Hâfez-e Shirazi, gardener of love: book review

[From the French language press]: Hâfez de Chiraz, jardinier de l'amour.

Au XIVe siècle, alors que Dante venait de terminer sa Divine Comédie et que Pétrarque était plongé dans son Canzoniere, la poésie persane battait son plein.

Le grand poète du moment s'appelait Hâfez et il écrivait des ghazals, comme son prédécesseur Rûmi. Sans doute moins mystique, moins exalté que le [autre] maître soufi, Hâfez (né vers 1315 et mort vers 1390) est l'auteur de poèmes plus ambigus.

Le Monde,France - Janvier 5, 2007 - Le Monde des livres, par René de Ceccaty

In the XIVth century, whereas Dante had just finished his Divina Commedia and Pétrarque was plunged in its Canzoniere, Persian poetry beat his full. The large poet of the moment was called Hâfez and he wrote ghazals, like his Rûmi predecessor. Undoubtedly less mystical, less exalted than the [other] sufi Master, Hâfez (born about 1315 and dead about 1390) is the author of more ambiguous poems.

And there is, with Hâfez, business with a more human poetic universe, more carnal, more ambiguous also, where intoxication, the physical love and the observations of the everyday life are not contradictory with the spiritual dash. One measures the influence that Hâfez will exert, through the centuries, on sensual poets like the Alexandrine Constantin Cavafy, for which also the tavern is a theatre of major and more rich training than the solitary meditation, the reading of the crowned books or the respect of the dogmas.

Intoxication, far from being opposed to the interior control which could be favourable to the true spiritual values, is a door of wisdom, because it delivers from the narrowness of the “ego”. It is one of the fundamental paradoxes of this poetry. The ascetic has less wisdom than the drunkard. The pure and contrite man less size than the libertine:

“Request to the drunk libertines the secret within the veil/because the Sufi of high rank does not reach this state!”

LE DIVÂN de Hâfez de Chiraz. Introduction, traduction du persan et commentaires par Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, Verdier poche, 1278 p., 25 €

Poets and mystics
Around Persian poetry, two other publications must be announced:

-an imaginary incarnation of the world of the poet soufi Rûmi, Sur les pas de Rûmi (On the steps of Rûmi), by Nahal Tajadod (illustrated by the painter Fédérica Matta and prefaced by Jean-Claude Carrière, Albin Michel, 386 p., 25 €).

-a new translation of the Poèmes mystiques (Mystical poems) of Hussein Mansour Al-Hallâj (translated from Arabic by Sami-Ali, Southern Sindbad-Acts, 96 p., 9,60 €).