SOAS Research Online

Abstract

In 1812 the orientalist and later president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Josef von Hammer-Purgstall published a two volume edition of the poetry of the 14th century Persian poet Hafis. This translation was based on a 17th century commented Ottoman Turkish edition of Hafis’ poetry by the Bosnian philologist Sudi, which Hammer found during a diplomatic mission to Constantinople in the early years of the 19th century. Hammer’s German translation later became the main source for one of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s best known later works, the West-oestlicher Divan. Goethe himself described his Divan as a productive literary response to the the medieval Persian poet Hafis and acknowledged the role of Hammer-Purgstall as a literary mediator, without whom this literary encounter would not have taken place. While Goethe’s Divan has been the topic of numerous studies since its publication in 1819, Hammer-Purgstall’s work as translator of Hafis’ poetry has never been studied systematically. Throughout the past 180 years, Hammer-Purgstall has been criticized, mainly by Goethe specialists with no knowledge of Persian, for the stylistic archaism of his Hafis translation. This monograph is the first attempt to critically analyze and revaluate Hammer-Purgstall’s translation work with direct reference to the source and target texts and their cultural historical contexts. It implicitely employs the methodological approach of descriptive-historical translation studies. The monograph starts with a reconstruction of Hammer-Purgstall’s reading of Hafis and his concept of translation. In the text analytical part, eight translations by Hammer-Purgstall are put in relation to the Ottoman commented edition by Sudi and the Persian original versions according to the historical, critical Hafis edition by Qasem Ghani and Mohammad Qazini. The monograph was published by the University of Graz in the series “Grazer Morgenländische Studies” in Hammer-Purgstall’s home province of Steiermark in commemoration of the150th anniversary of his passing.