Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz - Hardcover

Dick Davis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1933823488 ISBN 13: 9781933823485

Publisher: Mage Publishers, 2012

Synopsis

A giant of world literature, an eloquent princess, a dissolute satirist these are the three voices translated from fourteenth-century Persian by Dick Davis in Faces of Love. Together, they represent one of the most remarkable literary flowerings of any era. All three--Hafez, Jahan Malek Khatun, and Obayd-e Zakani--lived in Shiraz, a provincial capital in south-central Iran, and all drew support from arts-loving rulers at a time better known for invasions and political violence. Love was a frequent subject of their work: spiritual as well as secular, in varieties embracing every aspect of the human heart.

They could hardly have been more different. Hafez--destined to win fame throughout the world--wrote lyrical poetry that was subtle, elusive, and rich in ambiguity. Jahan largely forgotten until recent decades was a privileged princess who could evoke passion, longing and heartbreak with uncanny power. (As Davis says: To have this extraordinary poet's fascinating and often very beautiful poems emerge from six hundred years of virtual oblivion seems almost miraculous. ) Obayd a satirist and truth-teller celebrated every pleasure of the flesh in language of astonishing and occasionally obscene honesty.

In his introduction, Davis himself a gifted poet as well as an acclaimed translator and scholar of Persian literature describes the turbulent world of the three poets and recounts what is known of their lives. His scene-setting includes explanations of poetic conventions of the day: the rules of rhyming and meter, the stylized relationship between author and subject, and the way language sometimes hovers between male and female or between sacred and secular meanings. Detailed explanatory notes follow the poems, along with some personal reflections on the challenge of trying to catch the poetic genius of a culture distant in space and time. Dick Davis does it brilliantly: Faces of Love is a bridge that carries us to another age.

About this title

About the Author

As a translator, an eminent scholar of Persian literature, and an acclaimed poet, Dick Davis has published more than twenty books. Educated in England, he lived in Iran for eight years. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has taught at the University of California and Ohio State University. His recent translations include Ferdowsi's Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, chosen as one of the ten best books of 2006 by the Washington Post.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

What memories! I once lived on
the street that you lived on,
And to my eyes how bright the dust
before your doorway shone!
 
We were a lily and a rose:
our talk was then so pure
That what was hidden in your heart
and what I said were one!
 
And when our hearts discoursed
with Wisdom’s ancient words,
Love’s commentary solved each crux
within our lexicon.
 
I told my heart that I would never be
without my friend;
But when our efforts fail, and hearts
Are weak, what can be done?
 
Last night, for old times’ sake, I saw
the place where we once drank;
A cask was lying there, its lees
like blood; mud was its bung.
 
How much I wandered, asking why
the pain of parting came –
But Reason was a useless judge,
and answers? He had none.
 
And though it’s true the turquoise seal
of Bu Es’haq shone brightly,
His splendid kingdom and his reign
were all too quickly gone.
           
Hafez, you’ve seen a strutting partridge
whose cry sounds like a laugh –
He’s careless of the hawk’s sharp claws
by which he’ll be undone.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mage Publishers
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1933823488
• ISBN 13: 9781933823485
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368