Texts and Translations of Hâfiz

THE only original text of the Dîivân of Hâfiz which can be read with any degree of pleasure, or without impairing and imperiling even the strongest eyesight, is contained in three beautifully printed volumes edited by the late Professor Brockhaus.¹ The Persian Shaikh or Mullâ may prefer to peruse his favorite poets in Ta’lîk or Shikasta manuscripts, or in the lithographic facsimiles and typographic imitations of them issued at Shîrâz, Tabrîz, Calcutta, and Bûlak ; but for Occidental scholars such editions are a wanton waste of time and patience and paper, and, if not otherwise preventable, ought to be prohibited by the police.

The pathway of the Orientalist is rough and thorny at best, and he finds in his legitimate pursuits inherent difficulties and unavoidable obstacles enough to surmount, without having unnecessary burdens imposed upon him by being compelled, as he plods along, to perform penitential works of supererogation in atonement for the sins of editors and publishers. If Oriental literature is ever to break through the barriers of the school, and become something more than the well-fenced close of a few specialists, who, by their isolation from the common interests and sympathies of mankind, are liable to lose all sense of proportion in knowledge, and to fall into vexatious habits of pedantry and micrology; if it is ever to exert its proper influence upon Western taste and culture, and upon the general development of modern thought, by putting us into full possession of that rich and peculiar intellectual heritage of which the East is the proud and often too jealous guardian, more than ordinary pains must be taken to invite and facilitate the study of it by rendering its representative works both externally attractive and easily legible.

In this respect Brockhaus has set an excellent example : first, by making use of the clear and compact Naskhi characters ; and, secondly, by vocalizing them throughout, thereby determining the proper pronunciation as well as the immediate and correct understanding of the words. The simple process of printing the vowel-points not only saves a great waste of mental energy in mere efforts of memory, but also insures a degree of precision and accuracy not otherwise attainable even by the most accomplished Persian scholar. Very commendable, too, are his system of punctuation and his helps to the right scanning of the verses. The latter is all the more necessary because the metrical recitation not only serves to bring out the exquisite rhythm and liquid melody of the poetry, but also furnishes efficient and often indispensable aid in settling the sense of difficult or ambiguous passages, in which the metre is finally decisive as to the meaning. The text of Brockhaus’ edition is essentially a reprint of the recension of the Bosnian Turk Sûdî, and is provided, as far as the eightieth ghazal, or ode, with the annotations of this learned and judicious commentator, and also with the variants of the Calcutta edition. Thus a firm foundation has been laid on which it is possible to build anew, and by a further collation of codices and a happy combination of philological criticism with poetic taste, and the inspiration and illumination that come from genuinely Oriental sentiment and sympathy, to eliminate from the works of Hâfiz the errors and additions of copyists, and restore them to their original form; in short, to do for the Persian poet what classical critics and philologists have done for his lyrical next of kin, Horace and Anacreon.

No Eastern poet is more popular than Hâfiz. He is the favorite not only of the Persians, but also of the many Asiatic peoples to whom the Persian language is what French used to be to the nations of Europe, the chief medium of social and diplomatic intercourse and elegant literature, and an essential element of intellectual culture and refinement. His odes are recited on the banks of the Oxus and Yaxartes, the Ganges and the Danube, with no less enthusiasm than

His erotic and convivial songs and sententious strophes are repeated with as much zest in the steppes of Turkistân, the fertile plains of Malabar, and the cinnamon groves of Ceylon as in the famous rose gardens and cypress avenues of Shîrâz and Ispâân. The poet himself was fully justified in boasting that the fame of his magic art extended from Egypt to China, and from Rai to Rum, and that

Nothing, indeed, is more common in the Orient than to hear disputants elucidate a controversial point, or clinch an argument, by an apt quotation from Hâfiz, whose poems abound in pithy sayings and quaint conceits, and the keenest strokes of satire aimed at every form of pretentious pietism and Pharisaism. There is a story told of a notorious bandit, who, having been captured and condemned to death, sent to the governor of the province a petition for pardon, in which he set forth his own distinguished merits, and claimed that, instead of suffering decapitation, he should be taken into the public service, where his head would be of more value than on the block, and his superior talents and long experience in brigandage would find a fitting field for their exercise in detecting crime. This remarkable document, worthy of the genius of a “ practical statesman ” of the Guiteau type, was returned to the petitioner, inscribed with the following couplet from Hâfiz, as the governor’s sole reply : —

Next to the Kur’ân, Hâfiz’ writings are most frequently consulted as an oracle for the purpose of divining the future. The usual method is to breathe on the volume, and utter an invocation like the following : —

The book is then opened at hazard, and the first passage which meets the eye is regarded as an answer to the given question. It is stated that Nâdir Shâh, during a campaign against the Afghâns, made a pilgrimage to the poet’s tomb, and there had recourse to divination through the Dîvân in order to ascertain whether the expedition would be successful. Fortune favored him: as he unrolled the scroll his eye fell upon the final distich of the fifty-seventh ode : —

Encouraged by this auspicious omen, he attacked these cities, and rescued them from the Turks. Countless stories of this kind, some true and many well invented, are current in the East. About three centuries ago, Husayn of Kaffa collected more than one hundred and fifty of these anecdotes in a work entitled Kitâbi fa‘li Dîwâni Hafiz, or Book of Sortilege with the Dîvân of Hâfiz. The poet Jâmi also praises the verses of Hâfiz for their augural virtue ; as revealers of the will of Heaven, they still enjoy a reputation like that of the oncefamous sortes vergilianæ or the old Norse runes.

In consequence of their permanent popularity and wide diffusion, the poems of Hâfiz have been reproduced in innumerable copies, and corrupted by a multitude of glosses, interpolations, expurgations, and emendations. Odes have been introduced wholly destitute of the delightful and delicate spirit, and only clumsily imitating the mellifluous rhythm of the original models. In many cases the order of the couplets has been changed, and new couplets have been inserted, to suit the whim of the reader, or alleviate the rhyming itch of the scribe, or satisfy the orthodox scruples of the Muhammadan scholiast, who has too often been tempted to smooth the pathway of exegetics, and remove the most obvious and offensive stumbling-blocks by botching and bungling up the poet’s heresies: —

The elimination of all this spurious stuff and the complete redintegration of the text is a task which Brockhaus has not attempted, and which yet remains to be accomplished. To do this will require great patience and industry, a broad and accurate scholarship, fine but not finical, an extended knowledge of Eastern life and habits of thought, and a well - disciplined and discriminating taste, prompt to detect and competent to rectify all transpositions of motives and incongruities of style and sentiment, so that the editor may be able to decide with something like intuition, in the case of each poetic abnormity, how far the critical scalpel is to be applied, and whether to

In no department of learning is there more urgent need of this revisional and reconstructive criticism than in Oriental literature, and nowhere should it be conducted with greater care and caution, especially in giving scope to ingenious conjectures and the suggestions of merely individual fancy and feeling. Hâfiz himself complains of contemporary poetasters, who tried to palm off their pinchbeck for his gold: the city-shroffs themselves becoming counterfeiters and issuers of base coin. He also ridicules these forgers as men who braid split reeds into coarse mats, and imagine themselves to be embroiderers of fine tissues and rich tapestries : —

It was not so much from plagiarists that he suffered as from personators, who stole his seal and signet in order to give currency to their own inferior productions, and thus injured his reputation ; and if he was annoyed by the circulation of these counterfeits in his native city and during his lifetime, one can easily fancy what dimensions the evil assumed in remote places and after his death.

Of the several attempts which have been made to render Hâfiz into English verse, Bicknell’s translation is unquestionably the best.² It is based on the text of Brockhaus, and, with the exception of three odes not contained in the latter, and a few slight variæ lectiones and unimportant deviations in the succession of the couplets, is, so far as it goes, identical with it. Of the five hundred and seventy-three odes (ghazliyât) printed by Brockhaus, Bicknell has translated one hundred and thirty-one entirely, and portions of fifty-five others ; he has also rendered all of the fortytwo so-called fragments (kit’ât),and the sixty-nine tetrastichs (rubâ’iyât), two of the six binorhymes (masnaxviyât), namely The Cupbearer’s Book (sâkînâma) and The Minstrel’s Book (mughannînâma), a few stanzas of the two idyls or panegyrics (kasa’id), and the concluding pentastich (mukhammas). From this summary it will be seen that Bicknell’s volume comprises about one fourth of the odes which alone constitute the Dîvân proper, and a still greater proportion of the other poems which are also comprehended under this title, when used in a wider sense to denote an au- thor’s collected, and especially his posthumous works.

A Dîvân, in the strict signification of the term, consists of a series of odes, or ghazals, arranged in the alphabetical order of the rhymes. Theoretically, a ghazal³ should never have less than five nor more than ten couplets;⁴ but this rule is by no means rigidly adhered to in practice. Both lines of the first couplet and the second line of each succeeding couplet in the ghazal must rhyme, and the rhyme must end with the letter of the alphabetical section to which the ghazal belongs. Thus every ghazal under Alif must rhyme in Alif, every ghazal under Be in Be, and so on through all the thirty-two letters of the Persian alphabet. This binding letter is called rawîy. Furthermore, the final couplet of each ghazal must contain the author’s name, as a sort of signature, or signmanual, and usually expresses some purely personal sentiment, such as selflaudation, despair, admonition, flattery of a friend or patron, censure of a rival or foe, praise of the Supreme Being, or longing for the loved one.

Composing ghazals is therefore very aptly compared to piercing and stringing pearls ; the same word, nazm, being used for both acts, and the monorhyme forming the continuous thread which runs through the whole row of couplets and holds them together. It is this analogy which leads Eastern poets to speak so often of their verses as pearls, and to characterize a halting distich as a half-bored pearl (gawhari nûmsuft). The metaphor has to their minds a peculiar fitness and force which we fail to appreciate. Thus Hâfiz, in The Cupbearer’s Book, commends Nizâmi as a peerless poet, from whom he

This compliment, however, is made to reflect glory upon himself, since he elsewhere declares that his own songs, pure as pellucid pearl (durri khwushab, pearl of fine water), excel in lustre those of Nizâmi. Again, in a generous tribute to his contemporary, Salmân, court poet of Sultân Uvais at Baghdâd, he repeats the same figure of speech : —

In one of the binorhymes, not translated by Bicknell, it is said that the wise men who first called our earthly habitation a hostelry bored a pearl of truth, or, in more prosaic Western phrase, hit the nail on the head.

The Dîvân abounds in quaint conceits and queer similitudes, drawn from the supposed magical and medicinal qualities of gems, the strange virtues they were thought to possess as philters and phylacteries, and the curious notion that they contain perfectly pure water, frequently compared to the water of knowledge or the water of life, which trickles from them when they are perforated. In the following passage, this idea is carried out in one of those obscure and elaborate metaphors of which the Orientals are so fond : —

In other words, if the beggar only possesses the pearl of a noble nature, his shame will expand from the minutest point, in an ever-widening circle, by virtue of the water in this pearl, until it embraces his whole character, just as a pebble thrown into a pond produces a movement which gradually covers the entire surface. This couplet furnishes a good illustration of the difficulty of giving a close and at the same time an intelligible translation of Persian poetry.

According to native grammarians and prosodists, the ghazal is preëminently what Dr. Johnson used to call an “ amatorian ode.” Sweet music, ruby lips, and ruddy wine are the constant themes of Hâfiz, who never tires of touching his lyre to strains like these : —

The last couplet has been oddly misunderstood by both Hammer and Rosenzweig, who interpret it as meaning that the Muhtasib, or superintendent of police, is also a tippler, whereas his search after wine is for the purpose of suppressing its sale and preventing scandalous indulgence in it. To speak of him as “ begabt mit Trunklust ” is to miss the very point, and to lose the whole wit of the ambiguous phrase.

It is further stated by Persian writers on poetics that the subject matter of the ghazal, “ whether it be the joy of meeting or the pain of parting, should be continued to the end.” In other words, each ghazal should unfold a single thought, and preserve a uniform tone of sentiment. Hâfiz never adheres pedantically to this jus et norma loquendi, but obeys rather the suggestions of his own genius. On one occasion he was taken to task by Shah Shuja’ for his frequent violations of poetic unity by weaving a didactic strain, or a subtile thread of Sûfî mysticism and metaphysics, into the same ode in which he sings the passion of love, or the gladdening presence of wine. The Shâh himself was a dabbler in verse, and felt no little pride in the technical correctness of his productions. He possessed some literary taste, considerable intelligence, and unusual force of character; he only lacked the one thing needful for the true poet,—creative imagination. He was among bards what the ostrich is among birds, — a creature that by sheer strength of shank and sinew manages to get over a good deal of ground in a short space of time, but with all its leaping and flapping never rises into the air and soars, and would naturally turn its “ feeble eyen ” towards the sky with stupid wonder at the eccentric and tremulous movements of the lark mounting heavenward, and making the empyrean ring with melody, as it pours its

To the strictures of such a critic Hâfiz replied, “ The words which fall from the gracious lips of your majesty contain the very essence of truth, and it is doubtless due to the defects of my poems that they are sought after in distant lands, whilst the excellent verses of other poets never get beyond the gates of Shîrâz.” This response so enraged the Shâh that he caused Hâfiz to be cited before the inquisitorial tribunal of Ulamâ, on a charge of heresy, based on a couplet in which the doctrine of a future life seemed to be denied, or at least derided. By the advice of a legal friend, Hâfiz introduced an additional couplet, putting the offensive words into the mouth of a Christian who had just taken his morning dram. The poet was acquitted by the hierarchical court, on the ground that “ the citation of an heretical opinion does not constitute heresy.” The couplet which gave rise to the trial and the one which rose out of it, literally translated, are as follows : “ How sweetly came to me these words, which, at dawn, a Christian sang to pipes and tabors near the wine-shop door: ’ If that’s the Muslim’s faith which Hâfiz holds, alas that to-morrow should follow in the footsteps of to-day ! ’ ” The man who could detect anything condemnatory in these lines must have had a scent for heresy as keen as that of a Spanish Dominican.

Oriental poets are very fond of showing their skill in overcoming self-imposed and superfluous difficulties by cramping and contorting their verses, and compressing their ideas into all sorts of whimsical shapes, to which they sometimes attach a symbolical significance. It is an absurd and crudely unæsthetic confusion of the imaging and the speaking arts, to attempt to give to poetry a plastic character, to burden the pen with the superadded functions of the brush and the burin, to work in words as the sculptor works in clay and the painter in colors. Thus the Hindus exercise their ingenuity in constructing poems in the form of a lotus (padma-bandha), a drum (muraja-bandha), a sword (khadga-bandha), a bow (dhanur-bandha), a garland (srag-bandha), and a tree (vriksha-bandha.) In all this metrical and mental procrusteanizing there is reflected something of the arbitrary and autocratic spirit of the Eastern despot, who takes a morbid delight in freaks of nature, dwarfs, giants, and monstrosities, which he propagates by artificial selection, or even creates by actual surgery, to suit a cruel caprice, after the ghastly fashion of L’Homme Qui Rit. The poet is not satisfied with his oratio vineta or gebundene Rede until he has not only bound it hand and foot, but also mutilated and distorted it in the most fantastic manner. He seems to find the same childish pleasure in forcing his thoughts into attitudes which render their free and vigorous movement impossible that rude boors and rustics do in the floundering efforts of men to run races with their feet in bags.⁵

A great genius, like Hâfiz, never consents to play the clown in this wise : he is not ambitious to compete with the mountebank, nor to rival the feats of the prestidigitateur; he has no wish to manacle his wit, and can put the fine frenzy of his imagination to nobler uses than to exhibit it to a gaping crowd struggling in a strait-jacket. Yet, notwithstanding his freedom from all such artificial restraints, as well as from all forced and obscure inversions in style, and the remarkable simplicity, naturalness, and perspicuity of the language in which his easy numbers flow, it is evident from the very nature and structure of the ghazal, as already defined, that it involves restrictions and imposes hampering conditions which make the translation of his poetry into another tongue, and especially into English, a task of extreme difficulty.

Furthermore, when we consider that in his Dîvân there are, for example, seventy-seven ghazals rhyming in Mîm, ninety in Te, and one hundred and sixtyseven in Dâl, we can easily imagine that even the graceful and consummate skill of a Rückert, with a medium at his command as pliant and adaptable as German, might despair of reproducing the rhythmic and rhymic peculiarities of Hâfiz’ verse with any degree of elegance and exactness.

In addition to this clog of the monorhyme, there is also a constant succession of puns, antitheses, alliterations, and all kinds of miniature word-painting and curious word-play, in which the poet indulges far more freely than accords with Occidental taste, and which it is wellnigh impossible to retain or to represent. Persian writers are constantly and almost irresistibly tempted to err in this direction, not only by the peculiar structure of their language and its system of unwritten vocalization, but also by the fact of having, besides their vernacular vocabulary, the word-magazines of Arabic, Hindûstâni, and countless local dialects to draw from ; so that they are never in want of brilliant equivoques and other many-colored explosives for displays of verbal pyrotechnics. Thus the distinguished Dillî poet, Amîr Khusrau, relates in charming verse how, as he was walking on the banks of a stream, he saw a beautiful Hindû lady, with long, disheveled hair, performing her ablutions. “ Oh, lovely image,” he exclaimed, “ what is the price of a lock ? ” The fair damsel replied, “ Dur dur muy,” In Persian her answer would mean, “A pearl for every hair ; ” whilst in Hindûstâni the same words would express the sharp reproof, " Begone, begone, thou scamp ! ” Such double - entendres are of frequent occurrence, and afford infinite entertainment to the Oriental mind.

What Cervantes affirmed of translations in general is preëminently true of the translation of a Hâfizian ode: it is at best like the wrong side of a piece of tapestry, which shows the artistic designs only in rough outlines, the interwoven figures marred, and the delicate shades of color blurred. It is easy enough to paraphrase a Persian ghazal, as Sir William Jones has done, amplifying and embellishing the theme, and introducing an occasional strain or suggestion of the original, like a musician improvising variations to a popular melody ; but to produce a version at once accurate and readable, and so closely corresponding to the original as to be in some degree a substitute for it, is a labor requiring no inconsiderable power of intellectual assimilation and poetic execution.

The Germans, who are justly recognized as pioneers and facile principes in this branch of literary labor, already possess two complete translations of Hâfiz: the first by Joseph von Hammer (2 vols., Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1812— 13). and the second by Vincenz von Rosenzweig (3 vols., Vienna, 1858-64). The former, notwithstanding the reputation which it has enjoyed for more than half a century, is in reality a very faulty and flawy piece of workmanship. The fact that such an extremely imperfect production was once highly and universally praised proves how much the standard of translation has risen during the past seventy years. Scarcely an ode can be said to be satisfactorily rendered; serious errors, which pervert the meaning of the original, constantly occur; and many odes, like that on Hârût and Mârût, for example, are botched and bungled almost beyond recognition. But, with all the defects that mar these volumes, one turns their embrowned and thumb-soiled pages with a feeling of reverence and gratitude, remembering that from them came the first impulse and chief incentive to Goethe’s Westoestlicher Divan. Hammer’s merits, too, as an Orientalist were far greater than this translation would lead us to infer. Both by his learning and his personality he exerted a wide and lasting influence in this direction, not only in Austria and Germany, but also throughout all Europe. His writings show great research and erudition, and an intimate and accurate knowledge of Eastern life and character. Rosenzweig, Kremer (Culturgeschichte des Orients), and Baron von Schlechta are all either pupils of Hammer, or propagators of the movement he originated and the interest he excited in Oriental literature and history. Indeed, The Revolutions in Constantinople in the Years 1807 and 1808 (Vienna, 1882), by Baron von Schlechta, is essentially a supplement to Hammer’s celebrated History of the Osmanic Empire. Rosenzweig’s version of Hâfiz is quite close and correct, and is accompanied by the Persian text, although printed in the obscure and eye-straining Ta’lik characters, which no European editor ought to use. Selections from Hâfiz have also been translated by Daumer (Hamburg, 1846, sqq.) and by Nesselmann (Berlin, 1865) : the former is fluent and quite spirited, but much too free and fragmentary ; the latter is far more faithful, and has very skillfully preserved many of the peculiar features of the original.

Still more recent is Bodenstedt’s Singer of Shîrâz,⁶ an anthology of entire poems and isolated couplets, culled with excellent taste and discrimination from the flowery fields of the Dîvân, and “ germanized ” with the rare poetical facility and the intimate acquaintance and intense sympathy with Eastern customs and habits of thought which distinguish the author of Tausend und Ein Tag im Orient and Die Lieder des Mirza Schaffy. Regarded strictly as a translation, it by no means takes rank with that of Bicknell, already referred to. But it must be borne in mind that each had in view a different aim and ideal. Bicknell wished to produce an exact and, so far as possible, linear version of the original, and has been remarkably successful in the accomplishment of this extremely difficult task. Bodenstedt’s standpoint is clearly indicated by the use of the word “ verdeutscht ” on the title-page. His object, as he states it, is " den altpersischen Dichter heimisch zu machen” But this attempt involves dangers similar to those which attend the domestication of rare and delicate beasts in a jardin d’acclimatation; if they survive the process, they undergo a change, and suffer the loss of some of their finest qualities and most distinctive characteristics. The ghazals of Hâfiz can never be acclimatized and thoroughly naturalized in Western literature. They resemble, in this respect, those exotic plants which, with us, thrive and preserve their native bloom and perfume only in hot-beds and the artificial atmosphere of green-houses, but in the common soil and common air of other than their indigenous climes either perish or become transformed and assimilated to the flora of the land to which they have been transplanted.

It is easy to predict for Bodenstedt’s Hafisische Lieder a wide and permanent popularity in Germany, rivaling that of his own Mirza Schaffy and of Goethe’s West-oestlicher Divan ; but only by the sacrifice of whatever is most peculiarly and preëminently Persian and Hâfizian will they be able to attain and maintain this prominent place in German literature. Hâfiz and all the Persian poets often resort to metaphors and allusions which appear to us not only far-fetched and obscure, but also dreadfully prosaic and ignoble. Nevertheless, no translator is justified in eliminating all this imagery, merely because it is not readily intelligible, or does not accord with what we call good taste. On the contrary, this is the very reason why it should be scrupulously retained and, if need be, explained. The comparison in which the poet represents himself as a sugar-eating parrot ought not to be omitted simply because “ it strikes the German ear comically.” We do not prize a dark mole on the cheek as an element of beauty, nor call a heartless coquette a Turk ; but the fact that such expressions and figures of speech do not occur in our erotic poetry, and that such spots “ do not have for us the poetic charm they possess for an enamored Persian,” does not give us the right to erase them ; otherwise the dictates of individual fancy and caprice would alone set limits to the work of expurgation.

In every genuine poem and truly artistic creation, the thought and the phrase, the conception and the form, are inseparably interfused. It is not enough, therefore, to communicate the plain sense of a verse, however clearly and elegantly it may be done. The original method of expressing it, the die with which the imagination first stamped it and gave it currency as coin, the rhetorical adornments with which the thought is embellished and the similes by which it is illustrated and enforced, must all be reproduced. For these things are not mere accidents and accessories, but integral and essential parts of the poem, and cannot be discarded without depriving it of its peculiar tone and color. A few passages will suffice to illustrate this principle, and to show how far Bodenstedt has deviated from it. Thus he sums up the beautiful ode in which Hâfiz laments the death of his son as follows : —

Compare this epitomized version with Bicknell’s faithful rendering of the entire ode: —

The German translation conveys the plain sense of the original as clearly and concisely as possible, but the Oriental hues are all washed out of it: “the gorgeous East ” is stripped of its “ barbaric pearl and gold ; ” we do not get the slightest suggestion of the curious and often confused play of the Persian poet’s fancy and his tropical exuberance of expression. What the reader wishes to familiarize himself with is not merely Hâfiz’ thought, but also the figurative language in which he clothes it, with its mixed metaphors and obscure allusions, which the translator should elucidate but not eliminate. The camel-driver invoked in the fourth distich is the poet’s friend, from whose sympathy he hopes for strength to bear the burden of his grief as he follows his son’s bier to the grave. Heaven (the turquoise sphere or azure vault) has built our earthly habitation, ironically called a hall of pleasure, out of mortar made of the mingled dust and tears which gather on the face during life’s pilgrimage. The highest compliment a Persian can pay to a person’s beauty is to call him or her a moon. Thus Hâfiz declares that heaven’s moon through envy has slain his young moon, whose crescent suggests eyebrows arched like a bow. The last distich contains a metaphor taken from the Oriental’s favorite game of chess. The sad father laments that he did not cover the king with a castle, — that is, did not give his son in marriage, — so that he might now enjoy at least the society of grandchildren, and find consolation and comfort in their companionship. This neglect he ascribes to “the Cycle’s freaks,” or to the diversions of the days which made him thoughtless: bâzîe ayyâm marâ ghâfil kard. Present happiness, all-absorbing, rendered him heedless of the future. Few Europeans, perhaps, would understand this figure of speech ; nevertheless, it is far more satisfactory to preserve it and explain it in a brief footnote than to substitute for it the bald prose of Bodenstedt’s verse: “ I left him unwedded, and now stand alone.”

In an ode written during his visit to the Shâh of Yazd, Hâfiz, lamenting the fate that has cast his lot among strangers, and longing for his native land, exclaims, —

This truly Oriental imagery means simply that he will welcome with tears of joy the messenger who shall bring tidings from the beloved one at home ; or as Bodenstedt renders it: —

The feeling here expressed is as universal as home-sickness ; it is only Hâfiz’ manner of expressing it that is specifically Persian, and this distinctive feature disappears entirely from the German translation. With the tendency of the Eastern imagination, in pursuing a metaphor, to run down any chance game that bears the slightest and most superficial resemblance to it, the tribute of glad tears is compared to the small gold coins which are scattered among the people on festive occasions, and this largess (nisar) suggests the gold thread which the Persians are wont to weave into their hair, and thus calls up the image of the absent friend. In this wild chase of tropes, the poet, like an ill-trained hound, is constantly led astray by crossscents and counter-scents, and during the course of the hunt will have bayed perhaps half a dozen different kinds of quarry. If he started a stag, he will most likely bring in a squirrel. But the translator must not omit this peculiarity, nor attempt to correct the author’s rhetorical divagations, if he would truly represent the original.

Again, of the eighty-seventh ode, Bodenstedt translates only the first, second and ninth couplets thus : —

The same couplets in Bicknell’s version are as follows : —

In the German translation the second couplet is linked to the ninth by the insertion of a wholly foreign phrase (“ I take it as it tastes ”), which supplants the first hemistich of the ninth, so that the second hemistich of the couplet thus mutilated makes no sense whatever. In the Persian ode, which is given entire neither by Bodenstedt nor by Bicknell, Hâfiz passes, with the third couplet, by a natural transition from the intoxication of wine to that of love, confines himself during the rest of the poem to the latter form of inebriety, and concludes by comparing himself, as regards his ardent and consuming passion, to the taper made to burn and melt. These examples will suffice to illustrate the manner in which Bodenstedt has conceived of and executed his task. The result is an attractive volume of poems, but a very inadequate version of Hafiz.

Notwithstanding the fine appreciation of Persian literature shown by Jones, Nott, and Hindley, and the real value of their labors in this field of learning, no one nowadays would claim that the few translations they printed, however excellent as poems, give the reader any proper conception of the original which they pretend to represent. They were made on the false and now happily exploded theory of “ translation with latitude,” in accordance with which Sir William Jones expanded the eighteen lines of a Hafizian ghazal into fifty-four lines of English, and thus succeeded in producing a very smooth and pretty poem, from which every distinctive feature of the original was conscientiously eliminated.

Bicknell, indeed, is the first English scholar who has translated a Persian ghazal linearly, faithfully, and poetically, and in achieving this result has proved himself not merely a ready rhythmer and rhymer, but also at least ex alieno ingenio poeta. That even in his hands the delicate and delicious wine of Shîrâz should lose much of its native flavor and bouquet by decantation is inevitable ; but he has not diluted it for domestic consumption, nor loaded it with a view to exportation, nor adulterated it with foreign ingredients to suit unseasoned palates. On every page of the magnificent and, we regret to add, memorial volume, in which are garnered the mature fruits of many years’ study and travel, we find ample evidence that he possessed, both as a linguist and a metaphysician, the rare learning and peculiar qualities of mind necessary to grasp and to interpret the half-mystic and half-material subtleties of thought which pervade the lyrics of Hâfiz, and constitute a chief element of their irresistible and enduring fascination.

Mindful, too, of Goethe’s maxim, —

he resided for some time at Shîrâz, and there became familiar with the favorite haunts of the poet and the places made famous by his song, and acquired also a thorough knowledge of the character and customs of the Persian people. Had he lived to see his work through the press, he might have added here and there a finer touch, and given to the whole a more perfect finish ; but even in its present form, issued as it was without his final revision, it is unquestionably the very best version of the Dîvân extant. The selections are made with excellent taste and judgment; the notes which follow each ode are pointed and compact ; and, as far as it extends, it is incontestably superior to any other translation of Hâfiz accessible to the English reader. Doubtless the critic, who regards it from a purely literary standpoint, will find plenty of prosaic passages and some clumsy verses. But these defects are incidental to every translation of this kind, which aims at the strict fidelity of a prose version, whilst preserving, as far as possible, the metrical character of the original. The exact reproduction of the ghazal, with its peculiar richness of rhyme, has not yet been achieved in any European language, and no Persian scholar expects it ever will be.

Typographically, too, Bicknell’s volume is an elegant specimen of bookmaking, highly creditable to the publisher and well worthy of the contents. The illustrations, consisting of three chromo-lithographs and six woodcuts representing appropriate Oriental scenes, the tasteful floriated title, the numerous vignettes and arabesques, and the rich Persian border, printed in green and gold, and adorning every page of the clear letter-press, render the book a perpetual delight to the bibliophile. The harmony of the whole is disturbed only by a single discord : the sacred color of the prophet, which produces such a charming effect upon the inner illuminations, should have extended to the exterior, and the volume have been bound in green and gold instead of purple and gold.

A translation of the entire Dîvân by Professor E. H. Palmer was announced as “ in preparation.” But as it has not yet appeared, it was probably not ready for publication at the time when the sudden and tragic death of this accomplished Orientalist at the hands of Arab assassins occurred.

E. P, Evans.