The Divan by Hafiz

First transcribed:Dīvān, c. 1368 (English translation, 1891)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

The Divan of Hafiz is one of the glories of Persian literature in its golden age and a classic of Eastern literature. Hafiz was the pen name of Shams al-Din Muhammed, a Persian who, early in his life, turned to the serious study of philosophy, poetry, and theology. The pen name he adopted means “a man who remembers,” a title normally bestowed upon persons who commit the Qur՚ān to memory. In Hafiz’s case, the title was not unwarranted, for he was a dervish who taught the Qur՚ān in an academy founded by his patron.

While The Divan is the best known of Hafiz’s works, he also wrote in various other patterns common to Persian poetry. The Divan itself is a collection of short poems, lyric in quality, in the form known as ghazals. In the original Persian, these poems consist of from five to sixteen couplets (called baits). The particular poetic form has been compared to the ode and the sonnet in English-language poetry because of the lyric qualities, the length, and the subject matter. One curious feature of Hafiz’s ghazals is that the last two lines normally contain the poet’s name. The first line of each ghazal introduces the rhyme, which is repeated in every other succeeding line within the poem.

Although relatively little known in the Western world, Hafiz’s Divan has remained the most popular poetry ever written in his native land. It has even been considered oracular, and Persians sometimes consult it by opening the book and placing a finger on a chance passage, hoping to have an answer thereby to whatever question has arisen. Such a procedure, or a variation of it, was supposedly done at the death of the poet. Because of exception taken to some of his poems, his corpse was at first denied the usual burial rites. To settle the question, some of his ghazals were written on slips of paper and placed in an urn, one to be drawn out by a child. According to legend, the verse drawn by chance from the urn said that Hafiz should be given appropriate funeral rites, as he would enter Paradise; thus the question was settled.

Through the centuries there has been debate over whether his poetry should be taken literally or symbolically, with those who see in The Divan a serious work by a great Persian philosopher and student of the Qur՚ān taking one side of the question, and those who see it as a fine expression of a warmly alive human being taking the other. Western readers who cannot see anything religious in these superficially hedonistic poems should call to mind the religious expression, veiled in sensual imagery, in the poetry of John Donne and Richard Crashaw in England, Saint John of the Cross in Spain, and Edward Taylor in the United States.

Literal or symbolic, the imagery of Hafiz’s poetry is warm, human, even passionate. There is no escaping, even in translation, the sincerity of the poet. Like most Eastern poetry, the imagery may even seem lush to Western readers, as in the following example:

The east wind at the dawn of day brought a perfume from the tresses of my beloved, which immediately cast my foolish heart into fresh agitation.

I imagined that I had uprooted that flower from the garden of my heart, for every blossom which sprang up from its suffering bore only the fruits of pain.

From fear of the attacks of her love, I set my heart free with bloody strife; my heart dropped gouts of blood which marked my footsteps.

I beheld from her terrace how the glory of the moon veiled itself in confusion, before the face of that dazzling sun.

In his poems, Hafiz lauds the love between man and woman, and he praises the beauty of women, their eyes, their lips, their hair, their features, their forms. He also sings of wine and men, as in these lines:

O Cupbearer! bring the joy of youth; bring cup after cup of red wine.

Bring medicine for the disease of love; bring wine, which is the balm of old and young.

Do not grieve for the revolution of time, that it wheeled thus and not thus. Touch the lute in peace.

Wisdom is very wearisome; bring for its neck the noose of wine. When the rose goes, say, “Go gladly,” and drink wine, red like the rose.

If the moan of the turtle does not remain, what matter? Bring music in the jug of wine.

Whether one can interpret this praise of wine as symbolic of spiritual substance is open to question. That there is passion, grace, and charm in the lines is, however, undeniable. The same is true of the following, also typical of Hafiz:

O interpreter of dreams! give good tidings because last night the sun seemed to be my ally in the joy of the morning sleep.

At the hour when Hafiz was writing this troubled verse, the bird of his heart had fallen into the snare of love.

An interesting legend about one of Hafiz’s poems in The Divan has come down through the ages. In the poem, he offered willingly to exchange both the rich cities of Bokhara and Samarkand for the mole on the cheek of his beloved. When the great conqueror Tamerlane learned of the poem and had an opportunity, he sent for the poet and rebuked him, saying that Hafiz should not have offered to give away what did not lay in his power to bestow. Not entirely subdued, even in the presence of the great Tamerlane, Hafiz supposedly replied that it was through such generosity that he came to the attention of the mighty conqueror. Over and over again in The Divan, another city is mentioned, his own native city of Shiraz, which he loved greatly. (“Hail, Shiraz! incomparable site! O Lord, preserve it from every disaster!”) From the fame of Hafiz and his poems, Shiraz came to be a symbol of poetic inspiration among poets who followed him.

The reader of The Divan may make comparisons between Hafiz’s lyrics and those of Omar Khayyám, an earlier Persian poet and one whose work is more widely known among English-speaking readers through the adaptation by Edward FitzGerald (published 1859). The works of the two poets have much in common. The apparent hedonism, the similar imagery, and the same flowing mellifluousness are found in the work of both men. The obvious difference is the superficial one of form: Omar Khayyám wrote in quatrains, as the word “Rubáiyat” indicates, and Hafiz wrote in the form of the ghazal. A more important difference lies in the attitudes expressed in the poems. Hafiz is the more serious, despite an apparent hedonism. There is a greater inclination on the part of Hafiz to be religious, to place his faith in Allah and his wisdom, inscrutable as the poet may find it.

Bibliography

Arberry, Arthur J. Classical Persian Literature. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958. An account by one of the most accessible translators of Hafiz, with a discussion of Hafiz in English.

Browne, E. G. The Tartar Dominion, 1265-1502. Vol. 3 in Literary History of Persia. Bethesda, Md.: Iranbooks, 1997. A new edition of the four-volume history of Iranian literature originally published in 1902. Chapter 4 in the third volume devotes more than forty pages to Hafiz’s poetry, and there are many other references to the poet listed in the index.

Hafiz. The Collected Lyrics of Hafiz of Shiraz. Translated by Peter Avery. Cambridge, England: Archetype, 2007. Avery, a scholar of Persian literature, has translated all 486 poems in The Divan, and his translations are published here with extensive annotations.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Divan-i-Hafiz. Translated by H. Wilberforce Clarke. Bethesda, Md.: Ibex, 1998. A new edition of Clarke’s English translation of The Divan, including extensive annotations to the poems, a biography of Hafiz, and an index of the figures of speech in the work. This edition features a new introduction by Hafiz scholar Michael C. Hillmann, who provides information about Hafiz’s life and the historical and literary characteristics of the ghazal.

Hillmann, Michael C. Iranian Culture: A Persianist View. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990. An assessment of Hafiz and his place in the Persian literary tradition.

Meisami, Julie Scott. Medieval Persian Court Poetry. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. Discusses Hafiz within the tradition of Persian court poetry and patronage.

Rypka, Jan. History of Iranian Literature. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1968. Incorporates scholarship to 1968, especially by Iranian scholars. Emphasizes the social setting of the poems.

Schimmel, Annemarie. “The Genius of Shiraz: Sa’di and Hāfez.” In Persian Literature, edited by Ehsan Yarshater. Albany, N.Y.: Bibliotheca Persica, 1988. The perspective of a distinguished scholar of Persian mysticism.