Divan of Hafiz

This is the translation of Hafiz that you want! Paul Smith is a master craftsman in maintaining original rhythm, rhyme and structure of Hafiz. He could not do this unless he was a master poet himself and he is that most definitely. This is the best translation that I have experienced to date and I have read many because Hafiz has been close to my heart for a long long time (decades). Paul Smith's introduction and background information as well as glossary, notes and bibliography provide excellent tools in understanding this absolutely phenomenal mystic and poet If you want a better understanding of Hafiz and his indescribable Love look no further. You cannot go wrong with this edition. Paul Smith is prolific and an awesome poet/artist/mystic. His understanding, exhaustive research and sensitivity are a perfect match this unprecedented work. There is no other author who has brought so much mystic poetry to the west. It is my belief that Smith's work will open the eyes and hearts of many westerners to the love and humanity of the mid-east and beyond. Do yourself a favor and check out his many translations and other works. His own personal poetry is mystical, down to earth, modern and profound. Awesome! I am personally in his debt for this wonderful translation that has brought so much empathy to my heart.

Smith has written broadly in translation of SouthWest Asian mystical poetry. This edition of the Divan of Hafiz has several historical essays that help the Western reader understand the context of Hafiz' writing.The negatives are that Smith lapses into hagiography very easily. This is way beyond hero worship. He also introduces his own fiction into the middle of his essay with little warning. The approach is definitely NOT the expected keeping a distance between translator and subject.The translations themselves are claimed to be accurate in terms of meter, style, tempo, etc. You would have to be able to read the original Persian to know how close he has come to what he claims. However, it can be said that the translation often feels forced or crabbed that makes the sense hard to appreciate.

Such a rare gem as this, as Hafiz is the favorite poet of the Avatar of the age, Meher Baba, as well as being a national favorite throughout Iran, even to India, among Sufis, cannot be missed. While being limited to a translation and that also being a limitation of the level of understanding of the mind of the translator as opposed to the mind of the Perfect Master, which was the status of Hafiz, still this is a light that shines upon the mind of the reader and of such majesty and beauty as to lead one to ever more appreciation for the Truth that is the goal of this life.

A valiant effort to translate the entire Divan, but the Kindle version has typos and is poorly formatted. Every ghazal is run together into a single stream of centered text, so there are no line breaks visible. The translator's attempt to produce rhymed lines (of doubtful value in itself) is therefore wasted. Notes to the ghazals are all in one place and not hyper-linked to the relevant ghazal, which isn't much use. The Kindle version needs major reformatting. Some more scholarly references for the sources of the material in the Introduction and Notes would also be useful.

This book is amazing. Way more than I expected.Was made very happy by the connections made to originals and the translation. Previously, his translations were not connected to any thing so you had no idea where the source was.Thank you

This refers to kindle version onlythe right side of most pages I received are missing 3 to five letterswhich is a terrible reading experience.Especially when reading Hafiz where each word is key to the pleasure of reading his work.Dont purchase. Until they repair the copy. Someone did not check their work.

I love this collection of poems...it's a must for anyone interesting in Hafiz or Rumi!

There is an entire section of the human experience unfortunately almost lost to most of us in "the West" in this our so tiredly polarized world, polarized along East-West lines. No longer East (USSR)-West (noncommunist countries), but East (Islam)-West (nonislamic countries). An entire Renaissance lost to modern experience. The "inner" Middle East - inner in both geographical and psychic meanings of that word - and the larger Eurasian landmass was home for almost a thousand years to thinkers, soulseekers, saints and holy fools, poets all, whom the rabid stereotyping in our modern world all but ignores and/or is ignorant of.People have known a small piece, a very small piece, of Old Khayyam through Fitzgerald's admirable fantasia on that great Persian scientist - yes, scientist. More recently Rumi has been roped in by California zen as some generic pseudomysitcal dip into a watered down version of an anti-organized-religion quasireligion. Other than Rumi - and Rumi is, in my admittedly strong opinion, one of the blander representatives of these Eastern Renaissance souls - other than Rumi, an entire great literature, history, spirituality, shared human experience is denied us by the excessive and excessively biased representation of all the countries and their peoples past the eastern borders of Israel as rabid Islamic extremists, with no present and no past heights of soul, heart and mind. The equivalent would be (and maybe is) for "Easterners" to assume from the rabid politicoreligious extremism of Reagan and the Bushes that we never had Chaucer, Sir Thomas Browne, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, William Wordsworth, Shelley, Emily Bronte, John Stuart Mill, Thoreau, Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Yeats, Sylvia Plath - and that's only in the English tradition, not even mentioning the Europeans who are unfortunately or not usually classified as "Western."People have heard rumors and some free adaptations of someone called Hafiz, adaptations which usually present him as some selfprofessedly frivolous winedrunk soul (or is it womandrunk, or is it Goddrunk?). Hafiz, to put it bluntly, is not Hafiz. That people in the West do not dive into Hafiz as deeply as into their favorite Western writer lessens our lives. And Kabir. And Sadi. And 'Attar. And dozens of others.Paul Smith has translated it seems close to a hundred books (or more) from the highly poetic languages of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Individual authors are represented in almost always complete works - which avoids the personal biases of the selective translators, who in my experience select - and translate - either to show how a foreign author "matches" our own way of feeling, or to show how a foreign author "challenges" our own way of feeling; such translations become, even in good intention, more a reflection of the translator's way of feeling than of the author translated. Paul Smith has also appended studies of these great writers to individual volumes of their works, and in stand-alone volumes such as this remarkable three volume work on the Life and Times of the Great Hafiz. He has translated both female as well as male poet-philosophers from these magical but also very real times. And he has also put together anthologies so an interested reader (in California I would probably write "interested seeker") can get a taste and then read the complete works of a soul that particularly appeals.As well, he has made these volumes available in criminally inexpensive ebook formats, out of a passionate conviction to, bluntly, save trees. And for traditionalists, the print copies are hardly costly considering the completeness of what's in the covers.I am as is obvious too old to hide my hobbyhorses, and one thing I lament, detest, and outrightly laugh at is the stereotyping discounting of an entire large segment of humanity, and we are lesser for it. Because of understandably thorny (but not insurmountable) political friction between - how I hate the use of the word "between" concerning human beings! - between the supposed West and the supposed East - the supposed democratic erstwhile Christian West and the supposedly monolithic Islamic supposedly ubiquitously terrorist Middle East and Eurasia, the world of the souls, hearts, and minds of both those in the West and in the East lose by refusing to look past politicians and into other pastimes of people such as putting our thoughts, feelings, desires, fears and laughter down on paper to delight and move and elevate posterity.The thinkers, writers, poets Paul Smith has made available through what I would say is an almost superhuman and definitely altruistic effort are a corrective to our shrinking contact with others even as our world, as the cliche is, supposedly shrinks. They are us and we are them.I will end this rather long and probably overly preachy comment by saying one thing these writers show is an absolutely incredible sense of humor at the base of this other tradition, and when such deep and at the same time accessible humor is apparent, it drives home - again - that we are, after all, all the same.Please do yourselves a favor and sample these monumental treats, if not immerse yourselves. Paul Smith has many volumes on this Amazon website.Paul Smith has a website with more information. It is:[...]

Thanks

Came beaten and scratched otherwise happy with the purchase.

I was disappointed with the quality of the translation. While it is a full translation of the Divan as promised, the English is ungrammatical and inelegant.

Que des années après la création de sa boutique Kindle, Amazon continue à y vendre des livres sans prendre la peine de les doter d'une mise en page adaptée au Kindle est suffisamment inadmissible. Mais que des auteurs sérieux, formés aux règles les plus exigeantes de l'édition scientifique et universitaire, se prêtent à ce jeu est tout bonnement incompréhensible. Dans ce "Divan of Hafiz" traduit par M. Paul Smith, les notes, curieusement, précèdent le texte des poèmes. On n'a jamais vu cela, mais qu'importe : aucun lien hypertexte ne reliant ces notes à leur texte, elles sont de toute façon inutilisables. Pas de liens dynamiques non plus entre la table des matières et les chapitres du livre, de sorte que pour atteindre un poème situé, disons, à la page 250, il faudrait cliquer 250 fois sur la touche de changement de page ! Cette perle éditoriale est en vente sur Amazon au prix de 8 € (près de 11 US $). Il faut quand même oser…Le libraire, Amazon, est tout simplement le plus important au monde. L'éditeur, qui s'appelle "New Humanity Books", n'a pu choisir ce nom sans quelque ambition éthique. Quant à l'auteur-traducteur, M. Paul Smith, il est une des sommités mondiales du domaine des études persanes – j'ai du reste peine à croire qu'il ait été informé de la forme sous laquelle son livre, sous version Kindle, allait être mis en vente. Réveillez-vous !