Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry Read online

  LEONARD LEWISOHN is Lecturer in Persian and Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow in Classical Persian and Sufi Literature at the University of Exeter, UK. His previous books include The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (2008, translated with Robert Bly), Attar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight (I.B.Tauris, 2006, edited with Christopher Shackle), The Heritage of Sufism, vols 1-3 (1999) and Beyond Faith and Infidelity: The Sufi Poetry and Teachings of Mahmud Shabistari (1995).

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  Each verse that Ḥāfiẓ pens is a masterpiece

  of gnostic lore and sapience.

  Let’s praise his fetching turn of phrase

  and his stunning power of speech.

  Ḥāfiẓ, Dīvān, ghazal 275: 9

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  Selection and editorial matter copyright © 2010 Leonard Lewisohn

  Individual chapters © 2010 Leili Anvar, Peter Avery, Michael Barry, Carl W. Ernst, Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, Husayn Ilahi-Ghomshei, Franklin Lewis, Leonard Lewisohn, Parvin Loloi, James Morris, Ali Asghar Seyed-Gohrab

  Frontispiece calligraphy by Husayn Ilahi-Ghomshei

  The right of Leonard Lewisohn to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Iran and the Persianate World

  International Library of Iranian Studies: 25

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  Contents

  List of Contributors

  List of Plates

  Foreword: Ḥāfiẓ of Shīrāz

  PETER AVERY

  Editor’s Introduction and Acknowledgements

  PART I

  ḤĀFIẒ IN THE SOCIO-HISTORICAL, LITERARY AND MYSTICAL MILIEU OF MEDIEVAL PERSIA

  Prolegomenon to the Study of Ḥāfiẓ

  1 – Socio-historical and Literary Contexts: Ḥāfiẓ in Shīrāz

  2 – The Mystical Milieu: Ḥāfiẓ’s Erotic Spirituality

  LEONARD LEWISOHN

  PART II

  ḤĀFIẒ AND THE SCHOOL OF LOVE IN CLASSICAL PERSIAN POETRY

  The Principles of the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

  HUSAYN ILAHI-GHOMSHEI

  The Erotic Spirit: Love, Man and Satan in Ḥāfiẓ’s Poetry

  ALI ASGHAR SEYED-GOHRAB

  The Radiance of Epiphany: The Vision of Beauty and Love in Ḥāfiẓ’s Poem of Pre-Eternity

  LEILI ANVAR

  PART III

  ḤĀFIẒ AND THE PERSIAN SUFI TRADITION

  Ḥāfiẓ and the Sufi

  CHARLES-HENRI DE FOUCHÉCOUR

  The Religion of Love and the Puritans of Islam: Sufi Sources of Ḥāfiẓ’s Anti-clericalism

  LEONARD LEWISOHN

  Jalāl al-Dīn Davānī’s Interpretation of Ḥāfiẓ

  CARL W. ERNST

  PART IV

  ḤĀFIẒ’S ROMANTIC IMAGERY AND LANGUAGE OF LOVE

  The Allegory of Drunkenness and the Theophany of the Beloved in Sixteenth-Century Illustrations of Ḥāfiẓ

  MICHAEL BARRY

  Transfiguring Love: Perspective Shifts and the Contextualization of Experience in the Ghazals of Ḥāfiẓ

  JAMES MORRIS

  The Semiotic Horizons of Dawn in the Poetry of Ḥāfiẓ

  FRANKLIN LEWIS

  Ḥāfiẓ and the Language of Love in Nineteenth-Century English and American Poetry

  PARVIN LOLOI

  Bibliography

  Plates

  Contributors

  LEILI ANVAR is Lecturer at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris and Head of the Department of Iranian Studies there.

  PETER AVERY lived in Iran for many
years before serving as Lecturer in Persian Studies at the University of Cambridge (1958–90). Author of many books and articles, his final work before his death in 2008 was an English translation of The Collected Lyrics of Ḥāfiẓ of Shīrāz (London: Archetype 2007).

  MICHAEL BARRY is Lecturer in Persian and Islamic Studies at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University. He was Consultative Chairman, Department of Islamic Art, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York between 2005–9. He is the author of Figurative Painting in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of Behzad of Herat (1465–1535) (New York and Paris: Éditions Flammarion 2004).

  CARL W. ERNST has been on the faculty of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1992, where he has served as department chair (1995–2000) and Zachary Smith Professor (2000–5). He is now William R. Kenan, Jr, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations.

  CHARLES-HENRI DE FOUCHÉCOUR held the Chair of Persian at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris (1972–85), was Professor at the Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III), as well as Director of the Institut d’Etudes Iraniennes in that University (1985–93). From 1993, he has been Professor Emeritus at the Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. His annotated translation of the entire collected poetical works of Ḥāfiẓ: Le Divān Œuvre lyrique d’un spirituel en Perse au XIVe siècle, introduction, traduction du persan et commentaries, was published by Editions Verdier in Paris in 2006.

  HUSAYN ILAHI-GHOMSHEI received his PhD in Islamic Theology and Philosophy in 1965 from Tehran University. A former Director of the National Library of Iran (1981–2), he is a lecturer and author on Islamic philosophy and Persian literature, who has (among his many other works) edited the collected poems of Ḥāfiẓ in Persian.

  FRANKLIN LEWIS is Associate Professor of Persian in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

  LEONARD LEWISOHN is Lecturer in Persian and Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow in Classical Persian and Sufi Literature at the University of Exeter, UK.

  PARVIN LOLOI is a freelance scholar and writer who wrote her PhD thesis (University of Wales, Swansea) on English translations of Ḥāfiẓ and their influence on English poetry. She is author of Hafiz, Master of Persian Poetry: A Critical Bibliography – English Translations since the Eighteenth Century (London 2004).

  JAMES MORRIS held (1999–2006) the Sharjah Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, and has taught Islamic and comparative religious studies at Princeton, Temple University, the Sorbonne, and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in Paris and London. He is currently Professor of Islamic Studies at Boston College.

  ALI ASGHAR SEYED-GOHRAB is Lecturer in Persian Language, Literature and Culture at Leiden University.

  List of Plates

  Heavenly and Earthly Drunkenness. By Sulṭān-Muḥammad, probably painted in Herāt, AD 1526 or 1527. Page from a Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ. Harvard Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Promised Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Cary Welch, Jr. Partially owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, 1988. In honour of the students of Harvard University and Radcliffe College, 1988.460.3. Photo: Allan Macintyre © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

  Incident in a Mosque. By Shaykh-Zāda, probably painted in Herāt, AD 1526 or 1527. Painting (recto, text; verso, folio 77r) from a Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ, left-hand side of a bifolio. Harvard Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Stuart Cary Welch, Jr., 1999.300.2. Photo: Allan Macintyre © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

  Lady Belovéd within the Prayer-Niche, Holding A Sprig of Narcissi. By Muḥammadī of Herāt, ca. AD 1565. Detached album leaf. Soudavar collection, on loan to the Sackler Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

  Majnūn First Sees Laylī in the Mosque-School within the Prayer-Niche. By Bihzād or his fellow-painter Qāsim ‘Alī. Herāt, AD 1494. Illustration to a Khamsa of Niẓāmī; British Library, Or. 68100, folio 106 verso.

  Foreword:

  Ḥāfiẓ of Shīrāz

  Peter Avery

  Ḥāfiẓ of Shīrāz was born about 1315 and died in 1389 AD. Thinking of my experience of him, four incidents come to mind. The first is what happened one morning when, on the advice of my mentor, Pīr, I listened for several hours to a commentary on the poetry of Ḥāfiẓ delivered to me by a mullah. I was taken to a small mosque in Shīrāz with the injunction that, since I was a student of Ḥāfiẓ, it was necessary for me to listen to what a mullah had to say about him. Thus I spent the morning being told how every reference to wine, the rose, the nightingale and so forth could be, and should be, seen in a spiritual light: Ḥāfiẓ was reduced to a dealer in metaphors, all of which had a meaning justified by sanctity. I refrained, of course, from referring my interlocutor to the Gulshan-i rāz of Shabistarī, who died after 1340. In addition to its being a comprehensive key to Sufi imagery, it seems not to be doubted that it influenced Ḥāfiẓ; but this is not the place in which to go into the question of whether or not Ḥāfiẓ’s, or for that matter Shabistarī’s, thought was coloured by Ismailism. What should, however, be added in any discussion of the mystical significance of wine and intoxication is the fact that Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī, one of the greatest Islamic and for that matter world thinkers, saw intoxication as the ‘intoxication of love’. As Margaret Smith puts it: ‘For His lovers, God pours out a draught from the cup of His love, and by that draught they are intoxicated, rapt away from themselves.’1 Since Shīrāz has always been famous for its wines, in spite of these caveats it might be supposed that Ḥāfiẓ had, among other considerations, real wine in mind; there is evidence for this in one or two of his allusions to wine.

  Of course, Ḥāfiẓ dealt in metaphor. The poet, especially, has to express the otherwise inexpressible. A possible criticism of the mullah’s comments is that it might not be correct to attribute one particular set of meanings, based on one particular strand of belief or prejudice, to the metaphors the poet used. There is, however, no doubt that wine was a common metaphor for the spirit; to be remembered is Surah XII of the Koran, verse 36, where one of the prisoners in a dream saw himself pressing wine, and wine here stands for service to God, spiritual devotion. Take, for example, the fragment of Ḥāfiẓ, which may be translated as follows:

  Again the time has a head for discord:

  I and drunkenness and the incitement of the friend’s eye!

  I am continually astonished at the wheeling of fortune;

  I don’t know whom it’ll take down next into the dust.

  And if the Magian Elder were to spread a fire,

  I don’t know whose lamp would be kindled.

  The deceit of the world is a well-known tale.

  What will the dawn bring? The night is pregnant!

  In this bloodletting on Doomsday’s plain,

  Pour you the blood of the beaker into the goblet.2

  In the last couplet, ‘blood’ (khūn), might be said clearly to mean ‘Spirit’. Garcin de Tassy, in his Rhetorique et prosodie des langues de l’Orient musulman,3 lists nine examples of metaphor (majāz) in Persian poetry.

  The second incident was a chance exchange with the elderly maidservant in an Iranian household, whom I met as she was leaving the room in which a group of us – including Dr Khānlarī – were talking about Ḥāfiẓ, with quotations from his ghazals. As she came out I met her in the hall and while she was putting her feet back into her slippers, after delivering tea to the assembled company, I asked her what she thought of what was going on in the sitting room. She replied, ‘I don’t understand it but the words have been banging on my ears all my life and I love their sound.’ Her life, incidentally, had been a very long one: she was old enough to remember the days in her native Khurāsān when the Turkamen raiders came down from the north and ‘took away our sheep, and sometimes people, while we stayed in
the refuge of the burj [the tower]’. Of course, these raids persisted well into the reign of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh, who died in 1896.

  The third episode – and, for me, the most moving – was when I was travelling across country and my chauffeur and I chanced upon, as one often did on the highways of Iran, a large Mac-lorry parked with all its machinery taken out and strewn on the road around it, as the driver, with the wonderful mechanical savoir-faire of the Iranian, sorted out the fault prior to putting the pieces back and driving off. Next to this scene I spotted the driver’s apprentice, sitting on the verge with a small book in his hand in which, as semiliterate people do, he was painstakingly reading with his finger, guiding his eyes along the lines of the text. I looked over his shoulder and saw that the book was the Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was trying to learn how to read. I saw him several times subsequently and helped him in his studies, which he had begun with the poems of Iran’s greatest and one of the world’s greatest poets.

  On a fourth occasion, I asked a slightly, if at all, literate youth whence he came. When he replied, ‘Shīrāz’, I immediately recited the famous verse ‘If that Shīrāzī Turk were to get hold of my heart...’, whereupon he proceeded to recite the rest of the poem. Literate or not, he knew his Ḥāfiẓ. Imagine giving a London cab driver the first line of a Shakespeare sonnet. It is unlikely that he would reply with the rest of the poem. The last three of these episodes speak of the universal feeling for and acquaintance with the works of Ḥāfiẓ throughout Iran and all levels of its people.

  Thus it is that Ḥāfiẓ is a living entity in Iran today. A fact which brings us to the use of his text for bibliomancy: taking a fāl, omen, from the verses where the Dīvān falls open; sortes Hafizianae. But so all embracing are his verses, and on so many levels can they be read, that of course the augury to be derived from them is generally what the seeker expects or wants. Such is apt to be the case with scriptural writings in general; it is to be recalled that the works of Ḥāfiẓ, or he himself, have been known since his own time as the Lisān al-ghayb, ‘The Tongue of the Unseen’.4 And here touched upon is one of the most discussed aspects of Ḥāfiẓ’s compositions and a major problem in attempts to translate them into another language: the subtle ambiguities, the marvellous wordplay, the several levels on which he can be interpreted.