Goethe

The European authors and thinkers in classic period and particularly Romantic one were searching the root and basis of European culture and languages. The decoding of Sanskrit emphasized the centrality of the Orient for European culture. Goethe, the famous poet and author of Germany, under the influence of this movement and for his own interest, studied the works of orientalists too. Alltough he never went to the Orient, however, the study and survey of the translation the books by the Orient authors and poets, for him, was spiritual travel to the Orient. Particularly, during the study and survey he acquainted with the poeti-cal works of Hafez which exerted a strong influence on him and thus he created an attractive compilation in German language. The West-östlicher Divan of Goethe is the result of his spiritual travel to the Orient and, in effect, it is a description which joins the two poles of world (East and West). The description of Goethe’s life, his spiritual travel to the east, his acquaintance with Hafez and finally the West-östlicher Divan form the four parts of this ar-ticle.

The romantics in the West are paying close attention to Eastern mystical literature and poets such as Hafiz, Rumi, and Sa’adi. The intellectual similarities of Goethe, the great German poet in the 19th century, with Ibn-al-‘Arabī, an Islamic mystic and philosopher, and the common characteristics of the beloved in Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan and Ibn ‘Arabī’s Tarjoman Al-Ashwaq, have made some call them “spiritual brothers”. The purpose of this study is to explain the role of earthly love in human spiritual transcendence in the lyric poems of two great Arab and German poets. This research, using content analysis method and the approach of the American school of comparative literature, examines the characteristics of the two beloveds in Ibn-al-‘Arabī’s and Goethe’s work, namely, Nizam and Marianne (Zulikha), and how this earthly love has become the basis for transcendental love for the two poets. The results of this comparison show that although there is no mention of Goethe’s acquaintance with Ibn ‘Arabi in the former’s biography, there are similarities in issues such as unity of existence, transcendental love, and the union of the lover and beloved. For the two poets, love is the ladder for their spiritual excellence. In the eyes of the two poets, love turns any plurality into unity and reveals the beloved in different shapes and forms.