Goethe’s ‘West-oestlicher Divan’ and its Uses

Marking the 200th anniversary of the publication of Goethe’s engagement with Persian and Muslim culture in his poetic cycle West-oestlicher Divan, this conference focuses on the reception of the work in both Eastern (predominantly Iranian) and Western cultures, considering in particular issues of rapprochement, misunderstandings, and ideological distortion.

Programme

Venue: University of London, Malet Street, WC1E 7HU

Thursday, 10 October 2019

13.30 Welcome

14.00 Keynote Address

Hendrik Birus (Munich/Bremen): Goethes Divan-Jahre

15.00 Tea/Coffee

15.30 Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Responses
Patrick Fortmann (Univ. of Illinois, Chicago): Languages of Love in Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan and Heinrich Heine’s Buch der Lieder
Amir Irani-Tehrani (U.S. Military Academy, West Point): Public and Poetic Wars of Liberation: August von Platen’s Ghazals, Nationalism and Homoeroticism
Anna Guillemin (Evanston, IL): The Intimate Book: World Literature, Poetic Rejuvenation and the Art of Arrangement in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Divan Essay and Buch der Freunde

Friday, 11 October 2019

10.00 Visual cultures

Waltraud Maierhofer (Univ. of Iowa): Illustrations for the Divan in Editions of Goethe's Works in His Lifetime
James Hodkinson (Univ. of Warwick): Goethe’s Divan in the Contemporary Fine Arts. ‘Close Reading’ or Trading in Cultural Capital?'

12.00 Lunch (own arrangements)

14.30 Contemporary debates

Andrea Polaschegg (Univ. Siegen): ‘Hat man aber eines dieser Gedichte betreten, so ist eine magische Grenze überschritten’. Neuentdeckungen des West-östlichen Divans um die Jahrhundertwenden
Claudia Nitschke (Univ. of Durham): Michael Kleebergs Divan: Politisch-poetische Entwürfe für das 21. Jahrhundert
Thomas O. Beebee (Pennsylvania State Univ.): What is an Identical Translation? On Goethe's Discussion in the West-östlicher Divan

17.00 Concluding discussion ─ Tea/Coffee

Organised by the English Goethe Society

Attendance free. Advance online booking essential: https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/20330