Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>
<jats:p>This essay focuses on the genetic text of Nietzsche’s unpublished poem <jats:italic>An Hafis. Frage eines Wassertrinkers</jats:italic> in order to establish the development of this poem from preliminary versions to an authoritative version. Through such a detailed philological analysis of the text in Nietzsche’s notebooks, it becomes increasingly clear that the final version of <jats:italic>An Hafis</jats:italic> constitutes an intertextual answer to Goethe’s <jats:italic>West-östlicher Divan</jats:italic> (1819/1827), which itself was inspired by the late-medieval Persian poet Hafez. Developing from different, and open-ended, semantic configurations to a final version, Nietzsche’s <jats:italic>An Hafis</jats:italic> also allows us to reassess the editorial practices necessary to shed light on Nietzsche’s unpublished lyrical drafts.</jats:p>