√Æfiæ andtheLanguageofLove
inNineteenth-CenturyEnglish
andAmericanPoetry
ParvinLoloi
SomeofthePersianpoetshavebeenknownintheWestsincethemiddleofthesev-
enteenth century, through the accounts of such travellers as Sir Thomas Herbert.^1
TranslationsofḤāfiẓfirstappearedintheWest(inLatin),producedbysuchpioneers
ofOrientalismasMeninski,inhisLinguarium Orientalium(Vienna1680),andThomas
Hyde (1636–1703), the Laudian Professor of Arabic at Oxford, who in hisSyntagma
Dissertationum(publishedposthumouslyin1768)translatedapoembyḤāfiẓ,andwas
alsothefirsttotranslatefromKhayyām.ThefirstEnglishtranslationofaghazalby
Ḥāfiẓ, under the title of ‘A Persian Song’, was published by Sir William Jones in his
Grammar of the Persian Language(1771, pp. 135–40). Jones presented both literal and
verse translations of the ‘Turk-i Shīrāz’ghazal, which was to become very popular
amongst the Romantics over the following century. Jones’ ‘Persian Song’, indeed,
becameamodelforlatertranslatorsofḤāfiẓinEnglish.Intheremainderoftheeigh-
teenthcentury,onlyonemoreselectionfromḤāfiẓappearedinEnglish.
The nineteenth century, however, was much more productive. Numerous (and
very varied) versions of Ḥāfiẓ appeared in both English and German. The English
translatorsapproachedthepoetryofḤāfiẓfrommanydifferentanglesandinterms
of many different conceptions of his work. Many translations were made in India
and served primarily as cribs for the use of students of Persian in the Indian Civil
Service.ThefirstcompletetranslationofTheDīvān...(1891)ofḤāfiẓ,byLieut.Col.H.
Clarke, treats Ḥāfiẓ as a Sufi mystic, but unfortunately the language is particularly
graceless.Theliteraltranslationisheavilyinterpolatedwithnotes,whichmakeshis
texthardtoreadandincapableofgivinganyhintofthequalityofḤāfiẓ’slyricism.
AnumberoftranslatorschosetopresentḤāfiẓinprose.Themostnotableofthese
wasE.B.Cowell,^2 whoarguedthattotranslateḤāfiẓinversewouldbetoimposefor-
malconceptsonhisworkwhichwerealientoPersianpoeticalforms,anideaforce-
fully repeated by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs^3 in the following century.
Amongstthenineteenth-centurytranslatorswhopreferredtoemploy(inthewords
of Jones) ‘modulated but unaffected prose’,^4 seeking to unite readability and
euphony, Samuel Robinson and Justin Huntly McCarthy^5 deserve mention. The
majorityoftranslators,however,preferredtouseEnglishpoeticalformstopresent