'Brahma [...] Der Gerechte', 'Waltende Gerechtigkeit', 'Waltant Got': The Genesis of Goethe's Paria in an Intercultural Perspective

The verse trilogy Paria, based on motifs drawn from Indian legend and completed in 1823, is one of the longest and weightiest of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's later poems, and without doubt the most tautly dramatic. Even modern critical opinion is characterised by a sense that Paria is in some way defective. Walter Dietze argues that precisely through making use of Indian motifs in and for a German context, Goethe aspires in Paria to depict subject-matter of universal human concern. The Indian legend on which Paria is based has been transmitted in various forms, and the names, motivation and actions of the characters featured in it differ from source to source. The influence of the Hildebrandslied on this initial germ of Paria has been remarked on by several critics since attention was first drawn to it by Liselotte Blumenthal some twenty years ago. In Paria by contrast human tragedy is situated in the redeeming context of a divine economy.