Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

to intimately personal voices in each verse, divine allusions (to Heart, Spirit and

God)complementingthehumanlyindividualworkofunderstanding,amentalleap

whichtheaestheticoftheghazaldemandsofthereader.

ThelasttwochaptersinthevolumediscussḤāfiẓ’spoetryinrelationtocompar-

ativeliterature:medievalEuropeanandRomanticEnglishpoeticsrespectively.

FranklinLewis’studyof‘TheSemioticHorizonsofDawninthePoetryofḤāfiẓ’

addressestheparticularliterarytoposofdawn,the‘Alba’,inPersianpoetryingen-

eral, and in Ḥāfiẓ’s poems in particular. The chapter opens with a survey of this

toposinthemedievalProvençallyricinsouthernFranceandnorthernItaly,show-

ing how the theme of the parting of two lovers at dawn was ingrained into

EuropeanliterarytraditionsandsuffusedmedievalEuropeanandrenaissanceliter-

ature.LewisthenrevealshowacertainkindofAlbatoposinearlyArabicAndalusian

poetryexisted,whichwassimilarbutnotidenticaltoitsProvençalprototype.In

Persian,akindofAlbathemeisshowntoappearinSanā’ī’sghazals.Inthesecond

halfofhischapter,heexaminesḤāfiẓ’sghazals,toseeifanyofthecriteriaforthe

Albagenrecanbefoundinthem,butconcludestothenegative:thatthepoetfound

thetoposuninterestingortooclichédtouse.Nevertheless,makinganinventoryof

Ḥāfiẓ’slexiconofdawn,heunderlinesthatnearlyone-fifthoftheghazalsofḤāfiẓ

explicitlyrefertodawnorearlymorning,sothatthetoposofdawnisintegraltohis

mythopoeticvocabulary.

Inherchapteron‘ḤāfiẓandtheLanguageofLoveinNineteenth-CenturyEnglish

andAmericanPoetry’,ParvinLoloisurveysthereceptionhistoryofḤāfiẓ’spoetryin

EnglishfromthefirsttranslationsintoEnglishversebySirWilliamJonesin1771

downtotoday.Shesummarizesthehighlights,whileunderliningthedrawbacks,in

the versions done by nineteenth-century English and American translators, and

someofthelaterrenditionsintoEnglishfree-versebythetwentieth-centurytrans-

lators. As Loloi reveals, Von Hammer-Purgstall’s German translation (1812) of

Ḥāfiẓ’sDīvānhadahugeimpactonGoethe,EmersonandTennysoninEuropeand

theUSA,andplayedanimportantrole,alongwithOrientalism,inrevitalizingand

renewingtheliteratureandpoetryoftheRomantics.Likewise,throughtheirread-

ingsofSirWilliamJones,mostoftheEnglishRomantics(Shelley,Keats,Byron,and

Tennysoninparticular)hadafairlyadvancedunderstandingofthelovetheoryof

classical Sufism; examples are adduced from their own works showing how the

erotic content of their poetry is redolent of ‘the Ḥāfiẓian garden of love’. Other

examplesadducedbyLoloishowhowShelley’sphilosophyofLove,thoughsteeped

in neo-Platonism, also reflects his immersion in Jones’ translations of Ḥāfiẓ and

writingsonPersianmysticism,andhiscognizanceandversificationofthedoctrines

of Sufism in his own work. It was in Tennyson’s poetry, however, that Ḥāfiẓ’s

influence can be seen most forcefully among all the Romantics; the Sufi imagery

frequentinḤāfiẓappearsprominentlyinTennyson’sownpoetryaswell.Insum,we

discover how widespread ‘the Ḥāfiẓian language of love’ has been in the work of

both British and American poets throughout the nineteenth and twentieth

centuriesintheWest.

Editor’sIntroductionandAcknowledgements xxv

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