Classical Persian | Iran | Poetry
December, 2017These poems are selections from an ongoing project to translate Hafez’s collection of ghazals. Rather than attempting in vain to recreate the form, turns of phrase, and connotations of the fourteenth-century Persian, these translations aim instead to give the English speaker a taste of the experience of reading the original. Hafez’s ghazals span the sensual, social, and spiritual, with radical, anti-conformist social critique nestled amid reverence in equal part of the lover and of God. Despite the tightly structured meter and rhyme of each ghazal, and a complete lack of classical enjambment, scenes and perspectives shift erratically at the level of the individual line. These translations aim to preserve the evocative power of the spaces that open up between each such unit by linking disparate images in a contemporary voice.
- Patrick Sykes
Iran | Modern Persian | Poetry
May, 2015I first met Haji Khavari during my last visit to Iran a few summers ago. My cousin, knowing my interest in translating Persian poetry, introduced me to him at a party of artist types much younger and cooler than me.
At that time, Haji showed me a few handwritten poems, and though they were far inferior to the ones I’ve translated here, I found them refreshingly edgy, reflective of Iran’s educated and rather restless youth. Given my own predilections, I was even more intrigued with his use of architecture and philosophy in his verse. He was at the time studying these subjects in college. In a follow-up email upon my return home, when I learned of his interest in Jean Baudrillard, I knew this was the beginning of a worthwhile correspondence.
Khavari, like modern Persian poets who came before him, retains much of his own tradition while eagerly absorbing others. At times it’s almost as if he's bringing a kind of western art criticism to his own culture. Of course such intertextual allusions of literatures warrants foregrounding, but for such a vast poetic tradition predicated on musicality, it’s important also to include music. While Forough Farrokhzad had her Beatles, Haji Khavari listens to songs from Radiohead to the Ramones. I can’t say if the reader of his poems in the original or in translation can overtly hear such influences, but they certainly are felt in what I would call his intellectual yet intransigent sensibility.
As for the process of translation, almost all work is done by email correspondence. Like so many young Iranians, Khavari speaks and reads English relatively well, so at times my renderings become a kind of collaboration. I’ve offered to share credit, but he insists that I’m doing the real translation work. We send drafts back and forth for some time, highlighting and noting problem areas.
As of now, he has yet to publish his first collection in Iran, but based on what he’s shown me, I’d say one should be forthcoming soon.
- Roger Sedarat
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).