ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE “SONGS OF MIRZA SHAFI”: IN THE CONTEXT OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONFESSIONS OF BUSTAN EFENDI

It is a rare phenomenon when two different authors who lived at the same time are always remembered at the same time years later. Considering that these authors represent completely different cultures and geographies, the question takes on an even more interesting form. In this regard, the literary connections between the Azerbaijani poet Mirza Shafi Vazeh and the German translator Friedrich Bodenstedt are significant events in the history of world culture. Having met Mirza Shafi in Tbilisi, Bustan Efendi (F.Bodenstedt), took lessons from him in Azerbaijani and Persian languages. Returning to Germany, F.Bodenstedt, under the influence of the good impressions made on him, described the oriental image of Mirza Shafi, in all its subtleties, in his memoirs “A Thousand and One Days in the East”. In his works “Songs of Mirza Shafi” and “From the Accounts of Mirza Shafi”, he brought the Azerbaijani poet worldwide fame by translating numerous poems of Vazeh. In the explanatory part of the last work, F.Bodenstedt, confessing to the authorship of all the songs, contributed to the emergence of the question of plagiarism. At first this moment perceived ambiguously in the German scientific community gave rise to doubts and then led to the birth of a number of controversial questions around the literary connections between Mirza Shafi and F.Bodenstedt. Upon careful analysis of the author’s philosophical confessions creates a different impression. Without extracting F.Bodenstedt’s confession out of the general context and directly relying on the logic of the German translator the question of plagiarism takes on a different character. In his confessions Bustan Efendi not only introduces Mirza Shafi as his teacher, but also particularly emphasizes that his unusual oriental spirit is reflected in all the songs. He repeatedly notes that the songs owe their origin to Mirza Shafi. Since F.Bodenstedt could not fully reveal the deep content of Vazeh’s poems in his translations, he focused more on preserving the artistic form of his teacher’s oriental poetry. In his philosophical confessions he notes that a literal translation would be uninteresting and also incomprehensible to the German reader. F.Bodenstedt emphasizes the impossibility of translating an Oriental text while preserving all its colorful shades. With his translations from the legacy of the Azerbaijani poet Mirza Shafi, the German translator played an unprecedented role in passing on this legacy to his direct heirs.