The Importance of Literature in Education
Nebula4.3, September 2007
In Search of a Remedial Philosophy: A Consecutive Study of Hafez and Goethe.
By Ismail Baroudy
Abstract Despite a sharp gap historically segregating Hafez and Goethe from each other, the researcher justifiably finds them to merit sharing common spiritual, social, cultural and literary characteristics. This advocacy mainly stems from the fact that the former (Hafez) exercised an unfathomable strand of multidimensional impact on the latter (Goethe). Admittedly, based on findings approached in this study, the occidental Europe, at the time of Goethe, bitterly suffered from the absence of a remedial philosophy to make up for the ethical disadvantages befell upon the Europeans then. The researcher accordingly asserts that Goethe intelligently took Hafez’s oriental and Islamic tenets and values and had them frankly and furtively included in his mystical and transcendental expectations in poetry. He efficiently worked them out as a healing remedy for the losses and damages incurred upon the fellow-Europeans due to some utilitarian wars almost ravaged the whole continent. On the whole, exponent gurus such as Hafez and Goethe are undeniably privileged to be the inevitable product of some historical, cultural and social exigencies. They themselves have been indispensably trapped into such a narrow shave to eventually emerge in the scene as a couple of unforeseen sublimes consecutively matching up each other in every true sense of the word and practice. Never was the saying “great men think alike” more aptly rendered applicable than it is of the immortal Hafez of Persia (Iran) and Goethe, the multi-dimensional genius of Germany. Hafez was born about the year A.H. 720/C.E. 13201 in the city of Shiraz the capital of Pars (from which the name of Persia itself is derived) at a distance of about 38 miles (about 57 Kilometers) from the ancient Achaemenian Capital, Perspolis (Takht-e-Jamshid). He then lived there all his life of above 70 years till his
In Search of a Remedial Philosophy: A Consecutive Study of Hafez and Goethe.
By Ismail Baroudy
Abstract Despite a sharp gap historically segregating Hafez and Goethe from each other, the researcher justifiably finds them to merit sharing common spiritual, social, cultural and literary characteristics. This advocacy mainly stems from the fact that the former (Hafez) exercised an unfathomable strand of multidimensional impact on the latter (Goethe). Admittedly, based on findings approached in this study, the occidental Europe, at the time of Goethe, bitterly suffered from the absence of a remedial philosophy to make up for the ethical disadvantages befell upon the Europeans then. The researcher accordingly asserts that Goethe intelligently took Hafez’s oriental and Islamic tenets and values and had them frankly and furtively included in his mystical and transcendental expectations in poetry. He efficiently worked them out as a healing remedy for the losses and damages incurred upon the fellow-Europeans due to some utilitarian wars almost ravaged the whole continent. On the whole, exponent gurus such as Hafez and Goethe are undeniably privileged to be the inevitable product of some historical, cultural and social exigencies. They themselves have been indispensably trapped into such a narrow shave to eventually emerge in the scene as a couple of unforeseen sublimes consecutively matching up each other in every true sense of the word and practice. Never was the saying “great men think alike” more aptly rendered applicable than it is of the immortal Hafez of Persia (Iran) and Goethe, the multi-dimensional genius of Germany. Hafez was born about the year A.H. 720/C.E. 13201 in the city of Shiraz the capital of Pars (from which the name of Persia itself is derived) at a distance of about 38 miles (about 57 Kilometers) from the ancient Achaemenian Capital, Perspolis (Takht-e-Jamshid). He then lived there all his life of above 70 years till his
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