Hafiz influence on East and West

HAFIZ’S INFLUENCE ON THE EAST AND WEST

The influence of Hafiz’s life and poetry upon the art, literature and the consciousness of the East and the West is a subject that is vast and almost unexplored and would take years of research and hundreds of pages to fully uncover. We will attempt only to point out the way by showing the golden thread of Hafiz’s influence over the past six hundred years. It has woven together the art and consciousness of the East and West, and has helped to precipitate some of the advances in these areas in a way that is sometimes subtle, yet sometimes so obvious that it is a great wonder that it has rarely been given its due recognition.

One of the reasons why Hafiz has not been fully appreciated is that many of the scholars studying his work and its effect have had no understanding of his role as a Perfect Master or even that he was a Perfect Master, and how a Perfect Master influences mankind’s consciousness. Dr. Abdul Ghani Munsiff: ‘It is only when it comes to appraising the esoteric side of his poetical mind, that all his biographers without any exception, have failed miserably in giving Hafiz his due in the domain of mysticism and spirituality. All of them have paid learned tributes to his poetic genius and have written many an interesting treatise comparing and contrasting his favourite Muse with that of other luminaries from the literary firmament of Iran. Even such an eminent Orientalist as Moulana Shibli Nomani (India) consciously or unconsciously forgets to think of Hafiz as something more than a poet or higher than a free thinker. He like many others, easily disposes of the question of the poet’s mystical experiences and spiritual flights on the ground of rare gifts of poetical imagination and fancy, therefore, very inconsiderately puts him in the category of Epicurean philosophers like Omar Khayyam.

There have been exceptions to this, but rarely have these exceptions come from the ranks of scholars and literary historians. Among the exceptions was Doulat Shah who in 1476 said: ‘Void of difficulty and plain is his speech, but in truths and divine knowledge its meanings are endless. Far below his degree, is the rank of poet. In knowledge, outward and inward, unequalled.’ Later in the early 19th century Goethe was the first Westerner to recognize his true spiritual and poetic status. In the late 19th century Herman Bicknell and H. Wilberforce Clarke began the first of the English translations that gave some recognition to his spirituality, and in the twentieth century, the leader of the Sufi movement Inayat Khan paid him the respect he deserved. Meher Baba, continually throughout his life pointed out that Hafiz was a Perfect Master and had not gained the true recognition that he deserved. However, these exceptions are few and far between and for the most part the biographers, translators and scholars generally have not understood Hafiz and have failed to see the great influence that he has had down the ages. The ‘coin of history’ that I spoke about at the beginning of this introduction, not only has two sides, but also an edge that links both sides; and without that edge of God in human form, the evolution and involution of the consciousness of mankind (true history) would never roll on to its eventual Divine Destination.

The influence of poetry upon painting and painting upon poetry has never been properly documented. While paintings have been inspired by poems and poems by paintings and both have influenced each other when movements in art consciousness such as ‘romanticism’ and ‘impressionism have happened, most of the time the study of both of these ways of artistic expression is limited to a specialized analysis of the history of one particular form without an understanding of the influence of the other form upon it. This narrow approach has caused a state of appreciation of the arts where people often receive a history of a particular art form that is one-sided and untrue. The cross-pollination between the various art forms is something that is known to all true artists and is one of the reasons why art progresses, is revitalized, and expands the consciousness of the individual and all mankind.

HAFIZ’S INFLUENCE ON EASTERN AND WESTERN ART

Persian painting is the world’s greatest example of book illustration, or the art of illuminated miniature painting. Its greatest period began in 1330-6 (ten to sixteen years after the birth of Hafiz) with the monumental and widely recognized masterpieces that have been called the ‘Demotte Shahnama.’ These paintings are the culmination of the ‘realistic’ Chinese influenced painting of the previous hundred years and justly deserve their status as some of the world’s finest miniatures.

In the ‘Demotte Shahnama’ (and a later series of miniatures for the book ‘Kalila wa Dimna,’ a book of animal fables imported from India and painted 1360 -74), some of the paintings transcend the limitations of ‘realism,’ and these two series of miniatures closed a period of painting that in many instances had become tired, two-dimensional and gross.

Until this time Persian illuminated miniature painting usually took as its subject matter works that had very little spiritual content. Above all, the ‘Shahnama,’ an epic poem on the kings and heroes of Ancient Persia, was illustrated. Other works illustrated were natural histories, animal fables, scientific anthologies, bestiaries, general histories and encyclopaedias.

During the second half of the fourteenth century there occurred a change in Persian painting, not only in content but also in style. B.W. Robinson writes about this change in ‘Persian Drawings’ published by Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1965: ‘Strangely enough it is under the Muzzaffarid dynasty (1353—93) at Shiraz - a minor dynasty in a provincial city - that we find the first dated examples of Persian book illustrations which, though comparatively simple, and unsophisticated, are yet close kin to the magnificent works of the fifteenth - and sixteenth - century artists’ Robinson goes on to cite the difference between the style of the paintings painted under the ruler-ship of Abu Ishak and the later paintings painted under Shah Shuja etc. Robinson finally asks the question: ‘How did this fundamental and revolutionary change come about?’

Many authorities on Persian painting have recognized that this shift in consciousness from the ‘realist/Chinese influenced’ paintings of the 13th century that culminated in the two masterpieces previously mentioned in the mid t4th century, changed during the last half of the 14th century and that this change happened in Shiraz. They sometimes mention that Hafiz lived there during this time but they never make the connection’ between this change and the influence of Hafiz, and his poetry. Hafiz must have known many of the painters and he, of course, was the most famous poet of the time.

In his ghazals, Hafiz had expressed new ways of seeing the Creation and the inner realms of consciousness as symbols of God’s Beauty he described this in ghazals that were at first spiritually ‘romantic’, spiritually ‘impressionistic ‘ then spiritually ‘surrealistic.’ The change that occurred in Persian painting from the mid-fourteenth century the mid-sixteenth century followed exactly the same pattern. The content also became internalized, for the painters of these great periods in Persian painting saw that theirs was an art that had the responsibility and visionary possibility of seeing the Creation with ‘the eye of God.’

The ‘romantic’ period of Persian miniature painting dates from Junayd’s illustrations to Khwaju Kirmani’s ‘Divan,’ painted in 1396. Junayd has been called the first great spiritual ‘romantic’ painter, along with an unknown landscape painter who painted miniatures for an ‘Anthology’ (1398 lived at Bihbahan near Shiraz. In these paintings the Chinese and Mongol influences had been integrated and also a truly original style had emerged that we now call ‘Persian painting.’

Like the ‘romantic’ poems of Hafiz, these works have a great respect nature as a representation of the beauty of the Creator and a love of colour, a subtlety, simplicity and clarity of vision, a naturalness and sympathy, had not appeared before. The ‘realistic’ works of the past were often thickened with dull colours and often awkward and heavy. Their themes we this world, mostly a depiction of history, of objects merely for their sake and rarely in praise of, or in search of the underlying hand of Divine.

With the change in consciousness brought about by Hafiz, these painters of the ‘romantic’ style had begun to see the world through ‘the eye of the Creator,’ and by doing so had paved the way for the next stage. Subject matter had also changed. Most of the illustrated masterpieces of the next two hundred years were the works of the great Master Poets: Sadi, Hafiz, Nizami and others. The content and form had become spiritualized.

These ‘romantic’ paintings generally represented one scene at a time began to distort the horizon line and perspective in such a way that the previous paintings that were definitely seen on the level of the eye man, these paintings are usually viewed from a position above the scene picted, but close enough to see everything that was going on. Because of this and other qualities, Persian painting from this period on is said to be viewed with ‘the eye of God.’

The next important advance in Persian painting dates from the work of Persia’s most famous Master Painter, Bihzad, whose paintings first appeared about 1478. Dr Mulk Raj Anand in his book ‘Persian Painting,’ Faber and Faber, London 1930, mentions that the artistic achievement that Bihzad attained was the result of the spiritual romanticism 0f the work that preceded him. His art became the transformation of the great spiritual works of Sadi, Hafiz, Nizami, Jami and others. Dr Anand also says that Bihzad tried to achieve the spiritual ideal of these Masters through the art of painting: as a way to realize absolute beauty. For Bihzad, according to Dr Anand: ‘... the full perception of beauty is regarded as the realization of the Supreme beauty in the spiritual world.’

Bihzad illustrated the books of the great Master Poets and achieved an intensity of colour, mood and structure that until then had not been attempted. Here we have the second stage in Persian painting containing dynamic patterns and a fantastic reality, a world that is simple and direct and available for all to enter. The colours are sometimes intense and some times subtle, pure and full. All figures are of the time, easily recognizable. All buildings and spaces are carefully balanced. Perspective as we know it has completely vanished. Through these paintings we can view the scenes depicted on many levels, inside rooms and outside. What is on the horizon and in the foreground is equally perceptible. The painter and the viewer are looking with the ‘eye of God’ and the vision that one sees in an impression of the subtlety, intensity and beauty of the Divine Creator’s Creation. This spiritual ‘impressionism’ that Bihzad achieved can be easily likened to the spiritually ‘impressionistic’ poems of Hafiz that were written by him before and after God-realization.

The third stage in the development of the great periods of Persian painting flowed from this Master/Painter and combined the elements that were in his paintings with a new quality. The painters that were the pupils of the Master Bihzad followed his example in style and technique. Shaik Zadeh developed Bihzad’s formal elements until they became more important than the human element. He still produced masterpieces of design, colour and subtlety (which remind me of the paintings of Cezanne) and occasionally — controlled passion (as in his wonderful painting for a Divan of Hafiz).

Sultan Muhammad also illustrated Hafiz’s Divan, but with a sense of drunken abandonment, with an intensity of passion and colour that could only come from a God-intoxicated soul. Not only are his paintings sublimely spiritual, many of them are also spiritually ‘surreal.’ In the paintings of Sultan Muhammad we see the emergence of the third stage in Persian painting. The colour is even more intense than in Bihzad’s work, and the objects are clearer. In a state of ‘vision’ he paints the rocks with faces, with their souls showing them crying out for further evolution. The faces of many of the humans in his paintings are strange, surreal, haunting. Angels manifest in the paintings and demons, earth spirits, fantastic birds and fabulous creatures. The sky swirls in symbolic spirals and the scenes seem to be happening in other worlds, worlds of visions in which the Spirit underlying all of Creation, all levels, becomes apparent.

By the 1580’s the great periods of Persian painting had ended and the paintings that were to follow gradually lost the impetus of change and there began a process of refinement until eventually the influence of European painting turned them into lifeless shadows of their European models.

Early in the 20th century two large exhibitions of Persian miniature painting were held in Europe. The first in Paris in 1903 and then in Munich in 1910. These exhibitions were to have an influence on European painting and in particular on the ‘Fauves’; Matisse coming under their spell more than any other painter. Matisse said in ‘The Path of Colour’ (from ‘Matisse on Art’ by Jack D. Flann, Phaidon 1973): ‘Persian miniatures, for example, showed me all the possibilities of my sensations. I could find again in nature what they should be. By its properties this art suggests a larger and truly plastic space... Thus my revelation came from the Orient.’

From the beginning of the 16th century some of the best of the Persian painters left for India and started a revolution in painting there that we now know as ‘Moghul painting.’ In ‘Moghul painting’ we see that the advanced stages of Persian painting combined with the best elements 0f Indian miniature painting. This produced a new intensity of mood, colour, and form, as well as a greater variety of subject matter. All the great works of Persia’s Master-Poets are again painted. Hafiz, Sadi, Nizami, Jami and others are there in all, their glory, as well as miniatures depicting the love of Radha and Krishna and Rama and Sita, and the great esoteric love poems of India’s ‘Bhakti’ poets. This union between the mystical side of Hinduism (Vedanta) and Islam (Sufism) not only occurred in miniature painting, but had happened before, and during the early part of the 15th century had become evident in the poetry of many of India’s great Master-poets. Hafiz again was a major influence in this integration and this change in consciousness.

HAFIZ’S INFLUENCE ON EASTERN POETRY, LITERATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS

Hafiz was the last Master-Poet of Persia, excluding one. That one was Jami, born in 1414, died in 1492. Jan Rypka in ‘History of Iranian Literature:’ p.287 says: ‘He took Hafiz and Nizami (sometimes Amir Khusrau) as his models ...’ The influence of Hafiz can be seen throughout Jami’s poetry and also throughout the most important Persian poets of the centuries that followed

Baba Fighani (b.late 15th C.) and Lisani (d.1534) who was called ‘the little Hafiz’ were both emulators of Hafiz, as was Niziri of Nishapur (d.1604) who went to India and had a considerable influence there. Another Persian poet who went to India (in 1626) and was considered a great master of the ‘Indian style,’ and whose fame rested on his ghazals, was Sa’ib (b.1601), who was also an admirer of Hafiz. Visal (b.1779 d. 1846) was one of the most influential Persian poets of the 19th century. A large proportion of his ‘Divan’ are direct parellels to the ghazals of Hafiz and Sadi.

With the exception of the last great Master-poet, Jami, and the minor (but significant) poets mentioned above, it is as though throughout the 15th and 16th centuries Persia’s spiritual/artistic centre moved into the art of painting, and the spiritual/poetic heart moved into India. There, a succession of Master-Poets appeared over the following three to four centuries. These poets, though not all being God-realized, brought about a spiritual/artistic shift in consciousness which can be likened to, and can also be seen to be a continuation of, the tremendous spiritual/artistic upsurge that took place from the 11th century to the 14th century in Arabia, and in particular in Persia.

The enormous changes in consciousness that this succession of Master-Poets produced reached India and much of Asia and parts of Europe in great waves, and with each wave of love, changes occurred. The spiritual symbols used by Hafiz and others quickly became the language of the poets of India, with the local equivalents also explored. The fusion of Vedanta and Sufism meant that in one poem the poets would sometimes praise Krishna, Rama, Mohammed and even Jesus as incarnations of the one God.

During the early years of the 15th century one of India’s greatest and most popular poets, Kabir, was born at Benaras. Kabir became a disciple of the Perfect Master Ramananda and eventually Kabir gained God-realization. Evelyn Underhill in her introduction to Tagore’s translation of ‘One Hundred Poems of Kabir’ (Macmillan 1915) says of Ramananda: ‘Ramananda ... appears to have been a man of wide religious culture, and full of missionary enthusiasm. Living at the moment in which the impassioned poetry and deep philosophy of the great Persian mystics, Attar, Sadi, Jalalu’ddin Rumi and Hafiz, were exercising a powerful influence on the religious thought of India, he dreamed of reconciling this intense and personal Mohammedan mysticism with the traditional theology of Brahamanism.’

During his lifetime Hafiz’s poems/songs were widely known in India and exerted a strong religious and poetic influence. After his death this influence did not wane and was quickly carried as far as Spain. There are many similarities between Kabir and Hafiz, even though as Perfect Masters they each possess Divine Individuality. Both praised the one God and scorned religious ritual and fanaticism and were the most controversial figures of their times who bore the brunt of persecution from the orthodoxy. Another similarity was their philosophy of ‘the outsider.’ This was the path of the vagrant, the God-intoxicated vagabond, the lover of God who denounced reason as the path to the Truth, and embraced love and renunciation of worldly desires as the only true way.

Kabir praised Ram and Rahim in one breath and in doing so fought the religious separatism and hatred that was throughout the Hindu and Muslim communities at the time. This brave stance brought about a new wave understanding between the communities and a fundamental mystical revival. Hafiz praised Jesus, Mohammed, Abraham and Zoroaster, and by doing this he reasserted the right of each individual to follow the one God in whichever appearance he accepted.

Babur, who reigned in India from 1525-1530 was an accomplished poet in the Persian language. He obtained most of his ideas for his ghazals from Hafiz and Jami. The influence of Hafiz and other Master poets can be seen in the poetry of the great poet and martyr of India, Sarmad, who died in 1657. He says in one of his poems: ‘I care not what people think of me and say; I have adopted in my odes the style of Hafiz ...’ Translated by Bankey Behari, from his ‘Sufis, Mystics and Yogis of India’ Bhavan, India 1962.

Bullah Shah was born in the Punjab in 1680 and died in 1752 and was a disciple of Shah Inayat. Bullah Shah saw God as Mohammed, Jesus, Krishna and Rama and the influence of Hafiz, Rumi and others is obvious throughout his beautiful poems, as stated by Bankey Behari: ‘Bullah Shah was much influenced by the works of the Iranian Sufis - Jami, Rumi, Sadi, Hafiz and of some Arabian saints.’ Shah Latif (1689-1752) was the greatest of the known Sufi-saints of Sind. He always carried a copy of the Koran and Rumi’s Masnavi with him. Latif, like Bullah Shah and Nazir (to follow) ‘... drew a wealth 0f knowledge and experience from the writings 0f the Sufis of Iran like Hafiz, Rumi, Sanai, Sadi and others, and from the Arabian Saints, like Rabia, Ibn Arabi and others.’ Bankey Behari.

The influence of Hafiz and the other Master/Poets of Persia crossed through all language barriers in India. Not only were there poets writing in Hindi, Sindhi and Punjabi who came under this influence, but in Urdu (which in the 17th century came to be written in the Persian script) a whole line of ghazal writers also became influenced by Hafiz’s verse.

The Urdu ghazals employed the same imagery as Hafiz and the others, and also added to this Vedantic philosophy and Indian imagery. With Vali (b. 1668) the ghazal found a firm foothold in Urdu. Vali’s poetry reached Delhi in 1720 and immediately had a tremendous impact.

Mir was born in 1723 at Agra, he was the son of a dervish. Throughout all of Mir’s poems rings the bell of truth, the pain 0f the heart in search of love. Mir was the first great Urdu poet. He was soon followed by a poet who has been called the Chaucer and Shakespeare of India, Nazir. Nazir was born in Delhi in 1735 and died in 1846. In his poems he praises Krishna and Ali and Mohammed. Bankey Behari states: ‘... again we have the echo of Hafiz in Nazir’s lines...’ and ‘Nazir got enough material from Khusru, Sadi, Hafiz and Rumi to make his choice and cleverly he made’.

The next great Urdu poet in relation to Hafiz and his influence on Urdu poetry is Ghalib. Ghalib was born in 1797 at Agra and began writing poems in Urdu at the age of ten. Many of his works were written in Persian. He is considered by many scholars to be with Mir and Nazir among the greatest of the Urdu poets. The influence of Hafiz is evident in much of his poetry. Aijaz Ahmed in his introduction to Ghazals of Ghalib Columbia University Press 1971 states: ‘... the tradition of poetry that reaches its first greatness with Hafiz and Rumi in Persia, ends its Classical phase with Ghalib in Delhi’.

Probably the last great poet who wrote in Persian and Urdu was Sir Muhammad Lqbal (1877-1938). Iqbal was a noted lawyer and philosopher as well as a poet, and he has been called ‘the father of Pakistan’ because he encouraged his fellow Muslims in India to such an extent that this eventually led to Pakistan becoming an independent nation. This eminent poet/philosopher gained notoriety in 1915 when his long poem in Persian Asrar-e Khudi (Secrets of the Self) was published. In this poem Iqbal attacked Hafiz for iqbal’s belief that Hafiz preached ascetic inaction. Iqbal later explained that the verses he wrote on Hafiz were really only illustrating and criticizing a literary principle, shortly afterwards Iqbal praised Hafiz as one of the world’s greatest poets and excluded from the poems the lines criticizing Hafiz. Many of Iqbal’s poems resemble those of Hafiz as well as Shelley and Pindar and it is through the rhymes and metres that he inherited from Hafiz, Ghalib and others that he expounded his philosophy of Action and realization of the Self.

In the 19th century the Hindu philosopher and religious reformer Debendranath Tagore was called ‘Hafiz-e-Hafiz’ because he knew the whole of Hafiz’s Divan by heart. His son, Rabindranath, India’s most famous poet of the 20th century was influenced by Hafiz and other Persian Master Poets.

If we follow the golden thread of Hafiz’s influence into Turkey we will see that yet again Hafiz was to be a major influence in another country’s poetic and spiritual development. From the early 15th century onwards there were very few Turkish poets who did not come under the influence of Hafiz’s poetry.

One of the first influences on the Second Period of Ottoman Turkish poets (1450-1600) were Jami and his friend, the statesman Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i. Nawa’i (b. 1439 - d.1501) wrote prose and verse in the Turkish language. E.J.W. Gibb in vol. 2 of his History of Ottoman Poetry pub. Luzac and Co. 1902, states: ‘Like all other Persian and Turkish lyric poets of the time, Newa’i also was of the school of Hafiz.’

The first Turkish poets to ‘give form to Turkish poetry’ and one of the three masters of the early classical age, and considered by most critics to be ‘the true founder of Ottoman Poetry,’ was Ahmed Pasha (d.1497). In his work on Turkish poetry Gibb says of him: ‘His favourite model for the ghazal at any rate, was evidently Hafiz, echoes from whose Divan may be heard on well-nigh every page he wrote.’ The next great Turkish poet is the great Baqi (1526-1600) who has been called ‘the sultan of poets’ and ‘the greatest poet of the people.’ Gibb says of Baqi: ‘Frequent echoes from the lyrics of Hafiz tell clearly enough where the Ottoman singer went for his inspiration, and whom he chose as model ...’

The poet Vehbi (d. 1809), a Romanticist and the first Turkish poet to write occasional verses was also among the many Turkish poets influenced by Hafiz: ‘Of the Iranian Masters his favourite seems to have been Hafiz, whom he frequently quotes and sometimes imitates.’ Gibb.

The ‘New Ottoman’ poet, the first to state the need to return to the thinking and language of the ordinary people was the remarkable reformist poet of the 19th century, Ziya Pasha (1829-1880). Gibb translated one his autobiographical poems into literal English: ‘I was assisted in my studies by certain poets, one of whom induced me to read a considerable part of Hafiz. My whole nature was enthralled in what I read; it was as though my closed eyes were opened.’ Of the modern poets, Yahya Kamal Beijatli (1884—1958) has written a beautiful poem on ‘The Death of Hafiz.’

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