14 SOCIAL SCIENTIST He is really a gifted poet who has inspired great poets of many languages across the centuries. The two great names are those of Kabir (1440-1518) in India and Goethe (19th century) of Germany. During Kabir's days the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz was sung in the circle of Sufies. Common goshties (meetings) were held in which both the Bhakti and Sufi saints participated. That is how Kabir came to know Hafiz and Rumi. There is inner evidence in his poetry of the influence of the great Persian poets, Rumi and Attar. It can safely be presumed that Kabir was aware of the poetry of Hafiz. Hafiz exercised greater influence on Goethe. Diwan-i-Hafiz was translated in German language in 1812. Goethe was 65 at that time. Europe was in turmoil and the German nation in decadencee. The restless soul of Goethe and his high soaring imagination found a nest in the garden of Hafiz's poetry. And he wrote his West Ostlicher Diwan in the style of Hafiz and Sa'adi. Some lines of this book of poems in Iranian style seem to be free translations in the Sufi interpreatation of his poetry. He is inspired by the pure ghazal of Hafiz. His revolutionary contemporary Hiene, the favourite poet of Karl Marx, was also inspired by Persian poetry. At one place he feels in his imagination that he is a Persian poet who has been exiled to Germany. "O Firdausi, O Sa'adi., O Jaami, your brother in the prison of pain and sorrow is pining for the roses of Shiraz." (Quoted by Iqbal in his Payam-i-Mashiq, Message of the East written in answer to Goethe's West Ostlicher Diwan, 1924.) A biographer of Goethe quoted by Iqbal in the above book says, "Goethe saw his own image in the songs of the Nightingale of Shiraz (Hafiz). At times he felt as if his own soul had lived on the land of the East in the body of Hafiz. He shared with Hafiz the same earthly pleasure, the same spiritual ecstasy, the same simplicity and depth, the same warmth and joy, the same Catholicism, broad mindedness, and freedom from the shackles of traditions. A world of meaning is enclosed in the simple words of Hafiz. In the same manner Goethe reveals the secrets and truths of life through his spontaneous expression. Both of them have received homage from the rich and the poor alike/Both of them maintained their personal dignity in front of the great conquerors of their ages. (Hafiz in front of Timur and Goethe in front of Napoleon). Both of them succeeded in maintaining their inner tranquility under the stress and strain of the periods of general destruction and plunder, and went on singing their songs." Occasionally Goethe copied the style of ghazal with the same scheme of rhyming. He even borrowed expressions and metaphors