Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Faces of Love is wonderful. It's actually so wonderful that I've had to abandon all hope of recapping of its virtues in a comprehensive way. (The account threatened to be book-length.) Instead, here is what I hope will be a more useful, if only partial, description of a few highlights:-- First and maybe most importantly, the collection has the rare quality of being as accessible as it is intelligent. Both the poems and the commentary that frame them offer plenty of depth and detail to satisfy the frequent reader of poetry, but it also strikes me that translator Dick Davis's wry prose and contemporary analogies could provide a very entertaining inroad someone less acquainted with this art form. (Do you like Bob Dylan? This could be the book for you!) Very easy to imagine someone who was otherwise not much of a poetry reader getting curious about what else is out there, after reading Davis's collection.-- Second, the poems are remarkable. I'm not a reader of Persian, sadly, so I can't speak to the originals, but these translations make an impressive body of work on their own. There's a dexterity with rhyme and emotion I wish we'd see a lot more of in contemporary Anglophone poetry (Davis knocked me out resolving an otherwise-unrhymed poem on despair and solace with a final rhymed couplet, closing the poem with a comfort to the reader's ear that matches and magnifies the comfort the poem's themes offer the reader's heart). There's intellectual sophistication that gives lie to postmodernity's purported monopoly on the instability of meaning (a Hafez aside about "wine that's real and not a metaphor" is but the most explicit indication that one didn't need to wait for Barthes to grasp the pleasures and possibilities in the space between sign and referent. Is all the rest of the wine only metaphorical?!) And then there's the uproariously, graphically funny (I badly wish I thought I could get away with quoting the Obayd for you here, but my strong suspicion is that it would be censored. But perhaps that knowledge will be enough to tempt!) The work is terrific, across the board; it's a bit mind-bending to imagine that one translator could work so successfully in so many different styles.-- Third, the physical book is as lovely as the poems it contains: smooth, cream-colored paper with plenty of blank leaves at the end for note-making; vibrant blue cover art, consonant with the vitality of the book's contents; a matching blue satin ribbon to mark your page or perhaps one you'd like to share. And I think you might like to share it; it's not just a book that would make a nice gift, but the kind of book that reminds why books make such nice gifts.-- Finally, Faces of Love offers the Anglophone reader a rare view on three very different ways of making and writing a life in medieval Iran. The choice to group these three poets as well as Davis's narration of the world they inhabited brings their culture to life in an unusually vivid fashion. The documentation of their diversity (which often included fairly heterodox attitudes toward religion) may especially interest students of Iranian and international politics. In a passage explaining why alcohol would be so prominent in the lives of these poets despite its prohibition in Islam, Davis writes, amusingly, that in flouting the alcohol proscription, "Local Persian dynasties...were saying, in effect, `This is a part of our culture; get over it.' " Those inclined to speculate may wonder whether Davis, an eight-year resident of Iran, isn't making a similar statement with this publication, if in more circumspect fashion! Regardless of intention though, the book documents a fascinating, multidimensional culture with a good deal more evidence and interest than what, for instance, the U.S. readers usually encounter in the mainstream media accounts of Iran. As such the book becomes not only a work of great beauty but also one of considerable social and political interest.

That would be the fitting title for the Hafez section -- which includes the majority of the poems by the three featured authors in this volume -- at any rate. Reading the selections from Hafez's work, it seems he would be recognizable today by the likes of Dean Moriarty or John Blutarsky as a kindred soul, in a take life as it comes and enjoy it.Hafez also tweaked the establishment and challenged the pious busybodies of his day, as he does here:DO YOU KNOW WHAT OUR HARPS AND LUTES ADVISE US,when heard aright?'Men say that wine's awful -- when you drinkkeep out of sight!'They say you shouldn't talk of love, or hearlove spoken of --That's a hard lesson that they're teaching us,to give up love.Love's beauty they despise -- and as for lovers,they deride them;They mock the old, and tell the young that lovemust be denied them.The final couplet leaves no doubt as to his intended target:Bring wine! Qur'an reciters, clerics, sheikhs,religion's spies --Look well at each of them, and we see a manwho lives by lies.Obviously the Persians of that time had not yet achieved the level of buzzkills that their modern Iranian religious fanatic counterparts have achieved today, or else he would not have lived to die of the ripe old age he managed. He was a burr in the craw of the Muslim authorities after his more-secular patron and apparent fellow carouser was defeated and killed, bringing a Quran-thumper into power in his city.Not to say he eschews religion altogether; but it seems to be more of a (farther) Eastern flavor of spirituality than Islam.As for the translation, the poems work great in the English versions. I can't compare them to the original Persian, but they seem to me to convey the sentiment of the time they were written with a modern ring and with a flowing rhythm and soft touch to the rhyme schemes.This verse from the next poet, Jahan Malek Khatun, whose poems are mostly dealing with the pangs of absent or lost love, is an example:I'm like a cooking potThat's placed upon love's fire --All day and night I seetheAnd bubble with desireThe final poet, Obayd-e Zakani, was older when Hafez arrived in the city, is, well, more earthy; some may even say crude. His section closes with a political satire -- "Cat and Mouse" of his patron's defeat at the hands of the army of cats depicting the pious but bloodthirsty victor.All in all I found this to be an entertaining volume of poetry that can be easily read and digested and offers a perspective on the Persian people that perhaps we in the United States do not have. The introduction and end notes are great, especially for explaining the significance of historical figures mentioned, politics of the time in which these verses were written and common Persian literary devices.

In par with Paul Smith's translation. Capturing the essence of the message as well as the format, tone, rhythm and rhyme of the verses. True to the source.

This includes a wonderful intro to three Shirazi poets and their times. Includes a small section on Persian poetics. For a non-Persian speaker like myself it gives a taste of Hafez one of the great Classical Persian speaking poets. It also adds a woman to the poetic pantheon and shows a more ribald side of poetry in another unknown male poet.

Printing, paper quality and cutting was terrible. For those who know Hafez, will love to read the poems daily for ever. The way that book was designed and printed, I do not like even to open it.

lovely book

This is far and away the best translation of Hafez into English, by an English poet married to an Iranian, who has a deep understanding of Hafez's poetry and of the religious, cultural and historical background to it, all of which is fully explained in the introduction. The whole question of the symbolism of wine and love is thoroughly examined in a clear and enlightening manner. All previous translations have been plodding, long-winded and have never failed to miss the point. Dick Davis has scored one bullseye after another and has created poetry that is a delight to read, capturing the subtle and ambiguous elegance of the original. Take this book into a rose garden on a warm evening and read it to the sound of nightingales.Voltaire said that a translation is like a woman: either faithful or beautiful, but never both. This translation is both.For those who read Persian, the Persian index is particularly helpful for finding the original text.