Duentzer.[100] Suffice it to say that the
direct impulse to the composition of the work was the appearance, in
1812, of the first complete version of Persia's greatest lyric poet
Hafid, by the famous Viennese Orientalist von Hammer. The bulk of the
poems were written between the years 1814 and 1819,[101] although in
the work as we now have it a number of poems are included which arose
later than 1819 and were added to the editions of 1827 and 1837.[102]

The idea of dividing the collection into books was suggested by the fact
that two of Hafid's longer poems bear the titles [Arabic]
i.e. "book of the cup-bearer" and "book of the minstrel," as well as by
the seven-fold division which Sir William Jones had made of Oriental
poetry.[103] For the heroic there was no material, nor were some of the
other divisions suitable for Goethe's purpose. So only the _Buch der
Liebe_ and the _Buch des Unmuts_ (to correspond to satire) could be
formed. Other books were formed in an analogous manner until they were
twelve in number. The poet originally intended to make them of equal
length, but this intention he never carried out, and so they are of very
unequal extent, the longest being that of _Suleika_ (53 poems) and the
shortest those of Timur and of the Parsi (two poems each).

The great majority of the Divan-poems are not in any sense translations
or reproductions, but entirely original compositions inspired by the
poet's Oriental reading and study. The thoroughness and earnestness of
these studies is attested by the explanatory notes which were added to
the _Divan_ and were published with it in 1819,[104] and which show
conclusively, that, although Goethe could not read Persian poetry in the
original, he nevertheless succeeded admirably in entering into its
spirit.

We have mentioned Hammer's translation of Hafid as the direct impulse
to the composition of the _Divan_. It was also the principal source from
which the poet drew his inspiration for the work. A single verse would
often furnish a theme for a poem. Sometimes this poem would be a
translation, e.g. "Eine Stelle suchte der Liebe Schmerz," p. 54 (H.
356. 8); but more often it was a very free paraphrase, e.g. the motto
prefixed to _Buch Hafis_, a variation of the motto to Hammer's version
(H. 222. 9). As an example of how a single verse is developed into an
original poem we may cite "Ueber meines Liebchens Aeugeln," p. 55, where
the first stanza is a version of H. 221. 1, a