The Gift by Hafiz Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $10.20 You Save: $7.80 (43%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.53 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Gift
Book Review: These are NOT TRANSLATIONS OF HAFIZ.
Summary: 3 Stars
This book was my first introduction to Hafiz. The poems in this book are all very beautiful. However, anyone picking it up, and anyone who is interested in Hafiz, should know that these are contemporary poems and are not genuine Hafiz poems. They are NOT translations of Hafiz poems. Ladinsky's poems are the ones most people in the West are likely to associate with the name Hafiz, and I guess that's good for Ladinsky, but many people have been upset by what he is doing. I encourage people to read the actual works of Hafiz.Book Review: Title says it all..
Summary: 5 Stars
This book of verse is a blessing and a gift - you may find yourself purchasing it more than once - it's not the kind of book you just keep to yourself.I really believe Daniel Ladinsky is to Hafiz what Coleman Barks is to Rumi, i.e., he is the only soul who seems to understand how to make Hafiz sing in English. A translation is always a collaboration between the poet and the translator. I understand some of Persian descent object to Ladinsky's translations; I'm no experrt on the original Farsi, but perhaps those critics were less familiar than Ladinsky with idiomatic English? I have read other translations and they didn't compare.
Or perhaps you should judge for yourself; I liked this one enough to memorize it:
Even after
all these years,
the Sun never says
to the earth
"You owe me."
Look what happens -
with a love like that,
it lights the whole sky.
Book Review: Touching the Divine
Summary: 5 Stars
If you want to touch the Divine, then give yourself the gift of this book. Hafiz tells the truth in his poem titled "God Just Came Near." "No one in need of love can sit with my verse for an hour and then walk away without carrying golden tools, and feeling that God just came near." Open your heart, buy this book!Book Review: Understanding the Ladinsky problem!
Summary: 1 Stars
I truly do think that more people should pay attention to their teachers. In the case of this book by Mr. Ladinsky, there are two completely separate questions:1. Do you (did you) like the poems in this book?
2. Were these poems written by Mr. Ladinsky, or by Hafez?
It is very important not to confuse these two questions! The fact that you like the poems in this book does NOT mean that they were written by Hafez, any more than it means that they were written by Shakespeare.
I don't know a lot of Persian (Farsi) myself, but my own reading over the past few decades, plus some input from a dearly beloved friend who is a professor of Persian poetry, tells me this: Hafez NEVER (or very rarely) uses the word "God." That would be "khoda" in Persian, or "Allah" in Arabic. You can read for entire weeks in Hafez, and never find the word "khoda" or "Allah," unless it is in some formula, such as "al-hamdullah."
So how does Mr. Ladinsky explain this?
Book Review: ah, to be able to read Farsi!
Summary: 4 Stars
As a fan of Middle Eastern poetry in general, and Rumi specifically, Hafiz was a natural next choice to read. Like Rumi, Hafiz was a Sufi, and like Rumi he wrote in Farsi. The similarities continue in a commonality in theme and tone: both celebrate and find the divine in the everyday and mundane details so often overlooked by those of us who tend to get caught up in the (ultimately) trivial matters of daily life.
Hafiz, though, seems more overtly "religious" in his poety - the references in this collection are more explicit and clear in their religious grounding. Whether this is a function of the translator or the intent of the poet, I am unable to tell. Depending on one's temperment and attitude, this may be either a good thing or a bad thing - take from it what you will. The poems that I enjoyed the most were those that were more open-ended: perhaps there is a religious implication (almost certainly there is), but there is also an element of the romantic and deeply personal in it as well. For example, in "Needing a Mirror", Hafiz (through Ladinsky) writes,
Your / Eye / Is so wise
It keeps turning, turning/ Needing to touch / Beauty
It keeps turning/ Needing to find a mirror
That / Will caress you / As I.
There is a playfulness to the collection, and a creativity and uniqueness of metaphor that I just don't find in Western poetry. Regardless of wether this is the art of the poet or the skill of the translator, I enjoyed the collection. Four stars for it not being in the original. (A star deducted on general principle of translation.)