Tuesday Tome - A Year with Hafiz

One of the books I'll be reading very slowly through 2012 is a new collection of poems by the the fourteenth century Persian poet, Hafiz Shirazi. The collection, a gift from my good friend Jordan Peacock, is called A Year with Hafiz (Penguin Books) and contains a poem for each day of the year.

The poems are newly "translated" by Daniel Ladinsky, though rendering may be a better word than translation. Medieval Sufi poetry is difficult to translate because of the many-layered ambiguities and meanings bound up in the original language. To put it mildly, Ladinsky's Hafiz poems are not so much scholarly translations as they are dynamic reinterpretations.

Before reading the book, I decided to do a little research online to see what others think of Ladinsky's work. He has some great fans, but he also has some scathing critics. Some of the criticisms, I must confess, did resonate with things I saw in the book's preface and introduction, namely his egotism coupled with an inflated sense of his personal relationship with the "spirit of Hafiz." I guess I'll give the book an honest try and see how it goes. If I find Ladinsky too hard to take, I'll look for something else, perhaps 50 Poems of Hfiz (Cambridge University Press). If anyone has suggestions for other good Hafiz translations/renderings, I'd love to hear about them.

Some of you may wonder what it is that makes me interested in ancient Sufi poetry. Well, I'd have to say it all started with the poetry of Rumi who wrote a century earlier than Hafiz. I first discovered Rumi's poetry through the radio program, On Being. I find the mysticism and devotion of ancient Sufi poets to be very compelling in and of itself, but their spiritual insights and their appreciation of Jesus certainly grabs my attention as well. Take, for example, the first poem in the Ladinsky collection:

Listen to this Music
I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath
moves through--listen to this music.
I am the concert from the movement of every
creature singing in myriad chords.
And every dancer, their foot I know and lift.
And every brush and hand, well, that is me
too, who caresses any canvas or cheek.
How did I become all these things, and beyond
all things?
It was my destiny, as it is yours. My poems are
about our glorious journey.
We are a hole in a flute, a moment in space, that
the Christ's body can move through and sway
all forms--in an exquisite dance--as the wind in
a forest.