چو سلک درٌ خوشاست نظم پاک توحافظ
"like a string of lustrous pearls is thy clear verse, O Hāfiḍ." We might multiply such parallels, but those given bear out our statement in regard to the imitation of Persian rhetorical figures on the part of Platen.
In the eagerness to be genuinely Persian, the poet was not content, however, with imitating only what was striking or beautiful; he introduces even some features which, though very prominent in Eastern poetry, will never become congenial to the West. Thus the utter abjectness of the Oriental lover, who puts his face in the path of his beloved and invites her (or him) to scatter dust on his head (H. 148. 3), is presented to us with all possible extravagance in these lines of 87:
Sieh mich hier im Staub und setze deine Ferse mir auf's Haupt,
Mich, den letzten von den letzten deiner letzten Sklaven, sieh![139]
To the sāqī is assigned a part almost as prominent as that which is his in the Persian original. It was the introduction of this repulsive trait (e.g. 82) that gave to Heine the opportunity for the savage, scathing onslaught on Platen in the well known passage of the Reisebilder.[140]
Otherwise Platen, like Goethe, ignores the mystic side of Hāfiḍ, and infuses into his Ghaselen a thoroughly bacchanalian spirit, taking frequent occasion to declaim against hypocrisy, fanaticism and the precepts of the Qurān. The credo of these poems is the opening γazal in Spiegel des Hafis (64), where the line "Wir schwören ew'gen Leichtsinn und ew'ge Trunkenheit" may be taken to reflect the sentiment of the revelling Persian poet, who begs the sūfī not to forbid wine, since from eternity it has been mingled with men's dust (H. 61. 4); who claims to have been predestined to the tavern (H. 20. 4); who asks indulgence if he turns aside from the mosque to the wine-house (H. 213. 4); who drinks his wine to the sound of the harp, feeling sure that God will forgive him (H. 292. 5); who is above the reproach of the boasters of austerity (H. 106. 3); and who, finally, asks that the cup be placed in his coffin so that he may drink from it on the day of resurrection (H. 308. 8). But when Platen flings away the Qurān he certainly is not in accord with his Persian model, for, while Hāfiḍ takes issue with the expounders of the sacred book, he discreetly refrains from assailing the book itself.
But perhaps the chief significance of these Ghaselen, as well as those of Rückert, lies in the fact that they introduced a new poetic form into German literature. It is astonishing to see how completely Platen has mastered this difficult form. The radīf or refrain, so familiar to readers of Hāfiḍ, he reproduces with complete success, as may be seen, for instance, in 8, where the words "du liebst mich nicht" are repeated at the end of each couplet, preceded successively by zerrissen, wissen, beflissen, gewissen, vermissen, Narzissen, exactly in the style of such an ode as H. 100. In those odes called Spiegel des Hafis the name Hafis is even regularly introduced into the last couplet, in accordance with the invariable rule of the Persian γazal that the author's name must appear in the final couplet.
Besides the γazal Platen has also attempted the rubāʻī or quatrain, in which form he wrote twelve poems (Werke, ii. pp. 62-64), and the qasīdah. Of this there is only one specimen, a panegyric (for such in most cases is the Persian qasīdah) on Napoleon, and, as may therefore be imagined, of purely Occidental content.[141]