DIVINE LOVE
JAYADEVA; Friedrich MAJER, translator.
Gita-Govinda, ein Indisches Singspiel … aus der Ursprache ins Englische von W. Jones, und aus diesem ins Teutsche übersetzt, und mit einigen Erlaüterungen begleitet …
Weimar, im Verlage des Landes-Industrie-Comptoirs, 1802.
8vo, pp. 84; with copper-engraved frontispiece ‘Krischna’ by C. Müller, and copper-engraved vignette ‘Kama’ to title; a very good copy in contemporary paste-paper boards, gilt-lettered red paper spine label, edges red; extremities worn, some rubbing to covers, red sealing wax to endpapers.
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Gita-Govinda, ein Indisches Singspiel … aus der Ursprache ins Englische von W. Jones, und aus diesem ins Teutsche übersetzt, und mit einigen Erlaüterungen begleitet …
First and only separate edition of this uncommon German translation of Gita Govinda, a Sanskrit lyric poem by the twelfth-century Indian poet Jayadeva recounting the divine love of the Hindu deities Krishna and Radha.
‘The Gitagovinda explores the ebb and flow of divine love between Radha and Krishna, portraying their estrangement, longing, and joyful reunion through a cycle of lyrical songs and narrative verses that express jealousy, devotion, remorse, and passionate union … [It] is the earliest-known poem dealing with the theme of the divine lovers’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
This, the first full translation into German, was the work of Friedrich Majer (1772–1818), an associate of Goethe at Weimar and a significant influence on Schopenhauer. Majer avidly collected material relating to India and lectured on the subject; ‘as the author of essays on Hindu mythology, translations of Sanskrit works, and mythological reference works, Majer became the chief German purveyor of Indic knowledge in his time’ (Wilson, p. 42). Majer translated the poem from William Jones’s English rendering (first published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, in 1792), which he nevertheless criticises for turning the text into an ‘epic idyll’ to suit European tastes. Friedrich von Dalberg’s abridged German version appeared in the same year.
OCLC finds only two copies in the UK (BL and Cambridge University Library) and only one in North America (Brown).
See Wilson, ‘Friedrich Majer: romantic Indologist’ in Texas Studies in Literature and Language 3:1 (1961), pp. 40–49.
