The Green Sea of Heaven: Fifty Ghazals from the Diwan of Hafiz (Library of Persian : Text and Contexts in Persian Religions and Spirituality)
"These are truly remarkable and moving translations: the first English versions of Hafiz to read as poetry while still capturing the unique qualities of concision, multivalent meaning and spiritual depth which have for centuries made his Persian ghazals the acknowledged masterpiece and exemplar of poetic art throughout the Eastern Islamic world."  --James Morris, professor of Islamic thought and literature, Oberlin College"This is a groundbreaking work, one that places the ghazal of Hafiz into a contemporary English poetic idiom. Ms. Gray captures the rhythms, the paradoxes, the ironies, the sudden changes in tone and voice, the ambiguities, the spark and the bite of the original. After too long a wait, we encounter Hafiz, come alive in an English style that is at once natural and intricate. This is a remarkable achievement." --Michael Sells, professor of Islamic literature and author ofMystical Languages of the UnsayingA translation . . . with a tender and poetic care that is both a scholarly and artistic joy. --The Harvard ReviewThese are truly remarkable and moving translations. --James Morris, author of Wisdom of the ThroneThis is a groundbreaking work, one that places the ghazal of Hafiz into a contemporary poetic idiom. --Michael Sells, author of Early Islamic MysticismWestern scholars of classical Persian poetry have frequently felt humbled before the grand ocean of allusions and historical references, stock phrases and metaphors, ever-recurring images and figures, tantalizing integration of rhythm and rhyme and world-play and meaning, from all of which leaps forth the ghazal--ghazal, the hard-as rock genre of Persian poetry, of which Hafiz of Shiraz is the unparalleled master. To be sure, the very form of this genre is unique to its own milieu: ghazal is a single poem containing within itself a whole multiplicity of vibrating small poems: for each verse of the ghazal, the bayt, is an integral whole, related to other bayts only--at least apparently--by a meter that is fixed and by a rhyme that reappears.Given all this, translating a Persian ghazal is no easy matter. Steeped in tradition, it requires long curtains of explanatory footnotes hanging from the rod of each translated verse; but how clumsy such an exercise will look! And then, the translator must at once be highly learned in the Persian literary tradition and profoundly skilled in poetic craft. These are the twin requirements for those daring ones who undertake the daunting task.Here is an English translation of fifty ghazals of the great Hafiz: a translation with a rich flow that is surprising, with a vigilant faithfulness to the original that is commendable, and with a tender and learned poetic care that is both a scholarly and an artistic joy. Elizabeth Gray presents us with a bouquet of Shirazi flowers, blazing in their colors and so fresh. She is to be admired both for her erudition and her verbal skills. And more, we must admire her also for her cultural courage.The plan of this work is very sensible. First, Gray provides a very useful introduction; here she presents the historical setting in which the 14th century poet Hafiz was composing his ghazals; she explicates the nature of this genre itself, including its formal and technical requirements; she speaks of the challenges faced by a translator; and she utters an authoritative word of caution to the reader: "brandish lightly . . . the templates of Western literary criticism" [!] (p. xxi). Yes, we must heed her advice.  Then, she juxtaposes the original Persian text and her translation; and her there exist no footnotes, no heavy curtains, no clumsiness. To be sure, notes do exist--but far removed from the translations, at the end of the book. This was an intelligent structural decision. These notes are minimal, not too extensive, not too pedantic. And they are highly beneficial. In some cases, they constitute packed short essays on some of the most abstruse stylistic, conceptual, and historical elements of the Persian poetic tradition. It seems, then, that the work has wide scope: its magnetism would pull scholars, students, and the enthusiasts alike. --The Harvard Review, Vol. 8, Spring 1995; pp. 81-85