Pokonferencyjna

GOETHE AND ARABIC LITERATURE
KhodjaevaRanoUmarovna
Doctor of Philology, Professor Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies Uzbekistan

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  73 
PHILOLOGY,  SOCIOLOGY AND CULTUROLOGY №14
fate of a vagabond, who strayed from the 
usual medium of collective tribal life.
Echoes of Bedouin poetry is heard in 
Goethe’s poem Hegire, which starts his 
famous  West-Eastern Divan that is con-
sidered the deep humanistic synthesis of 
Eastern and Western cultures.
Like a shepherd roams with a flock,
Freshen up under the chinar  
Lead the caravan through the sands
With coffee, musk and silks,
Through the  waterless lands and the heat
PasttheImpassableside.
It is known that the name of this poem 
is inspired by the most important event in 
the life of the prophet Muhammad  – 
resettlement (al – Hijra) in 622 from Mec-
ca to Medina (Yasrib). Goethe did not 
choose this name by accident, because at 
the time when he wrote the poem Hegira 
he was deeply disappointed in Western 
values, especially after the defeat of Napo-
leon Bonaparte allies (he was a 
Bonapartist), when there was an increase 
in despotism and crisis of consciousness 
in many European countries:
The North, West and South are break-
ing up!
Thrones are shattering, Empires quaking;
Fly thou to the untroubled East,
There the patriarchs’ air to taste!
What with love and wine and song
Chiser’s fount will make thee young.
Thus, Goethe turned to the East in 
search of spiritual and moral foundations:
In a world where the ancestors of the 
respect,
Where someone else’s-in neglect,
Where there is space to the right faith,
Closely the wily wisdom,
And where the word forever is new,
For the word was spoken.
Goethe was so interested in Arabic 
literature that he repeatedly tried to learn 
Arabic. Goethe himself wrote about this 
in Annals,1815, “ Not being completely 
unfamiliar with the peculiar features of 
the East, I turned to the language (Ara-
bic – R.Kh.), because it was inevitable to 
breathe the air of the East, I even appealed 
to the writing with its features and deco-
rations. I remembered Moallakat, I trans-
lated some of them immediately after 
their appearance even before. The Bed-
ouin lifestyle came to my mind; the Life of 
Mohammed by Elsner, with whom I had 
long been friends, helped me again. I 
strengthened my relationships with von 
Diez. The Book Qaboos has opened my 
eyes to a scene of Eastern rules in the 
most significant era such as ours... The 
Majnun and Layla, samples of a bound-
less love, were again absorbed by the feel-
ing and imagination.
In this passage, Goethe reminded us of 
the old-time legend of Layla and Majnun. 
But Goethe knew stories about the other 
famous beloved of Muslim East such as 
Yusuf and Zulaikha, Farkhad and Shirin, 
Sulaymanand Balkis, Rustam and Rudaba 
and that is surprising, he was even in-
formed of Jamila and Busein (Goethe tells 
Botein), whom he also mentioned in the 
West-Eastern Divan in the Ishq-name