East West Divan

In 1814, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe read the poems of the great fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in a newly published translation by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. For Goethe, the book was a revelation. He felt a deep connection with Hafiz and Persian poetic traditions, and was immediately inspired to create his own West-Eastern Divan as a lyrical conversation between the poetry and history of his native Germany and that of Persia. The resulting collection engages with the idea of the other and unearths lyrical connections between cultures. The West-Eastern Divan is one of the world’s great works of literature, an inspired masterpiece, and a poetic linking of European and Persian traditions. This new bilingual edition expertly presents the wit, intelligence, humor, and technical mastery of the poetry in Goethe’s Divan. In order to preserve the work’s original power, Eric Ormsby has created this translation in clear contemporary prose rather than in rhymed verse, which tends to obscure the works sharpness. This edition is also accompanied by explanatory notes of the verse in German and in English and a translation of Goethe’s own commentary, the “Notes and Essays for a Better Understanding of the West-Eastern Divan.” This edition not only bring this classic collection to English-language readers, but also, at a time of renewed Western unease about the other, to open up the rich cultural world of Islam.

This collection of scholarly essays on Egyptian culture, history, society, archeology, literature, art, and conservation is published in memory of Werner Mark Linz, who spent much of the latter part of his professional life as the Director of the American University in Cairo Press. East-West Divan is the first volume of the Gingko Library, a publishing project that embraces scholarship from both East and West, conceived by Werner Mark Linz to foster greater cross-cultural understanding. Among the contributors to this collection are the Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building; Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass; the renowned Swiss theologian, Hans Küng; the author of the acclaimed A Fort of Nine Towers, Qais Akbar Omar; and Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan.

Bringing together young musicians from Palestine, Israel and other countries of the Middle East, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is both one of the most acclaimed youth orchestras in the world and a rare note of hope in a war-torn region. Founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said in 1999, it aims to promote Arab-Israeli understanding through music. In An Orchestra Beyond Borders, Elena Cheah, a professional musician and assistant to Daniel Barenboim, explores the orchestra’s journey through the remarkable stories of the musicians that comprise it. These youthful testimonies are a window into the life of the region. Together, they communicate the musicians’ ambitions and hopes, their varied and conflicting views on life and politics, and above all the orchestra’s transformative ability to create an atmosphere of musical cooperation away from the implications and hardships of a world full of division and conflict.

Now reaching its 200th anniversary, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s sequence of poems, the West-Eastern Divan serves as the inspiration for this new collection poems by twenty-four international poets. Goethe’s original work shows the poet looking east from his homeland of Germany to build a collection of writing inspired by the poetic traditions of Persia. In twelve books, Goethe writes on a variety of great poetic themes, including love, humor, parables, and paradise. Over the years since its original publication in 1819, the Divan has served as inspiration for a variety of literary, theoretical, and musical responses. A New Divan revisits Goethe’s work in a lively celebration of cross-cultural exchange. Works by twelve poets from the East and twelve from the West respond to the themes laid out in Goethe’s Divan and build bridges between cultures, nationalities, and languages. The poets have been paired to write in response to each of the twelve books of the Divan, and here present their multi-lingual works in eleven different languages, each with a poetic interpretation written in English. Three pairs of essays complement and shed further light on the series of poetic exchanges. These writings mirror the original notes that Goethe included in his West-Eastern Divan. ​ Reaching through time, language, and poetic history, A New Divan offers a lyrical conversation and opens paths of connection across cultures.

"The ageing Goethe finds new inspiration and youthfulness through the love of a young woman and the example of the great Persian poet Hafez.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), a towering figure in German culture, was remarkably prolific in many literary genres. But much of his work is scarcely known in the English-speaking world. With this new translation, Robert Martin tries to remedy this situation with regard to one of Goethe's most adventurous volumes of verse, the West-Eastern Divan. Here Goethe playfully pretends to be a Middle-Eastern poet, but draws on themes vital to all of humanity - love, creativity, wisdom, richness of life."

This English verse translation of Goethe's West-Eastern Divan aims to give English-readers a fair indication of the themes, quality and flavour of Goethe's major cycle of lyric poetry. As far as possible it remains faithful to Goethe's metrical and rhyming patterns. The Divan's wealth of earnest depth and passion is conveyed with an often casual simplicity of vocabulary and expression. It moves through changing moods from which wit and grace and good humour are never long absent when the mind is, as in these poems, at play and in command. Goethe described this complexity as «Unconditional submission to the unfathomable will of God, serene conspectus of the activities of this earth, mobile and always in circles and spirals, love, inclination hovering between two worlds, all the real purified, dissolving in symbol». The English translation seeks to keep to the poetic tones in Goethe's seemingly effortless words.

This book offers a study of West-East cross-cultural and cross-contextual literacy by investigating Goethe's relationship to the poetics of fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in the West-östlicher Divan. Goethe's collection of poetry, this book argues, constitutes a turning point in the history of German poetic subjectivity. The intellectual and historical significance of the Divan is examined by considering Goethe's conception of history both in relation to Hegel's philosophy of history as well as the linear notion of progress throughout the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the book demonstrates how the rise of aesthetics and the transition from a theological to a secular-humanistic conception of history and humanity in Europe positively influenced the reception of non-European literatures at the end of the eighteenth century. Hafiz, as argued here, owes his textual presence in the Divan to a cross-cultural and cross-temporal poetic vision that has its roots in the European Enlightenment. The book also elaborates on the role translation plays in the development of poetry and poetics as exemplified in the works of Sir William Jones (1746-1794) and Josef Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856), translators of Oriental poetry into English and German.

Poetry that responds to the Qur’an and to the tradition it created. Written for the general reader and the specialist, Muslim and non-Muslim, East-West Poetry responds to the Qur’an, scriptural heart of Islam, and to the tradition it created. An introduction relates the Qur’an to Hebrew and Christian biblical writing and to Rumi, who illumined the Qur’an with Sufi mystic wisdom; and we sample earlier Western poetic celebrations of Islamic culture. “Rarely has a book been so timely as this one. It is an East-West collection that comes at just the right moment in our cultural history, now that America is reawakening to the plenitude of its varied traditions. The double role of the book’s author as researcher and poet benefits the reader of the 140 Islam-related lyrics offered here.” — Katharina Mommsen “Martin Bidney has [brought] the Christian Gospel and the Muslim Qur’an together with the Torah to form a luminous torch of love and understanding.” — Khalil Semaan

Children of the Stone is the unlikely story of Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a boy from a Palestinian refugee camp in Ramallah who confronts the occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then inspires scores of others to work with him to make that dream a reality. That dream is of a music school in the midst of a refugee camp in Ramallah, a school that will transform the lives of thousands of children through music. Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli musician and music director of La Scala in Milan and the Berlin Opera, is among those who help Ramzi realize his dream. He has played with Ramzi frequently, at chamber music concerts in Al-Kamandjati, the school Ramzi worked so hard to build, and in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra that Barenboim founded with the late Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said. Children of the Stone is a story about music, freedom and conflict; determination and vision. It's a vivid portrait of life amid checkpoints and military occupation, a growing movement of nonviolent resistance, the past and future of musical collaboration across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and the potential of music to help children see new possibilities for their lives. Above all, Children of the Stone chronicles the journey of Ramzi Aburedwan, and how he worked against the odds to create something lasting and beautiful in a war-torn land.