Divan of Hafiz — Selected Ghazals
c. 1315–1390 CE · Medieval Persia (14th century CE) · Shiraz, Persia
Ghazal I — Wine and the Beloved
Ghazal II — The Path of Love
Ghazal III — Rise, and Behold
Ghazal IV — The Rose and the Nightingale
Ghazal V — The Beloved's Face
Ghazal VI — The Old Tavern-Keeper
notes
Khwaja Shams-ud-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi (c. 1315–1390 CE), universally known as Hafiz ("one who has memorised the Quran"), is regarded by Persians as their greatest lyric poet. His Divan (collected works) consists of approximately 500 ghazals — short lyric poems, typically 5-15 couplets long, on themes of love, wine, the beloved, spiritual longing, and the tension between religious hypocrisy and the ecstatic path. Hafiz's poetry operates on multiple levels simultaneously: the beloved may be human or divine, the wine may be literal or the intoxication of mystical union, the tavern may be a physical place or the meeting-house of the true seekers. The Persian tradition of literary interpretation refuses to force a single reading; the ambiguity is itself the poetry. Goethe, whose West-östlicher Divan (1819) was his tribute to Hafiz, wrote: "Hafiz has no peer." Emerson called him "a poet for poets." Ralph Waldo Emerson translated a number of Hafiz's poems into English in the 19th century. His tomb in Shiraz remains one of the most visited sites in Iran. It is traditional in Persian culture to open the Divan at random and read the first verse as a form of divination (fal-i-Hafiz). Translation: composed from H. Bicknell, "Háfiz of Shíráz: Selections from His Poems," London: Trübner, 1875, and H. Wilberforce Clarke, "The Divan-i-Hafiz," Calcutta: Government of India Central Printing Office, 1891. Both public domain.
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