NOTES.

BOOK OF THE SINGER.

1 The family of the Barmecides originated in Balkh. They were able, affluent, and famous for their love of the fine arts; patrons and protectors of cloisters and institutions of learning. They furnished governors to provinces under the reign of Haroun ar Raschid (Aaron the Just), 786-809, and under later rulers of the House of the Abassids. "Time of the Barmecides" proverbially expressed an epoch of the liveliest and most sumptuous activity.

2 Chiser is an Arabic name that appears variously spelled in books as Khedr, Khizir, and Khizr. Its meaning is the same as the Persian Sebes, green, which is the root of Sabazios, the Mithras of the Zendavesta. It was a trait of Mithras to make green the waste places: he was the Repairer, the Restorer. He expressed an element of the Nature-Worship which appeared in all the ancient local and ethnical names, including that of Dionysus, or Bacchus the same ideas of the fructification of the earth in Spring, the revival of Nature from the death of Winter, the eternal process of generation, are transmitted through them from the earliest times and the remotest Eastern sources. Dionysus travelling from India into Libya is only the recurrence of these ideas of the restorative power of Nature. He is the Chiser who watches over the fountain of youth in Ethiopia, concerning which Herodotus, III. 23, reports that its use prolonged the life of the people.

Chiser is Spring and youth, the immortal green. As Khizr he is still a prophet in the mythology of a sect of Dervishes called Bektâshees, who relate that Moses learned the true path from him. Khizr, they say, became first immortal by drinking at the fountain of youth.

The Arabs used to think of Chiser as a deliverer in peril, an avenger of wrongs, a guide in the wilderness, an escorter of pilgrims to and from Mecca, the conductor of Moses through the Red Sea and the desert. He and Elias, sometimes confounded, protect travellers; the former is constantly journeying over the earth for that purpose, and the latter by sea.

The Persian sect of the Sufis mystically translated Chiser's spring into the divine love that renews.

In the outer wall of the Convent of St. Catherine, at Mount Sinai, are some niches in which the Arabs place pans of incense in honor of Khizr, or, as they interpret him, the Prophet Elias.

See, in chapter xviii. of the Koran, the adventures of Moses in search of Al Khedr.

3 Among the gems and amulets which were favorites of Basilides, the Jewish Gnostic, there was the mystic stone Abraxas, which expressed his doctrine of the seven natures in each one of the 365 spiritual worlds: it represented the whole evolution from Deity. The word Aßpaĝas was formed according to the numerical values of the Greek letters: that is, a = :I, B = 2, p = = 100, a = 1, § = 60, a = = I, S 200 the addition of the whole being the number of days in the year and of the Basilidean gradations of the spiritual world.

=

By these descriptions of oriental charms and talismans Goethe hints at his various styles throughout the "Divan." Abraxas is the enigmatic. Under the Signet-Ring he expects the reader's concurrence to make out all his meanings.

4 The number of ninety-nine would have behaved awkwardly in Goethe's verse. The ninety-nine names or epithets which the Mohammedan applies to Allah exhaust His attributes. They are

written on paper and serve as personal amulets. His Prophet is also furnished with ninety-nine names which are used as charms. They are very effective in preserving a family and the house it lives in from damage. The Mohammedan rosary has ninety-nine beads, with a name to repeat at each.

The previous verse, “Allah's is the Orient," is by no means an ordinary Mohammedan sentiment, but it comes from Hafis, and expresses the tolerance or indifference of Sufism, concerning which see Note 4 to the "Book of Ill-Humor." Thus the verse, like many others of Goethe's, clothes in Oriental costume a genuine West-Easterly sense that is shared by the advanced thought in both countries. The origin of the sentiment of Hafis may be traced to the earlier time of Mohammedanism when the old custom of turning to Jerusalem during the act of worship, which the Arabs caught from the Jews, was diverted toward Mecca.

The points of the compass are not carefully conned by the Sufi who knows that all the winds which blow over all places are the waifs and strays of an Infinite Breath.

5 The poet Saadi thus begins his introduction to the Gulistan, or Rose Garden, as translated by Ross. "Every breath that is inhaled is an elongation of life; and when it is exhaled it exhilarates the spirits accordingly, in every single breathing two benefits are forthcoming, and for each benefit a thanksgiving is owing."

6 Hafis said that the dust out of which man was created was moistened with wine before it was moulded.

"O just Fakir, with brow austere,

Forbid me not the vine;

On the first day, poor Hafis' clay

Was kneaded up with wine."

The views of Hafis on the subject of drinking will find a place in the notes to the "Book of the Cup-Bearer."

The Arabs say that the first horse appeared when Adam sneezed at his awakening into life.

7 Goethe was so often stimulated by circumstance to compose some of his finest poems that he used to call himself Gelegenheitsdichter, a Poet of Occasion. This poem is one of the kind. On a misty morning during a Rhine journey in 1814, the poet saw broad, beautiful fields of poppies suddenly lighted up by the sun through the driving vapor. The gay and peaceful sight was all the more deeply impressed upon him as it stood in sharp contrast with soldiers who were then marching by into the uproar of war.

8 The flowing element of Oriental poetry which for a time enchanted Goethe who was a genuine and unrepealable Hellenist. 9 A zealous and powerful Mohammedan ruler, whose chief seat was at Ghazna in Zabulistan, which was the northern part of the present Afghanistan and bordering on the Punjaub. He was a famous idol-breaker, and extended his rule over parts of India, proselyting at the edge of the sword. Hating images, like all followers of Mohammed, he broke up the monstrous idols, sent pieces of them to holy spots as trophies, and appropriated the jewels and gold which had been concealed in them for safety. His father was a young Turk who was raised to the throne in A.D. 977. The dynasty was called Ghasnavid, from its chief city; its princes loved art and literature, and the Persian poet Ferdusi (937-1020) was a great favorite at the court. Another poet, Feriduddin, celebrated Mahmud's breaking of the idol Lát which earned for him a title equivalent to "iconoclast."

10 Zelter set this song to music. In a letter to Goethe he mentions that it was admired in a certain circle, but that a rather heavy listener asked him who was meant by the "sorry guest," in the original, "trübe Gast," sorry fellow. As the Philistine was a guest of the occasion, Zelter improved his chance to say, "It must be thyself."

The fate of the moth in the taper is a favorite Eastern symbol of overpowering and heroic attraction. So is the iron and loadstone, straw and amber, male and female date-trees, the ball and the bat. The ancient Persian game of Polo, played on horseback

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with ball and hockey, served the poets with frequent allusion. "Let my head be the ball in the Polo-Ground, and perhaps the Shah will strike it with his bat, and so speed my fortune." 'How long wilt thou, handless and footless, be the ball of fate? Though by a hundred paths thou boundest, thou canst not escape the bat. Put thy head on the Shah's path." In the poem beginning "Dust for thee is elemental” (p. 18), Goethe produces a favorite allusion of the Persians. "Only that countenance is fortune's mirror which has been rubbed in the dust at his horse's hoofs." And with great frequency the dust helps the abject lover. "The dust of her walking is the tent of my hope: dust from thy feet is pleasanter than water." My face lay in the road, but the feet

did not pass over it."

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BOOK OF HAFIS.

1 Mohammed Schems-ed-din, surnamed Hafis, “the rememberer," that is, one grounded in the Koran; he was born at Shiráz: the date is uncertain. His death occurred in 1388. He loved Shiráz, as Charles Lamb did London, and was quite as loath to leave it. Once he set out to visit the court of an Indian prince who was a great patron of genius. But, undertaking to go by sea from Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, the disgust inspired by sea-sickness was so great that he found some pretext for returning: "The infliction of one of its waves would not be compensated by a hundred-weight of gold.*

A pretty story is extant in Persian tradition, relative to a turning point in his youth when he began to devote himself to thought and poetry. Per i sebez, or The Green Old Man, is a spot near

*Sir Gore Ouseley's "Notices of Persian Poets."