[201] One poem of his earliest period, Die Lehre (vol. iii. p. 276), published in Hamburgs Wächter, 1817 (Strodtmann, op. cit. i. 54), does seem to show it. In this the young bee, heedless of motherly advice, does not beware of the candle-flame and so "Flamme gab Flammentod." We at once recognize a familiar Persian thought, and are reminded of Goethe's fine line, "Das Lebend'ge will ich preisen das nach Flammentod sich sehnet." (Selige Sehnsucht, ed. Loeper, iv. 26.)
[202] O.M. v. Schlechta-Wssehrd, Der Frühlingsgarten von Mewlana Abdurrahman Dschami, Wien, 1846. Persian text, p. 38.
[203] For a discussion of the legend see Nöldeke in Grdr. iran. Phil. vol. ii. pp. 154, 155, 158.
CHAPTER X.
BODENSTEDT.
Lieder des Mirza Schaffy—Are Original Poems—Nachlass—Aus Morgenland und Abendland—Sakuntala, a Narrative Poem.
The Hāfiḍ tendency was carried to the height of popularity by Friedrich Martin Bodenstedt, whose Lieder des Mirza Schaffy met with a phenomenal success, running through one hundred and forty editions in Germany alone during the lifetime of the author, besides being translated into many foreign languages.[204] These songs have had a remarkable career, which the author himself relates in an essay appended to the Nachlass.[205]
According to the prevailing opinion, Mirza Schaffy was a great Persian poet, a rival of Saʻdī and Hāfiḍ, and Bodenstedt was the translator of his songs. Great, therefore, was the astonishment of the European, and particularly the German public, when it was discovered that the name of this famous poet was utterly unknown in the East, even in his own native land. As early as 1860, Professor Brugsch, when in Tiflis, had searched for the singer's grave, but in vain; nobody could tell him where a certain Mirza Schaffy lay buried. At last, in 1870, the Russian counsellor Adolph Bergé gave an authentic account of the real man and his literary activity.[206] Two things were clearly established: first, that such a person as Mīrzā Šafīʻ had really existed; second, that this person was no poet. On this second point the few scraps of verse which Bergé had been able to collect, and which he submitted in the essay cited above, leave absolutely no doubt. So, in 1874, when Bodenstedt published another poetic collection of Mirza Schaffy, he appended an essay wherein he explained clearly the origin and the nature of the original collection bearing that name.