Hafiz influence on East and West

Hafiz's Influence on the East and West continued ... (page 2)

HAFIZ’S INFLUENCE ON WESTERN POETRY, LITERATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS

We will now follow another thread of Hafiz’s influence as it travels even further west in a direct line that carried it to Spain shortly after Hafiz’s death in Shiraz. Towards the end of the 14th century and early into the 15th century Timur’s conquests caused immense destruction and loss of life in Persia and India. The poorest people in both of these countries were the Gypsies. Although poor in material wealth, they were rich in the arts of song and dance. Hafiz’s ghazals were being sung by rich and poor alike all over Persia and India. When Timur crushed his bloody fist down upon the masses, many of these wanderers (Gypsies) headed west and some finally ended up in the early 15th century in sunny Spain, and in particular in Andalusia. In his essay on Andalusian Gypsy music (‘deep song’) Federico Garcia Lorca in Deep Song and other Prose translated by Christopher Maurer (New Directions 1980), agrees with the Spanish composer and music historian Manuel de Falla that: ‘... in the year 1400 the Gypsies, pursued by the hundred thousand horsemen of the great Tamerlane, fled from India. Twenty years later these tribes appeared in different European cities and entered Spain with the Saracen armies then periodically arriving (from Egypt and Arabia) on our coast. On arriving in Andalusia the Gypsies combined ancient, indigenous elements with what they themselves bought and gave what we now call deep song its definitive form.’

Lorca then says how much the poems of Hafiz and other Asiatic poems moved him when he read them as translated by Don Gasper Maria De Nava into Spanish and published in 1838, and how they reminded him of the ‘deepest’ poems of his countrymen. Lorca gives five examples from Hafiz’s ghazals to illustrate the closeness (almost identical) between them and Gypsy poems (‘siguiriya’), saying: ‘But where the resemblance is most striking of all is in the sublime amorous ghazals of Hafiz.’ Lorca shows through these examples the close similarities in symbology and sentiment between the two.

Many of Spain’s greatest poets and composers were influenced by this Andalusian Gypsy music. It was influential on Debussy and later Lorca fell under its spell. Lorca wrote a number of ghazals (‘gacela’). The Gypsies fled not only to Spain early in the 15th century but to all over Europe and the song and poetry that they brought with them was probably influential throughout Europe from the grassroots level of ‘popular music’ such as drinking songs.

The more literate members of European and American society would have to wait another 200-300 years for Hafiz to be translated into Latin, then English, German, Russian, French, Spanish and other European languages. With these translations Hafiz would influence many of the great figures in the Arts in England, Europe and America.

The first translation of a Hafiz ghazal into Latin was published in 1680. Almost a hundred years later the first translation into English appeared. This first translation by the famous Orientalist and ‘father’ of Persian studies in the East, Sir William Jones, had an immense immediate and long-term influence, corn parable only to the later translations of Khayyam by FitzGerald, which it definitely helped to bring about. Soon the translation of Persian poetry into English became so fashionable and voluminous (particularly in the case of Hafiz) that within a short time Hafiz, like Horace, became a household name. Within one hundred years poets of both hemispheres began using ‘Hafiz’ as a pen name to gain a wider audience and eventually Hafiz became so well known that even Sherlock Holmes quoted him with Horace to give a solution to a problem.

Jones called his version A Persian Song and it was so well received that it was soon included in The Oxford Book of 18th Century Verse. G.H. Cannon Jnr. states in his book Sir William Jones, Orientalist: An Annotated Bibliography of His Works (Honolulu: University of Hawaii 1952). ‘It was immensely popular at once and continued to be popular for decades ... and definitely stimulated ... Byron Swinburne (and) Moore and Gatty.’ Byron was influenced by this poem and imitated its rhyme-structure and later Swinburne perfected the stanza. By the turn of the century six other translations of Hafiz (including others by Jones) had appeared since the first successful attempt by Jones, and by 1905 another twenty-two translations were published including two complete versions of the Divan.

Not only did the English Romantic poets of the early 19th century fall under Hafiz’s spell, but in the mid-nineteenth century E.B. Cowell introduced Hafiz to Edward FitzGerald who called Hafiz ‘the best Musician of Words’ and later went on to translate Omar Khayyam (possibly because so many versions of Hafiz’s poems already existed). Among Cowell and FitzGerald’s friends were Carlyle and Tennyson who were extremely interested in Hafiz. This interest in Hafiz became even greater as the century progressed into the Victorian Age with Hafiz influencing Swinburne and Burne-Jones, to whom John Payne dedicated his complete version, published in 1901, with the words: ‘... which owed its completion to his urgent instance.’ By the turn of the century Hafiz had become a ‘fad’ in England, consulted as an oracle by Queen Victoria. From 1905 until now approximately another eighty translations into English have appeared; proof that the interest in Hafiz has not waned in English speaking countries.

Let us go back to early in the 19th century and follow the thread of Hafiz into another country and culture: Germany. In 1812-13 a translation into German by Von Hammer-Purgstall appeared. During the first half of 1814 one of the greatest influences on the Romantic movement in Europe, Goethe, read it and immediately recognized Hafiz as his Spiritual Master and as a poetic genius. Although the translation was romantic in the ‘gross’ sense, the genius and intuition of Goethe understood the immense Spiritual content of the poems and Goethe set about praising and clarifying the spiritual status and the verse of Hafiz. To do this and to write a Divan of his own (inspired by Hafiz’s example), Goethe began his West-Eastern Divan which was to become a vessel in which he could pour his experiences as they happened and his belief in the deeper aspects of life and love. This book became an impressionistic poetical diary of the years 1814-18, and through the Divan of Hafiz (using page numbers of Von Hammer’s trans. as ciphers) he corresponded with the woman he loved, Marianne, who also wrote poems that were recorded in his own Divan.

In his ‘West-Eastern Divan Goethe says of Hafiz in the section called The Book of Hafiz: ‘In his poetry Hafis has inscribed undeniable truth indelibly...’ Trans. by J. Whaley, and later: ‘This is madness, I know well, Hafiz has no peer!’ In another poem he states: ‘In you true source of joy and poetry shows, From you unnumbered wave on wave outflows.’ And: ‘In the word we see the bride, Bridegroom is the spirit. For this wedding sanctified Hafiz takes the merit.’

Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan appeared in 1819 to a mixed reception, its admirers included Alexander Von Humbolt, Hegel and Heine. Goethe’s interest in Hafiz led to many excellent German translations in the years that followed and caused many writers and philosophers in Germany and other countries in Europe to view Hafiz in a more spiritual light.

A German philosopher who was deeply interested in Goethe and Hafiz was Fredrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who saw Hafiz and Goethe as ideals and spent many years studying them both. In his book The Joyful Wisdom, Nietzsche praised Hafiz for ‘mocking divinely’. He would also say following About Hafiz in The Will to Power, ‘Only the most enlightened of beings can benefit from the deepest human joys because within such beings resides a unique force of freedom and rapture. Their awareness rests in the house of spirit and their soul mates with their awareness, meaning that which shines in the soul is known with awareness. This unity of spirit and mind is the legacy of Hafiz.’ Frederick Junger (b.1898), the German poet, essayist and short story writer who was an outspoken critic of Nazi Germany was another German writer who was influenced by the poems of Hafiz.

The influence of Hafiz has also threaded its way through the literature of Russia. Russia’s greatest poet Aleksander Pushkin (1799—1837) was the founder of Russia’s modern literature. The Age of Pushkin is considered the ‘Golden Age’ of Russian literature. According to the letters of Pushkin the Eastern style of Saadi and Hafiz was a model that he believed had to be Europeanized. ‘To Pushkin, Hafiz and Sadi were not merely ‘... names familiar’ the latter he regarded a sage worthy of quoting, while the former - a poet worthy of imitation, though Pushkin’s verses From Hafiz are actually unconnected with the great Persian bard.’ (From Six Centuries of Glory by Michael J. Zand, Moscow 1967). In Pushkin and Hafiz’s poetry, both the spiritual and physical planes art fused. Both used simple words and images with no artificiality, nothing being forced which results in an impression of spontaneity. Pushkin used parallel themes within a single poem that are so balanced that the content and the form are indivisible, a style that is similar to that of Hafiz. While Pushkin was influenced by Hafiz and the ‘Eastern Style’ - that later Russian poet, Fet (1820 -1892) was, according to Zand, ‘... infatuated with Hafiz which resulted in many subtly conceived renderings and imitations of Hafiz’s poems.’ Fet’s passionate lyric poetry was a great influence on the later Russian Symbolist poets, Blok in particular. Fet was a close friend of Turgenev and Tolstoy. In 1859 Turgenev gave Fet a German translation of Hafiz and Fet immediately began work on translating some of these versions into Russian. Twenty-seven different translations by Fet were published separately in 1860 in the periodical Russkoe Slovo. Early in the 20th century, this ‘infatuation’ with Hafiz by Russian poets once again showed. Ghazals inspired by Hafiz were created by V. Ivanov (1866-1949) a leading Symbolist poet and V. Bryusov (1873-1924) the controversial poet, critic and novelist who played a major role in the Symbolist Movement in Russia.

Sergei Yesenin (1895—1925) ranks with Pushkin and Mayakovsky as one of Russia’s three most popular poets. According to Zand: ‘This early century Russian ‘Hafiziana’ actually links up with Yesenin’s ‘Persian motifs,’ though while mentioning the names of Sadi, Firdawsi, Khayyam, he never directly alludes to Hafiz.’ Russian interest in Hafiz has continued over the past eighty years with many translations and scholarly and critical works appearing in Russia and elsewhere. Some of the most important discoveries in ‘Hafiz studies’ have recently appeared in the former U.S.S.R. A year after Pushkin’s death in 1837 and about twenty years after Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan appeared, another of the great figures in 19th century literature came under the spell of Hafiz.

The thread of Hafiz’s influence reached America in 1838 when Ralph Waldo Emerson read in German Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan. Emerson immediately became interested in Hafiz and sought out Von Hammer-Purgstall’s German translation of Hafiz’s Divan. On obtaining a copy Emerson immersed himself in a study of Hafiz and other Persian poets. For him, Hafiz and Sadi became the ideal poets. For fourteen consecutive years Emerson read the Divan of Hafiz through completely and quoted Hafiz in many of his essays, including those on ‘Fate,’ ‘Power’ and ‘Illusion.’ Hafiz became Emerson’s ideal and he says of him in Journals: ‘He fears nothing. He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see and be.’ Many of Emerson’s poems, including ‘Bacchus’ were influenced by Hafiz, and Emerson translated some of Hafiz’s ghazals into free-form English verse from the German translation. Of the many compliments that Emerson paid Hafiz a number stand out, for they could also be applied to Emerson himself: ‘Hafiz defies you to show him or put him in a condition inopportune or ignoble. Take all you will, and leave him but a corner of Nature, a lane, a den, a cowshed ... he promises to win to that scorned spot the light of the moon and stars, the love of man, the smile of beauty, and the homage of art.’ ‘Sunshine from cucumbers. Here was a man who has occupied himself in a nobler chemistry of extracting honour from scamps, temperance from sots, energy from beggars, justice from thieves, benevolence from misers. He knew there was sunshine under those moping churlish brows, and he persevered until he drew it out.’

It was Hafiz’s joyful humanity and love of Nature, his freedom of thought and spirit and sincerity and self-reliance that attracted Emerson to Hafiz. Hafiz’s perception of beauty in man and Nature was also an attraction, and from Hafiz Emerson learnt of the inspirational quality of women. Emerson was also inspired by Hafiz’s thoughts on love and friendship and often quoted Hafiz on friendship Emerson also learnt much from Hafiz about the Law of Compensation (Karma) and quotes Hafiz on this. For Emerson, Hafiz was like Shakespeare, above the preachers and the philosophers as he states in the following poem from Works:

‘A new commandment,’ said my smiling Muse,
‘I give my darling son,
Thou shalt not preach;’ Luther, Fox, Behman,
Swedenborg grew pale,
And, on the instant, rosier clouds up bore
Hafiz and Shakespeare with their shining choirs.

In his Essay on Persian Poetry 1858 Emerson states: ‘That hardihood and self-equality of every sound nature, which result from the feeling that the spirit in him is entire and as good as the word, which entitle the poet to speak with authority, and make him an object of interest and his every phrase and syllable significant, are in Hafiz, and abundantly fortify and ennoble his tone.’ Further on he states: ‘...Hafiz is a poet for poets whether he writes, as sometimes with a parrot’s, or as at other times, with an eagle’s quill.’

Another poet who was interested in Hafiz early in the 19th century was he great Victor Hugo of France. Hugo, along with Goethe, Pushkin, Byron and Emerson can be considered one of the greatest influences on the Romantic Movement in Europe. He was also influential on the later Impressionist and symbolist poets of France. Hugo was born in 1802 and died during 1885. M. Darwish in his Intro-duction to Poems from the Divan of Hafiz (Javidan Pub. Iran 1963) states that Victor Hugo translated some of Hafiz’s ghazals. In 1826 at the age of twenty-four Hugo published a collection of poems entitled Les Orientales which were inspired by a number of Eastern poets, among them were Hafiz and Sadi. Some of Hugo’s poems seem to be direct parallels in style and content to those of Hafiz. It is as though he read some of Hafiz’s ghazals and transposed them into the French context. Another French poet and artist who was influenced by Hafiz was Tristan Klingsor (b.1874). Klingsor was a member of the original Symbolist group and published Scheherazade in 1903, a collection of poems inspired by Hafiz and other Persian poets.

During the 20th century a few Australian poets were influenced by Hafiz. Early in this century A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson wrote a poem Wisdom of Hafiz in which he used various couplets from a number of Hafiz’s ghazals to write a satire on horse racing. In 1974 Francis Brabazon, the first great mystical poet to appear in Australia, published a book of modern ghazals titled In Dust I Sing (Beguine Library, Berkeley, U.S.A.) Although not ghazals in the strict sense, ‘the form is based on the Persian ghazal, perfected by Hafiz 600 years ago and carried down in the Urdu language to the present day,’ (Brabazon). Many of Brabazon’s earlier poems have also been influenced by Hafiz.

Hafiz was not only a poet for the masses, rich and poor alike, but he was also as Emerson stated ‘a poet for poets.’ As can be seen from this, many of the most influential poets, artists, writers and philosophers of the past 600 years have come under his irresistible spell. It seems that Hafiz was instrumental in helping many of these great figures in literature to align themselves with the true Spirit within themselves and all of mankind.

In THE POETRY OF HAFIZ and the SPIRITUALITY OF HAFIZ I told about the three different stages that Hafiz’s poetry went through during his journey to Divine Consciousness, and how he used these later, after gaining God-realization, to enlighten others. I, along with others, have called these stages ‘romanticism,’ ‘impressionism’ and ‘surrealism,’ and I have prefixed the terms for each of these stages with the word ‘spiritual’ so that the reader will not confuse them with the Movements in art and literature which occurred in Europe from the late 18th century up until the present time. But, I believe that there is a connection between them, as can be seen by the influence of Hafiz upon many of the great figures in literature as mentioned above, and in the nature of the work of the Perfect Master in raising the consciousness of mankind through his possession and use of Universal Mind.

It should be understood that in Hafiz’s ‘spiritually romantic’ early poems that he wrote from about the age of twenty-one, he viewed and symbolized the Creation and all that it contains, its beauties and its horrors, as symbols to disclose the Truth that manifests it all. Hafiz’s principal aim was to praise the beauty of God’s Creation and to discover its inner meaning.

Hafiz’s conscious ‘spiritually romantic’ poems written after God-realization, towards the end of his life, used the symbols of Creation to praise the Creator and to show His Glory and shower His Grace and to disclose Truth by using the everyday symbols in the world around us as shadows of the higher Reality that he was experiencing.

The Romantic Movement in Europe during the late part of the 18th century and during the beginning of the 19th century rejected the neo-classicism, rationality and realism of the ‘Age of Reason’ and sped in the opposite direction, that of feeling, passion and sentiment. I have termed this early Romanticism ‘gross,’ and examples of it can be clearly seen in many of the early translations of Hafiz’s ghazals where the spiritual quality is unseen and his poems are interpreted usually only in a physical sense. In the works of Goethe, Hugo, Pushkin and Emerson we see somewhat of a spiritualization of the Romantic Movement take place. All these great writers came under the influence of Hafiz and other Eastern Master/Poets.

Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan is really a collection of impressionistic poems that were greatly influenced by Hafiz and were imbued with Goethe’s theory of light and colour which he expressed in his book Theory of Colours. Once again we see Romanticism moving into the next stage, Impressionism. Impressionism and Symbolism became the next major stage in art consciousness as Romanticism, as Goethe predicted, turned in on itself and became an end as well as a means.

Throughout the Symbolist Movement in Russia we again see Hafiz’s influence. The French Symbolists also drew on the Orient, and from their predecessors, including Hugo. Many of Rimbaud’s poems are on the surface reminiscent of Hafiz and one wonders whether he read him in French translation. Rimbaud’s famous statement: ‘One must be completely modern’ seems to be a distant echo of Hafiz’s often quoted couplet:

In this dusty world of ours, to hand comes not one true man,
it’s necessary to make a new world and a new man is necessary.

The imagery, symbols, light, colour and magical qualities of the Impressionists and Symbolists are reminiscent of Hafiz’s ‘impressionist’ and ‘surrealist’ periods. The Symbolists were later to inspire the Surrealists, and among them Lorca was directly influenced by Hafiz.

In Hafiz’s ‘romanticism’ his consciousness was not directed at the object, but at what the object represented in the spiritual sense. The aesthetic aspect only mattered in that a beautiful vessel makes one more aware of what it might contain. Romanticism in Europe usually directed its attention at the aesthetic and horrific aspects of the Creation and at the effect that these had upon the onlooker, i.e. the artist. For the Romantics the poet was the seer, the visionary who contained within himself the possibility of perfecting his own consciousness. For Hafiz the poet was fortunate to be a dog on the leash of his Master (God in human form), another individual outside of his own ego, but as close to his true Self as his jugular vein. It was his Master who could perfect his consciousness, not himself. The Romantic’s master was his own perception. Hafiz’s Master was his Master’s command.

In Hafiz’s ‘impressionstic’ poems he expresses his experience of the ‘subtle world,’ a world of subtle light and colour and subtle smells and music: a Paradise. This is not to be confused with the world as we understand it, but a state in which the consciousness of the individual involutes. This ‘gross’ or physical world we experience is really a shadow of this subtle inner realm. The Impressionists and Symbolists directed their attention at expressing their experience of the energy, light, colour, smells, symbols of the physical world, outside themselves. Hafiz expressed his experience of an inner world and how its images, sounds, smells were shadows of an even greater Reality.

The light that the Impressionist saw was not a subtle light, but a more intense experience of physical light. The symbols the symbolist expressed were not from a higher state of consciousness, but from a forced freeing of the imagination. The bubble of ‘gross-consciousness became distorted and they experienced ‘visionary states’ which clothed the physical world in light, colour and mystery which was always there in the ‘spiritually romantic’ sense. By doing this they believed that they had created a new way of seeing. What they had actually done was to create another way of seeing and expressing the physical world.

Hafiz actually existed in a different state of consciousness and expressed his experience of it, and its limitations in relation to the greater Reality. It was Hafiz’s quality of actually experiencing this other ‘subtle world’ that drew many of the symbolists to his poetry.

The Surrealists of the 20th century through the subconscious mind, by means of dreams, trances, imagination and chance, sought to express by juxtaposing opposite symbols, an idea of truth, beauty, unity. The subject matter of the Surrealists was the mind, and in particular the subconscious, the hidden, strange, mysterious side of the psyche. Hafiz’s ‘surrealistic’ poems are written from a deeper state of consciousness than the ‘subtle’ realm, the ‘subtle’ being a shadow of the Mind-state which he now inhabited. This is a state of pure vision - ‘face to face with God.’ The images that Hafiz juxtaposes are images of the Divine Emanation - Universal Mind. There is no conscious or subconscious, only a consciousness that all is God and emanates from the Creator. The opposites are shadows, an illusion created, imagined to be flowing from His Unity, through Mind. The Surrealists explore the ‘gross’ mind in an effort to know the opposites that exist there, the conscious and subconscious. Hafiz expresses pure Divine Archetypes, while the Surrealist manufactures or discovers psychological archetypes as they appear in the subconscious. Hafiz knows, the surrealist dreams, imagines, explores through chance. Hafiz is face to face with his Master - God. The Surrealist is in the dark with his master, the subconscious.

The ‘stream of consciousness’ method used by many modern writers has also been pre-empted by Hafiz. This method of trying to create the flow of the consciousness of the characters in some modern novels (and in free-form poetry and ‘action painting’) should really be called ‘stream of incoherent consciousness’ for the consciousness they depict is not an awareness of a greater Reality, but merely a record of thought and feeling processes. They are usually lacking in any purpose other than to record.

According to Michael J. Zand in Six Centuries of Glory. (Moscow 1967): ‘Hafiz’s ghazals mostly present a wisp of themes, as it were held together by very relative, at times elusive associations that impart a certain unity to the whole ghazal - a unity of emotion and tonality rather than logic or reason. Compressing the long logical sequences leading from one beyt (couplet)-theme to the next, until they are reduced to an associative allusion of interrelationship, the poet involves the reader in the process of immediate perceptive reconstruction of this interrelationship, in the process of active co-experience, co-creation, i.e. the stream-of-consciousness. We may state, without incurring the danger of modernisation, that in these ghazals Hafiz applied quite consciously and consistently a method of revealing his hero’s inner condition at which European literature first arrived only in the 20th century.’ M. Farzaad states in Haafez and his Poems ‘... by the simple process of association of ideas (which ‘Modern’ psychology ‘discovered’ and labeled several centuries after Hafiz knew about it and used it) he has linked every verse with the next one in every single one of his poems.’

The Abstract Expressionist tried to intellectually experience and express the idea of an abstract state of non-existence, beyond the mind - a false ‘fana’ (annihilation of the mind). Abstract Expressionism was an intellectual interpretation of ‘fana’ or ‘nirvana’ - but without the existence of God, merely an idea, not an experience. Such a true experience can only be given or passed on by a God-realised Master, for as Jesus said, ‘No one gets to the Father but through Me.’ Hafiz states ...

Don’t place your foot down in the street of Love without a Guide;
by myself, for myself, a hundred moves I willed ... it wasn’t to be.

The soul must explore the false approach before it finds and explores the true path. The Age of Reason gave away to the Age of Intellect which finally put men on the moon and painted black paintings and found that nothing had changed, consciousness remained the same.

All these Movements in art/consciousness were pale intellectual shadows of Spiritual states of higher consciousness that were expressed by Spiritual Masters, be they artists or not.

Many of the poets and artists mentioned above who were influenced by Hafiz and many others, have also been influenced by an aspect of Hafiz that has been called ‘rind’ or ‘unreason.’ It is understandable that at the end of the Age of Reason Hafiz’s ‘philosophy of unreason’ would effect many of them.

According to Steingass’ Persian-English Dictionary ‘rind’ means: ‘sagacious, shrewd; a knave, rogue; a Sufi; dissolute; a drunkard, debauchee; one whose exterior is liable to censure, but who at heart is sound; a wanderer, traveller; and insolent, reckless, fear nought fellow.’ Zand states: ‘The image of the rind is deeply rooted in the early mediaeval social and cultural history of Central Asia and Iran... Hafiz raised this image to the level of great poetic generalisation, transforming it into an expression of the proud, free human personality opposing a society cramped with hypocritic morality and hideous personal and social relationships... Hafiz hurled and individualistic challenge at the very foundations and establishments of evil. In the power of his individualistic revolt of a man delighting in life, against a crippling life, Hafiz has no equal not only in the mediaeval literature of the Near and Middle East, but probably in the mediaeval literature of the world.’

There are two aspects of the rind as portrayed by Hafiz that I now wish to comment upon. Firstly, Hafiz used this image of himself as a form of protest as stated by Zand above. Secondly, he used this image as a symbol of an inner, spiritual stance. The spiritual hero in this sense, rejects the formal religious path of aestheticism and religious rituals, and is placed outside formal religion.

The path of Hafiz’s outsider is one of denunciation of selfish desires, scorn for Reason as a method of knowing God and a belief in unreason (or love) as being the best approach. For Hafiz the true hero is the one who has lost consciousness of any desire other than to please his own Master. In this sense he is outside formal religion and outside his own path and has abandoned himself and the world and has embraced the Will of God as his Master, ceaselessly moving with this Will and always longing to fulfil it.

It was this duel image of the rind that appealed to Goethe who became a wanderer, awaiting on the pleasure of God and his own inspiration when he wrote his West-Eastern Divan. This image also appealed to Emerson as can be seen by the quotes by him earlier in this chapter. It also appealed to Nietzche and influenced many of the great writers of Russia where this ‘outsider’ features as one of the heroes of Russian literature. Rimbaud’s vagrant stems from this image, as does Hesse’s hero in the 20th century. A distant echo can be seen in the ‘beat’ poets and in the heroes of Kerouac‘s On the Road.

Hafiz’s outsider’s stance was a spiritual one that saw through falseness in the world and exposed it for what it was. The outsider in Western literature was usually a victim of the outside world and his reaction to its beauty and its tyranny was to walk the path of aloneness and from this to gain an outside perception of himself and the world. The difference between them is obvious. Hafiz’s ‘madness’ or ‘intoxication’ is because of his love for God and is channeled towards God on earth in physical form, while many of the outsiders in Western literature’s ‘madness’ is because of a feeling of being alone in the world and searching for the meaning of this.

Hafiz is intoxicated by God’s Love and does not try to understand ‘how’ or ‘why’. The other ‘outsider’ is over-awed by God’s Creation and can’t escape it. One has a Master and is overwhelmed by the Master’s Godhood; the other is alone, still searching, overwhelmed by the loneliness and magnitude of the search and the cruelty of the world - a brave lonely victim. Hafiz is a victim of the love of God in human form and is frightened of only one thing - losing his Master’s blessing. Hafiz’s only desire is God, and all else is false. The other ‘outsider’ desires that which is yet to be found: some distant Nirvana, escape, or some shadowy imagined ‘master’.

Through Mohammed, the Age of Pure Reason commenced which finally became distorted through the ego into a pale shadow, the Age of Reason; which Hafiz tore away with the Age of Unreason, which then became distorted through the ego into the Age of Intellectual Expressionism

And now we stand in the morning of the Age of Intuition, alread3 dawned by the ‘New Coming Messiah,’ and so begins the involution of consciousness. All past experiences will be concentrated into the experience of knowing through the logic of the heart. All thoughts of diversity will eventually become feelings of unity. How? Through, as always, the releasing 0f Divine Love, Knowledge and Power on Earth by the Manifestation of God on Earth in human form.

The ‘rind’ will become the norm and the outsider will eventually be come whoever is outside the inner approach to God, outside the desire to fulfil the command of the Divine Master, outside the Truth. Perhaps this will, for quite some time, become an impossibility.

With the dawning of the Age of Intuition, where heart and mind are becoming more balanced and inner meanings appreciated, it is likely that he will from now on have a much greater influence than he has had in the past. For his Vision is not in the past, but in the never ending Present, and that Present is with us now, as always, but perhaps it is clearer to all of us now, if only we ask God to help us to be open to it. ‘The picture that Hafiz drew represents a wider landscape though the immediate foreground may not be so distinct. It is as if his mental eye endowed with wonderful acuteness of vision, had penetrated into those provinces of thought which we of a later age were destined to inhabit.’ Gertrude Bell

UNESCO AND HAFIZ

UNESCO, the United Nations educational and Cultural arm, officially declared 1988 the "Year of Hafez" and conducted a conference in Paris to honor the poet and explore the significance of his teachings for the modern world.

This event was initiated by the government of Iran, where thoughtful observers, in the tradition of earlier centuries, are turning increasingly to Hafez for political insight and counsel. As a troubled world poised precariously on the brink of the 21st century, prominent scholars from many lands confirmed that Hafez’s poetry and philosophy speak directly to our contemporary cutting edges of philosophy, psychology, awareness studies, educational systems, and business theory.

UNESCO’s official statement cited "the great importance of the works of Shams-ud-Din Mohammed Hafez Shirazi and his tremendous influence on other world literatures and cultures" and "the high esteem in which Hafez is held by countries familiar with the Persian language and literature."

From ‘THE SPIRITUAL WISDOM OF HAFEZ’ by Haleh Pourafzal and Roger Montgomery. Inner Traditions, Vermont. 1998. (Highly recommended).

The beauty of this verse is beyond an explanation:
to splendour of the sun does a person need a guide?

Blessings be on brush of the painter who gave such
wonderful beauty as this to meaning’s virgin bride.

Regarding its beauty, reason can’t find comparison:
regarding its grace, comparison nature can’t provide.

This verse is either a miracle or it is of true magic;
these words, Gabriel or Invisible Voice did guide.

No one can utter a great mystery in such a fashion:
like this, no one knows how to pierce a pearl inside

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