This Valentine's Day I was excited to read these
translations of some of the poems of the famous Persian poet Shamsuddin
Muhammad Hafiz. The title - The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz
- is so fitting for Valentine's Day, although of course Hafiz was
not just a romantic poet; his poems can also be read as spiritual, being
addressed to the Divine. The poems in this volume certainly give a taste of the
spiritual and emotional intensity that Hafiz is known for.
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By
Abolhassan Sadighi - Society for the National Heritage of Iran, CC BY-SA 4.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86911865
However, I was disappointed to
find that these translations by Daniel Ladinsky, published in 1996, were based
not on the original Persian, but on the 1891 English translations of H.
Wilberforce Clarke. It might be more accurate to say that they are translations
of a translation.
Since every act of translation
involves a measure of interpretation, this in itself isn't a huge problem. But
as someone who doesn't read Persian, I want to read something that is based
more closely on Hafiz's own words, rather than a second-hand interpretation -
and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. How else do you know whether what you're
reading is a faithful rendering? But the issue in this case is that the
translator of this volume is himself not a Persian scholar; worse, he has not
acknowledged any Persian language or literature experts who might have helped
him with his understanding for this volume (if indeed he bothered to consult
any), apart from one 'spritual teacher', mentioned in the introduction (and not
by name, I might add). Instead, he relied on - and credited - the
hundred-year-old translation of another dead white man.
Despite this lack of any real background in
Persian studies or even time spent in Iran, Ladinsky has, according to the
foreword in the book, been recognised by the BBC and other well-known figures
such as Oprah, as an expert on Hafiz and Persian poetry. Let's just sit with
that for a minute. A white American is hailed as an expert on a Persian poet,
despite having no knowledge of the Persian language, and no first-hand
experience of Persian or Muslim culture. Perhaps in the mid-nineties, there may
have been a dearth of actual Persian experts (bit of a stretch but for the sake
of argument let's go with it). But surely that is not still the case?
At a time when writers of colour and the global
south are struggling for greater representation in publishing, to say that I'm
disappointed that when I search for Hafiz in translation, Ladinsky is what
comes up, is an understatement. His rendering is certainly lyrical, and
spirtual to an extent, but devoid of the connection with Islamic and Persian
culture that any reading of Hafiz should be conscious of. It's almost as if
it's been sanitised of any overtly Islamic or cultural reference for a Western
audience, similar to what has happened to the poetry of Rumi in translation.
Cultural and spiritual appropriation, much?
Where are the modern Persian
poets, the language experts, the native speakers, who are able to produce their
own stunning translations, with a more immediate sense of the culture and
history surrounding Hafiz and his poems? They are out there, but why are they
not celebrated and published in the same way as Ladinsky? (perhaps they are,
and I just don't know about them - in which case, let me know in the comments!)
A bit more research reveals that a lot of the
'translated' poems that Ladinsky has attributed to Hafiz are not even in fact translations of
Hafiz poems; they are poems that he feels have been mystically transmitted to him in a vision.
But then why does he not publish them as original poems, instead of claiming
they were written by Hafiz? This whole experience has left me feeling
incredibly frustrated.
If anyone knows any good
translations I can read, which are actually based on the original poems of
Hafiz, preferably by writers with a real foundation in Persian language and
culture, or indeed if you yourself are one of those writers, please comment and
let me know.
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