A Novel Interpretation of Hafiz

Mary Boyce

doi:10.1017/S0041977X00111115

A Novel Interpretation of Hafiz

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009

Mary Boyce

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The odes of Hafiz have been for some 600 years a source of delight to Persians, and an object of their serious study. To Europeans they have been known for less than half that time; yet here too, many scholars and poets have laboured to understand and interpret them. Much remains, no doubt, still to be done; but it is unlikely that anyone will now discover in the poems wholly new ranges of meaning, which have been hidden from generations of scholars among the poet's own countrymen. Any claim to such discovery must necessarily be subjected to the strictest scrutiny.

Type: Articles
Information: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , June 1953 , pp. 279 - 288

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00111115 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1953

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^{page 279 note 1} ‘Orient Pearls at Random Strung’, BSOAS., xi, 699–712.Google Scholar

^{page 279 note 2} The third ghazal in the Tehran edition of Qazwini and Qasim Ghani.

^{page 279 note 3} ‘The Persian Conception of Artistic Unity in Poetry and its Implications in Other Fields’, BSOAS., xiv, 239–243.Google Scholar

^{page 279 note 4} No. 407 in the Tehran edition. Mr. Wickens does not give the first line of the Persian text, or any means of identifying it except a reference to Professor Arberry's anthology of Hafiz' odes.

^{page 279 note 5} ‘An Analysis of Primary and Secondary Significations in the Third Ghazal of Hafiz’, BSOAS., xiv, 627–638Google Scholar. For this study Mr. Wickens chose the same ode (No. 3 in the Tehran edition) earlier analysed by Professor Arberry.

^{page 280 note 1} In Persian, as in other cultivated languages, there are elegancies of the written word, and ornamental devices such as the use of maqlūb and taṣḥīf. These are comparatively rare, and are little more than jests of the study. One does not associate them with great poetry.

^{page 280 note 2} See BSOAS., xiv, 627.Google Scholar

^{page 280 note 3} loc. cit., 635, vii a 3.

^{page 280 note 4} Neither here nor elsewhere has it seemed necessary to repeat the indecent words read by Mr. Wickens into the third ode, as secondary significations. Some of these are of the crudest character, and are yet held to underlie words of general currency, and even those of poetic worth. The application of such treatment to the work of Hafiz is particularly unwarrantable, since he is a poet known for the general seemliness of his verses.

^{page 281 note 1} BSOAS., xiv, 636, viii a 6.Google Scholar

^{page 281 note 2} Also in the first line of Ode 3.

^{page 281 note 3} ibid., 630, i a 6; for the meanings ‘sun’ and ‘sick’ see ProfessorHenning, 's observations below, p. 285Google Scholar. With mirā Mr. Wickens appears to be suggesting a change in a word of ‘primary signification’.

^{page 281 note 4} ibid., 631, ii b 5.

^{page 281 note 5} ibid., 629, i a 1–2.

^{page 281 note 6} ibid., 629, i a 3–4.

^{page 281 note 7} ibid., 633, v a 3.

^{page 282 note 1} loc. cit., 634, v b 6.

^{page 282 note 2} ibid., 637, ix a 6.

^{page 282 note 3} ibid., 632, iv a 3.

^{page 282 note 4} ibid., 632, iv a 1. Earlier (ibid., 241, verse 7) this identification had been made, with a greater approximation to accuracy, as ‘bindweeds’, ‘ašaq being an Arabic plural properly signifying ‘kinds of bindweed’.

^{page 282 note 5} This point had been stressed by Professor Arberry in his study of Ode 3. He said (BSOAS., xi, 707Google Scholar): ‘No complete understanding and appreciation of this poem is attainable … until all prior treatments of the themes have been examined, and all images and verbal pictures drawn by earlier poets have been compared.’ The force of this he brought home by a comparison of certain phrases from the ode with others in the Ghazalīyāt of Sa'dī.

^{page 282 note 6} BSOAS., xiv, 631, ii b 4.Google Scholar

^{page 282 note 7} ibid., 630, i a 5.

^{page 282 note 8} ibid., 628 n. 1.

^{page 282 note 9} ibid.

^{page 282 note 10} Since this was written, my attention has been drawn to the fact that previously (review, BSOAS., xiii, 781Google Scholar) Mr. Wickens had described Steingass as ‘elephantine and ageing’.

^{page 283 note 1} One would welcome here a more precise reference to the authority for what appears to be an extremely rare usage.

^{page 283 note 2} op. cit., 633 n. 2.

^{page 283 note 3} See ibid., 628 n. 1.

^{page 283 note 4} ibid., 627.

^{page 283 note 5} ibid., 630, i b 4.

^{page 283 note 6} ibid., 633, v a 2.

^{page 285 note 1} Unless the Jāmi ‘al-Tavārīḫ, ed. Quatrèmere, 394¹⁹, 398⁴, ⁵Google Scholar, is the source; there the river is named in connexion with both Darband and Širvān.

^{page 285 note 2} The mistake is the more remarkable in that it was Sir William Jones' rendering of these very words (namely ‘… pearls at random strung’) which was taken by Professor Arberry as the starting-point for his discussion of this ode and the odes in general. [M.B.]

^{page 286 note 1} After this article had been set up in print, I received, through the kindness of the author, ProfessorDā'ūd, Pūr-i's Hormazd Nāme (Tehran 1331)Google Scholar, which again contains a spirited chapter on the Desātīr (pp. 310–319).Google Scholar

^{page 286 note 2} The author of the Desātīr was perhaps inspired by Portuguese ponto (for the vowels of pinde the Burhān is responsible).

^{page 288 note 1} Professor Arberry considered the poem to contain one principal theme, one subsidiary theme, and one ‘clasp’ theme; he also admitted some allusions to secondary themes, contained in the interplay of the main ones (BSOAS., xi, 706Google Scholar). His analysis was of what the poet himself had said. Mr. Wickens appears to pay little heed to the poet's amis, but to discover ‘patterns’ merely from his own word-list. This is shown most clearly by the fact that, although the third ode is justly famous as a love-poem, yet, strangely, ‘love’ does not figure among Mr. Wickens' array of themes. The word ‘love’ itself (‘išq) is assigned to Category B: ‘Allusions to arrogance … lack of “respectability’, distress, etc.’ This category, we are told, often overlaps with F: ‘imperfections and defects’.

^{page 288 note 2} BSOAS., xiv, 627.Google Scholar

^{page 288 note 3} ‘When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean.’ Humpty Dumpty to Alice.

^{page 288 note 4} op. cit., 628 n. 2.

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