Poems from the Divan of Hafiz

by active 14th century Hafiz

Stanza 1.—The first line of this song, the opening poem in the Divan, is borrowed from an Arabic poem by Yezid ibn Moawiyah, the second Khalif of the Ommiad line. This prince was held in abomination by the Persian Shi’ites, both as the head of the Sunnis and because he was the cause of the death of Hussein, the son of Ali, whom the Shi’ites regarded as the rightful successor to the Khalifate. Hafiz was frequently reproached for setting a quotation from the works of the abhorred Yezid at the head of his book, a reproach which he is said to have met with the reply, that it was good policy to steal from the heretics whatsoever they possessed of worth.

“In this country (i.e. North-Eastern China) is found the best musk in the world, and I will tell you how it is produced. There exists in that region a kind of wild animal like a gazelle. It has feet and tail like the gazelle’s, a stag’s hair of a very coarse kind, but no horns. It has four tusks, two below and two above, about three inches long, and slender in form, one pair growing downwards and the other upwards. It is a very pretty creature. The musk is found in this way: when the creature has been taken, they find at the navel, between the flesh and the skin, something like an imposthume filled with blood, which they cut out and remove, with all the skin attached to it; and the blood inside this imposthume is the musk that produces that powerful perfume. There is an immense number of these beasts in the country we are speaking of. The flesh is very good to eat. Messer Marco brought the dried head and feet of one of these animals to Venice with him.”—Travels of Marco Polo.

There is a play of meaning upon the musk which is obtained at the cost of the deer’s life-blood and the tears of blood which the lover weeps for his mistress.

Stanza 2.—The title which Hafiz gives to the Tavern-keeper is Pir-i-Maghan—literally, the Old Man of the Magians. The history of this title is an epitome of the history of Persian faiths. It indicated primarily the priest of the first of Persian religions, that of Zoroaster. When the Mahommadans invaded Persia, and the preachers of the Prophet supplanted the priests of Zoroaster, their title fell into disrepute, and was degraded so far that it came to mean only the keeper of a tavern or caravanserai. But in this sense it gradually regained the honourable place from which it had fallen; for the keepers of such places of resort were, for the most part, men well acquainted with the “ways of the road and the hostelry.” In their time they may themselves have served travellers upon their journey; they had heard and learnt much from the wayfarers who stopped at their gates, and they were able to guide others upon their journey, sending them forth refreshed and comforted in body. And here the Sufis took up the ancient name and used it to mean that wise old man who supplied weary travellers upon life’s road with the spiritual draught of Sufi doctrine which refreshes and comforts the soul.

II

Stanza 1.—This poem has been expounded to me as a description of the poet’s quest for love. In an allegory he shows how he looked for it in vain from that image of earthly devotion, the nightingale; he warns men that it comes not but by humiliation and sorrow; he questions the magic garden, but its breezes cannot answer him; finally, he concludes that love is not that which lies upon the lips of men, and calls upon the Cup-bearer to silence their idle talk with the wine of divine knowledge.

Stanza 2.—The Garden of Irem was planted by the mythical King Shedad, the son of Ad, the grandson of Irem, who was himself the son of Shem. The tribe of Ad settled in the sandy deserts near Aden, where Ad began the building of a great city which his son completed. Round his palace Shedad planted a wonderful garden which was intended to rival in beauty the Garden of Eden. “When it was finished he set out with a great attendance to take a view of it, but when they were come within a day’s journey of the place they were all destroyed by a terrible noise from heaven.... The city, they tell us, is still standing in the deserts of Aden, being preserved by Providence as a monument of divine justice, though it be invisible, unless very rarely, when God permits it to be seen, a favour one Colabah pretended to have received in the reign of the Khalif Moawiyah, who, sending for him to know the truth of the matter, Colabah related his whole adventure: that, as he was seeking a camel he had lost, he found himself on a sudden at the gates of this city, and entering it, saw not one inhabitant, at which being terrified, he stayed no longer than to take with him some fine stones which he showed the Khalif.”—Sale’s Koran.

Sudi says that Hafiz composed this poem in a beautiful garden belonging to Shah Shudja, and called by him the Bagh-i-Irem, after Shedad’s legendary Paradise.

“Il y avait jadis en Perse un grand roi nommé Djem ou Djemshid. Il régna sept cents ans; je ne saurai vous dire à quelle date au juste, mais ‘tant qu’il régna, il n’y eut dans son empire ni mort, ni maladie, ni vieillesse, et tous les hommes marchaient dans la taille de jouvenceaux de quinze ans; il n’y avait ni chaleur, ni froideur, et jamais ne se desséchaient les eaux ni les plantes.’ Mais le pauvre Djem n’avait point la tête solide, et, comme il faisait des immortels, il se crut Dieu et voulut être adoré. Aussitôt, le Fari Yazdan, c’est-à-dire la gloire royale qui vient de Dieu, l’abandonna; un serpent à trois têtes, nommé Zohab, vint de l’Arabie et lui prit son trône; il s’enfuit dans l’Inde et y resta chaché mille ans durant; puis un beau jour, s’étant aventuré hors de sa retraite, il fut livré au serpent, qui le scia en deux avec une arête de poisson. Entre autres splendeurs, le roi Djemshid, au temps de sa splendeur, possédait une coupe magique où il voyait tout l’univers et tout ce qui s’y passe. Certains savants prétendent que cette coupe était le soleil qui voit toute chose; d’autres, que c’était un globe terrestre mis au courant, et il me souvient qu’il y a deux ans, prenant le thé dans un café de Stamboul avec un sage d’Isfahan, nommé Habib, la conversation tomba de la tasse de thé à la coupe de Djemshid, et Habib, me mettant le doigt au front, me dit: Djam-i-Djemshid, dil-i-agah: “la coupe de Djemshid c’est le cœur de l’homme de science.””—Darmsteter, “Lettres sur l’Inde.”

A few miles from Peshawar, Darmsteter goes on to relate, there is a dried-up pond called the Talab i Djemshid, into which the King is said to have cast his magic cup. The head man of the village told the French traveller that a knife had been discovered there bearing this inscription: “This pond was dug by me, Djemshid, five hundred years before the Hejra.” “Elle n’a pas été retrouvée, la coupe de Djemshid,” adds Darmsteter, “non plus que la coupe du roi de Thulé, c’est pour ça qu’il n’y a plus parmi les hommes ni science, ni amour.”