Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 05
History
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 05
Literature -- Collections
The book was received with universal applause, and on it Bodenstedt's
fame as poet rests. It has been translated into all the European
languages, even into Hebrew and Tartar, and is now in its one hundred
and forty-third German edition. Twenty-four years later Bodenstedt
followed it with a similar collection, 'Aus dem Nachlass des
Mirza-Schaffy' (From the Posthumous Works of Mirza-Schaffy: 1874), where
he shows the more serious, philosophic aspect of Eastern life.
Bodenstedt's poems and his translations of Persian poetry are the
culmination of the movement, begun by the Romantic School, to bring
Eastern thought and imagery home to the Western world. Other well-known
examples are Goethe's 'West-Eastern Divan,' and the poems and
paraphrases of Rückert and others; but the 'Songs of Mirza-Schaffy' are
the only poems produced under exotic influences which have been
thoroughly acclimatized on German soil.
Bodenstedt was for a time director of the court theatre at Meiningen;
and though he held this difficult position for only a short time, he did
much to lay the foundation of the success which the Meininger, as the
best German stock company of actors, achieved later on their starring
tours through the country. He was ennobled in 1867, while in this
position. He spent the last year of his life at Wiesbaden, where he
died in 1892.
Bodenstedt was a voluminous writer; his work includes poems, romances,
novels, and dramas. 'Vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ocean' (From the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean: 1882) is a description of his lecturing
tour to the United States the year before. His autobiography,
'Erinnerungen aus Meinem Leben' (Recollections of my Life), gives
interesting glimpses into his eventful career. His mind was more
receptive than creative, and this, combined with his great technical
skill and his quick intuition, fitted him peculiarly to be a translator
and adapter. His translation of Shakespeare's works, in conjunction with
Paul Heyse, Kurz, and others (fifth edition, Leipzig, 1890), is
especially noteworthy, as also his rendering of Shakespeare's sonnets.
But he will live in German literature as the poet Mirza-Schaffy.
* * * * *
TWO
To one exalted aim we both are tending,
I and thou!
To one captivity we both are bending,
I and thou!
In my heart thee I close--thou me in thine;
In twofold life, yet one, we both are blending,
I and thou!
Thee my wit draws--and me thine eye of beauty;
Two fishes, from one bait we are depending,
I and thou!
Yet unlike fishes--through the air of Heaven,
Like two brave eagles, we are both ascending,
I and thou!
WINE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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