What the glad grove sang
Through the wide vale rang,
And the fresh stream from the mountain sprang.
While the upland air
Wafted forth its rhyme,
"Oh, how wond'rous fair
Is the glad spring-time!"
Seldom has a volume of poems been received with more general applause. Their renown spread rapidly through their native land; constantly increasing demand for copies rendered needful frequent new editions, to which at divers times were added by the author freshly-created poems; and the interest is still alive, now nearly quarter of a century after their first appearance, when they have passed their fiftieth edition. They have been at one time or other translated into most of the modern tongues of Europe; and that they have never gained popularity with us is due probably to the fact that in those which have been translated into our tongue neither the essence nor the form of the original has been preserved. By the title no mystification was ever designed: it came, as it were, of itself, and the purport of the narrative through which the main songs were interwoven being well known, it was never, supposed that a doubt concerning the authorship could arise. Nevertheless, the critics accepted them as translations from the Persian, and sharp lines of distinction were drawn between the poet, Mirza-Schaffy, and his translator, Friedrich Bodenstedt, not precisely to the advantage of the latter. Many a hearty laugh did Bodenstedt indulge in on reading in one or another learned dissertation that he was the possessor of a very neat poetic talent, and frequently reminded one in his original compositions of the works of his genial teacher, Mirza-Schaffy, of which he had given admirable translations, though without attaining to the excellence of the original. Now, a poet, in the wildest flights of his imagination, could not hope for a more brilliant success for the poetic fiction of his own creation than to have it accepted by the world as a living reality. In this he would naturally delight, even though his own personality were for a time thrust into the background, precisely like a loving father whose children meet with better fortune in life than himself. Sundry renditions into foreign tongues were even announced as direct translations from the Persian.
After the death of the real Mirza-Schaffy in 1852, which was duly announced by the press, sundry efforts were made by Eastern travelers to visit his grave in Tiflis and gain those particulars concerning him and his writings which Bodenstedt was supposed to have selfishly withheld from the public. Of these, one of the most prominent was Professor H. Brugsch, secretary of the Prussian embassy to Persia in 1860, who in his book of travels thus descants on his futile efforts: "No one could inform us where the last earthly remains of a certain Mirza-Schaffy were laid to rest. We consoled ourselves with the reflection that neither mounds nor monuments are requisite to preserve a poet's fame, but that through his songs is his name transmitted to posterity. Yet even here we were doomed to disappointment. No one whom we encountered knew aught of the songs of the jovial, genial Mirza-Schaffy which in our German Fatherland have penetrated to the very life of the people."
Some years later the Russian imperial state counselor Bergé, while chief of educational institutions in Caucasus, also made the matter a subject of investigation, and in the year 1870 gave the history thereof to the world in the Journal of the German Oriental Society. He tells of his vain efforts to learn something of the genius of Mirza-Schaffy in his own land, and the amusement he created by his queries concerning possible posthumous works, and finally settles the question beyond dispute concerning the authorship of the poems.