23 May 22 Guest Poet: Hafez #1

If Life Remains, I Shall Go Back to the Tavern

Half of my genetic heritage is Middle Eastern, so it is time that I posted an excellent Middle Eastern poet – Hāfez. (The other half of my gene pool is Irish – the mix is a long and amusing story: A genie and a leprechaun walked into a bar...)

Khwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shirazi (Persian: خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمّد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen-name Hāfez (حافظ, Hāfez, "the memorizer; the (safe) keeper"; 1325–1390) was a Persian lyric poet whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as a pinnacle of Persian literature. His works are often found in the homes of people in the Persian-speaking world, who learn his poems by heart and use them as everyday proverbs and sayings. His poetry and his life have become the subjects of much analysis, commentary, and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other Persian author. 

Themes of his ghazals (lyric poetry; see below for further definition) include the beloved, faith, and exposing hypocrisy. Hāfez frequently attends to love, wine, and taverns, all representing ecstasy and freedom from restraint. Adaptations, imitations, and translations of his poems exist in almost all major languages.

With that said, the history of the translation of Hāfez is fraught with complications, and some professional readers say that few translations into western languages have been wholly successful.

One of the literary devices for which Hāfez is most famous is iham –  clever and sophisticated punning. Iham uses a word(s) that can be variously interpreted, wherein each meaning may well be logical, valid, and intentional, yet also hold paradoxical definitions. Thus, a word such as gowhar, can be simultaneously essence, truth, and pearl, would take on both meanings at once as in a phrase such as "a pearl/essential truth outside the shell of superficial existence." Hāfez’s iham are notoriously difficult to translate.

Hāfez often took advantage of the difficulty in distinguishing among lyrical, mystical, and verse form that expressed excessive praise of a person or object (e.g. a sculpture). He did this by using complex, cerebral metaphors and ihams that have multiple interpretations. Here is an example of this:

Last night, from the cypress branch, the nightingale sang,

                                                      g

But wait! We find ourselves, here, in the thicket of Hāfez’s surprising art. So as not to keep you in suspense about the tavern, here is Hāfez’s poem referred to above  -- and one more. 

If life remains, I shall go back to the tavern

If life remains, I shall go back to the tavern

and do no other work than serve the revelers.

Happy day when, with streaming eyes,

I shall go again to sprinkle the tavern floor.

There is no knowledge among these folk,

Suffer me, God, to offer my jewel of self to another buyer.

If the Friend has gone, rejecting the claim of old friendship,

God forbid I should go and look for another friend.

If the turn of the heavenly wheel favor me

I shall find some other craft to bring him back.

My soul seeks wholeness, if that be permitted

by his wanton glance and bandit tresses.

See our guarded secret, a ballad sung

with drum and flute at the gate of another bazaar.

Every moment I sigh in sorrow, for fate, every hour

strikes at my wounded heart with another torment.

Yet truly I say: Hafiz is not alone in this plight;

So many others were swallowed in the desert.

translated by Bernard Lewis

The Essence of Grace

Now that I have raised the glass of pure wine to my lips,

The nightingale starts to sing!

Go to the librarian and ask for the book of this bird's songs, and

Then go out into the desert. Do you really need college to read this book?

On the front page of the newspaper, the alcoholic Chancellor of the University

Said: "Wine is illegal. It's even worse than living off charity."

It's not important whether we drink Gallo or Mouton Cadet: drink up!

And be happy, for whatever our Winebringer brings is the essence of grace.

The stories of the greed and fantasies of all the so-called "wise ones"

Remind me of the mat-weavers who tell tourists that each strand is a yarn of gold.

Hafiz says: The town's forger of false coins is also president of the city bank.

So keep quiet, and hoard life's subtleties. A good wine is kept for drinking, never sold.

from Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: 100 Poems of Hafiz, by Thomas Rain Crowe

Background

No Iranian poet has been so intensely analyzed and interpreted as Hāfez. No Persian poet brings together such a combination of fertile imagination, literary expression, the right choice of silk words and expressions. According to experts and cataloguers, during the four hundred years of compiling the Divān in the last decade of the 14th century until its publication in Calcutta in 1791 AD / 1206 AH, this book has been written and copied more than any other literary work. The number of manuscripts of The Divān of Hāfez is about 1700 pages, which is scattered not only in Iran, but also in the geographical region of the Persian language and among all social works of Persian literature.

Divān of Hāfez

This confusion stems from the fact that, early in Persian literary history, the poetic vocabulary was usurped by mystics, who believed that the ineffable could be better approached in poetry than in prose. In composing poems of mystic content, they imbued every word and image with mystical undertones, causing mysticism and lyricism to converge into a single tradition. 

Exploration 1: Is there any benefit to reading translations to English from languages so different that they have their own alphabet? Why or why not?

Exploration 2: Any ideas about why Hāfez includes so many references to alcoholic beverages and places where they are consumed?

Exploration 3: Is it necessary to be familiar with a poem’s mysticism forced on it by the poem's technical aspects or by poetic vocabulary itself? While some poets, attempted to distance themselves from this fused mystical-lyrical tradition by writing satires, Hāfez embraced the fusion and thrived on it. Wheeler Thackston has said of this that Hāfez "sang a rare blend of human and mystic love so balanced... that it is impossible to separate one from the other."