7 - Arabian Proverbs

Summary

Talismans throughout this book I’ll scatter.

ALL HIS LIFE, but especially after turning fifty, Goethe prized terse, pithy statements of opinion or widely held truths: proverbs, aphorisms, country sayings, parables, maxims, apophthegms, and epigrams, that is, in brief, all trenchant, didactic forms. Psychologically, the existential attitude of such sayings might well have appealed to the aging mind’s inclination to reflect on life rather than take an active role, as in youth, and to state what it concludes from experience briefly and with apodictic self-assurance. The books Goethe borrowed from the library reflect this preference. To better understand other cultures, he studied carefully the proverbs still current in their colloquial languages. Experience had taught him [7-1]:

Their sayings much of nations tell,

But first among them you must dwell.

Goethe was more than a merely receptive reader of these forms; often, he was moved to respond “productively,” in that spirit of constructive criticism encountered earlier. Occasionally, he sought creative impulses in anthologies, as in the case of Arabic proverbs while writing the Divan. Aside from available collections, he found such genres everywhere during his oriental studies, mainly as quotations from the Qur’an, the Sunna, or in poetic texts. Poems by Goethe inspired by the Qur’an or Sunna were discussed earlier, as were the Tame Xenias on motifs from the Moallakat.

Sayings play an enormous role in Arabian culture. Arabs customarily quote proverbs and the like in their ordinary speech and in writing. That is why they occur so frequently in travel journals, histories, biographies of the Prophet, and similar works. With its many aphorisms, the Divan reflects the culturally significant role such sayings play in the Near and Middle East. Goethe intentionally “scattered” such forms throughout the work. He inclined strongly to such witty, apodictic reflections, finding it liberating to encapsulate ideas and experiences in this way and anchor them in language. His encounter with the spirit and poetry of Arabia and Persia was necessary, however, for Goethe to bring forth the wealth of brief, reflective poems in the Divan and Tame Xenias. He acknowledged this commenting on the “Book of Observations,” declaring that “he who dwells in the Orient” is inclined toward reflection:

for meditation is all-important there, flowing to and fro between the sensory and the supersensory, without favoring one or the other.