Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

Howthouartchanged!Idarenotlookonthee;

Ifeelbutseetheenot.Iscarceendure

Theradianceofthybeauty.Somegoodchange

Isworkingintheelements,whichsuffer

Thypresencethusunveiled.[...]

...love,liketheatmosphere

Ofthesun’sfirefillingthelivingworld,

Burstfromthee,andilluminedearthandheaven

Andthedeepoceanandthesunlesscaves

Andallthatdwellswithinthem;[...]

Suchartthounow:norisitIalone,[...]

Butthewholeworldwhichseeksthysympathy.

Hearestthounotsoundsi’theairwhichspeakthelove

Ofallarticulatebeings?^44

If we compare Shelley’s lines with these lines by Ḥāfiẓ, as translated by Jones, the
similaritiesbecomeapparent:

Ineternitywithoutbeginning,arayofthybeautybegantogleam;

WhenLovesprangintobeing,andcastflamesoverallnature;

Onthatdaythycheeksparkledevenundertheveil,

andallthisbeautifulimageryappearedonthemirrorofourfancies.^45

Theimageoftheveilis,ofcourse,asmuchaPlatonicimageasitisofPersianSufi
poetry. It is this shared idealism and philosophy which first attracted one of the
fathersofAmericanpoetrytoreadthePersianpoets.
Emerson, like Shelley, was opposed to the orthodox church, and sought in his
transcendental views, which, again like the ideas of Shelley, were nurtured by the
German philosophers, to establish a Universal Soul. In fact, echoes of what Shelley
writesonLovearealsodiscernibleinEmerson’sessayon‘Love’.Strikingly,Emerson
placesasanepigraphtohisessayaquotationfromtheQur’ān,‘Iwasasagemcon-
cealed; / Me my burning ray Revealed’,^46 which is the central doctrine of Sufism.
EmersonhadreadḤāfiẓinSirWilliamJones’workswhenhewasstillayoungboy.
He later came across von Hammer’sDiwanand tried his hand at translating Ḥāfiẓ
into English from German. His notebooks contain many finished and unfinished
translationsfromḤāfiẓ.^47 HisEssayon‘PersianPoetry’alsocontainsmanytransla-
tionsfromḤāfiẓ.^48 AccordingtoEmerson:‘ḤāfiẓistheprinceofPersianpoets,and
inhisextraordinarygiftsaddstosomeoftheattributesofPindar,Anacreon,Horace
and Burns, the insight of a mystic, so that his work sometimes affords a deeper

Ḥāfiẓ’s Romantic Imagery and Language of Love 287