Muhammad Iqbal's Romanticism of Power

English Summary: This book is a research on the Persian poetry of Muhammad Iqbal, whom Pakistan chose as its national poet. It specifies the position of these poems between tradition and modernity as well as the appeal of these poems to Iqbal's contemporaries. Based on structural text analysis, aesthetics of reception and the semiotics of Umberto Eco, it proves that the message of the poems in Message of the East and Persian Psalms is clearly romantic. This romanticism is an adaption...
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English Summary: This book is a research on the Persian poetry of Muhammad Iqbal, whom Pakistan chose as its national poet. It specifies the position of these poems between tradition and modernity as well as the appeal of these poems to Iqbal's contemporaries. Based on structural text analysis, aesthetics of reception and the semiotics of Umberto Eco, it proves that the message of the poems in Message of the East and Persian Psalms is clearly romantic. This romanticism is an adaption of national romanticism and can be named a pan-islamic romanticism of power as opposed to nature romanticism. The traditional forms of the poems turn out to be mere tools to render this message plausible. Using traditional rhetorics in order to convey a thoroughly modern content, Iqbal succeeded in attaching the muslims of India to the discourses of panislamism and self-governance and in motivating them for joining India's independence movement. German Description: Dieses Buch untersucht die Position der persischen Lyrik des pakistanischen Nationaldichters Muhammad Iqbal zwischen Tradition und Moderne und versucht, die Wirkungsweise dieser Gedichte darzustellen. Es legt auf der Basis von strukturalistischer Textanalyse, Rezeptionsasthetik und Umberto Ecos Semiotik dar, dass die Botschaft der beiden Gedichtbande Botschaft des Ostens und Persischer Psalter sehr eindeutig nationalromantisch (genauer umma-romantisch) ist und die traditionellen Formen nur dazu dienen, diese Botschaft dem indisch-islamischen Leser plausibel zu machen. Mit dieser Poesie hat Iqbal die Muslime Indiens an die Diskurse des Panislamismus und der Selbstbestimmung angeschlossen und sie zur Mitarbeit an der Unabhangigkeit Indiens motiviert.