Haféz: Teachings of the Philosopher of Love

Introduction

By Roger Montgomery

You are about to meet one of humanity’s greatest friends and most delightful companions, a man named Shams-ud-Din Mohammad. He lived long ago in the fourteenth century in the Persian city of Shiraz in what is now southern Iran. Shams-ud-Din Mohammad was a seeker of wisdom who became a poet of genius, a lover of truth who has transcended the ages. His timeless message of liberation invites us to meet him in the tavern of the human spirit, to share a cup of wine, and to enjoy a blissful vision of humanity’s highest potential. He emphasizes the enjoy part.

Shams-ud-Din Mohammad took the pen name Haféz and cleverly inscribed that signature into the final verses of nearly all his hundreds of surviving poems. Through the centuries, Haféz has been read, memorized, recited, quoted, and loved by millions of people in one of the world’s most spiritually oriented societies. He remains Iran’s most popular poet to this day.

Haféz the poet was a synthesizer of knowledge, a thinker about the human condition, and a reporter on his own journeys into higher awareness. Like his Persian predecessors Jalal-ud-Din Rumi and Omar Khayyam, he was a poet of God. But his vision was so all-embracing that his writing serves more as a tool for pointing to the totality of the Creator than as a litany of praise. A superbly educated man in absolute command of the subtle beauty of one of the world’s most expressive languages, Haféz traced his roots of reference back to ancient Persia and extended his vision unimpeded into our own future. His mastery of poetic form empowered an endearingly informal style that has preserved his visionary content through the ages.

Haféz wrote of both the wine of the spirit and the wine of the grape. He burned with our hearts’ longing and bubbled with our minds’ humor. His full-length poems endure as in-depth essays on life, while virtually every individual couplet stands as a masterly homily of simple but profound advice:

Let neither pride nor rich delicacies delude you;

this world’s episodes extend not to eternity.

He also blends deep yearning with a thoroughly modern sales pitch:

Make this deal—buy from me this shattered heart.

Its worth is more than a thousand unbroken.

And sometimes he is just wry and witty:

Either don’t bring home elephant riders

or build a house with a very strong floor.

Such is Haféz—heart open, intellect detached and soaring, tongue in cheek, a lover of humanity. An incomparable weaver of the mystic and the hedonistic.

On a spring evening at a sidewalk café in Berkeley, California, I sat with two of Haféz’s very best friends, my coauthor Haleh Pourafzal and her father, Abdol-Hossein Pourafzal, whose life’s passion is the study of the poet’s works. Students from the University of California laughed and talked and dined around us. We three shared fine red wine as though the café were a Persian tavern. Our talk could be of only one topic: the master poet Haféz.

I have been a Haféz lover for fifty years now, Hossein said with a smile. How long have you known him?

Only about five years, I laughed, as though discussing a neighbor down the street. Haleh introduced us.

Hossein’s presence is that of a dignified Persian elder. He is a self-possessed man who misses none of the student activity around us. An attorney for forty years in Iran and France, he now splits his time between Los Angeles and Paris. His favorite spots in the world are the intellectually stimulating environments of coffee houses filled with chattering students. In Paris, where he lives fifteen minutes by Metro from thirteen million books in the Bibliothèque Nationale, he frequents the Latin Quarter with fellow members of the Persian-Parisian literary establishment.

There is absolutely no subject of importance to humanity as we enter the twenty-first century that Haféz does not address in his poetry, Hossein said. A lifelong student of Persian linguistics, Hossein is the fifth-generation direct descendant of Ghaem Magham Farahani, creator of the contemporary Farsi prose form. Although his conversational English is fluid, it does not measure up to his masterly and intricate command of Farsi. Since his comments on Haféz must reflect subtle and sophisticated levels of thought, he switches to Farsi, and Haleh translates. The center of all Haféz’s teaching is justice, and humanity is thirsty for justice now as never before. It is the perfect time for his teachings to emerge in the West.

Hossein embodies the same admiration for Haféz that I first observed in Haleh, an admiration based on respect for an artistry and intelligence that serves truth above all other values. This is not surprising, since it was Hossein’s daily recitations of Haféz that first awakened his young daughter’s awareness of the poet during her childhood in Tehran. I thought back to my own first encounter with Haféz. Our Berkeley office was quiet that winter afternoon. Haleh was focused on a book, and I was drifting into a nap in my favorite chair when she said, I want to read to you.

I nodded, but my eyes did not open. She sat beside me, paused, and then invoked a flow of words and feelings like nothing I’d heard before. Her voice, naturally rich and deep, entered a rhythmic world midway between chanting and singing. There was cadence; there was rhyme. Her reading drowned all thinking:

Ma bedin dar na peye heshmat o jah amadeim

az bad-e hadesseh inja be panah amadeim.

The language was the Farsi of Haleh’s homeland and its great Persian poets. A language not of my tongue, but certainly of my nervous system.

What does that mean in English? I asked.

No yearning for fame and fortune has tempted us to this gateway, she said slowly. Rather, we come as refugees, guided by cosmic occurrence. Our translation work had begun. When we began to translate in rhyme and rhythm for this book, the verse became:

Neither fame nor fortune tempted us to this gate;

we approach as refugees, here guided by fate.

She continued to read. Tears resounded through her voice. Centuries melted away. Around and beyond the words, drums pounded and flutes strained into outer limits of hearing, while dervishes in white whirled just outside the edges of inner vision.

Nagahan pardeh barandakhtei yaani cheh

mast az khaneh boroun takhtei yaani cheh

(What do you mean suddenly the veil has lifted?

That suddenly you are walking away gifted?)

She read on and on, a priestess calling up magical truths and strangely penetrating questions in harmonic melodies. Rhymed words and syllables repeated continually. Poem followed poem. Rhythms varied; the intensity and otherworldliness of the incantations did not. She finished. I sat entranced, unwilling to speak or open my eyes. After a while, she said simply, That was Haféz. He is my favorite poet.

Intoxication described perfectly my reaction to Haleh’s reading, and I would come to understand that no word could be more fitting. But I also would learn that sobriety was equally appropriate—and absolutely necessary—in describing the world and work of Haféz. I don’t have to understand Farsi to know there’s a lot more than just pretty words in Haféz, I said as my eyes finally opened. Can you tell me more about him?

You’re right, Haleh laughed. Haféz is not just a poet. He’s a wizard, a musician, a singer, a dancer. The poetry of his day was written for performance. If you really want to know Haféz, you must learn to dance like a writhing serpent in your mind. But there’s something more. He is a thinking poet like no other Persian before or since. He brings you philosophy, and he challenges you to think on his own level. Many people love his poetry just for poetry’s sake, but many others seek the deeper meaning. It seems to me that his philosophy is understood best by people who are free spirits.

From that introduction, Haleh patiently began explaining the essence of this Persian poet and philosopher who had been her most precious source of inspiration since childhood. In Iran, where more books have been written about Haféz than about any other person, it is said that literally every Persian feels a private bond with the poet. In the words of publisher Mohammad Batmanglij in the foreword to the book Hafez: Dance of Life, In Persia, poetry is a part of everyone’s life, from the sweeper in the bazaar to the university don. Hafez, one of the great poets, is also the most popular.¹

Haleh’s deep fascination with Haféz spurred me into a personal quest to comprehend more of this thinker of Persia’s past. As I scanned various English-language translations and writings, the tantalizing comments of several literary figures caught my eye. Typical were these words from Forugh Farrokhzad, Iran’s best-known modern female literary figure: Oh, I wish I could compose poetry like Haféz, and like him possess the sensitivity to establish a relationship with all the intimate moments in the lives of all future humankind.²

The praise also came from nineteenth-century Europe. Deeply inspired by an early German translation, Goethe wrote, In his poetry, Hafiz has inscribed undeniable truth indelibly. Hafiz has no peer.³ Among a number of verses Goethe addressed to his kindred spirit of Persia is this:

Holy Hafiz you in all

Baths and taverns I’ll recall.

When the loved one lifts her veil,

Ambergris her locks exhale.

More: the poet’s love song must

Melt the houris, move their lust.

Hafiz fears nothing, observed Ralph Waldo Emerson. He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see or be.⁴ Emerson composed a few of his own renditions, working from earlier German translations, capturing the Persian certainly as well as any other English interpreter:

O just fakir, with brow austere,

Forbid me not the vine;

On the first day, poor Hafiz’ clay

Was kneaded up with wine.

Up: Hafiz, grace from high God’s face

Beams on thee pure;

Shy thou not hell, and trust thou well

Heaven is secure.

British scholar Gertrude Bell, who translated Haféz’s poetry from Farsi, wrote, It is as if his mental eye, endowed with wonderful acuteness of vision, had penetrated into those provinces of thought which we of a later age were destined to inhabit.⁵

The praise flowed on. Spiritual teacher Inayat Khan wrote: "Hafiz stands unique in his expression, in his depth of thought, in the excellence of his symbolic expression of certain thoughts and philosophy. . . .⁶ Hafiz teaches one to see the ultimate truth and the ultimate justice in one and the same thing, and it is God; that justice is not in related things, perfect justice is in totality.⁷ Sufi teacher and author Meher Baba wrote, There is no equal to Hafiz in poetry. He was a Perfect Master."⁸

Tributes also came from the German philosopher Nietzsche and from Rudyard Kipling, who had access in India to old manuscripts of the Divan (literally, collection). This book of Haféz’s poetry was assembled after his death and today is regarded in the Middle East both as great literature and as a divination tool similar to China’s I Ching. An obvious pattern emerged in these comments: Many who had access to his poetry in Farsi as well as a few great literary minds who read translations considered Haféz among the finest of all poets.

Meanwhile, Haleh persuaded me to think of Haféz not only as a poet but also as a sage and philosopher (filsouf) in the realm of Plato and Lao-tzu and Confucius. From this starting point, both the form and content of this book began to emerge. To expand and enhance our perspective, we welcomed Haleh’s father to Berkeley.

Without any question, Haféz was a genius, Hossein observed as we ordered dinner. "When you examine the entire body of his work, there are six specific indicators of this genius. First, there is his depth of intellect. That is self-evident. Second, he is futuristic. He understands how the future will come into being. Third, he balances every philosophical idea in an appropriate perspective. He sees the need for balance in all of life.

"Fourth, his mind is fluid in the cutting-edge fields of his time. It is obvious that he is educated in algebra, geometry, philosophy, history, mythology, astronomy, logic, theology, literature, music, and linguistics. Fifth, he displays great political acumen. He is deeply concerned with social dynamics and issues of equality and human rights as they existed in his time.

"Sixth, he is a personal counselor. His words offer direct life guidance, and people have continued coming to him for centuries by consulting the Divan as a means of divination. Put all of this together and you see a fearless, thinking being of self-reliance, deep resourcefulness, dignity, and integrity. You see a genius."

In addition, Hossein explained, Haféz’s brilliance is demonstrated by his use of poetry to break through the repressive religious environment of his times in order to express a complete philosophy of the sacredness of the individual within the framework of universal mysticism. That he chose the rhythmic poetry of the sonnetlike ghazal form for most of his composition was a key to this achievement. In Persian literature, the ghazal was the best pedagogical tool available, the best way to bring ideas to a society. The ghazal was a superior form of poetry—the most mystical, most beautiful, and also the most educational. It was a dancing, joy-creating form of poetry. Messages came across when delivered by the ghazal.

Hossein’s eyes moisten as he speaks of Haféz, but he deals in facts as well as feelings. In Iran, he reported, the latest count is about six hundred books written about Haféz. Perhaps half have been published in the past fifty years, and most of them concern the Divan’s divination system. Hossein maintains his own mental outline of the sources and process through which this huge body of work came into being. In addition, at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and in other French public and private libraries, there are hundreds of books on Haféz in many of the at least twenty-five languages into which the poet’s work has been translated.

UNESCO, the United Nations educational and cultural arm, officially declared 1988 the Year of Haféz and conducted a conference in Paris to honor the poet and explore the significance of his teachings for the modern world. This event was initiated by the government of Iran, where thoughtful observers, in the tradition of earlier centuries, are turning increasingly to Haféz for political insight and counsel. As a troubled world poised precariously on the brink of the twenty-first century, prominent scholars from many lands confirmed that Haféz’s poetry and philosophy speak directly to our contemporary cutting edges of philosophy, psychology, awareness studies, educational systems, and business theory. It is easy to imagine the old poet smiling at his growing prestige and musing, ironically, that he has been here all the time.

As Haleh and I began to work on this book, Hossein assisted us in many ways, such as gaining access, in Paris and Iran, to an extensive body of previously untranslated writings of Iranian scholars. Many of these scholars have made it their lives’ work to study, catalogue, and analyze the entire body of Haféz’s poetry, breaking down all the ghazals, couplet by couplet, in order to create an overview of his message to humanity. Hossein provided us with what he considered to be the fifty best Farsi books on Haféz, each offering unique insights into particular aspects of the poet.

One focus of this book is the application of the inspired wisdom of Haféz to the dominant personal and public issues of our own time, this unique period that has come to be known as the Information Age. As the speed and complexity of our daily existence increase at a sometimes astounding rate, we are faced with a continuing need to upgrade our spiritual lives in order to balance the demands made on us by our technology. We have found the wit and genius of Haféz to be an ideal source of inner renewal no matter what draining issues arise during contemporary days. In addition, we have found that translating this Persian verse into easily comprehended modern English provides an effective vehicle for applying the poet’s essence and intent to the life of the present.

Most of the complete ghazals translated here come from the Farsi edition of the Divan assembled and edited by Ghani and Ghazvini in 1941 and considered by many Farsi scholars to be the most authoritative version. Individual couplets, however, have been selected from a dozen different Farsi Divans, each with its own variation of content and commentary. The total number of authentic Haféz poems is a topic of much debate in Iran. Some scholars have attributed more than seven hundred to him, but the most credible sources have set the figure at about five hundred. The earliest known version of the Divan, dated 1391—only a year or so after Haféz’s death—is reported to be preserved in a private collection in Gurkohpur, India. It includes four hundred and thirty-five ghazals, twenty-six rubaiyat (the four-line stanzas for which Khayyam is known), and eighteen other poems.

Our translations, with rhyme schemes and rhythm patterns approximating the original structures as nearly as possible, are designed to be read aloud, the same as the original Persian versions. The English wording is aimed at illuminating each passage’s meaning as intended by Haféz in the context of the full scope of his writings. Our emphasis is on projecting the deepest essence of the poet’s message, and often we have chosen to enhance word-forword translation with English language content that clarifies meaning in a style consistent with the poet’s mode of expression. To some degree, our prose is an extension of the translation process, since its purpose is to create an environment allowing the spirit of Haféz to find expression, just as it did in fourteenth-century Persia, with reference points in the past, present, and future.

We have created titles for the complete ghazal translations even though the original Persian poems had none, because we find these titles helpful in creating context for the verses’ content. Also, since every edition of the Divan differs as to poems included as well as organization and wording, there really is no other definitive way to refer to particular poems.

For Haleh, this book encapsulates the focus that inspired her life. Born in Iran and tuned to the spirit of Haféz, she chose a career in international service management in order to pursue her life-as-service, a key element in the poet’s philosophy. This perspective also connects traditional spiritual and philosophical wisdom from the ancient cradle of civilization to a modern vision of the world. It remains our hope, as co-authors, that this writing can serve as a single step in aligning two cultures in desperate need of mutual understanding. As Haféz said:

Peace in two worlds is the merging of two paths:

fairness with friends, fellowship with enemies.

To our two cultures and to each of us personally, Haféz proclaims this message of unity through his every verse. Welcome, the poet says to us all. Welcome, dear readers and friends, come in. Enter the tavern of higher awareness