Whatever defects it may have, Rückert's Oriental work is nevertheless indisputably of the greatest importance to German literature. More than any one else he brought over into it a new spirit and new forms; and it is due primarily to his unsurpassed technical skill that the German language is to-day the best medium for an acquaintance, not only with the literature of the West, but also with that of the East.
[145] See Beyer, Friedrich Rückert, Fkft. a. M. 1868, pp. 101, 102.
[147] So Hammer himself thought at the time. See Rob. Boxberger, Rückert-Studien, Gotha, 1878, p. 224. Such also was the opinion of the scholarly von Schack, Strophen des Omar Chijam, Stuttg. 1878, Nachwort, p. 117, note. A copy of the original _dīvān_ of Rūmī has not been accessible to me.
[148] Cf. for instance No. 8, in ii. with Red. p. 175, and No. 24 in ii. p. 235, with Red. p. 188.
[150] Cf. H̱āfiḍ, Sāqī Nāmah, couplets 77, 78 for the three names mentioned above. The figure is most familiar to the English reader from Fitzgerald's version, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Boston, 1899, p. 211, xxxvii. See also ʻUmar Xayyām ed. Whinfield, London, 1883, No. 466.
[151] They were published in Deutscher Musenalmanach, 1838, and do not belong properly to the collection here discussed.
[152] See essay on this by Robert Boxberger in Rückert-Studien, pp. 210-278. Also Beyer, Neue Mittheil. vol. i. p. 213; vol. ii. pp. 201-204 for the date of many of these poems.
[153] Also a few of the Vierzeilen-Sprüche, pp. 102-108, e.g. No. 30=Nītiś. 31.
[154] Friedr. Rückert, Grammatik, Poetik u. Rhetorik der Perser, ed. W. Pertsch, Gotha, 1874, p. 187.
[156] Fr. Wilken, Hist. Gasnevid. Berol. 1832, p. 13, Latin p. 148.
[157] Cf. transl. of Bahāristān for Kama Shastra Society, Benares, 1887, p. 180. The Persian text of these fables appeared in 1805 in the chrestomathy appended to Fr. Wilken's Institutiones ad Fundamenta Linguae Persicae, Lipsiae, 1805, pp. 172-181.
[158] This poem was mistranslated by Hammer in his Divan des Hafis, Tüb. 1812, vol. ii. p. 553. Bodenstedt has given a version in rhymed couplets: Der Sänger von Schiras, Berl. 1877, p. 129.
[159] For Niḍāmī I have used a lithographed edition published at Shīrāz, A.H. 1312. In Wilberforce Clarke's transl. of the Iskandar Nāmah, London, 1881, the couplet in question is the forty-third.