Goethe und die arabische Welt (review)

242 Book Reviews nouns from the list, then return to the main entries to see the number of occurrences of all forms. In addition, one must then decide whether to include compounds, and if so, which ones. In Part II the five most common nouns (including all compounds, assuming the method just described is accurate) are Mann (78), Tag (73), Herr (68), Welt (61), Auge (61 + 13 Augenblick); in Part I Herr (73), Geist (66), Welt (64), Tag (59, names of days of week not included), Herz (58). Part II moves toward humanity from God, toward perception from feeling. I wonder if the shift from Herr to Mann reflects that Faust II is somehow more democratic than Faust I. Probably the change is better explained in the shift from a more direct representation of social reality to allegory. What is there to be said about the frequency of both Mann and Herr? It surely raises questions about what Faust has to say about and to women. Some words are surprisingly infrequent — how is it that neither Natur nor Licht nor Nacht is among the ten most frequently occurring nouns in either part? Perhaps we overemphasize the importance of nature in Faust. If we return to the top five words for a moment, it is clear that the main vocabulary of Part I is little different from what we would expect in Werther, yet most of Faust I was written in the late seventeen-nineties. It would be interesting to investigate whether Goethe's vocabulary shifted only later, or whether this phenomenon reflects Goethe's deliberate attempt to reassimilate himself to the language of the Urfaust when he returned to the play. Erna Merker's Wörterbuch zu Goethes Werther (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1966) does not offer the statistical overview to facilitate this kind of analysis; but the planned third volume of this concordance, to cover the Urfaust, the Fragment, and paralipomena, should shed light on this question. Faust scholars can only be grateful for the patience, diligence, and careful planning that have made these extremely useful volumes available to us. University of Washington Jane K Brown Mommsen, Katharina, Goethe und die arabische Welt. Frankfurt/Main: Insel Verlag, 1988. In her most recent book Katharina Mommsen rereads some major portions of the Divan and evaluates Goethe's relationship to the Islamic and preIslamic world against the background of a rich array of sources. Most of the interpretations (white sometimes differing only slightly from established readings) as well as the more general arguments are amply supported by extensive citations from Goethe's oeuvre, his correspondence, recorded conversations, library records, journal entries, scholarly works on the Orient, and various translations of the Koran and Oriental anthologies. If anything, Mommsen's text occasionally suffers from an excess of documentation. One wonders, for example, if as many as three pages of text and citations are really necessary (113-16) to establish the simple fact that gazelles belong to the local color of the Arabic landscape and that the pitching of tents drives them off, in order to substantiate the suggestion that two verses from a Divan paralipomena, "Und unserer Zelten Pfahle /Verdrängen die Gazelle" may have been inspired by the Moallakat. Or if it is useful to provide all of five different Goethe Yearbook 243 sources for groaning camels (102) to place "Das Stöhnen der Kamele" from the fourth stanza of "Wo hast du das genommen?" (Buch des Unmuts), in the Moallakat tradition, when the summary statement "Die Schilderung ihres Kamels gehört zu den Themen, die die Dichter der Moallakat bestrebt sind zu behandeln" (103), preceded by one or two illustrations might have been quite sufficient to make the point. On the other hand, it is very useful to know that within the context of Bedouin lyric a battle scene is normally preceded by "eine ausgedehnte Prahlrede des Helden" (102) to fully appreciate the otherwise relatively obscure verses, "Durchdrang das Ohr, die Seele, / Und derer die sie führen, / Einbildung und Stolzieren" which follow the above. Mommsen's text features other such illuminating moments. Particularly noteworthy is her discussion of "Einlaß," one of the poems written after the first publication of the...