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perspective[foundin]theGulshan-irāzofMaḥmūdShabistarī(d.after740/1340),a

workdoubtlessknowntoḤāfiẓaswellasDavānī’.Sufiauthoritiessuchas‘Aynal-

Quḍāt,Ḥallāj,IbnKhafīfandRūzbihānareinvokedintheSufisectionofDavānī’s

commentary. Throughout his commentary on Ḥāfiẓ, Ernst demonstrates that

‘Davānī maintains ... a consistent hermeneutic that assumes a deep structure of

concealingandrevealingthedivinemysteriesastheoperativeprinciplebehindall

seriousliterature....ItwasjustasnaturalandinevitabletoemployaSufihermeneu-

ticforthepoetryofḤāfiẓasitwasforSa‘īdal-DīnFarghānī(d.701/1301),Ṣadral-

Dīn Qunawī (d. 752/1351), or ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1143/1751) to write

detailedmysticalcommentariesontheArabicpoemsofIbnal-Farid.’

Part IV features four chapters on the topic of ‘Ḥāfiẓ’s Romantic Imagery and

LanguageofLove’.

Inthefirstchapteron‘TheAllegoryofDrunkennessandtheTheophanyofthe

BelovedinSixteenth-CenturyIllustrationsofḤāfiẓ’,eminentart-historianMichael

Barry decodes the mystical symbolism underlying Ḥāfiẓ’s romantic imagery, as

depictedintwofamousTimurid-periodillustrationsoftheDīvān–featuredrespec-

tively on the front and back cover of this volume.‘Such paintings’, Barry reveals,

‘underscore how much traditional readers in the Iranian and Indo-Muslim worlds

perceivedḤāfiẓ’sDīvāntobeapre-eminentallegoryofSufiloveandmysticalfrenzy’.

The artist’s visual exegesis of Ḥāfiẓ’s bacchanalian imagery – his depiction of the

symbolofthetavern(kharābāt)–portraysthemetaphysicaldrunkennesspervading

alllevelsofBeing,winebeingasymbolforradiationoftheDivinelightandbeauty–

theophany–radiantwithineveryatomofExistence.ThePersianpainter’sdepiction

ofwinebecomes‘ametaphorfortheall-connectingandall-pervadingemanationof

thedivinecreativeclarity,fromitsmostrarefiedandimmaterialheavenlyconfigu-

rations,toitsdensestandmostvisibleembodimentsonearth’,namely‘theDivine

Light’sdescent(nuzūl)fromthehigherplanesofBeingtothelower:inthecareful

hierarchy of Islamicized neo-Platonic thought and imagery upon which Ḥāfiẓ so

muchplaysinverse’.Lastly,thethemeoftheSophianicFeminineinPersianminia-

turepainting,withitsmanycorrespondencesinḤāfiẓianlovemysticism,isanalysed,

withBarryadducingconvincingargumentsthat,justaswiththePersianvisualartof

painting,‘themysticalimageryofclassicalPersianSufiepic–andlyrical–poetry

thuscanmostdefinitelyconfiguretheDivineBelovédasafemale’.

Inthesecondofthesechapters,entitled‘TransfiguringLove:PerspectiveShifts

and the Contextualization of Experience in theGhazals of Ḥāfiẓ’, James Morris

attemptstorecreate,andthusremindus,ofthepoet’sspiritualworldviewbasedon

a perspective at once metaphysical, religious, aesthetic and ethical, where the

entirecreationisviewedasatheophanyoftheOnedivineSource.Hefocusesonthe

scriptural–symboliccorrelatesthatarenecessarytograspthemostessentialspiri-

tual realities in Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry, which in turn reveal some of the basic rhetorical

structuresandpresuppositionsinhispoetry.Inordertoillustratethesesubjective

shiftsinperspective,ProfessorMorrisanalysestwoghazals,showinghowthepoet

shiftslinebylinefromtheabstracttotheparticular,andfromthegeneralnarrative

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ḤāfiẓandtheReligionofLoveinClassicalPersianPoetry