Hafez and the habit of Persian poetry

A visitor to Iran may notice that poetry is part of everyday talk. A host quotes a line over dinner, a taxi driver recites a couplet, and children learn verses at school. Several poets of the 10th to 15th centuries remain widely read: Ferdowsi, Nizami, Rumi, Saadi and Hafez.

Hafez of Shiraz

Hafez lived in Shiraz in the 14th century, a city of gardens and learning. Little is known for certain about his life, and the dates usually given are approximate. His collected poems, the Divan, were gathered after his death. They are mostly ghazals, short lyric poems made of couplets that share a rhyme and a refrain, with the poet’s pen-name placed in the last verse.

A book to consult

Many Iranians own a Divan of Hafez. On special evenings, such as Nowruz and the winter night of Yalda, people open it at random after making a wish and read the poem they find. This is fal-e Hafez. It is usually a game, with serious feeling behind it.

The epic and the lyric

The poetry tradition has several voices. The Shahnameh, the “Book of Kings”, completed by Ferdowsi around 1010 CE, tells the history of Iran from mythical beginnings to the Arab conquest in some fifty thousand couplets, and it is credited with helping to preserve the Persian language. Ghazals, by contrast, are short and personal. Persian poets also wrote quatrains (rubai) and longer narrative poems (masnavi).

Reading in translation

Poetry loses much in translation, above all sound and double meaning. When Irooni publishes verse, it will give the Persian original, a transliteration and a translation with credit, and only where we have the right to print it. Several fine English translations exist, and readers can compare them.

Where to go

The tomb of Hafez, in a garden in Shiraz, is a place of pilgrimage for people who love him. Visitors often read poems aloud there.