A Correction

On Hafiz

I have a somewhat embarrassing correction to make: The poem I identified yesterday as a translation of the great 14th-century Persian Sufi poet Hafiz is not actually a translation of Hafiz; It’s an “interpretation” by an American poet named Daniel Ladinsky. Ladinsky presents his work as being that of Hafiz, but it is not. Gently put, one might say that his poems are inspired by Hafiz. But speaking honestly, you’d have to say that they are fabrications; Ladinsky does not even read Persian. Instead, he claims that the poet appeared to him in a dream and spoke English.

Here’s an article about it from Al Jazeera by Omid Safi, the Director of the Islamic Studies Center. Like Safi, I think they are often good and even beautiful poems, but I also think it’s charlatanism to pass one’s work off as that of a world-historical figure. Not to mention being extremely corny. It’s as if you decided that your poems were really Milton or Shakespeare or Goethe.

This is doubly embarrassing for me because I ought to have known better: I grew up with Hafiz in the house. My parents’ syncretic spiritual beliefs included Sufi mysticism, and the poet was regarded in our household as a saint. We had several volumes of his works in a few different translations, including the almost word-for-word early 1891 Wilberforce-Clark version of the Divān. But I grew up under the impression that Ladinsky was just another translation, albeit a somewhat controversial one. I didn’t know that he couldn’t read the language at all! The fact that Ladinsky’s poems are not numbered like the ghazals in the Divān should’ve been a big clue. In any case, I regret the error.

Here is a real poem from Hafiz, selected at random in the manner of divination that uses the Divān, from the 1897 Gertrude Bell translation:

VI

A FLOWER-TINTED cheek, the flowery close Of the fair earth, these are enough for me— Enough that in the meadow wanes and grows The shadow of a graceful cypress-tree. I am no lover of hypocrisy;

Of all the treasures that the earth can boast, A brimming cup of wine I prize the most This is enough for me!

To them that here renowned for virtue live, A heavenly palace is the meet reward ; To me, the drunkard and the beggar, give The temple of the grape with red wine stored ! Beside a river seat thee on the sward ; It floweth past-so flows thy life away, So sweetly, swiftly, fleets our little day Swift, but enough for me !

Look upon all the gold in the world's mart, On all the tears the world hath shed in vain; Shall they not satisfy thy craving heart? I have enough of loss, enough of gain; I have my Love, what more can I obtain? Mine is the joy of her companionship Whose healing lip is laid upon my lip This is enough for me!

I pray thee send not forth my naked soul From its poor house to seek for Paradise; Though heaven and earth before me God unroll, Back to thy village still my spirit flies. And, Hafiz, at the door of Kismet lies No just complaint--a mind like water clear, A song that swells and dies upon the ear, These are enough for thee!