THIRTY POEMS BY HAFIZ OF SHIRAZ pdf download

Thirty Poems by Hafiz of Shiraz Translated by Peter Avery And John Heath-Stubbs

THIRTY POEMS BY HAFIZ OF SHIRAZ

Almost any poem of Hafiz can, in fact, be read on at least three levels of significance — though we may suppose that some- times one, sometimes another, is uppermost in the poet’s mind.

In the first place, the poems may be taken at their face value as songs in celebration of love and wine.

They express the gay and graceful sensuality of a civilization which had achieved a great degree of refinement and sophistication, and which, in spite of the sternness of the Muslim theology which was its background, allowed of considerable freedom of manners.

In addition to the eroticism of its themes, this poetry is pervaded by sexual symbolism, which is more apparent to those familiar with the overtones which the images and words carry in the Persian language. But at a further removal is the interpretation in terms of Sufi mystical theology.

The images of Hafiz’s poetry are to be taken as applicable to the universal experiences of the mystic. The beloved becomes the Divine Lover; separation from Him, in its various degrees, is the Dark Night of the Soul, union with Him the mystic’s ecstatic absorption in the Absolute.

Oriental commentators, indeed, give a precise allegorical significance to every point that the poet enumerates in describing the beauty of his beloved.

Thus the mole of the cheek signifies the point of Divine Unity, the beloved’s curling tresses are the glory which at once veils and reveals the splendor of God, and so on. Mysticism which employs erotic imagery is, of course, not unknown to the West.

We find it pre-eminently in the poetry of St. John of the Cross and the Spanish mystics, who, at least by way of Ramon Lull, if not through other channels, owed much to the traditions of Arabic Sufis