The Divan of Hafez

Poetry is the greatest literary form of ancient Persia and modern Iran, and Hafez is its preeminent master. Little is known about the poet's life, and there are more legends than facts relating to the particulars of his existence. This mythic quality is entirely appropriate for the man known as "The Interpreter of Mysteries" and "The Tongue of the Hidden," whose verse is regarded as oracular by those seeking its guidance.

His short poems, called ghazals, are sonnet-like arrangements of varied numbers of couplets, incorporating elements of Sufi mysticism. The state of God-Realisation is symbolised through union with a Beloved, and drinking the wine of spiritual love. In the tradition of Persian poetry, each poem corresponds to two interpretations, sensual and mystic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an enthusiastic translator and advocate for Hafez, writing that he "is the prince of Persian poets, and in his extraordinary gift adds to some of the attributes of Pindar, Anacreon, Horace, and Burns the insight of a mystic, that sometimes affords a deeper glance at Nature than belongs to [other] bards. He accounts all topics with an easy audacity."

He continues that "Nothing is too high, nothing too low, for his occasion. He fears nothing, he stops for nothing. Love is a leveller, and Allah becomes a groom, and heaven a closet, in his daring hymns to his mistress or his cupbearer. This boundless character is the right of genius."

David Peloquin suggests that "Melville's enigmatic description of Ahab's tear, which contains more 'wealth than all the waters of the Pacific,' can be sourced to a Sufi metaphor": "the soul as a 'drop' that longs to return to... the Ocean of the Soul.... Sufi tradition teaches that when the heart opens, as Ahab's does for a brief moment [in the chapter, 'The Symphony'], the soul wakens, and the Divine Symphony becomes audible."

The Divan of Hafez (translated by Gertrude Bell):

• Google
• Sacred Texts
• Librivox (1h28m)

Supplemental:

• "Persian Poetry" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "Fragments on the Poet and the Poetic Gift" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Hafez and Persian Poetry in Song

Trivia:

• Terrence Stamp, who played Billy Budd in the 1962 movie, titled his memoir The Ocean Fell Into the Drop.

Extracts:

• "Like a grand, ground swell, Homer’s old organ rolls its vast volumes under the light frothy wave-crests of Anacreon and Hafiz..." (Mardi, 2.15)
• "What could Pierre write of his own on Love or any thing else, that would surpass what divine Hafiz wrote so many long centuries ago?" (Pierre, 17.2)
• "But, as for the wine, my regard for that beverage is so extreme...that I keep my love for it in the lasting condition of an untried abstraction. Briefly, I quaff immense draughts of wine from the page of Hafiz, but wine from a cup I seldom as much as sip." (The Confidence Man, 36)
• "To Hafiz in grape-arbor comes / Didymus, with book he thumbs: / My lord Hafiz, priest of bowers— / Flowers in such a world as ours?" (Clarel, 3.13)
• "“...’twas he of old / The Song’s hid import first unrolled... A mystic burden.” / “Eh? so too / The Bonzes Hafiz’ rhyme construe / Which lauds the grape of Shiraz. / See, They cant that in his frolic fire / Some bed-rid fakir would aspire / In foggy symbols." (Clarel, 4.26)
• "I dream of the hearts-of-gold sped— / The Falernian fellows— / Hafiz and Horace, / And Beranger—all / Dexterous tumblers eluding the Fall" ("Hearts-of-Gold")
• "...take charitable example from the Persian, who in his comment upon the Icelandic version of the fervid orientalisms of Sadi and Hafiz, made humane allowance for the inherent difficulties and numb fingers of the translator in penning it." ("The Marquis de Grandvin")
• ""Oh, morning life!" cried Yoomy, with a Persian air; "would that all time were a sunrise, and all life a youth."" (Mardi, 2.46)
• "Bethink thee...this same Lugar-Lip's verses being all grapes, or veritably saturated with the ripe juice thereof, there is no properly rendering them without a cup or two of the same; and, behold, My Lord, I am sober." ("Under the Rose")

This meetup is part of a series on The Crescent and the Cross.