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English Translations of Hafiz continued ... (page 3 of 4)
1891. H. Wilberforce Clarke. The Divan of Hafiz. Ghazal 1 couplet 1. Literal translation. Ho! O Saki, pass around and offer the bowl (of love of God): Ghazal 8 couplet 1. Literal translation: If that Bold One (the true Beloved) of Shiraz gain our heart, Clarke gives five pages of footnotes to explain ghazal 1 couplet 1. The words in brackets are his own, in explanation of what it means in a spiritual or Sufi sense. In ghazal 8 couplet 1 Clarke uses ‘Bold One’ instead of ‘Turk’ but explains this in the footnotes. In Clarke’s version the Beloved is nearly always spelt with a capital ‘B,’ and is mostly designated as a male. ‘He’ with a capital ‘H.’ Some poems he sees as having no spiritual content and surprisingly some of these to my way of thinking are the most spiritual of Hafiz’s poems. Many that he sees in a Sufi sense, to me seem to be either protest poems or about the world as Hafiz saw it, with occasional couplets referring to God, but Clarke sees them all as spiritual. If there is a criticism of Clarke’s versions it is that he over-spiritualizes them, always seeing them from a Sufi point of view and to some degree they lose a lot of their humanness because of this. He does not seem to understand that Hafiz was beyond any ‘ism.’ Clarke reads into some of Hafiz’s poems references to Sufi formalities and initiations and rituals that are clearly not there. This was probably because Clarke himself was a Sufi, and projected his own beliefs into the poetry. But overall the translations of Clarke are extremely honest, diligent and helpful; more so than most others because it is complete and explanative. With Clarke, the spirituality has overshadowed the humanity and again an imbalance has occurred. In 1893 another literal translation into English appeared by J.H. McCarthy. McCarthy’s book comprised 138 ghazals. 1893. J.H. McCarthy. Ghazals from the Divan of Hafiz. Ghazal 1 couplet 1. Literal translation. If that angel of Shiraz would take my heart in hand McCarthy’s is less of a literal translation than Clarke’s and is not as exact but has a feeling of poetry to it. It is an enjoyable version and is simple and clear. The Beloved is again female and McCarthy replaces ‘Turk’ with ‘angel.’ It is a very readable translation that tries in many poems to blend the spiritual with the human or physical. If it lacks anything it is power, and of course poetry. McCarthy has only a little of each, but not enough. In 1895, 1896 and 1897 two more Indians each published in English translations of fifty ghazals: K.M. Jhaveri and M.S. Sirajuddin. I have not been able to obtain copies of these translations but Masud Farzaad says that all the Indian translations have much to recommend them. Forty-three ghazals translated into English verse were published in 1897, and the translator was the remarkable Orientalist Gertrude Bell. Besides the translation of ghazal no. 8 by Jones, these versions have become the most popular and acclaimed of all the translations of Hafiz. 1897. Gertrude Bell. Poems from the Divan of Hafiz. Ghazal 8 couplet 1. Poetic translation. O Turkish maid of Shiraz! in thy hand Bell’s translations have the charm of beautiful poetry, but they haven’t the poetic form of the ghazal. In some aspects they are a return to the translations of the previous century because of their embellishment and rhyme-structure and also in the words and images used. But in another way they are completely new. They have beauty and music and power and it is because of this that they have become popular and have often been praised, especially by later translators. In ghazal 8 couplet 1 Bell assumes that the Beloved is a female and returns to Jones’ image of a ‘maid’ but at least adds ‘Turkish’ before it. Throughout the majority of these translations Hafiz’s Beloved remains a female, romantic, in the flesh, but sometimes a ‘lady,’ mysterious, but playful. The spirituality that sometimes comes through is usually because of the great power of the poetry and not because of the consciousness of the translator. In a way, Gertrude Bell’s translation is the first great ‘poetic’ translation, but leaves much to be desired in other aspects, Many words she uses have become old fashioned and like those of Bicknell who combined the poetic and spiritual, have become slightly worn by the passage of time. It is a highly readable translation that at times soars to become truly great poetry in its own right. The first translation into English that kept strictly to the poetic structure of the original was by Walter Leaf and contained twenty-eight ghazals and appeared a year after Bell’s translation, in 1898. 1898. Walter Leaf. Versions from Hafiz, An Essay in Persian Metre. Ghazal 8 couplet 1. Poetic translation. An if you Turk of Shiraz land this heart would hold in fee, Walter Leaf, a well known poet of the time was the first to attempt to translate the poetry of Hafiz into English using the same metre and rhyme-structure as in the original. Leaf’s weaknesses were in the language of the time (Victorian) and in his choice of words for the rhymes, and the unsuitability of the Persian metre to the English language. But apart from all this his was a brave effort that paved the way for others. For the Beloved, Leaf correctly uses ‘thee’ and ‘thy’ not designating sex, and he skillfully blends the human with the Divine throughout his versions that are clear, simple, honest and poetic. In a way the translations of Walter Leaf are the summation of all the translations of the century that had almost ended. In the 19th century the versions were romantic in the gross-sense. Through the insight and inspiration of Goethe and the Germans and Hermann Bicknell and Clarke the spiritual aspect of Hafiz’s poems came to the fore and the translations were either purely spiritual as with Clarke or romantically spiritual as with Bell. With Leaf there came a balance of the two and finally after one hundred and twenty-seven years and many translations into English, a correct poetic translation, even though the language of the time and the metre were unsuitable. The twentieth century began, and the translations of Hafiz began with a huge drunken swagger. In 1901 John Payne burst onto the scene with not only a complete translation of the Divan, but also a correct poetic translation! Payne was a self-taught linguist who translated among others, Dante, Goethe, Lessing, Villon, Boccaccio, Heine, Omar Khayyam and the Arabian Nights. He was an extremely controversial poet and translator. If Leaf’s style could be called Victorian, Payne’s is extreme Victorian neo-Gothic. In his book Payne dismissed all the previous translators except Robinson whom he found useful. He was scornful of the other complete translation, that of Clarke, whom he saw as reading Sufi symbolism into every line of Hafiz with which Payne vehemently disagreed. For Payne, Hafiz is the ultimate rebel, drunk continually on the juice of the grape (in a physical sense) a womanizer, a debaucher, a libertine who through his dissipation becomes honest with himself and others and so can see the truth of all that is around him. Payne’s view is the exact opposite to that of Clarke. His approach is totally divorced from Sufism (which he derides) and one can’t help but think that like Clarke he projects his own values onto Hafiz and that Payne does this to justify his own outrageous behaviour. When reading Clarke and Payne side by side it becomes obvious that the true Hafiz is between the two and also above them. The value of Payne’s translation lies elsewhere. It is that he completed all the poems and that he managed to keep the correct rhyme and metre which is both a blessing and a curse for Payne fell totally into the trap that Walter Leaf put one foot into. The trap was that the English language is unsuited to the Persian metre, being unnatural to it; and the language that he used in the rhyme-structure and elsewhere dated so fast that within a short time much of his translation became incomprehensible to the majority of people. The 20th century had begun and in the translations of Hafiz by John Payne the problems of the past translators had truly culminated in one man; but despite all that, there is often much to appreciate and learn from this controversial and remarkable gargantuan effort. The versions of Payne have fire and passion, music and rhythm and a certain boldness that can’t be denied. 1901. John Payne. The Poems of Shemseddin Mohammed Hafiz of Shiraz. Ghazal 1 couplet 1. Poetic version. Ho, there .skinker! Fill the wine-cup; pour and pass to me as well! Ghazal 8 couplet 1. Poetic translation: So but that Turk of Shiraz take my heart within her hand of snow, Payne keeps to the Persian metre and rhyme and uses capital letters and spaces in the middle of the lines to help the reader to read the metre. He uses words such as ‘skinker’ in ghazal 1 couplet 1 for the Winebringer or Cupbearer, a word that is long out of use and was probably only used as slang at the time it was written. He adds ‘snow’ in the first line to ghazal 8 couplet 1 to get the rhyme-structure correct, but by doing this he makes the line almost comical. For Payne the Beloved is always ‘her’ and is a ‘wanton’ or worse. When Hafiz is talking about God in the Absolute sense, Payne recognizes this and translates ‘He’ with a capital ‘H.’ For Payne, Hafiz is a seeker of truth and that truth is only to be fond through drunkenness and dissipation, rebellion and passion. In a ay, Payne misses Hafiz more than any other translator. In Payne, we see the worst of the 20th century to come: licentious, mindless drunkenness and the use of drugs and search for the ‘truth’ through expansion of the ego. At times in Payne’s work he forgets himself and the light of Hafiz is there for all to see, but this is not as often as with many of the other translations. But some of the original manages to escape, as is the case with every version of Hafiz. The next major translation into English was that by Richard Le Gallienne in 1905. Le Gallienne, a known poet at the time, knew no Persian, so he used the complete translations of Clarke and Payne to make his versions. 1905. R. Le Gallienne. Odes from the Divan of Hafiz: Freely Rendered from Literal Translations. Ghazal 8 couplet 1. Poetic translation. You little Turk of Shiraz - Town, Le Gallienne expands the two lines into eight! He changes the rhyme-structure completely, embellishes more than any previous translator and uses Hafiz as an inspiration to write his own poetry. The couplet following the one above he expands into fifteen lines and in the end it bears little resemblance to the original, the content being almost completely lost in his poetic flights of fancy. For Le Gallienne, the Beloved is nearly always a woman and the wine is usually not spiritual. In a way, he follows the path walked down by Payne, but in some ways goes much further, for often he puts into Hafiz’s mouth ideas and beliefs that are not those of Hafiz. But sometimes his poems somehow work and one can’t help but think that these are the poems where he has looked more closely at Clarke’s translation and suppressed his own desire to become carried away by his own poetry and where he had been touched by the spiritual quality contained in them, and it seemed to have awakened something of the same in himself. These are often his shorter versions. During 1910 L. Cranmer-Byng brought out a translation of some of Hafiz’s Rubaiyat that he made from Syed Abdul Majid’s literal translations. Because of the enormous popularity of FitzGerald’s version of Omar Khay-yam a number of Hafiz’s ruba’is were soon to find some more translators including A Member of the Persia Society in 1920, who also translated some of Hafiz’s ghazals. During the period from 1910 to 1920 there were other translators, among them were E.W. Underwood and K.B. and D.J. Irani in 1917. 1920. A Member of the Persia Society. Selections from the Rubaiyat and Odes of Hafiz. Ghazal 1 couplet 1. Literal translation. Ho there, 0 Saki (0 perfect Murshid) pass round and
If that Shirazi maid would take In ghazal 1 the translator gives a literal translation similar to that by Clarke. In ghazal no. 8 he tries to keep the refrain word at the end of each couplet. The problem in his translation is that every line in every couplet rhymes, and this is not the correct rhyming structure of the ghazal. In my version of this ghazal I have added ‘too’ as the equivalent of Hafiz’s ‘ra,’ a device to give emphasis to the word that precedes it at the end of each line in the first couplet and the end of the second line in each following couplet. Again in this translation the Beloved is a female, a ‘maid,’ but the translator usually spells ‘Her’ with a capital ‘H,’ thus designating the Divine aspect of the Beloved. This is the first time that this has occurred in all the translations. This translator is always aware of the spiritual symbolism contained in the poems and on the whole are some of the best and most useful ever made, especially the ruba’is of which there are many that don’t appear elsewhere. In the same year (1920) the Literary History of Persia was published in four volumes, and the author was the great Persian scholar E.G. Browne. Browne joined in and published his translation of ghazal no. 8. 1920. E.G. Browne. A Literary History of Persia. Ghazal 8 couplet 1. Poetic translation. If that unkindly Shiraz Turk would take my heart within her hand, Browne kept the correct rhyme-structure throughout the whole poem but wisely discarded the Persian metre and allowed the metre to create itself from the English that he wrote. Because of this the poem flows and is smooth and pleasant on the ears being without the sing-song effect that grates in the versions of Payne and Leaf. Again the Beloved is female. To my mind Browne’s translation was by far the best to date of this poem, except for the mistake of designating the gender of the Beloved, something that Hafiz hadn’t done. By allowing the metre to come naturally, Browne solved one of the problems of the previous translators into poetic form. Most of the poem is clear, musical, beautiful English and the rhyme-words don’t seem forced or unnatural: you don’t even notice them. Except for a few words, the words are not dated, even now sixty years later. The whole poem has a conversational tone to it, an aspect 0f Hafiz’s poetry that had also been missed by many of the previous translators. 1921. Elizabeth Bridges. Sonnets from Hafez and other Verses. Ghazal 12 couplets 1 and 2. Poetic translation. Where is the pious doer? and I the estraye’d one, where? Either Bridges had read Browne or ‘great minds think alike,’ for she also kept the original rhyme-structure and invented a metre to suit the feeling of the poem in English. Overall it is a beautiful poem, simple, clear and precise, musical and powerful. The only complaint is once again the passage of time. She uses words such as ‘estraye’d,’ and ‘hastest’ and ‘whither,’ and ‘fraught;’ words that today are no longer in use and probably were not in use in normal conversation in 1921. It must be stressed again that Hafiz only used fairly simple words, words that are used in conversations; not words that are only used in ‘poetry.’ They are small defects to complain about in such a beautiful poem, but still they jar slightly when reading the poem and one finds it difficult to get the tongue around them. |
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