Goethe encountered Hafiz in the summer of 1814 and was electrified. At 65, the old master discovered a new voice, one that blended Persian mysticism with German lyricism in ways no one had attempted. The West-Östlicher Divan is his love letter to the East, but also his most intimate confession, a collection where the poet becomes bridegroom to his own words, where wine and love and God dissolve into each other like smoke and wine. The collection moves through books of varying moods: the Book of the Singer, the Book of Hafiz, the Book of Suleika. That final section contains Goethe's most personal work, poems addressed to Marianne von Willemer, the young woman who would become his love. What readers discovered later is that Marianne wrote several of these poems herself, making their dialogue a genuine exchange between the aging poet and his muse. The verses celebrate sensuality with an urgency that surprises even those who know Goethe's other work. Heine called these poems "the most intoxicating enjoyment of life," so light and happy and ethereal that one wonders how such things are possible in German. This is poetry as seduction, as prayer, as intoxication.
