Pokonferencyjna

part:
Old age goes, but their love is true,
They are Jamil and Botain.
Goethe referred to Jamil Ibn Maamar, 
the 7
th
 century poet, (died in 701), who 
fell in love with Buseina, the daughter of 

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74 
MONOGRAFIA POKONFERENCYJNA
his uncle, and praised her in verse, that 
raised the discontent of the tribesmen. 
Buseina was married off to another, but 
the poet continued to love her until his 
death, and he was called Jamal of Buseina. 
This legend is not extended beyond the 
Arab world, but, as seen, it did not stay 
without attention of Goethe.
Goethe was well acquainted with the 
classical Arabic poetry of the Abbasid era 
(the 8
th
 – 11
th
 centuries). He was particu-
larly attracted to the poems of Abu t-
Tayyib al-Mutanabbi  (915-965), the great 
Arab poet of the 10
th
 century, who’s works 
differed on the one hand a bright creative 
personality, and on the other hand incon-
sistency, which was due to the extraordi-
nary personality of the Arab poet. The 
brilliantly talented poet was too vain and 
issued his poems for last truth, so he be-
lieved in himself as a prophet, and for that 
he was nicknamed “al-Mutanabbi” – “pos-
ing as a prophet”. Goethe writes about this 
in his comment to Notes to the West-East 
Divan in the article Muhammad, “One 
poet boldly stated: I can also talk about 
everything that Muhammad knows and 
says, with what I can express better than 
him”. And he gathered around him as 
disgruntled as he was.   Therefore, in 
mockery of him, he was called “al-Mu-
tanabbi”. We know him under this nick-
name, which means “the false prophet”. 
[Goethe 2010:119-120] 
But in general, Goethe thought highly 
of al-Mutanabbi for his sharp thoughts, 
vivid imagery, and fearless criticism of 
people in power.   Additionally, Goethe’s 
interest in the identity of Arab poets 
looked through his commitment to the 
aesthetics of Romanticism, where the 
poet is always compared with a prophet, 
bearing the knowledge of the masses but 
often left alone from misunderstanding 
crowd.  The same motif of prophetic po-
ets is found in the poems of Byron, Keats, 
Shelley and other great poets of Romanti-
cism.
Goethe was attracted by adherence to 
the traditions of the fathers, the closeness 
to nature, inspiration, the ability to 
express wisdom in short aphorisms of 
Arabic poetry. He was particularly 
impressed by “badiha”, the art of improvi-
sation, in which, in his opinion, Arab 
poets developed imaginative thinking. 
Through their rich imagination, they 
gained ability to use all expressive and 
visual means of a huge arsenal of elo-
quence and rhetoric art.
“These poets are able to portray any-
thing and easily connect complex ideas”, 
wrote Goethe in his notes to the West – 
Eastern Divan.  Therefore, they bring to-
gether the spirit of perspicacity and ironic 
humor. Not only poets, but all the people, 
whose charm and ability to joke manifests 
itself in countless Hikayats and Navadirs, 
possess this feature. [ Goethe 1985:378] 
The Folk tales collection, One Thou-
sand and One Nights, was another work 
that influenced the later work of Goethe, 
both in terms of content and style. In the 
early 19
th
 century, German publishers be-
gan to print folk tales collections and One 
Thousand and One Nights was translated 
directly into Arabic from the Tunisian 
manuscript.  In 1925, Goethe received the 
first 9  volumes of Arab fairy tales from 
the publisher. Goethe was already familiar 

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  75 
PHILOLOGY,  SOCIOLOGY AND CULTUROLOGY №14
with fairy tales translated from French, 
but this new, direct translation from the 
original language more accurately con-
veyed the unique originality and flavor of 
Scheherazade tales.
The image of Scheherazade captivated 
Goethe and was often found in his works, 
acquiring a personal character as a carrier 
of his thoughts. For example, in the sec-
ond part of the brilliant work Faust by 
Goethe the Emperor says to Mephistoph-
eles:
With your thousand and one night,
Please always treat us the same way.
Be prolific like Scheherzade,
And you will never be forgotten by me.
Just constantly you appear near,
When I’m tired of work by evening.[ 
Goethe 1985:378]
There are plenty of these examples in 
the works of Goethe. Katherine Masen, 
the American researcher, who devoted 
her entire scientific life to the study of 
Goethe’s relationship with the Arab-Mus-
lim culture, believes that Goethe used the 
framework structure of Scheherazade’s 
tales, as well as the techniques such as 
“the fairy tale in the tale” or “short story 
in the short story” in his novel Wilhelm 
Meister’s Apprenticeship, thereby creating 
a novel of a completely new type, in which 
there is no clearly built plot. Moreover, 
the image of the hero serves as a frame for 
different plot repletes and inserted novels, 
sometimes unrelated to the fate of the 
hero, but representing real life stories.
The West-Eastern Divan is the pinnacle 
of Goethe’s works, along with his Faust. In 
practice, it realized Goethe’s dream of East-
ern and Western cultures synthesis. In the 
Divan, we experience the world of Quranic 
meanings and tales of Oriental poetry im-
ages, beliefs and traditions, and yet, we 
deeply perceive the personal and intimate 
feelings of the German poet through the 
dialogues of Khatam and of Zuleikha. In 
the Divan, the credo of Goethe, his world-
view, which is felt the influence of Muslim 
culture reveals. 
As you know, Goethe was one of the 
pioneers of the Romantic Movement in 
literature.   The representatives of 
Romanticism had “daemonia”, where real-
ity was opposed to the romantic ideal 
world in the image of nature, childhood 
and distant exotic countries. In such a 
world, a romantic way for Goethe has 
become the whole of the East, where he 
wanted to go and he wanted to know. But 
knowledge of Goethe East has exotic 
character. Deep study of culture and lit-
erature of the East allowed him to develop 
an important concept of world literature. 
It is the translation of Arabic, Persian and 
Turkic literature, as well as familiarity 
with Indian and Chinese literature that 
allowed us to draw more important con-
clusions about the literary processes, their 
origins and development.
The main thing in this concept was the 
conclusion that contrary to the claims of 
eurocentrists, who believe that the funda-
mental in the world literary process are 
the ancient Greek and Roman literature, 
Eastern literature, for all its specificity and 
originality, is also the fundamental of 
world literature, and it was Eastern litera-
ture that had a strong influence on the 
formation of many aesthetic values in 
other. One more important conclusion 

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76 
MONOGRAFIA POKONFERENCYJNA
made by Goethe has meant that a huge 
full-flowing course of world literature has 
been formed by the power and appeal of 
world literature.
In 2019, celebrating the 270th 
Anniversary of the birth of Goethe, the 
great German poet, it is necessary to 
emphasize once again the relevance and 
importance of his conceptual conclusions 
in the modern world, where, on the one 
hand, there is a tendency to dialogue of 
civilizations and, on the other hand, 
collisions of different nature as political, 
social, inter-confessional, etc. Works of 
Goethe teach tolerance, mutual sufferance 
and respect, the understanding of the 
universal importance of culture and many 
other universal values.
Thus, thanks to the translations from 
Arabic, Persian and other Eastern 
languages, Goethe got acquainted with 
the literature of the East and developed 
his concept of “world literature” as a 
detailed theory of international cultural 
communication. According to the con-
cept of Goethe, each national literature, 
preserving its identity features, in the 
process of interaction with other national 
literatures and culture, mutually enriches,