Elnaz Zandian
on translating Khajeh Shams od Din Moḥammad Ḥafeẓ e Shirazi
There are many paths to choose from when translating poetry, many principles to light the way. What I personally choose is to stay as close to the author as possible, for both the meaning and the form. The translation should inspire the same emotion and evoke the same image as the original text. As Cicero puts it, I translate sense-for-sense. This is an essential approach to Persian poetry in particular, with the layered meanings and the intent behind every word.
Classical Persian thrives on iham, or ambiguity, and polysemy, and Hafez has one of the most complicated and ambiguous poetic languages. The meaning of his ghazals vary from person to person. His words can have vastly different meanings of earthly life or the divine. For example, when he writes about the Beloved, the gender is grammatically neutral in Persian, he can be speaking about a lover, or even God. Here, English, like other gendered languages, forces the translator to choose a pronoun, and, therefore, just one meaning.
The other essential characteristic, this time related to the form of the text, is the rhyme scheme and melody of the poem. The Persian ghazal is built upon rhyme and often features a radif, a recurring word or phrase at the end of every line. Persian offers a limitless supply of rhymes, but for English to force a strict rhyme scheme often results in verse that sounds comic, reducing the sublime mysticism of Hafez to the cadence of a nursery rhyme. The translator must therefore improvise to preserve the poem's dignity, substituting the original’s auditory effect for an internal rhythm or blank verse that mimics the feeling of the meter. For this translation, at first I decided on blank verse, but the result sounded too soulless and mundane, so I did my best with the rhymes and tried to keep the spirit of the poem intact.
about the author
Khajeh Shams-od-Din Moḥammad Ḥafeẓ-e Shirazi (known as Hafez) was born in fourteenth-century Shiraz, a city celebrated for its gardens, wine, and poets. One of the most admired figures in Persian literature, Hafez stands at the center of Persian culture and literary identity. His Divan, a collection of lyric poems, is found in every household and recited in family gatherings and national celebrations, such as Nowruz and Yalda Night.
Hafez lived in a time marked by political instability and that shaped both the subtlety and boldness of his verse. He is the master of the ghazal, a lyric form of six to fifteen couplets bound not by linear argument but by symbolic coherence and emotional unity. Themes of love and wine provide a space for Sufi thought, spiritual yearning, and reflections on the human condition.
The brilliance of Hafez lies in his radical ambiguity. His ghazals revel in earthly delights of wine, beauty, beloved, and gardens, while simultaneously engaging the metaphysical language of Sufi mysticism. Through intricate metaphor, irony, and musical precision, he creates a space where the sensual and the spiritual coexist, where he praises the beauty of the Beloved, laments separation, meditates on the brevity of life, and prods at religious hypocrisy and political authority. His layered poems invite multiple interpretations, allowing each reader to find a personal meaning in the text.
Hafez’s influence extends far beyond his time and place. Western writers such as Goethe and Emerson admired him, and the practice of "fal-e Hafez," a form of bibliomancy using his Divan, remains alive today. His work endures because it continues to speak across cultures and minds to the deepest human longings for beauty, truth, and transcendence.
about the translator
Elnaz Zandian
