TEHRAN – October 12 is a significant cultural event for Iranians who commemorate the great Persian poet and mystic Hafez Shirazi.
Poetry, in particular, that of Hafez, occupies a significant place in Iranian society. This art form is an important part of the lives of all Iranians.
Meanwhile, among all Persian poets, Hafez occupies a special place for Iranians.
They not only consult him to foresee their future through “Faal-e-Hafez” (augury), but the poetry of the celebrated poet has had a lasting influence on great people, including the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini.
Khawaje Shams-u-Din Muḥammad Ḥafeẓ Shirazi was born in 1315 in the city of Shiraz. Having memorized the Holy Qur’an at a young age, he was bestowed the title of “Hafez”.
The spiritual enlightenment that Hafez attained and personified traveled beyond the borders of Iran and influenced the great minds of the world, in both the East and the West.
The poetry of the Nightingale of Shiraz has had a hypnotic influence only on the East, but his verses also inspired poets in the West.
Founding oriental studies as an academic field, the prominent orientalist, Joseph von Hammer Purgstall, translated the Diwan e Hafiz in 1846. The translated work inspired Goethe to create a collection of poems titled The West-Eastern Divan.
The poetry of Hafez led Goethe, the legendary German philosopher, to call him “Saint Hafiz” and a “Celestial Friend”, as it oozes with spiritualism and asceticism.
For Goethe, Persian poetic language reached its zenith in the verses of Hafez in whom he was able to find the magnificence of ideas and the view of the world he had been searching all his life.
Inspired by Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan, a number of German poets, including Friedrich Ruckert and August von Platen, composed poems on the model of Ghazal.
Hafez’s poetry is considered the very epitome of the Ghazal tradition.
Prominent among the German thinkers fascinated by Hafez was Friedrich Nietzsche, who repeatedly mentioned him in his seminal works.
Nietzsche was deeply interested in Hafez and praised him as an ideal poet and spent many years reading his works. The Persian poet appears almost a dozen times in the writings of Nietzsche.
In a poem dedicated to Hafez, Nietzsche glorifies the insight of the Persian poet and his poetry.
“The tavern you have built with your hand is far greater than any house, the wine you have made therein all the world fails to imbibe, the bird which was once called the phoenix is now dwelling in your house, the mouse which gave birth to a mountain is yourself, you are everyone and no one,” he writes.
For Sir William Jones, the famous British philologist, the poetry of Hafez was a form of meditation on divine perfection. The first poem of Hafez to have appeared in the English language was translated by Jones in the eighteenth century.
The poem was titled “A Persian Song” and played a significant role in introducing the bard of Shiraz to the English-speaking world.
According to the famous German orientalist Annamarie Schimmel, Hafez is like a pure decorated jewel with endless colors. His words are not restricted by time, but he is a poet who has crossed the limitations of time and space and is universal belonging to all times.
However, as per Schimmel, understanding Hafez is not easy as he uses a secret language, and only those who can understand the culture of Hafez can understand him and his poetry.
The influence of Hafez stretched from Europe to America, when Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous American poet and philosopher got acquainted with Hafez.
While introducing the Persian poet, Emerson described him as “the prince of Persian poets.”
“His extraordinary gifts add to some of the attributes of Pindar, Anacreon, Horace and Burns…He accosts all topics with an easy audacity,” Emerson writes.
“He fears nothing. He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see and be.”
According to mystics, God created the world as a mirror to reflect His grandeur and glory. For Hafiz, the whole world with all its diverse forms and phenomena is a manifestation of God.
Praising the acclaimed lyricist Emerson said, “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.”
Hafez’s literary reputation reached the Indian subcontinent during his lifetime.
One of the oldest manuscripts of Diwan-e-Hafiz preserved in an Indian library shows that Humayun and Jahangir, the Mughal emperors of India, frequently consulted it for faal.
Abul-Fazl, author of Akbarnama, writes that Divan-e-Hafez was one of the main books read in the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar.
Praised as an incomparable master of the Ghazal tradition, this genre of literature which conquered new heights in the Urdu language was hugely influenced by the Ghazals of Hafez Shirazi.
Shahab Ahmed, a Pakistan-American scholar of Islam referred to Hafez’s Divan as “the most widely-copied, widely-circulated, widely-read, widely-memorized, widely-recited, widely-invoked, and widely-proverbialized book of poetry in Islamic history.”
In the sub-continent, the verses of the great Persian poet and thinker have also been written in amulets to get spiritual benefits and ward off evil forces.
Hafiz is still read and still loved in India, which is evident from the fact that Dr. Balram Shukla, director of the Swami Vivekananda Institute Tehran, has translated the whole Divan-e-Hafez into Hindi language.