Hafiz

“ Shah Shudja was not the only member of the house of Muzaffar who protected Hafiz; the warrior prince Mansur was his staunch friend. He appears to have been absent from Shiraz at the time of Mansur’s accession—perhaps he had accompanied Timur’s retreating army. “The wind has brought me word,” he cries, “that the day of sorrow is overpast; I will return to Shiraz through the favour of my friend. On the banners of the Conqueror (i.e. Mansur, of whose name this is the meaning) Hafiz is borne up into heaven; fleeing for refuge, his destiny has set him upon the steps of a throne.” ”

“ The last to Hafiz went."
Another:--
"High heart, O Hafiz! though not thine
Fine gold and silver ore;
More worth to thee the gift of song,
And the clear insight more."
Again:--
"Thou foolish Hafiz! say, do churls
Know the worth of Oman's pearls?
Give the gem which dims the moon
To the noblest, or to none."
Again:--
"O Hafiz! speak not of thy need;
Are not these verses thine?
Then all the poets are agreed,
No man can less repine."
He asserts his dignity as bard and inspired man of his people. ”

“ There is endless variety in the poems of Hafiz, and they are replete with surpassing beauty of thought, feeling, and expression. The grace, ease, and fancy of his numbers are inimitable, and there is a magic in his lays which few even of his professed enemies have been able to resist. To the young, the gay, and the enthusiastic his verses are ever welcome, and the sage discovers in them a hidden mystery which reconciles him to their subjects. ”

“ Dschami says,—
"A friend is he, who, hunted as a foe,
So much the kindlier shows him than before;
Throw stones at him, or ruder javelins throw,
He builds with stone and steel a firmer floor."
Of the amatory poetry of Hafiz we must be very sparing in our citations, though it forms the staple of the "Divan." He has run through the whole gamut of passion,—from the sacred, to the borders, and over the borders, of the profane. The same confusion of high and low, the celerity of flight and allusion which our colder muses forbid, is habitual to him. ”

“ The tendency in dealing with a mystical poet is to read into him so-called deeper meanings, even when the simple meaning is clear enough and sufficient in itself. Hafiz is one of those who has suffered from this process; it has removed him, in great measure, from the touch of human sympathies which are, when all is said and done, a poet’s true kingdom. Of a different age, a different race, and a different civilisation from ours, there are yet snatches in his songs of that melody of human life which is everywhere the same. ”

“ With Shah Shudja, I would accuse him of mixing up inextricably wine and love and Sufi teaching, and perhaps more besides. To some at least of the innumerable difficulties which assail every man who turns a thoughtful eye upon life and its conditions, Hafiz seems to have accepted the solution presented to him by Sufiism. He understood and sympathised with the bold heresy of Hallaj, “though fools whom God hath not uplifted know not the meaning of him who said, I am God.” ”

“ Moreover, a devoted lover of Shiraz, Hafiz was overcome with homesickness when he was absent from his native town. “Why,” he says in a pathetic little poem written while he was at Yezd—“Why should I not return to mine own home? Why should I not lay my dust in the street of mine own beloved? My bosom cannot endure the sorrows of exile; let me return to mine own city, let me be master of my heart’s desire.” It was after this luckless visit to Shah Yahya that he is said to have remarked, “It seems that Fortune did not intend kings to be wise.” ”

“ Shah Shudja reproached Hafiz with the discursiveness of his songs. “In one and the same,” he said, “you write of wine, of Sufiism, and of the object of your affections. Now this is contrary to the practice of the eloquent.” “That which your Majesty has deigned to speak,” replied Hafiz (laying his tongue in his cheek, though Khondamir does not mention the fact) , “is the essence of the truth; yet the poems of Hafiz enjoy a wide celebrity, whereas those of some other writers have not passed beyond the gates of Shiraz.” ”

“ Dynasty after dynasty had succeeded each other in Persia whose members made either Shiraz, the home of Hafiz, their place of residence, or Ispahan, or Kirman, until at length Tamerlane came along and beheaded them all. Hafiz’ political horizon was like to Heine’s in its uncertainty, and in its change of outlook. Like Heine, he saw world-conquerors sweep away the firm ground from beneath his feet, and he glimpsed far vision of a world in which there should be no inequality. He had the poet’s vision of the future’s justice. The definite facts of Hafiz’ life are few, unsatisfactory. ”

“ V Stanza 1.—When the conqueror Timur entered Shiraz it is related that he summoned Hafiz before him and said: “Of all my empire, Bokhara and Samarkand are the fairest jewels; how comes it that in thy song thou hast declared that thou would’st exchange them against the black mole on the cheek of thy mistress?” Hafiz replied: “It is because of such generosity that I am now as poor as thou seest.” The Emperor was not to be outdone in repartee: he sent the poet away a richer man by some hundreds of gold pieces. ”

“ Hafiz falls foul of this rival school in several of his poems. “I am the servant,” he says, “of all who scatter the dregs of the cup and are clothed in one colour (that is, clothed in sincerity) , but not of them whose bodies are clad in blue while black is the colour of their heart.” And again: “Give me not the cup until I have torn from my breast the blue robe,” by which he means that he cannot receive the teachings of true wisdom until he has divested himself of the errors of the uninitiated. ”

“ He is not there, master.
HAFIZ
Not there? Not there? Why, there is no door beyond. He must needs be there, and his chief spy with him.
SHEIK [off]
He is not here.
MIRALDA [turning round and clawing the wall]
O, I was weary of him. I was weary of him.
HAFIZ
Be comforted, pearl of the morning; he is gone.
MIRALDA
When I am weary of a man he must die.
[He embraces her knees.]
ZAGBOOLA [who has come on with a little crowd that followed the BISHAREENS. She is blind.]
Lead me to Hafiz. I am the mother of Hafiz. Lead me to Hafiz. [They lead her near.] Hafiz! Hafiz! ”

“ Then getting up from the side of the bed and walking to and fro in the room, Hafiz laughed out loud in his savage joy at the thought of defeating Macdonald, until Gordon said—
"I shall want a man to go with me. Can you find me a man, Hafiz?" ”

“ One cannot but hope that so charming a begging 24letter, couched in verse withal, was more than tolerated. It was probably this Vizir who sent a robe of honour to Hafiz which, when it came, proved to be too short for him; “but,” says the poet politely, “no favour of thine could be too short for any man.” ”

“ Thy pleasure is fruit of freedom of the spirit, of deep, noble feeling, of confidence in God whom he had seen face to face. Unceasingly he praises spring, love, wine. He is always offering gems in new settings, but he lacks the epic, the organic. He is purely lyrist, one meant to attune, then harmonize emotion. The zealots have written Hafiz down in the black book of their disapproval. ”

“ I, a poor man of one robe—dervish signifying in its primary sense, it is hardly necessary to say, poor. I should think that the double meaning is significant. In its mystical sense, the poem describes how Hafiz found consolation in the ecstatic drunkenness of the Sufis, in the minstrel’s song, or divine message, which brought him a word from God; and when finally the last shred of his orthodoxy had been torn from him, when in his desperate struggle with existence he was forced to abandon even his dervish robe, Heaven mercifully showed him a safe refuge in the Sufi doctrines. ”

“ Stanzas 5 and 6.—The accepted explanation of these lines is that by the glass Hafiz means his own heart, which he sends to his mistress that she may see that her own image is reflected in it; but I prefer here (and indeed for the whole poem) a mystical interpretation. The heavenly voice tells him to seek for comfort in Sufiism, and bids him look upon the mirror, for he shall see God himself reflected in it—which is only another way of putting the doctrine that man and God are one. ”

“ Hafiz himself is determined to defy all such hypocritical interpretation, and tears off his turban and throws it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass after the turban. [Pg 116] But the love or the wine of Hafiz is not to be confounded with vulgar debauch. It is the spirit in which the song is written that imports, and not the topics. Hafiz praises wine, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings, and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and sympathy with every form of beauty and joy ”

“ The son of Oweis, Sultan Ahmed of Baghdad, whose cruelty caused his subjects to call in the aid of Timur against him, was very anxious to induce Hafiz to visit his court; but Hafiz, perhaps with prudence, declined the invitation, saying that he was content with dry bread eaten at home, and had no desire to taste the honey that pilgrims gather by the roadside. He sent to Ahmed a poem in which he loaded his name with extravagant praise. “On Persian soil,” he declared, “the bud of joy has never blown for me. How excellent is the Tigris of Baghdad and the perfumed wine! ”

“ But the poets were unable to perform the task to the King’s satisfaction, and at length some one suggested that the line should be sent to Hafiz of Shiraz, the fame of whose great skill had reached Bengal. This was accordingly done, and Hafiz composed the ode here translated, with which the Sultan (whose taste seems to have turned towards the discursive in poetry) was much delighted. The three cups of wine are an allusion to the three maidens who washed the King’s body; the parrots of India are the court poets of Ghiyasuddin, and the Persian sweetmeat is the ode that Hafiz sent to Bengal. ”

“ We don't hang over things and brood over them for years where I come from. If a thing's to be done, it's done.
DAOUD
Even so, master. Hafiz had laid his plans for years. He would have killed him and got his substance; and then, when the hour drew near, you came, and Hussein died, swiftly, not as Hafiz would have had him die; and lo! thou art the lord of the pass, and Hafiz is no more than a beetle that runs about in the dirt. ”

“ Hafiz is the prince of Persian poets, and in his extraordinary gifts adds to some of the attributes of Pindar, Anacreon, Horace, and Burns the insight of a mystic, that sometimes affords a deeper glance at Nature than belongs to either of these bards. He accosts all topics with an easy audacity. “He only,” he says, “is fit for company, who knows how to prize earthly happiness at the value of a nightcap. ”

“ Other poets besides Hafiz have sung to the same tune. Whether or no he lived to witness the overthrow of the race that had sheltered him, he foresaw the troubles that were coming upon it and upon his beloved Shiraz. There is a short poem full of foreboding which is said to have been written after the entry of Timur: “What tumult I see beneath the moon’s orbit, every quarter of the earth is full of evil and wickedness! There is strife among our daughters, and among our mothers contention, and the father is evilly disposed towards his son. ”

“ What is pent and smouldered in the dumb actor is not pent in the poet, but passes over into new form, at once relief and creation.
The other merit of Hafiz is his intellectual liberty, which is a certificate of profound thought. We accept the religions and politics into which we fall; and it is only a few delicate spirits who are sufficient to see that the whole web of convention is the imbecility of those whom it entangles,—that the mind suffers no religion and no empire but its own. ”

“ About the time of the birth of Hafiz, that is to say in the beginning of the fourteenth century, a certain Mahmud Shah Inju was governing the province of Fars, of which Shiraz is the capital, in the name of Abu Said, the last of the direct descendants of Hulagu. On the death of Mahmud Shah, Abu Said appointed Sheikh Hussein ibn Juban to the 9governorship of Fars, a lucrative and much-coveted post. ”

“ A reclaiming voice seemed to say to him, "Atone for your crime! Confess everything! Die—on the gallows if need be! Better suffer the pains of death than the furies of remorse! Give your own life for the life you have taken, no matter by what impulse of self-defence or devilish accident of fate!"
Hafiz would carry his message to headquarters, or perhaps help him to go there, and the good old Patriarch would explain why he had not gone before.
"It is the only way now, the only hope," he thought. ”

“ These are the utterances of a great poet, the imaginative interpreter of the heart of man; they are not of one age, or of another, but for all time. Fitz-Gerald knew it when he declared that Hafiz rang true. “Hafiz is the most Persian of the Persians,” he says. “He is the best 53representative of their character, whether his Saki and wine be real or mystical. Their religion and philosophy is soon seen through, and always seems to me cuckooed over like a borrowed thing, which people once having got do not know how to parade enough. ”

“ He lies in the garden of Mosalla outside Shiraz, a garden the praises of which he was never tired of singing, and on the banks of the Ruknabad, where he had so often rested under the shade of cypress-trees. When, some sixty years after the poet’s death, Sultan Baber conquered Shiraz, he erected a monument over the tomb of Hafiz. An oblong block of stone on which are carved two songs from the Divan, marks the grave. At the head of it is inscribed a sentence in Arabic: “God is the enduring, and all else passes away.” ”