LITERATURE
Fake Hafez: How a Supreme Persian Poet of Love was Erased That so many of the poems attributed to Hafez are fake reveals a Western appropriation of Muslim spirituality BY OMID SAFI
D
uring summer months I regularly receive daily requests to track down the original, authentic versions of some famed Muslim poet, usually Hafez or Rumi, for Muslims who are getting married and for parents whose children are graduating. It’s heartbreaking to write that about 99.9% of the quotes and poems attributed to Hafez, one the most popular and influential of all the Persian poets and Muslim sages ever, a member of the pantheon of “universal” spirituality on the Internet, are fake. Consider these quotes: “Even after all this time, / the sun never says to the earth, / ‘you owe me.’ / Look what happens with a love like that! / It lights up the whole sky.” And “Your heart and my heart / Are very very old friends.” And “Fear is the cheapest room in the house. / I would like to see you living in better conditions.” Beautiful, but they are not from the real Hafez. They are the pure inventions of Daniel Ladinsky, an American poet who has been publishing books under the name of Hafez for over 20 years. This hurts, because I know so many love these “Hafez” translations. They are beautiful poetry in English and do contain some profound wisdom. And yet Ladinsky has admitted that they are neither “translations” nor “accurate” and even denied having any knowledge of Persian in his 1996 best-selling
“I Heard God Laughing.” His other bestseller is “The Subject Tonight Is Love.” Persian speakers take poetry seriously. For many, it’s their singular contribution to world civilization: What the Greeks are to philosophy, Persians are to poetry. And in the great pantheon of Persian poetry, perhaps no one’s mastery of Persian is as refined as that of Hafez. In my introduction to a recent book on Hafez, I said that Rumi (whose poetic output is in
being a perfect cut. You cannot add or take away a word from his ghazals. So, pray tell, how can someone who doesn’t know Persian translate it? In Ladinsky’s own words, “About six months into this work I had an astounding dream in which I saw Hafiz as an Infinite Fountaining Sun (I saw him as God), who sang hundreds of lines of his poetry to me in English, asking me to give that message to ‘my artists and seekers.’”
THIS ISN’T SIMPLY A MATTER OF A TRANSLATION DISPUTE OR ALTERNATE MODELS OF TRANSLATIONS, BUT A MATTER OF POWER, PRIVILEGE AND ERASURE. ALL BOOKSTORES HAVE LIMITED SHELF SPACE. WILL WE SEE THE REAL RUMI OR HAFEZ OR NOT? the tens of thousands) comes at you like an ocean, pulling you in until you surrender to his mystical wave and are washed back to the ocean. Hafez, on the other hand, is like a luminous diamond, with each facet
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While I can’t argue with people and their dreams, this is certainly not how translation works. Christopher Shackle, a great scholar of Persian and Urdu literature, describes Ladinsky’s output as “not so
much a paraphrase as a parody of the wondrously wrought style of the greatest master of Persian art-poetry.” The poet, translator and essayist Murat Nemet-Nejat says it is no more than Ladinsky’s original poems masquerading as a “translation.” To give credit where credit is due, the following line shows that he is indeed a gifted poet: “I wish I could show you / when you are lonely or in darkness / the astonishing light of your own being.” That is good stuff. Powerful. Many mystics, including the 20th-century Sufi master Pir Vilayat, would cast his powerful glance at his students, stating that he would long for them to be able to see themselves and their own worth as he sees them. So yes, Ladinsky’s poetry is mystical. And it is great poetry. So good that it is listed on Good Reads as the wisdom of “Hafez of Shiraz.” The problem is, Hafez of Shiraz said nothing like that. Oprah, the BBC and others have passed on these “translations.” Government officials have used them on occasions to include Persian speakers
