Hafiz’s Little Book of Life by Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach (Hampton Roads Publishing, 2023) is a distilled version of Hafiz’s poetry— based on a former edition by Abbas Kiarostami that presents a modern re-arrangement of the lines. In Kisarostami’s modernized edition of Hafiz, the traditional form of ghazal is broken into new vertical lining arrangements according to the sense and a more natural rhythm of words; that is, it breaks the traditional couplet into three or four pieces stacked beneath each other. [1] And that’s the design Hafiz’s Little Book of Life follows, making it probably susceptible to controversial criticism Kiarostami’s edition faced at the outset: while Hafiz scholars like Bahaeddin Khorramshahi praised his “unique” approach in the preface to Kiarostami’s, other figures such as renowned linguist Dariush Ashuri criticized this “absolutely modernist playfulness”, arguing that in Kiarostami’s collection, each line of verse is split into two halves that rely on the preceding line for meaning, leaving them visually and semantically incomplete, as if suspended in the air: this matters because many, with a modern mindset, mistake any disruption or busyness for innovation and creation.”[2]
Notwithstanding the controversial reception in home culture, Mojib and Gach’s translation does more than just introducing Hafiz and his ghazals to the English-speaking realm; the book argues that Hafiz’s badge of individuality – the radiant eloquence and luminous expressiveness of “this classical sufi poet” – is transferable to other English-speaking cultures, as it still speaks with the same sensibility as does the Persian civilization, which had originally been thought untranslatable. This compact volume explores Hafiz’s 14th-century realm of poetry through five distinct domains called “gardens.” The thing that adds credit here is that every word is a treasure chosen with concise precision, putting the old in new light, and the efficiency of it comes to fruition thanks to Hafiz’s renowned mastery of word economy. Additionally, as Hafiz’s poetry is a selective path that brings one closer into union with the divine, so is this exquisite translation— stamping its cherishable essence on to our memory.
As the first of the five, the “Garden of the World” on its own is not strictly limited to a Hafizean milieu; it serves as an expansive reference to the broader Persian domain of poetry and culture. Yet, to be exclusive, Hafiz through his reference to the “Garden of the World” – “Within life’s caravanserai/ What berief security have I,/ When momently the bell doth cry,/ ‘Bind on your loads; the hour is nigh!”[3] – emphasizes the impermanence of this world, an incomplete and unsafe resting place. Though, Hafiz’s Little Book of Life attempts to extend Hafiz’s emphasis on life’s fleeting condition through a careful economy of words: “Between these two doors/ This caravan/ Everyone/ Drives by/ While I/ Walk on alone”[4]
In “Thousands of flowers are in full bloom, yet not a song/ What happened to nightingales?/ Where did those thousands descend?”[5] Hafiz uses symbolic descriptors of what he considers to be the very essence of the Garden of the World, a realm meant to abound with these elements (inaesthetical images). One thing that Mojib and Gach would like to remind us with the following transparent extract:
“I behold hundreds of thousands of flowers
Yet no bird sings –
Where have the birds all gone
& what happened to the nightingales
Once this was a city of friends
In a land of kind people –
What happened to the love
& where are the compassionate leaders”[6]
is that these descriptors are symbolic, not literal. Hafiz’s allusions reflect his time, when war-driven rulers ravaged Persia, whereas Hafiz had shown contrastive superiority through preserving and sanctifying the vision of the Persian Paradise along with its true identity. For instance:
“The tavern door’s been closed up Oh God
May this not open the door
To the house of hypocrisy and lies
Those preachers
Who appear glorious
In pulpits and on altars
Yet in private
Act totally the opposite
Vanity, my dear
Is merely proof
Of ignorance”[7]
By including these lines, the translators want their audience to grasp, through Hafiz, the turbulent geo-political situation of Persia as they had stated it in the introduction. Also, in his poetry, love (Persia, God) is mystical, but not in the sense of a personal “I-Thou” relationship with God; rather, it points towards a direct, open, almost public pathway or meeting-place with the divine.
In the “Garden of Wine,” people recover Hafiz’s 1st ghazal, where he tends to picture the wine-bearer: “O beautiful wine-bearer, bring forth the cup and put it to my lips/ Path of love seemed easy at first, what came was many hardships.”[8] However, as do know the audience of classical Persian poetry, Mojib and Gach are familiar with the notion that the beginning section of this garden should kick off a deep spiritual sensation: “The bright lamp of my eyes/ I cast upon the Path of Wine/ …/ You’ve dissed all of/ Wine’s downsides –/ when will you address/ Its merits as well?”[9] However, shorter than that with the same thematic embellishment can be recognized in one of Kiarostami’s rendition why Hafiz has made a tavern’s lane his dwelling place: “To have spoken/ Of all wine’s faults/ Now concede its virtues?”[10]
The translators’ mastery of Hafiz’s ghazals is so deeply rooted in intense experience and rhythmic flexibility that their works resembles a puzzle— seemingly random in arrangement, yet crafted with precise intent: “Dye your prayer mat/ With fine wine/ If the sage tells you to”[11]
The noted segment above corresponds to the first two lines of the third stanza of Hafiz’s first ghazal, which A J Arberry renders quite loosely in English: “Let wine upon the prayer-mat flow,/ An if the taverner bids so;”[12]
The fact that Hafiz as in the sense of Sufi poetry is so rich in his allusion to wine: “Were it not for [it]/ Making our hearts forget their sorrow/ The dread of events/ Would uproot our foundation”[13] or in a rendition of Kiarostami: “Last night I dreamt/ angels strike the tavern’s door”[14]— should be considered symbolic with multiple layers of meaning: the soul’s intoxication with God and the transcendent experience of losing oneself in the Divine.
Yet, one cannot deny it, for the chapter that follows seems to confirm this: that “Love” in terms of a “delicious delirium,”[15] usually experienced by “lovers,” is intertwined with Wine: “Love/ Is a huge pearl/ I/ Am a deep-sea diver/ The ocean/ Is the tavern/ …”[16] The quote above, though mentioned in the Garden of Wine, is thematically in sync with: Hafiz’s broader poetic ghazal motifs— in extension his rhubaiyat “The Pearl on the Ocean Floor.”
“Such a sea/ Is the Sea of Love/ It has no shore/ …”[17] Though here is not the “Garden of the World,” Mojib and Gach strive to start the “Garden of Love” with the segment above. They desire to show the universal dimension of this grand luminary through the indication that he has, since the time he’d lived and gone, empathized with how the notion of love affects a soul.
Hafiz mystically shows that the trials and tribulations of love are not to be sought after in external domains, for love is self-inflicted by itself, so what he proposes rather finds its way within: “Lovers’ tears and laughter/ Come/ From/ Otherwhere”[18] Furthermore, according to the path he illustrates, each and every one of us is lonesome, therefore the responsibility of tending and ministering to our wounds and prayers solely depends on us alone: “I showed the doctors my bloody tears./ They all said, “This is love sickness./ “There is a cure – but it’s a painful process,”[19] seclusion is imposed on all of us.
Hafiz, however, demonstrates a nuanced understanding that for a human in love, it is not simple to free oneself from the pangs of passionate desire: “Bad mouth me/ Put me down/ All over town/ Still/ It’s to you I pray”[20]
Or, as in a rendition by Kiarostami: “The face and meaning’s charm/ are secure in your being./ Your mole and your lines/ are the heart and orbit of duty./ The playful glance of the narcissus/ [would] bloom before you.”[21] It should also be noted that, although Hafiz often employs literal descriptions of love, this love is frequently directed toward bridging the gap between the human moral realm and the Divine.
“The Garden of Wisdom” specifically focuses on how Hafiz is the center that brings everything but also everyone together, in love and harmony: “The language of love/ Remains untold/ In any human tongue”[22] or, “My darling/ Never went to school/ Cannot read nor write/ Yet with one flirtatious glance/ Resolved all scriptural questions of 100 teachers of religion.”[23] Hafiz’s subtlety, combined with his striking presence, is reflected in Goethe’s description of him as ‘peerless,’ and in the Western perspective, he is often regarded as one of the seven literary wonders of the world.
As meant and mentioned before, Hafiz strikes to: “I, a beggar, longing for union with you—/ Alas! No beggar’s hand can reach such a waist/ Last night I hoped his ruby lips/ Might grant my rememdy/ …/ At last, may my hand reach that tall cypress—/ if fortune favors,/ I’ll hold her hem in my palm./ It shall not remain so, nor will it always be so;/ My aim/ from mosque, or tavern alike,/ Is union with you/ …”[24] become the medium between God and this world. Hafiz obliges us to grow as into dots building connections in amongst our cycle of humanity.
Now that Hafiz is at the attempt to build relations based on trust, it’d be invigorating not to forget that even in his ghazals, he renders his writings relatable to flocks of people in other faiths, too: considering the oldest values reigining across certain fields of the Persian regions— Zarathustra’s followers.[25]
“The Garden of Ecstasy” may at first glance sound invtingly orgiastic. But it’d be good to heed that even in reference to: “The Dearest is with us/ What more/ Can anyone ask/ A harp/ A joyous melody/ A music hall/ A dance floor”.[26] Hafiz does still signify the kind of intoxication with the divine spirit he had in the “Garden of Wine.” Plus, the revelation of his intent is more observable through:
“Why must I yet the body’s captive be,
When spiritual gardens call to me?
Give me to drink, till I am full of wine,
Then mark what wisdom and what power are mine;
Into my keeping let your goblet pass,
And I will view the world within that glass;
Intoxicate, of saintlessness I’ll sing,
And in my beggar’s rags I’ll play the king.
When Hafiz lifts his voice in drunken cheer,
Venus applauds his anthem from her sphere.”[27]
In this translation of Arberry’s, it is crystal clear of how Hafiz craves becoming the unconscious, which is when he loses his self. All the clues given out here strengthen Hafiz’s status as an ecstatic (inspired) poet. It quite resonates with Mojib and Gach’s intent to recover Hafiz’s “dissatisfaction with the [mundane] world.”[28] Then, clearly it is noted how Hafiz is infatuated with the Divine and to what strains he plans to go to procure liberation:
“Fire is not that
Which makes the candle
Dance in laughter
True fire
Is that which is set
In the soul of the moth”[29]
It is difficult to determine whether, in his reference to certain prominent spiritual figures, Hafiz intends to portray himself as religious. One thing, however, is certain: he must have been a believer, as his allusions to salvation indicate in the following: “Good news/ Dear heart/ Breath of Messiah/ Is on its way”[30]
Overall, although Kiarostami’s innovative adaptations may have influenced and inspired the creation of this notable translation by Mojib and Gach – which I deem incidentally revolutionary… Kiarostami’s rendering has in its own case been criticized for the supposition that for a work to preserve modernity, disruptions are most inclusionary – the translation has arisen in opposition to this school. They argue that such disruption undermines the peace, sanctity, and reflective calm that Hafiz’s recitation and reading demand and inspire.
In the hands of a poet, ultimately him being Hafiz, each poem (ghazal, in the case here) is a “unique [individual] equilibrium”[31] that makes one never dream of having it rendered in another’s tongue. However, since as conceded by Kiarostami, nowadays we’re living in an “age of concision;”[32] that was how he began to tackle the kaleidoscopic poetry of Hafiz, as an instance, to start a new movement in the hope of its betterment for the acquaintance of digital world’s youngsters with grand literary giants. It was him who was picked up by Mojib and presented it to Gach that for any translatable matter from Persian to English— i.e. Hafiz— how fulfilling it’d be to set Mr. Kiarostami’s adaptations as an example, and him a role model, to look up to.
This book invites not only those who find in its pages an immediate kinship, but also those who lend their voice to English as a second music of thought and utterance. Hafiz emerges here with a rare wholeness—his radiance still “unravished”, neither diminished nor refracted by translation. As has been noted throughout, his calling was to fashion a bridge between the seen and the unseen, the momentary and the eternal. In this rendering, that bridge feels newly traversable. Freed from the strictures of conventional measure, the language moves with its own quiet rhythm, shaping a luminous space where the modern reader may stand, briefly, within the orbit of Hafiz’s divinatory light.
Notes
[1] “Dariush Ashuri, Criticism of Hafez according to Kiarostami, July 2023 (1402), https://baru.ir/mag-contents/criticism-of-kiarostami/”
[2] “Dariush Ashuri, Criticism of Hafez according to Kiarostami, July 2023 (1402), https://baru.ir/mag-contents/criticism-of-kiarostami/”
[3] “Hafiz, [Love’s Awakening, Poem II], trans. A. J. Arberry, Fifty Poems of Hafiz (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 83.”
[4] “Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, 2023, pp. 19- 20.”
[5] “Hafiz, www.hafizonlove.com, ghazal 169.”
[6] “Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, 2023, p. 25.”
[7] “Ibid, pp. 26-27.”
[8] “Hafiz, www.hafizonlove.com.”
[9] “Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, 2023, pp. 61-63.”
[10] “Abbas Kiarostami, Criticism of Hafiz according to Kiarostami, p. 249.”
[11] “Ibid, p. 65.”
[12] “Hafiz, [Love’s Awakening, Poem II], trans. A. J. Arberry, Fifty Poems of Hafiz (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 83.”
[13] “Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, 2023, p. 67.”
[14] “Abbas Kiarostami, ‘Bitter Wine,’ Hafiz according to Kiarostami, New York, USA, 2006.”
[15] “Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, 2023, p.10.”
[16] “Ibid, p. 68.”
[17] “Ibid, p. 83.”
[18] “Ibid.”
[19] “Ibid, p. 85.”
[20] “Ibid.”
[21] “Abbas Kiarostami, ‘Desire of Union,’ Hafiz according to Kiarostami, New York, USA, 2006.”
[22] “Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, 2023, p. 143.”
[23] “Ibid, p. 146.”
[24] “Abbas Kiarostami, ‘Desire of Union,’ Hafiz according to Kiarostami, New York, USA, 2006.”
[25] “Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, 2023, p. 147.”
[26] “Ibid, pp. 179- 180.”
[27] “Hafiz, [Saki Song, Poem II], trans. A. J. Arberry, Fifty Poems of Hafiz (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 130.”
[28] “Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach, Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, 2023, p. 14.”
[29] “Ibid, p. 181.”
[30] “Ibid, p. 182.”
[31] “Ibid, p. 195.”
[32] “Ibid.”
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