Iqbal’s Concept of ‘Khudi’ - 4
By Dr. Zafar M. Iqbal
Chicago , IL
Goethe was not the only one fascinated by Eastern/Persian literature and culture. Another German writer was Friedrich Martin Bodenstedt (1819-1892), who was the head of a public school at Tiflis, Transcaucasia. Given his proximity to Persia and his interest in Persian literature, he published poetry, Die Lieder des Mirza Schaffy (English trans. by E. d'Esterre, 1880), which has been popular since, and has gone through over 160 editions in Germany. This is based on a man with the same or similar school-master in Georgia. In this West literary interest in the East and its literature and culture, we cannot ignore Edward Fitzgerald's ‘Rubaiyats of Omar Khayyam' and its extraordinary popularity in the West since Fitzgerald's first edition, 1859.
In his ‘Stray Reflections', Iqbal talks about the influences on this thinking and poetry:
"I confess I owe a great deal to Hegel, Goethe, Mirza Ghalib, Mirza Abdul Qadir Be-dil and Wordsworth. The first two led me into the ‘inside' of things; the third and fourth taught me how to remain oriental in spirit and expression after having assimilated foreign ideals of poetry, and the last saved me from atheism in my student days."
On Goethe, Iqbal had more to say:
(i) "Our soul discovers itself when we come into contact with a great mind. It is not until I had realized the infinitude of Goethe's imagination that I discovered the narrow breadth of my own."
(b) As to "Faust", Goethe "picked up an ordinary legend and filled it with the whole experience of the nineteenth century - nay, the entire experience of the human race." This "transformation of an ordinary legend into a systematic expression of man's ultimate ideal is nothing short of Divine workmanship. It is as good as the creation of a beautiful universe out of the chaos of formless matter."
(ii) It is from Goethe "alone" that we get a "real insight into human nature". In contrast to Shakespeare who as a "realist Englishman re-thinks the individual", Goethe as "the idealist German "rethinks the universal". Indeed "Faust is a seeming individual only. In reality, he is humanity individualized."
(iv) "Nature was not decided what it should make of Plato and Goethe. Poet or philosopher.
["Iqbal too was both," said Anil Bhatti. I agree!]
(v) "No nation was so fortunate as the Germans. They gave birth to Heine at the time when Goethe was in full-throated ease. Two uninterrupted Springs!"
(vi) In the Lecture on "The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience" in Iqbal's English book "The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam," speaking of the creative self, perfection and God, he quotes Goethe:
"In the endless self-repeating
For evermore flows the Same.
Myriad arches springing, meeting,
Hold at rest the mighty frame.
Streams from all things love of living,
Grandest star and humblest cold,
All the straining, all the striving
Is eternal peace in God."
Iqbal freely acknowledged being influenced so much by Goethe and others (including Hegel, Wordsworth) -- Iqbal also puts Goethe in the same category as his own Urdu favorite and his predecessor, Ghalib. In light of this and other details, I believe, had Iqbal had a similar feeling toward Nietzsche, Iqbal would have no hesitation in similarly acknowledging Nietzsche, and his influence.
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