtniß durch ihre Schriften und erzeigten ihnen den schönsten BeUaU, indem wft unsere Gedanken durch ihre gewählten und gebUdeten Worte ausdrückten und dadurch eingestanden , daß sie besser als wft unser Innerstes zu entfalten gewußt. (7:130) The cultural strategy of the Divan, Ui any case, the tension between its self-consciously German and its self-consciously Eastern quality, has the effect of exhibiting precisely the German language to German readers as tf it were a foreign language, and so focuses the reader's spectficaUy linguistic awareness upon his or her own situation. The association of poetry with a breaking down of the boundaries of individuality, with an undoing of our very identity, is especiaUy clear Ui the poem "Unbegränzt" (6:39) from the "Buch Hafis." Hafis himself (Ui EngUsh usuaUy Hafiz), the historical poet, is already Ui some ways a person of questionable identity. His very name, at least the name by which he names himself as a poet, is not a proper name at all, but an honorific for one who has committed the whole Koran to memory. This fact is the basis of the first poem, "Beiname" (6:33-34), of the "Buch Hafis." The next three poems, "Anklage," "Fetwa," "Der Deutsche dankt" (6:35-37), take up the Goethe Yearbook XII (2004) 162 Benjamin Bennett question of whether true Muslim piety can be reconcUed with the relatively dissolute persona Hafis adopts Ui his poems. And the Noten und Abhandlungen contrast very strongly the "serious studies" and "actual teaching post" of Shams-ud-din Muhammad with the poetry of "Hafis, " suggesting that one could find a "contradiction" here tf one did not recognize "daß der Dichter nicht geradezu aUes denken und leben müsse was er ausspricht" (7:64). Precisely what is important to us about Hafis, Ui other words, what he shows us Ui his poetry, is understood not to be the direct self-expression of an integrated UidividuaUty. "Auch scheint unser Dichter kernen großen Werth auf seine so leicht hinfließenden Lieder gelegt zu haben, denn seine Schüler sammelten sie erst nach seinem Tode" (7:64). The same basic questioning of identity is found Ui the poem "Unbegranzt ," tf on a deeper level of linguistic structure. The first line, "Daß du nicht enden kannst, das macht dich groß," is thoroughly ambiguous. If the first half of the Une means simply, "That you cannot stop singing (or writing )," or, "That you never bring your poems to a satisfying conclusion," then the pronoun "das" Ui the second half becomes questionable. How can that sort of failure make a poet "great"? If, on the other hand, the first half means, "That it is impossible for 'you' ever to come to an end, or for 'you' to be limited within a finished identity," then we can understand how this might be considered a form of greatness, but now the pronoun "dich" makes no sense, since precisely the identity it names is not avaUable for greatness to be attributed...