What about verse translations?
Most translations from Hafez are in verse. Within this category, three different kinds of translations may be distinguished. The first is made up of versions that try to imitate the rhyme and meter of the original. This kind of translation has been described as “literary acrobatics.” Only three translators of Hafez have used this method: Walter leaf, John Payne, and Paul Smith. The first two belong to the second half of the 19th century and Smith belongs to the second half of the 20th century. Leaf managed to avoid a fall, but Payne and Smith took heavy tumbles in their so called literary acrobatics. Leaf’s is an impressively intelligent piece of work which reproduces many of the formal features of the original, though he manages to be as faithful as most translations in far freer verse forms. Payne’s version offers a warning against this kind of translation. It is extremely unpleasant in tone and hard to understand because of its use of archaic affected poetic diction. Smith, like Payne, tried to translate the whole Divan, but the results are as unattractive and as unsuccessful and as unreadable as Payne’s version.
Have the translators tried to present Hafez in a more familiar English verse form?
The main objection here is the one expressed by Cowell, which is forcefully repeated by Peter Avery and John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs, who argue that the use of rhymed stanza-forms of traditional English verse inevitably leads to the imposition of formal conceptions which are alien to Oriental poetry (Avery, 15). It is true that behind the two literary traditions lie fundamentally different aesthetic principles, even contradictory formal conceptions of poetic unity and design. Many translators in this category have tried to judge the Persian poet according to their own understanding of western classical literary theory and have felt obliged to improve on his work. Alexander Rogers (d. 1911) thinks the poems give an appearance of patchwork that greatly detracts from their value as literary compositions. Herman Bicknell (d. 1875) is certain that there is a want of unity in many of the Odes (p. xix). Richard Le Gallienne (d. 1947) was not, in fact, familiar with the originals, as was reliant on the versions by Clarke and Payne. He is confident of the superiority of classical poetry and says: the difficulty of inconsequence I have tried to overcome by choosing those poems that were least inconsequent, and by selecting and developing the most important motive out of the two or three different motives which one frequently finds in the same ode. (p. xviii).
Le Gallienne’s translations are in stanzaic form with different meter and rhyme. The translators who used English stanza form had Jones’s “A Persian Song” as a model. He translates each bayt into a six-line stanza. His prose version of the poem changes the original by omissions and additions. To some extent, he also reduces the importance of the original imagery and obscures its clarity. Almost all the translators who belong to this category have followed Jones. Apparently, the only exception is Gertrude Bell (d. 1926), whose verse translations are clear, musical and accurate.
Translators like Arthur John Arberry use quatrains of octosyllabic iambic lines. Frank Rundall (d. 1930) imitates the monorhyme of the original. A number of translators, like Avery and Heath-Stubbs have been reluctant to impose a foreign form on the classical Persian ghazal and have used the free verse successfully. They present each bayt in an unrhymed couplet of loose six-stress lines, which preserves something of the symmetrical form of the Persian original.
Translations which fall in the third category exercise the liberty of changing the words and sense of the original and also abandon them as they please. Such translators call their versions “imitation” and “creative translation” and have tried to imitate FitzGerlad and have presented Hafez in the form of rubā’ī. Among the imitators of Hafez there are Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (d. 1945), Elizabeth Bridges (d. 1977), and Basil Bunting (d. 1985). Bridges and Bunting communicate much more of the nature of Hafez’s greatness than is communicated by the more faithfully literal translations.
The scholar-translator type appeared in the 20th century. Notable examples are Iraj Bashiri, Michael Hillmann, Julie Scott Meisami, and Robert Rehder who have generally rendered Hafez into English so as to support their own line of argument or interpretation. Their translations are generally in simple idiomatic English. Rehder’s translations are in free verse.
How has Sufism been reflected in the translations?
Besides the choice of form and the problem of communicating within one literary structure and tradition, the aesthetic principles of a different tradition, the translators have had to deal with the presence- or otherwise – of Sufism in the poems. Translators like Payne and Le Gallienne, believed that Hafez was not a Sufi. Apparently, most of the translators have tried to present him as a mystical poet. The renewal of western interest in Sufism has led to a number of translations in this light, such as those of Michael Boylan, Elizabeth Gray, and Reza Saberi. The fact is that Hafez is multi-faceted, and this quality has baffled almost all translators and apparently, the results of their efforts have not been very successful. Most of the translations lack the required poetic merit and they fail to reflect the rich clarity and vigorous beauty of the Persian poet.
What about German translations? Are there noteworthy German translations like those of Goethe?
The close association of the name of Hafez with that of Goethe in German literature is due to the status Goethe accords Hafez in his West-östlicher Divan. It is because of Goethe’s work that since the early 19th century, the Divan of Hafez has been an important source within the framework of “international literature,” and that a great number of scholarly studies have been published of the Persian poet’s Divan. Nine translations of the Divan appeared in the 19th century. As noted above, Hammer-Purgstall produced the first complete German translation. The translator studied two Turkish translations of Hafez during his stay in Constantinople, those of Sham‘ī and Soruri in the library of Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid. He also used Sudi’s translation and commentary (Hammer 1812, p. iv). In his translation, Hammer includes allusions and comparative references to Latin and Greek literature, since he tried make the Persian poet’s world more comprehensible to contemporary readers. His is faithful to form and content of the ghazals.
August Platen (d. 1835) translated about 80 ghazals with an introduction in the late 19the century. He also took Hafez as his model to compose original ghazals in German.
In the middle of the 19th century, Herman Brockhaus (d. 1877), who taught Indo-Iranian languages at Leipzig, published his complete translation of Hafez in three volumes. He used Sudi’s edition and commentary. The first volume presents his translations and the originals.
Vincenz von Rosenzweig (d. 1865) published his complete translation in the second half of the 19th century in Vienna. Translations and originals are presented on facing pages. It has been the basis for all modern German studies on Hafez.
Friedrich Rückert (d. 1866), a contemporary of Goethe, published his selections from Hafez in which he imitated the ghazal form and its meter and rhyme scheme. Ruckert’s translations reveal his literary relation to Hafez, which is different from that of Goethe. They also show the Persian poet’s artistic elegance, especially his metaphorical language.
A very popular selection in German is that of Georg Friedrich Daumer which appeared in the middle of the 19th century and a number of his translations were set for voice and piano.
Hafez is perhaps the most popular of Persian poets and as you mentioned he is multi-faceted. It is this quality of multi-facetedness that if a book of poetry is to be found in a Persian home, it is likely to be the Divan of Hafez. Many of his lines have become proverbial sayings, and there are few who cannot recite some of his poems by heart. An entire series of programs could be devoted to his life and times, poetic art, Hafez and ‘erfān, music, the visual arts and so on. We are about to close this program, but I’d like to ask you one more question. Could you briefly explain the quality of rendi? Who is the rend in Hafez?
The term “rend” in Hafez has been variously translated in English as “rake, ruffian, pious rogue, brigand, libertine, lout, debauchee” and so on. He appears to be the very antithesis of establishment propriety. It requires a lengthy discussion on such significant and sensitive topic. The rend seems to communicate the poet’s message and projects the Persian poet’s world view and his heroic ideal. Some scholars see the rend in Hafez as a mythological or archetypal figure, composed of various strains which Hafez has sculpted into transcendent form. The rend is apparently a composite of the Perfect Man of Gnostic Sufism, the impoverished beggar in the road, the libertine, and the political rebel who refuses to bow the knee to hypocrisy and values imposed by force. He is the antithesis of the ascetic, a would-be free spirit who enjoys the pleasures of life and sees it his mission to challenge inauthenticity in all its forms. Some scholars believe that the distinctive development in the Persian poet’s concept of rendi is that the rend does not try to kill his lower passions (nafs) as in the eastern Iranian mystical-ascetic tradition, but to live in harmony and equilibrium with them, without pretense or hypocrisy. The rend seems to be a new spiritual ideal, a reconciliation of the Perfect man with the human condition. If our Persian poet is not a perfect man, he is perfectly human.
I’d like to thank you for your time. Hopefully, we’ll discuss further topics on our coming programs.
Bell; Arnold; Arnold, James; Brown; Gladwin; Hammer-Purgstall; Brockhause; Costello; Alger; Hafez; Burton; Golestan; Bustan; Gibb; Cowell; Brockhaus; Dodenstedt; Herder; Bicknell; Arberry; Eastwick;
