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Persian
poetry: Hafez |
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The great lyric poet of Iran is Hafez(c 1320-1388),
whose ghazals
fuse multiple layers of meaning and are unlike anything
in European literature. Little is known about the man,
who lived quietly as a Koranic teacher in Shiraz. Like Dante,
his inspiration was a woman of unapproachable beauty, but
he married and survived local politics, religious censure
and Tamberlane's invasion. After Arabic, Persian is the
chief literary language of the medieval Islamic
world, and its poetry is rich and varied – as can
be see by sampling these epics,
romances,
ghazals,
and others.
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Reading Persian poetry |
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Farsi
is now spoken throughout
the world, and is possibly more easily learned
than Arabic,
at least sufficiently to appreciate some aspects of Iranian
culture. Hafez's style is intensely felicitous and musical,
but also simple, subtle and fluid, which makes for difficulty
in translation and appreciation. Despite innumerable 19th
century efforts, and excepting Omar
Khayyam, classical Persian poetry has not been adequately
translated into English, and the praised translations of
Gertrude
Bell will seem dated to many readers. Sterling
efforts are still being made, but a good translation
will need superlative verse skills.
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Hafez Today |
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Hafez may well have been a sufi
mystic, and many readers approach him for his philosophy.
Some indeed make their own personal interpretation of sufism,
translating Hafez into contemporary
equivalents. The results are not usually poetry, and certainly
nothing like the original. Hafez's aim seems to have been
to recreate the world in a web of symbols drawn with great
aptness and ingenuity from Islamic culture. The poems are
architectonic tours de force, each image being fitted into
a pattern of linked figures of speech: an astonishingly refined
integration of image with thought and musical expression.
The closest parallels to western poetry may be with Symbolism
(though Hafez has wider imagery) and with Postmodernism
(though Hafez does make reference to sensed and inward realities).
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