رویکردهای گوناگون در شرح غزلیات حافظ (انگلیسی)

  

Bahador Bagheri

Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature

Kharazmi University

Tehran - Iran

  

Hafiz is one of the few Iranian poets whose poems have had the various and different interpretations since his time up to now. Some of these explanations are appropriate and acceptable and some of them are really wrong without any coordination with the whole atmosphere of his art and ideas. Some of them are as only suggestions among other suggestions, but others count their view as the exact, radical and unique explanation. Sometimes they have explained his poems like a simple prose text without pay any attention to its rhetorical and aesthetic values and in many cases they have searched their previous personal ideas in his work like mystical or historical or secular interests. Some of them have claimed that they have seen Hafiz in their dreams and he has ordered and guided them to find the secrets of his poems.      

I have a book entitled the Dictionary of interpretations of Poems of Hafiz that shows the history of the process of writing the explanations of his Ghazals and several types of them. This paper is actually a summary of that book with new information.

1.    History of interpretations

In Iranian history of literature we can find many explanations of Ghazals of Hafiz. Writing the explanation on his ghazals has been started since a few years after his death. Azari Tusi in Javaher ol Asrar and Farughi have been explained some of verses of Hafiz. But mystical interpretation has been started by Allameh Davani Kazeruni (1502) and Obeid ollah Ahrar (1490). In addition to Iranian books and notes, there are many samples in India and Turky. This process is so serious till now. Last year Dr. Hamidian Professor of Allameh Tabatabayi University printed a huge interpretation in 5 valumes. We speak about the samples during the classification of them.

 2. Quantitative Classification

There are 3 kinds of explanations: brief, medium and detailed ones. Brief ones are the explanations of the key word of each verse, 1 to 10 verses and a ghazal. Medium ones are the explanation of 3 to 10 ghazals and detailed ones are the explanation of the whole of Divan or poems collection. 

  3. Qualitative Classification

Briefly the whole interpretations of Hafiz can be classified in two orientations: Theological and philosophical approaches. The theological orientation is totally limited and ideological; it assumes some ideas totally correct and certainty previously and tries to proof their one-dimensional viewpoint. But philosophical approach is wisely and free. The commentator tries to be neutral and remarks the poem as it is, not as he or she thinks or likes or assumes to be. Based on this classification, we can find two main types of explanations: 1. Unilateral ones, 2. Multilateral ones. Unilateral explanations can be categorized in six kinds: mystical, historical, astronomical, secular, based on Mithraism, and Psychoanalytic (Freudian).

 Mystical explanation is one of the most important approaches and has a large history since shortly after the death of Hafez up to now. Of course some of his poems are mystical but not all of them. So mystical approach of explain all of his works is not correct. Some examples of this approach are: explanations of Davani Kazeruni, Latifeye Gheibieh of Mohammad Darabi, Badro Shoruh of Bahae oldin Akbarabadi, Sharh e Jonun of Beheshti Shirazi, Sharhe Erfanie Ghzalhaye Hafez (Mystical Explanation of Ghzals of Hafez) of Khatmi Lahuri, Jamale Aftab Va Aftabe Har Nazar (Beauty of Sunshine and The Sunshine of Any View) of Ali Saadat Partow and some articles In this field.

 Historical explanation: first time Dr. Mahmud Human in his book Hafez che Miguyad? (What does Hafez say?) Then in his other book Hafez, tried to classify the poems of Hafez based on the time of their composition. So he classified them in five periods. That was unscientific and imprecise method. After him Dr. Ghasem Ghani in Tarikhe Asre Hafez (the History of the age of Hafez) was the first scholar who based on a scientific and detailed method and with enough acceptable reasons, showed the history of composing of some ghazals. After him unfortunately there are some Extremist and Sophisticated explanations based on the search on the time of composing of the poems. Firstly they  wanted to classify the ghazals based on the time and then tried to show the exact historical examples or applies for each ghazal as though Hafez is a panegyrist poet and the whole Divan is a panegyric text. They even explained the mystical and lyric poems in this field, hence some of them are really humorous and funny. We know that except a few ghazals, the exact time of the composition of his poems is not obvious, so this kind of historical unilateral interpretation is not scientific and reasonable. Some examples are: Hafez e Kharabati of Roknoddin Homayun Farrokh, Ganj e Morad of Sirus Niroo, Sharh e Jalali bar Hafez of abdolhosein Jalalian, and Gereh Gosha of Kazem khosh Khabar.

A few of commentators have some rare and strange ideas about his poems. For instance because of the existence of the astronomical idioms and themes in ghazals of Hafez, one of the writers named Sarfaraz Ghazni climes that Hafez has been an astronomer and has figured out some facts of this knowledge in his time before invention of telescope and other astronomical instruments, while we know that firstly using the astronomical terms is common in Iranian poetry and is not exceptional characteristic of Hafez, also it is not the reason to assign the poets like Khaghani, Anvari or Hafez as expert astronomers.

 A few commentators have tried to prove that Hafez believes in Mithraism as well, because of using some Mithraism terms or issues. Ali Forati in his book az Freud be Hafez (From Freud to Hafez) believes that Hafez is a Freudian poet and even before Freud he has figured out some psychological and psychoanalytic subjects. Some writers assign him as a completely secular poet without any belief in any religion. Rahi be Maktabe Hafez (a road to the school of Hafez) of Mahmudi Bakhtiari and Hafez ra ham az Hafez Beshnasim ( Lets Know Hafez from him) of Moayyeri and the introduction of Ahmad Shamlu on his print of Divan e Hafez are examples of this approach. As we see these kinds of extremism approach exists in the process of explanation up to now.

But fortunately the main stream belongs to multilateral interpretations. Firstly it's important to hint that they are not the same and have several levels. These kinds of explanations relatively try to be comprehensive. We can classify these ones to seven types or levels:

1. Based on the explanation of the key words of verses: they only focus on the key words and think that readers can understand the meaning of the poems trough knowing the meaning of them. Like: Estelahat e Musighi dar divane hafez (Musical idioms in Divan e Hafez) of Basari or Farhang e Dah Hezar Vazhe az Divane Hafez (Dictionary of 10000 words of Divan e Hafez) of Mosaffa, and Ihamate Divane Hafez (Polysemy in Divan e Hafez) of Farid.

2. Based on turning the verse to a simple prose.

3. Based on turning the verse to a simple prose with emphasis on grammatical and literary aspects and showing the influence of Qoran in them. These explanations are in the form of articles.

4. Based on etymology of the important words in the verse.

5. Based on the talk about the differences between manuscripts of Divan e Hafez and trying to find the best meaning through the best version of the manuscripts.

6. Based on a documentary or non - documentary legend about Hafez and his personal life as we see in the life story of many Iranian poets and scholars.

7. Close to be the ideal interpretations. They tried to solve all difficult aspects of the poem like the lexical, grammatical and syntactic subjects, the main thinking and philosophical points and artistic dimensions of the ghazal, and the most important thing is explore the laminated and colorful layers of the meaning and associations in them. As you know the artistic ambiguity and polysemy are the main characteristics of the poem of Hafez and without enough pay attention to this important and outstanding quality, we can't understand the whole formal and content beauty of them.

Some examples of these kinds are: Hafez Nameh of Khorramshahi, Yek Ghesseh Bish Nist of Dr. Hassan Anvari, Gomshodeye Labe Darya of Dr. Pournamdarian (interpretation of the first ghazal of Divan) and Sharhe Showgh of Dr. Hamidian and many of articles.

Conclusion

In Iran in the recent 3 decades it has been written some good and useful explanations on the Ghazals of Hafez. Many of them have new and valuable information about Hafez and his art and thinking. Positive aspects of them are obvious and the main result of these books and papers is the brilliant boom in the field of research on Hafez and reading his poem these years. But if we want to represent the negative aspects and defects of them, we can point these facts: the unilateral approach especially mystical one continues in this process more or less. In one of his papers Dr. Ali Mohammad Haghshenas believes that from the viewpoint of meaning, ghazals of Hafez has 4 levels from simple level to complicated and multidimensional ones. Besed on his idea we can see that one of the problems of those explanations is counting the whole Divan as a same collection of ghazals and explaining them in a same way. But it is better to classify the Divan in 3 or 4 categories and interpret them in their own category.    

Another problem is explaining the verse or verses separately and independently without paying any attention to the relationship between the verses and the whole atmosphere and coherence of the ghazal. Dr. Taghi Pournamdarian believes that ghazals of Hafez has a hidden and vertical coherence and we should find and explore it. So in many cases seeing the verse alone is really illusory.  

Other serious defects are: Being unaware of the history of previous explanations and repeating their content, inattention to the basic thoughts of poet and his own school, absolutism and dogmatism in offering the meaning and forgetting the laminated form of his ghazals and the difference between the artistic and philosophical language, excellence of praising Hafez so enthusiastically rather than knowing him, and turning him to a holy character rather than an artist, limiting the explanation to description the words and idioms and forgetting the hidden layers of associations, neglecting the influence of previous poets on Hafez and his imitation and creativity Simultaneously, lack of scientific and organized method, repeating subjects again and again.

One of the most important facts in writing the book is specifying its audiences. In many cases we don't know who is the special audience of explanations meanwhile the young generation of Iran needs several appropriate interpretations, so it is a good idea that we have several levels of explanations for various readers. Ghazals of Hafez is not one ancestry and related to several sciences like Qoran, mysticism, philosophy, logic, history, myth, medicine, astronomy, politic and etc. So comprehensive interpretation should enters these areas to find the exact meaning of the poem. 

Other problems are: explaining the simple verses and neglecting the complex and laminated ones and more important, forgetting the apparently simple ones while they are not simple actually and need to be explained deeply. Making non - documentary legends about him, Redundant texts and repeating the obvious subjects again and again. Forgetting the explanation of his poem based on his poem and searching the key subjects through the whole ghazals, so it seems that one of the most important needs of literary area and specially Hafez is having thematic explanations. Meanwhile we need to now the history of change or evolution of key words like love, mysticism and Rend since the beginning period till the time of Hafez - chronological explanations - to understand the special meaning of them in his poems. Lack of careful examination in the winding and colorful series of associations in his poems for example his special and unique use of stories and holy characters of Qoran.

Most of our explanations are single - dimensional, either focusing on the form or content, while ghazals of Hafez are important in both aspects and neglecting one of these aspects leads to failure in understanding the meaning completely.

Finally I think it is better to have an expert group of scholars to write appropriate explanations on the ghazals of Hafez, because each member of this group is expert in some fields so their cooperation and consultation will have good and bright results.

In one of his ghazals Hafez says:

فیض روح القدس ار باز مدد فرماید

دیگران هم بکنند آنچه مسیحا می کرد

If the grace of Gabriel helps again

Other people can do like Christ.