The book was received with universal applause, and on it Bodenstedt’s fame as poet rests.  It has been translated into all the European languages, even into Hebrew and Tartar, and is now in its one hundred and forty-third German edition.  Twenty-four years later Bodenstedt followed it with a similar collection, ’Aus dem Nachlass des Mirza-Schaffy’ (From the Posthumous Works of Mirza-Schaffy:  1874), where he shows the more serious, philosophic aspect of Eastern life.  Bodenstedt’s poems and his translations of Persian poetry are the culmination of the movement, begun by the Romantic School, to bring Eastern thought and imagery home to the Western world.  Other well-known examples are Goethe’s ‘West-Eastern Divan,’ and the poems and paraphrases of Rueckert and others; but the ‘Songs of Mirza-Schaffy’ are the only poems produced under exotic influences which have been thoroughly acclimatized on German soil.

Bodenstedt was for a time director of the court theatre at Meiningen; and though he held this difficult position for only a short time, he did much to lay the foundation of the success which the Meininger, as the best German stock company of actors, achieved later on their starring tours through the country.  He was ennobled in 1867, while in this position.  He spent the last year of his life at Wiesbaden, where he died in 1892.

Bodenstedt was a voluminous writer; his work includes poems, romances, novels, and dramas.  ‘Vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ocean’ (From the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean:  1882) is a description of his lecturing tour to the United States the year before.  His autobiography, ‘Erinnerungen aus Meinem Leben’ (Recollections of my Life), gives interesting glimpses into his eventful career.  His mind was more receptive than creative, and this, combined with his great technical skill and his quick intuition, fitted him peculiarly to be a translator and adapter.  His translation of Shakespeare’s works, in conjunction with Paul Heyse, Kurz, and others (fifth edition, Leipzig, 1890), is especially noteworthy, as also his rendering of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  But he will live in German literature as the poet Mirza-Schaffy.

* * * * *

     TWO

     To one exalted aim we both are tending,
                    I and thou! 
     To one captivity we both are bending,
                    I and thou! 
     In my heart thee I close—­thou me in thine;
     In twofold life, yet one, we both are blending,
                    I and thou! 
     Thee my wit draws—­and me thine eye of beauty;
     Two fishes, from one bait we are depending,
                    I and thou! 
     Yet unlike fishes—­through the air of Heaven,
     Like two brave eagles, we are both ascending,
                    I and thou!

WINE

In THE goblet’s magic measure,
In the wine’s all-powerful spirit,
Lieth poison and delight: 
Lieth purest, basest pleasure,
E’en according to the merit
Of the drinker ye invite.