Hafiz: The Interpreter of Mysteries

Scholars remain divided as to whether Hafiz was, as Wickens (1965) puts it "...a mystic or a libertine, a good Muslim or a skeptic, or all of these by turns" (pp. 57). Though, for the most part, "It is now generally claimed (without prejudice) merely that he spoke through the standard themes and terminology of hedonism, the lament for mortality, human and mystical love, and so on; that he was a superb linguist and literary craftsman, who took these forms so far beyond the work of his predecessor that he practically cut off all succession; and that he revolutionized the ghazal and the panegyric* both by making the one the vehicle for the other..." (pp. 57). This confusion regarding the status of Hafiz as either a saint or a hedonist is not surprising, Hafiz himself addresses it in many of his ghazals. The form itself requires such ambiguity. As one Islamic literary critic puts it, "...the ghazal is not meant to explain or illuminate the poet's feelings; on the contrary, it is meant to veil them" (Schimmel, 1992, pp. 3).

Indeed, it is this very inability to pin him down that is one of the signs of Hafiz's genius. As Schimmel (1988) explains, "...the special charm of his verse consists in the fact that he uses the traditional vocabulary to such perfection that every interpretation seems to make complete sense. The beautiful but cruel beloved from whom he expects a sign of love-just a little note to catch his heart's bird by snare-like letters may be a real young boy, fourteen years old and moon-faced, similar to the moon in the fourteenth night, or still a child who can "murder" his lover without being held responsible. It can also be the Divine beloved from whom one implores a sign of grace, a word of consolation, but who remains inaccessible, hiding Himself behind the numberless manifestations of His beauty and majesty and can be reached only if the lover annihilates himself completely in Him. Again, the cruel beloved ca be the prince or king whose whims nobody knows and on whose kindness the poet is dependent. (Poetry was, after all, mainly written for a reward, and the medieval poet usually had to rely upon his patron's generosity for his more or less modest sustenance.) The human beloved can be praised for hi beauty because in him the eternal beauty of the Divine beloved is reflected (he is indeed the shahed, the visible witness to this invisible beauty); the prince, in turn, has to be flattered by the same expressions as the heavenly and the earthly beloved. In fact, the unbearded shahedand the prince are loci of manifestation for the contrasting qualities of the Divine beloved, His jamal and His jalal, His eternal beauty and kindness, and His terrifying majesty that reveals itself in His cruelty toward those who love Him most and are willing to suffer on the path toward Him. If this interpretation of a Persianghazal, and especially of a ghazal by Hafez, seems far-fetched, one should read the descriptio that the Indian historian Barani, an exact contemporary of Hafez, gives of the role of the king as the representative of God's jamal and jalal."

"It may be difficult for a modern reader to appreciate this multi-faceted quality of Hafez's poetry. However, one has always to keep in mind that the Persian spirit was at that point deeply permeated by Sufi thought and thus by the belief that the divine presence is felt in the different manifestations of life. The rose that blooms in the garden points to the eternal rose (and Rozbehan Baqli, Hafez's compatriot

was once blessed by a vision of the Divine Glory in the form of clouds of roses that overwhelmed him). The nightingale is in the same position as the human heart that longs and cries for the view of the rose like cheek of the beloved, for the bird is an age-old symbol of the human soul..." (pp. 222-23).

There are those, however, who despair at the readiness of the Sufi to attribute spiritual meaning to every utterance of Hafiz. As Browne (1920) laments, "The student of Hafiz who cannot decide for himself which verses are to be taken literally and which symbolically is hardly likely to gain much from commentator who invariably repeats that Wine means spiritual Ecstasy, the Tavern the Sufi Monastery the Magian elder the Spiritual guide and so forth. To the English reader who desires to pursue this method of study, however, Lieut.-Colonel H. Wilberforce Clarke's complete prose translation of the Divan of Hafiz 'with copious notes and exhaustive commentary' may be recommended" (pp. 299300).

Lieut.-Colonel Clarke is not, however, the only one to find deeper meaning in the words of Hafiz. Many celebrated spiritual figures have commented favorably on the beauty and depth of his poetry. Hazrat Inayat Khan (1964), the founder of Sufism in the West, has praised the poet at length. "Hafiz found a way of expressing the experiences his soul and his philosophy in verse, for the soul enjoys expressing itself in verse. The soul itself is music, and when it is experiencing the realization of divine truth its tendency is to express itself in poetry. Hafiz therefore expressed is soul in poetry...The work of Hafiz, from beginning to end, is one series of beautiful pictures, ever-revealing and most inspiring. Once a person has studied Hafiz he has reached the top of the mountain, from whence he beholds the sublimity of the immanence of God" (pp. 147-148).

Central to the interpretation of Hafiz that Browne so laments is the understanding of the symbolism of wine. As Inayat Khan observes, "The word 'wine' is often used, and according to the mystic each person drinks a wine peculiar to himself. Hafiz pictures the whole world as a wine-press, and every person takes that wine which is in accord with his own evolution. The wine of one is not the wine of another. He wishes to express the idea that every person, whether evolved or ignorant, whether hones or dishonest, whether he realizes it or not, whether he has great belief or no belief at all, is in every case taking a certain wine. It is the type of intoxication produced by that particular wine which is his individuality, and when a person changes, he does so by drinking another wine. Every different kind of wine changes the outlook on life, and every change in life is like taking a different wine" (pp. 152-153).

Yet another approach to the understanding of the symbolism of wine is offered by Indian spiritual leade Meher Baba (1989). "The Sufi master-poets often compare love with wine. Wine is the most fitting figu for love because both intoxicate. But while wine causes self-forgetfulness, love leads to Selfrealization."

"The behavior of the drunkard and the lover are similar; each disregards the world's standards of conduct and each is indifferent to the opinion of the world. But there are worlds of difference between the course and the goal of the two: the one leads to subterranean darkness and denial; the other gives wings to the soul for its flight to freedom." "The drunkenness of the drunkard begins with a glass of wine which elates his spirit and loosens his

affections and gives him a new view of life that promises a forgetfulness from his daily worries. He goe on from a glass to two glasses, to a bottle; from companionship to isolation, from forgetfulness to oblivion-oblivion, which in Reality, is the Original State of God, but which, with the drunkard, is an emp stupor-and he sleeps in a bed or in a gutter. And he awakens in a dawn of futility, an object of disgust and ridicule to the world."

"The lover's drunkenness begins with a drop of God's love which makes him forget the world. The mor he drinks the closer he draws to his Beloved, and the more unworthy he feels of the Beloved's love; an he longs to sacrifice his very life at his Beloved's feet. He, too, does not know whether he sleeps on a bed or in a gutter, and becomes an object of ridicule to the world; but he rests in bliss, and God the Beloved takes care of his body and neither the elements nor disease can touch it." "One out of many such lovers sees God face to face. His longing becomes infinite; he is like a fish thrown up on the beach, leaping and squirming to regain the ocean. He sees God everywhere and in everything, but he cannot find the gate of union. The Wine that he drinks turns into Fire in which he continuously burns in blissful agony. And the Fire eventually becomes the Ocean of Infinite Consciousness in which he drowns" (pp. 2-3).

The final decision on the meaning behind the poetry of Hafiz must, as with all art, be decided by the patron and observer of the work. Though credited as being "The Interpreter of Mysteries," there remain many mysteries regarding Hafiz that have yet to be solved. As the poet himself had said, "Am I a sinne or a saint/which one shall it be?/Hafiz holds the secret of his own mystery." [*panegyric=A formal eulogistic composition intended as a public compliment; elaborate praise or laudation. ]

Works Cited Browne, E. G. (1920). A literary history of Persia, vol. iii. London: Cambridge University Press. Khan, I. (1964). The Sufi message of Inayat Khan, vol. x. London: Barrie and Jenkins. Meher Baba (1989). The everything and the nothing. Beacon Hill: Meher House Publications.

Schimmel, A. (1992). A two-colored brocade: The imagery of Persian poetry. Chapel Hill: The Universi of North Carolina Press. Schimmel, A. (1988). The genius of Shiraz: Sa'di and Hafez. In Yarshater, E. (Ed.). Persian literature. Albany: Bibliotheca Persica. Wickens, G. M. (1965) Hafiz. In (Ed.) Lewis, B., Pellat, C., Schacht, J. (1965). The encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. iii. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

The Life of Hafiz

There has always been an air of mystery surrounding the life of Hafiz. One reason for this is that relatively little is known about the details of his life. The problem is not unique to Hafiz. E.G. Browne (1920) laments, in regard to Hafiz and other Persian authors, "the lack of authentic particulars as to the lives and characters of these poets is a very discouraging feature of our quest. Most of the anecdotes...are trivial or fictitious, and, save for what can be gleaned from their verses (where again we are often hampered by the lack of anything approaching a critical edition), we are finally driven to admit that we know very little indeed about most of them. They were generally poor men, often socially obscure, and as such were completely ignored by contemporary historians, while all that later generations could do was, as a rule, to string together a few more or less trivial anecdotes, evidently constructed in many cases to explain or illustrate passages in their poems" (pp. 210). After offering a brief disclaimer, often like Brownes above, most authors construct a general outline of the life of Hafiz which goes something like the following. He was born in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, somewhere between 1317 and 1326 CE. His father, a merchant, moved the family to Shiraz while Hafiz was still a child and died early in the boys life. Though the loss of his father put the family in difficult circumstances, Hafiz managed to become quite well educated, being fluent in both Arabic and Persian, and memorizing the Quran at an early age (the pen name Hafiz is a title given to one who has committed the Islamic holy book to memory.) He is said to have worked as a copyist (examples of his work have been preserved) and a bakers apprentice before acquiring the support of courtly patrons, and later in life he became a professor of religious studies at a college in Shiraz (Wickens, 1965). He is said to have died sometime between 1389 and 1390 and was buried in the beautiful Musalla Gardens of Shiraz, on the banks of Hafizs beloved Ruknabad river (Gray, 1995, pp. 12). The earliest witness to Hafiz is the preface to the first collection of his poems. This collection, written by a friend and contemporary named Muhammad Gulandam, is the first to collect all of Hafizs work into one volume. Gulandam praises Hafiz's genius, his celebrity, and his compassionate nature and lists among Hafiz's preoccupations the "...diligent study of the Qur'an, constant attendance to the King's business, annotation of the Kashaf and the Misbah..." (Browne, 1920, pp. 272). and various other literary pursuits that kept him from collecting and editing his own poetry. Gulandam then goes on to explain that, despite repeated requests that Hafiz collect all of his poems into one volume, "With this request...he was unable to comply, alleging lack of appreciation on the part of his contemporaries as an excuse, until he bade farewell to this life..."(pp. 272).

Tradition, probably based on references in the ghazals themselves, suggests that Hafiz was in love with a woman that he referred to as "the Branch of Sugar-cane." Browne makes reference to this. "For the statement that he fell in love with and ultimately married a girl called Shak-i-Nabat ("Branch of Sugar-cane") there is no weighty authority...That he married and had several children is probable" (Browne, 1920, pp. 287-88). The probability of his marriage is also based on hints found in individual ghazals. Oneghazal seems to refer to the death of his wife, another to the death of a son. Aside from this brief sketch there is little known about the details of the life of Hafiz, leaving much room for mystery and speculation. Perhaps it is better that way, for Hafiz, 'The Interpreter of Mysteries,' 'The Tongue of the Hidden,' has always been most at home in the evocative realm of myth and legend.

Works Cited Browne, E. G. (1920). A literary history of Persia, vol. iii. London: Cambridge University Press. Gray, E. T. (1995). The green sea of heaven. Ashland: White Cloud Press. Wickens, G. M. (1965) Hafiz. In (Ed.) Lewis, B., Pellat, C., Schacht, J. (1965). The encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. iii. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

The Legends of Hafiz

(This story is an excerpt from the introduction to Paul Smith's translation of the divan of Hafiz and is used by permission of the author.) Hafiz was twenty one years old in 1341, and was still working in the bakery and studying at night. He had memorized the Koran and had adopted the pen-name for the occasional poem that he wrote but until this time had not gained much success as a poet. He had become skilled in jurisprudence and had learnt all the sciences, including mathematics and astronomy. For the past ten years he had been constantly studying all of the great poets and the lives and works of the great Spiritual Masters. He was fluent in Arabic and had also learnt Turkish. He was still small and ugly and was the occasional topic of jokes told by his fellow workers and friends. They also found his attempts at writing poetry to be something to laugh at. Hafiz took it all in his goodnatured way, but underneath his jovial exterior, his heart had begun to boil with anger and frustration.

Then, one day at the bakery, one of the workers who delivered the bread was sick, and Hafiz had to deliver the bread to a certain quarter of Shiraz where the prosperous citizens lived. While taking the bread to a particular mansion, Hafiz's eyes fell upon the form of a young woman who was standing on one of the mansion's balconies. Her name was Shakh-i-Nabat which means 'Branch of Sugarcane'. Her beauty immediately intoxicated Hafiz and he fell hopelessly in love with her. Her beauty had such a profound effect on him that he almost lost consciousness. At night he could not sleep and he no longer felt like eating. He learnt her name and he began to praise her in his poems. Ghazal 53, couplets 1, 2 and 6: Lord, that bright candle lights the night of whose dwelling? Our soul burns while asking this: "That is whose darling?" That one overturns my heart and my faith and my religion. That's whose bedmate, I want to know; with whom is living? 0 Lord, one so regal, face like the moon, forehead of Venus, Is whose peerless pearl and whose jewel beyond comparing? Hafiz heard that she had been promised in marriage to a prince of Shiraz and realized how hopeless was his quest for her love. Still, the vision of her beauty filled his heart, and his thoughts were constantly with her. Then one day he remembered the famous 'promise of Baba Kuhi.' Baba Kuhi was a Perfect Master-Poet who had died in Shiraz in 1050 A.D., and had been buried about four miles from Shiraz, at a place called 'Pir-isabz,' meaning 'the green old man,' on a hill named after Baba Kuhi. The promise that Baba Kuhi had given before he died was that if anyone could stay awake for forty consecutive nights at his tomb he would be granted the gift of poetry, immortality, and his heart's desire. Hafiz, interested in the third of these three, vowed to keep this vigil that no one had yet been able to keep. Every day Hafiz would go to work at the bakery, then he would eat, and then walk past the house of Shakh-i-Nabat, who had heard some of the poems that he had composed in praise of her. She had noticed him passing her window every afternoon, each day more weary, but with a fire in his eyes that had lit the lamp of her heart for him. By this time Hafiz was in a kind of trance. Everything that he did was automatic, and the only thing that kept him going was the fire in his heart and his determination to keep the lonely vigil. Slowly he dragged his tired, small ugly body towards the mansion of Shakh-i-Nabat. She saw him coming and left the house; on meeting him, she declared that she preferred a man of genius to the son of a king. But Hafiz could not stop, for all that he was conscious of was that he had to light the lamp for the fortieth time and keep awake until morning. He tore himself from her and stumbled towards the hill. Early the next morning the Angel Gabriel (some say Khizer) appeared to him. Gabriel gave Hafiz a cup to drink which contained the Water of immortality, and declared that

Hafiz had also received the gift of poetry. Then Gabriel asked Hafiz to express his heart's desire. All the time that this was happening, Hafiz could not take his eyes off Gabriel. So great was the beauty of the Angel that Hafiz had forgotten the beauty of Shakh-i-Nabat. After Gabriel had asked the question, Hafiz thought: "If Gabriel the Angel of God is so beautiful, then how much more beautiful God must be." Hafiz answered Gabriel: "I want God!" On hearing this, Gabriel directed Hafiz to a certain street in Shiraz where there was a shop selline, fruit and perfumes that was owned by a man named Mohammed Attar. Gabriel said that Attar was the Perfect Master, a Godrealised soul, who had sent Gabriel for Hafiz's sake, and that if Hafiz would serve Attar faithfully, then Attar promised that one day Hafiz would attain his heart's desire. The Angel left Hafiz as he made his way through the waking city to the shop of the man who was a Perfect Master and who was awaiting his arrival. On entering the shop, Attar embraced Hafiz and congratulated him on keeping the vigil and accepted him as his disciple. He told him to be patient in his quest, to obey him explicitly, to keep on writing poetry and to keep Attar's identity a secret. Throughout the whole of Hafiz's Divan (collection of poems) there is not one mention of his Master's name, but Hafiz is constantly singing his praises and in one poem refers to him as 'Rose colour'... (pp. 14-16). ...Hafiz returned to Shiraz vowing that he would never again leave the city that he loved and never again leave his Master, Attar. During the foll- owing year, 1380, Hafiz constantly complained that he had not yet rec- eived the gift of God-realization that Attar had promised him thirty nine years previously. Again Attar told Hafiz to be patient and in reply Hafiz wrote ghazal 490; couplets 6 and 8: Bitter is this patience and so fleeting is this life of mine. How long will I experience this, how long will I remain. Hafiz, why do you complain if it is Union you desire? In season and out, griefs cup of blood you must drain. One day in 1381 Hafiz went to visit Attar. Hafiz's patience had come to an end. When he was alone with Attar he began to weep and when his Master asked him why he was weeping, Hafiz through desperation cried out: "What have I gained by being your obedient disciple for nearly forty years?" Attar replied: "Be patient and one day you will know.',' Hafiz cried: "I knew I would get that answer from you," and left the room. it was exactly forty days before the end of their forty year relationship. Hafiz went home and entered a circle that he drew on the ground. Through love and desperation he had decided to enter self-imposed 'Chehel-a-Nash- ini,' in which the lover of God sits within a circle for forty days and if the lover of God can succeed in this difficult practice, God will grant what- ever he desires. The love and strength and bravery of Hafiz was so great that he succeeded in never leaving the circle, no matter what God had in store for him.

On the fortieth night Attar again sent to him the form of the Angel Gabriel as he had done forty years earlier, who asked him what was his heart's desire. Hafiz replied: "My only desire is to wait on the pleasure of my Master's wish." Before dawn appeared on the last day Hafiz left the circle and rushed towards the house of his Master, Mohammed Attar. Attar met him at the door and embraced him, gave him a drink of two year old wine and made him God-realized. Hafiz had finally attained his heart's desire after forty long years. Ghazal 210 couplet 2: For forty years I suffered difficulty and anguish, and finally I Was to find the outcome in wine that for two years was aging. Immediately after Hafiz regained normal consciousness, after gaining Realization of his own True Self, he composed the following poems which are three of his most famous ghazals. Ghazal 192 couplet 1: Separation day and severance night from Beloved at last is ended; This grief, as lucky star has passed and my fortune cast, is ended. Ghazal 217 couplets 1, 6 and 8: Praise be to God what wonderful wealth's given to me tonight; Because my Divine Beloved came to me, quite suddenly, tonight. My blood will write 'I am The Truth' (Anal Haq) on the earth, If like Mansur they kill me on the gallows mercilessly tonight. All the time I'm frightened that Hafiz will be lost, obliterated; Because each moment I'm in possession Of such ecstasy tonight. Ghazal 218 couplets 1, 3 and 13: Last night before dawn, freedom from all suffering They gave me; In the darkness of night, Water of Life-everlasting, They gave me. What a fortunate dawn and joyful night was that Night of Power When the Supreme Authority of God's Commanding They gave me. Hafiz, rejoice, rejoice then thankfully scatter the sugar of thanks: Realization of the Divine Beloved, sweetly swaying, They gave me. During the remaining eight years of his life, Hafiz wrote half of the poems that bear his name. He no longer wrote of his desire for the Beloved, for now he was the Beloved. He wrote of the Unity of God, of the temporality of the world and its works and of the stages of the Path to God-realization and, he gave advice to others how to best avoid the traps of the Path. The poems written after Realization are written from the Authority of Divine

Knowledge and have a Perfect detachment and Merciful involvement that sets them apart from the other poems that were written from various stages on the road to Truth. (pp. 34-36)

Works Cited Smith, P. (1986). Divan of Hafiz. Melbourne: New Humanity Books. Copyright 1986 Paul Smith.