Border Crossings
▻http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/04/border-crossings
“North and West and South are quaking / Thrones are cracking, kingdoms shaking / Fly to the East, so pure and fair / Taste the patriarchal air!” When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe composed these lines for his poetic cycle “The West-Eastern Divan,” nearly two centuries ago, the Middle East seemed to him a shimmering idyll, the antithesis of war-torn Europe. Venturing beyond exotic stereotypes, Goethe immersed himself in Islamic tradition and Persian poetry. His aim was to foster a new kind of Weltliteratur, or “world literature,” in which far-flung cultures would become more aware of each other. Both West and East belong to God, he wrote, adapting lines from the Koran. Source: The New (...)