N. Kanani —
“Hafiz is most assuredly a poet worthy to sup with gods.”
— Sir William Jones
William Jones, a British philologist, judge, orientalist and scholar of ancient India, was born on September 28, 1746 in London. His father, also named William Jones (1675-1749), was a famous mathematician from Wales and noted for introducing the use of the symbol π for the number 3.14, which is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. The father died when his son was three years old, and his wife Mary had to take care of the upbringing of their son William.
It soon turned out that William was a linguistic prodigy. In addition to his native languages English and Welsh he quickly learned at an early age Greek and Latin, which he could not only read but also write with fluency and grace, both in verse and prose. According to Wikipedia, by the end of his life William Jones knew eight languages with critical thoroughness, was fluent in a further eight, with a dictionary at hand, and had a fair competence in another twelve.
1753 William was sent to school and later on in 1764 to University College, Oxford where he studied oriental literature and graduated in 1768. During his study he perfected himself in Persian and Arabic. His primary source in acquiring Persian was Meninski’s “Thesaurus linguarum orientalium1.”
At the age of 22 William Jones had already a reputation as an accomplished English philologist and orientalist. To give an idea of his linguistic abilities, it will suffice to mention that when Christian VII of Denmark visited England in 1768, he brought with him a biography of the Persian king Nader Shah (1736-1747), whose spectacular career as a warrior and conqueror had fired the imagination of the Europeans.2 The author of this biography, titled “Jahāngoshā-ye Nāderi,” was the historian Mirzā Mehdi Khān Astarābādi (died 1759), the chief secretary, advisor, and confidant of Nader Shah. Christian requested the twenty-two-year-old Jones to translate the manuscript from Persian into French, which he did, a laborious task for which he received no money.3 The translation, titled “L’ Histoire de Nader Chah,” appeared two years later in Paris. Christian praised Jones’s translation highly and unreservedly and made him a member of the Royal Society of Copenhagen, an act, which heightened Jones’s reputation as an oriental scholar. A year later, 1773, Jones published “An Introduction to the History of the Life of Nader Shah” containing a description of Asia, a short history of Persia, and an essay on oriental poetry.
Literary encounter with Hafez
Early in 1768, at the time when the Hungarian orientalist Count Károly Reviczky (1737-1793) was involved in translating some of the ghazals of Hafez into Latin, Jones met him in London and found in him the person with whom he could carry on a scholarly and critical discussion about Persian poetry. Within a year of their meeting Count Reviczky left England but continued to correspond with Jones on Persian and Arabic poetry. It was through this acquaintance that Jones grew to know and love Hafez’s poesy. In April 1768, he wrote to his mentor and friend:
“Our Hafiz is most assuredly a poet worthy to sup with gods; every day I take pleasure in his work, which daily gives me more delight by its charm and attractive style.”4 Jones’s biographer John Shore (1751-1834), better known as Lord Teignmouth, observed: “His [Jones’s] life was permanently changed by his first reading of Hafiz, and for about six years he engaged in advocating the claims of Eastern poetry.”5
A Grammar of the Persian Language
The English East India Company (EIC) that was founded in 1600 as a merchant company for India trade and outlasted until 1874 established the basis for the almost 200-year British colonial rule over India. The Company became increasingly a great territorial power in that country, and an acquaintance with the Persian language, which was the lingua franca of the Mughal court, was indispensably necessary for its civil and military servants.
Being aware of the importance of the Persian language in Britain’s colonial relationship with India Jones published in 1771 “A Grammar of the Persian Language” in the hope that the East India Company would use it as a training manual for its officers wanting to learn the language. On the book cover shown in Figure 1 one can see Jones’s pen name یونس اوکسفردی. In his introduction Jones stated: “The Persian language is rich, melodious, and elegant; it has been spoken many ages by the greatest Princes in the politest courts of Asia and a number of admirable works have been written in it by historians, philosophers, and poets, who found it capable of expressing with equal advantage the most beautiful and the most elevated sentiments.”6
Jones’s “A Grammar of the Persian Language” proved to be one of the best grammar texts ever published in English about a language the Western world considered “exotic” and went through several editions. As Robert Irwin, a British scholar of Arabic and Middle Eastern History put it, “Jones’s Grammar of the Persian language was really of more use to poets than to imperial administrators, as he was more interested in introducing Persian poets to a European audience than he was in producing a crib for merchants and administrators working in exotic parts.”7
And the American semantic scholar Kurt A. Johnson commented: “For Jones, the primary reason for Britons to learn Persian was not to make it easier for them to administer the colony, but rather to gain a better appreciation of ‘Eastern’ poetry. Jones sought to foster that appreciation by demonstrating how European poetry resounded with aesthetic echoes from Persian poetry.”8
Translation of the poems of Hafez
Jones introduced his “Grammar” with the following remark: “The learner is supposed to be acquainted with the common terms of grammar, and to know that the Persians write their characters from the right hand to the left.”
He then explained – after a detailed discussion of the Persian alphabets – the grammatical rules of the Persian language using Persian poems. To this end he included also a number of Hafez’s poems in Persian together with their English versions and explained them by every trick in the book. His aim was to attract Europeans to the idea that Persian literature might help them to enrich their own.
Jones’s first translation called A Persian Song of Hafiz was a paraphrase of one of the most famous ghazals of Hafez namely the one with the opening verse Agar ān Tork-e Shirazi…..
He noted: “The wildness and the simplicity of this Persian song pleased me so much, that I have attempted to translate it in verse: the reader will excuse the singularity of the measure which I have used, if he considers the difficulty of bringing so many eastern proper names into our stanzas. I have endeavoured, as far as I was able, to give my translation the easy turn of the original; and I have, as nearly as possible, imitated the cadence and accent of the Persian measure; from which every reader, who understands musick, will perceive that the Asiatick numbers are capable of as regular a melody as any air in Metastasio9.”10
To raise awareness of the difficulties facing anyone who wished to translate Hafez, Jones noted: “I shall transcribe the first ode of Hafiz that offers itself, out of nearly three hundred that I have paraphrased: when the learner is able to understand the images and allusions in the Persian poems, he will see a reason in every line why they cannot be translated literally into any European language.”
اگر آن ترک شیرازی به دست آرد دل ما را
به خال هندویش بخشم سمرقند و بخارا را
بده ساقی می باقی که در جنّت نخواهی یافت
کنار آب رکن آباد و گلگشت مصلا را
فغان کاین لولیان شوخ شیرینکار شهرآشوب
چنان بردند صبر از دل که ترکان خوان یغما را
ز عشق ناتمام ما جمال یار مستغنیست
بآب و رنگ و خال و خطّ چه حاجت روی زیبا را
حدیث از مطرب و می گو و راز دهر کمتر جو
که کس نگشود و نگشاید بحکمت این معما را
من از آن حسن روزافزون که یوسف داشت دانستم
که عشق از پردۀ عصمت برون آرد زلیخا را
نصیحت گوش کن جانا که از جان دوستتر دارند
جوانان سعادتمند پند پیر دانا را
بَدَم گفتی و خرسندم عفاک الله نکو گفتی
جواب تلخ میزیبد لب لعل شکرخوارا
غزل گفتی و دُرّ سُفتی بیا و خوش بخوان حافظ
که بر نظم تو افشاند فلک عقد ثریا را
Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,
And bid these arms thy neck infold;
That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
Would give thy poet more delight
Than all Bocára’s vaunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand.
Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow,
And bid thy pensive heart be glad,
Whate’er the frowning zealots say:
Tell them, their Eden cannot show
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
A bow’r so sweet as Moselláy.
O! when these fair perfidious maids,
Whose eyes our secret haunts infest,
Their dear destructive charms display;
Each glance my tender breast invades,
And robs my wounded soul of rest,
As Tartars seize their destin’d prey.
In vain with love our bosoms glow;
Can all our tears, can all our sighs
New lustre to those charms impart?
Can cheeks, where living roses blow,
Where nature spreads her richest dies,
Require the borrow’d gloss of art?
Speak not of fate‒‒ah! change the theme,
And talk of odours, talk of wine,
Talk of the flow’rs that round us bloom:
’Tis all a cloud, ’tis all a dream;
To love and joy thy thoughts confine,
Nor hope to pierce the sacred gloom.
Beauty has such resistless pow’r,
That ev’n the chaste Egyptian dame
Sigh’d for the blooming Hebrew boy:
For her how fatal was the hour,
When to the banks of Nilus came
A youth so lovely and so coy!
But ah! sweet maid, my counsel hear;
(Youth should attend when those advise
Whom long experience renders sage);
While music charms the ravish’d ear,
While sparkling cups delight our eyes,
Be gay; and scorn the frowns of age.
What cruel answer have I heard!
And yet, by heav’n, I love thee still:
Can aught be cruel from thy lip?
Yet say, how fell that bitter word
From lips which streams of sweetness fill,
Which nought but drops of honey sip?
Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease
Like orient pearls at random strung;
Thy notes are sweet, the damsels say,
But oh! far sweeter, if they please
The nymph for whom these notes are sung!
With his A Persian Song of Hafiz, which was the first poem of Hafez to appear in English, William Jones set the fashion of finding an ode-like equivalent for the Persian ghazal. In this context the following comments seem appropriate:
Firstly: Since Persian pronouns have no gender distinction the Persian pronoun for the third person ‛u’ may be translated as “he”, or “she.” By the same token, the gender of the Turk from Shiraz was and still is open to debate. Was the Turk from Shiraz male or female, a real person or an imaginary one? There is no clear answer to this question. Jones chose to use the expression Sweet maid for the Turk from Shiraz.
Secondly: Jones’s verse translation introduced a significant change in the ghazal practice. According to an old literary tradition the Persian original contains the poet’s pen name, Hafez, in the last line; Jones’s English version does not.
Thirdly: It should be pointed out that the term ghazal occurs 26 times in the Divan of Hafez. The first place where it appears is in the final couplet of this very ghazal translated by Jones. He obviously preferred to ignore the term in his English version.
By his A Persian Song of Hafiz Jones made one of his most important contributions to English poetry. The British scholar of Persian and translator Samuel Robinson (1794-1884) was of the opinion that the most beautiful rendering of a Persian ode into English was the exquisite A Persian Song of Hafiz. In his book “Persian poetry for English readers” he remarked:
“It is impregnated throughout with the Oriental spirit; but when we find that the twenty-one words of the first couplet of the original, literally translated into English prose, are transmuted into thirty-eight in the version, we naturally wish to know how far the beauties we admire, and the thoughts and images which are presented to us, really exist in the original text, or are introduced by the copyist to render his imitation more conformable to the Western style and the taste of the European reader.”11
The Anglo-Irish writer Louisa S. Costello (1799-1870) raised the question:
“Who is there that is not familiar with those beautiful verses of Sir William Jones, translated from Hafiz?”12
Arthur J. Arberry (1905-1969), the British scholar of Persian and Islamic studies, called Jones the father of Persian studies in the west and remarked: “A Persian Song of Hafiz, celebrated translation, introduced Ḥāfiẓ of Shīrāz to the literary world of London and Europe.”13
Garland H. Cannon (1924-?), one of William Jones’s biographers, noted: “Inclusion of “A Persian Song of Hafiz” helped ensure the book’s success. Among Jones’s contributions to the development of Persian Studies in Europe, none was more consequential than his paraphrasing of several of Háfiz’s lyrics. None bore sweeter fruits than his version of “Shírazí Turk.”14
Referring to Jones’s “Grammar,” the British author and editor, Olive Classe, made the following comment on his A Persian Song of Hafiz:
“Hāfiz was introduced to English-speaking readers through Sir William Jones’s version of one of his ghazal, titled “A Persian Song of Hafiz” published in his Grammar of the Persian’s language (1771). Jones, who admired the poem’s “wildness and simplicity” translated it into verse.”15
The British scholar Thomas Wrighton, on his part, made the following remark on Jones’s A Persian Song of Hafiz and also practiced some criticism as he wrote:
“If the average English man were asked what he knew of Hafiz he would probably recite Sir William Jones’s elegant lines:
Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,
And bid these arms thy neck infold;
That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
Would give thy poet more delight
Than all Bocara’s vaunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand.
This is all very pretty, but unfortunately it is not Hafiz. The slim, seductive beauty whom Hafiz sings had neither a rosy cheek nor a white hand. What she really could boast was a black mole, which in the East is regarded as one of the most coveted accompaniments‒‒an enhancer, indeed‒‒of female beauty; hence it was the lady’s mole, and not for her rosy cheek, which, by the by, was really green, that Hafiz in his ecstasy would have thrown away two whole cities. As for the concluding stanza of Jones’s poem there is not in it a single word or thought that corresponds with the actual utterance of Hafiz.”16
Lord Byron’s parody
To illustrate William Jones’s literary impact suffice it to say that the famous English poet Lord Byron (1788-1824), who admired Jones’s skill in poetic technique, particularly his translation of A Persian Song of Hafiz and even planned a visit to Persia to see everything for himself, wrote a lengthy parody of A Persian Song of Hafiz in 1811, called Bar Maid. In this parody, which was not published during his lifetime17, Byron skillfully retained the exact form of versification of Jones’s translation:
Hafez/Jones
Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,
And bid these arms thy neck infold;
That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
Would give thy poet more delight
Than all Bocara’s vaunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand.
Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow,
And bid thy pensive heart be glad,
Whate’er the frowning zealots say:
Tell them, their Eden cannot show
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
A bow’r so sweet as Moselláy
O! when these fair perfidious maids,
Whose eyes our secret haunts infest,
Their dear destructive charms display;
Each glance my tender breast invades,
And robs my wounded soul of rest,
As Tartars seize their destin’d prey.
Byron’s parody
Bar Maid, if for this shilling white,
Thoud’st let me love, nor scratch or scold,
That ruddy cheek and ruddier hand
Would give my Bardship more delight
Than all the ale that e’er was sold,
Than even a pot of “Cyder-And”
Girl, let your stupid booby go
And bid him bring a pint of Beer –
Whate’er the droning Vicar swear
Tell him, his Living cannot show
A tap at once so strong and clear,
A sofa like this Elbow chair.
Oh! when these ogling Chambermaids
Whose fingers fumble beds of down,
Their dear expensive charms display,
Each glance my dwindling cash invades
And robs my purse of half a crown,
As footpads on the Turnpike way.
to be continued
________
- “گنجینه زبان های شرقی” (چهار جلد، سال انتشار:١۶٨۰در شهر وین).
- The British academic Michael Axworthy (1962-2019) nicknamed Nader Shah Napoleon of Persia. See: “The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant”. I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2006, pp. 17-19.
- One has to remember that Christian VII, King of Denmark from 1766 to 1808, was mentally ill and for most of his reign only nominally king. Therefore, there is a good case to believe that it was not the king, but his progressive-minded German doctor and “de facto regent” of Denmark, Count Friedrich Struensee (1737-1772), who requested Jones to translate the biography of Nader Shah.
- Cannon Garland (Editor): “The Letters of Sir William Jones,” two Volumes, Oxford, 1970, Vol. 1, p. 5.
- Lord Teignmouth: “The Works of Sir William Jones with the Life of the Author in Thirteen Volumes,” Vol. II, London, 1807, p. 146.
- “A Grammar of the Persian Language,” p. i
- Robert Irwin: “For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies,” Penguin Books, London, 2006, p. 122.
- Kurt Andrew Johnson: “Sir William Jones and Representations of Hinduism in British Poetry, 1784-1812,” PhD University of York, Department of English and Related Literature 2010, p. 45.
- Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782) was an Italian poet and dramatist.
- “A Grammar of the Persian language,” p. 137.
- Samuel Robinson: “Persian poetry for English readers,” MDCCCLXXXIII (1883), p. 393.
- Louisa Stuart Costello: “The Rose Garden of Persia,” London, MDCCCLXXXVII (1887), p. ix.
- Arthur John Arberry: “Persian Jones,” Asiatic Review 40, London, 1944, pp. 186-189.
- Garland Hampton Cannon: “The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones. Sir William Jones, the father of modern linguistics,” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 1990, p. 39.
- Olive Classe: “Encyclopaedia of Literary Translation into English: A-L,” Taylor & Francis, 2000, p. 600.
- Thomas Wright: “The life of John Payne,” T. F. Unwin, London, 1919, p. 115.
- Bar Maid appeared for the first time in 1980 in the Oxford edition of “Byron’s Complete Poetical Works,” edited by Jerome McGann (Vol. I, p. 342.)