Poetry as a Deep Emotional Experience of a Different World: The Example of Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan

Poetry which comes from other religions and cultures can become an emotionally based bodily experience of a different world. This way of accessing the Other breaks down the biogenetic fixation on one’s own pack, family and land, and the concomitant hatred of strangers - other people, tribes and nations. This happens within an aesthetic context where we do not feel threatened and engage in the transition playfully and imaginatively. Currently, questions about the possibility of shared spaces enabling inter-cultural and inter-religious co-existence are of great importance. How does Goethe deal with what he finds in that alien world of poems by the Persian poet Hafiz? Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan may be considered an excellent role model of intercultural learning, centred on a training in aesthetically based empathy.