41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
HAFEZ AT LAST IN ENGLISH!, August 10, 2007
This review is from: The Poems of Hafez (Paperback)
At last an English translation of Hafez that isn't a "version" based on someone else's translation (from German perhaps, or Victorian English, or the famous but rather unwieldy Col. Wilberforce Clarke crib), or like the versions that take a line or two and "channel" a new poem almost out of whole cloth, which pretend to be translations but are really original, warm and toasty spiritual takes, but have only a glancing relationship with anything close to Hafez-like.
No, these are solidly Hafez, but also musically poetry, and for decades of wondering about him, loving him from afar and through really corrigated glass, I find this book satisfies as no other has before.
I've heard that in Iran people open Hafez the way one casts astrology charts or throws an I Ching reading, so I've been doing that with this book from time to time, not necessarily with superstitious seriousness, but still, at a certain poem randomly thumbed, lines pop out and images resonate the way a good consciousness-booster does, with Tarot cards or those roadside psychic readings (no, I've never had one).
Plus, we get the luxurious meanings, now cast in poetry-friendly English, and sometimes reaching real poetry in themselves, with only a few infelicitous moments here and there, which strike me as being the best one can do in English with a frantically difficult meaning in Farsi, for which Hafez is so famous. Even Persians may not quite understand his drift, even though taxi drivers may quote him at length today!
I highly recommend this beautifully published book, with decal edges and everything. My only reservation is that the concordance with the original Persian text could have also referred us to the Wilberforce Clarke page numbers for a more indepth reading, since he goes into multiple meanings for some of the words... But this is truly a minor and even persnickity criticism.
So dive in and taste the deep wine of Hafez' amazing spiritual songs, afresh and faithful for the first time.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Has been respected and enjoyed for more than five hundred years, January 6, 2007
This review is from: The Poems of Hafez (Paperback)
The Persian poetry of Hafez has been respected and enjoyed for more than five hundred years. Now a new translation into English by academician Reza Ordoubadian successful presents the language and imagery of Hafez to a new generation of readers who will find his verse to be as fluent, enjoyable, thoughtful, inspiring, relevant and universal today as they were when originally set down so long ago. With the inclusion of an extensive 'Notes to the Poems' section, "The Poems Of Hafez" is comprised of 202 'ghazals' and is a seminal and highly recommended addition to academic and community library poetry collections for both scholarship and the non-specialist general reader. 'Hundred and Sixty-Eight': This garment I wear, better in the pawn of wine:/this mindless booklet, better drowned in wine./Since I wasted life-when I reexamined time:/better in the corner of a tavern, tippled and gone./Since rational rumination is far from darvishi,/better heart on fire and eyes full of water./I will not speak about the condition of the ascetic to the people:/if I ever tell this story, it better be with lyre and the violin./Since the affairs of the heavens are foul, from this side/better lust for Saghi with wine in hand./Such a lover as you: I'll never abandon;/if I am to pull a burden, better the weight of your tresses./You are old, hafez: leave the tavern;/rendi and lusting best when you're young.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An authentic Hafez, July 10, 2009
This review is from: The Poems of Hafez (Paperback)
The vast majority of English translations of Hafez have been dire -- either literal and unreadable or intolerably free. There are, however, three that I would recommend. Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs (a distinguished British poet) produced a version of 'Thirty Poems' in 1952, that was reprinted recently but appears to have gone out of print again. This version is the best for literary quality, and has an enormously helpful introduction; but many readers will want more of Hafez than this. At present the real competition is between this translation by Ordoubadian of 200 poems and the complete Hafez (486 ghazals) that Peter Avery has now (2007) produced on his own. Avery's version is more literal and in this sense more reliable; it reads well, but (to my ear at least) Ordoubadian has produced the more natural-sounding English. All these versions are highly recommendable, though those who can read French should turn to the version by C.-H. de Fouchecour (Verdier, 2006), which reads better than any of the English versions and is provided with far fuller, and enormously helpful, annotation.
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