In 1819 the German poet Goethe published the West-östlicher Divan — the West-Eastern Divan — a collection in which the West turned, with admiration, toward the poetry of the East, and of the Persian master Hafiz in particular. It was Europe reaching its hand eastward.
A century later, Iqbal answered. His Persian collection Payam-e-Mashriq — 'The Message of the East' (1923) — was written explicitly as a response to Goethe: the East now reaching back, poet to poet, mind to mind. Iqbal admired Goethe enormously and saw in him a kindred restlessness, a refusal of the static and the dead.
The exchange matters because of what it models. Iqbal did not see East and West as enemies or as a hierarchy. He saw a conversation — one in which each side had something the other needed. He criticised the West's materialism and praised its dynamism; he loved the East's spirit and despaired of its stagnation. Payam-e-Mashriq is the sound of that conversation being taken seriously.