For this there was no lack of material; for, apart from the works of such travelers to the Orient as Marco Polo, Pietro della Valle, and Adam Olearius, and, above all, the translations of Saʿdi’s Golestān and Bustān (qq.v.
Goethe’s approach to Ḥāfeẓ began with enthusiasm, which, in its turn, led to interchange and dialogue, and, in the Divan, assumed a lyric-prosaic form. The need for communication, for narrative and for fi;nding one’s way into a different society is characteristic of the essence of the Divan (Bohnenkamp and Bosse, p. 306). The dialogue with Ḥāfeẓ, however, demanded a knowledgeable analysis of the Oriental world. For this there was no lack of material; for, apart from the works of such travelers to the Orient as Marco Polo, Pietro della Valle, and Adam Olearius, and, above all, the translations of Saʿdi’s Golestān and Bustān (qq.v.; Bohnenkamp and Bosse, p. 333), Goethe also read works by Orientalists, such as the Denkwürdigkeiten aus Asien(1813-15) by Heinrich Friedrich von Diez (see Mommsen, 1961), the journal Fundgruben des Orients(1809-14; see Solbrig, pp. 192-220), and Hammer’s Geschichte der Schönen Redekünste Persiens (1818).