Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

Vol. 1, No. 1, Autumn-Winter 2012

ISSN: 2557-2322
pp. 41- 58

Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of

1
William Jones's Translation of Hafez

Alireza Anushiravani * Laleh Atashi

Associate Professor of Comparative Ph.D. Candidate
Literature English Literature
Shiraz University, Iran Shiraz University, Iran
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

Abstract
The humanist mission of translation is believed to be rooted in the
universal humane urge to spread knowledge and to eliminate
misunderstanding among people as well as to generate a broader
space for communication. What is absent from this philanthropist
definition is the workings of power and the political agendas that
influence the translator's stance and his/her interpretation of the
text that he/she is translating. The translation of an oriental
literary text by a scholar who is actively involved in the discourse
of colonialism would be an ideologically pregnant text, and a rich
case study for cultural translation. Sir William Jones, an English
philologist and scholar, was particularly known for his
proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-
European languages. Jones translated one of Hafez's poems—if
that Shirazi Turk—into English under the title of "A Persian
Song of Hafiz." His Translation denotes a large cultural formation
that emerges through the encounter between the colonizing West
and the colonized East. In this paper, we have examined how
Jones’s Western perspective affects his translation of Hafiz’s
poem and changes its spiritual and mystic core into a secular and
profane love.
Keywords: Hafiz, William Jones, cultural translation, westernization,
orientalism, appropriation

1
Received: July 21, 2012 Accepted: Oct. 09, 2012
Corresponding author
42 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

The "Turk of Shiraz" seems to fail as a poem not

because of any lapses in its rhythm, sound effects, the
vitality of its images, the freshness of its conceits, or
the force of its statements- -it may be flawless in those
terms--but because its organization of theme and
imagery does not conduce to the singleness of
impression which is associated with poetic statement.
(Hillman, 1975, p. 178)

Introduction
One of the problems faced by the Western translators when they approach the
poetry of Hafez is the cultural encounter between East and West and their
deferring horizons of expectations. What constitutes the poetic ideal in Eastern
poetry is different from its Western counterpart, hence Hillman's dismissal of
the translation of Hafez's poem as a failure. Hillman made this value judgment
in 1975 when colonialism had become a part of history but still the Western
stereotypes of the Eastern literature's imperfection as contrasted with the
"norms" established by the Western literature are quite evident. Davis (2004) in
order to delineate the collusion of two cultural grids compares Hamlet's advice
to the actors and Ayyuqi's definition of a poet: Hamlet wants the players "to
hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show . . . the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure," and the eleventh-century poet Ayyuqi believes
that "a poet is like the woman who beautifies a bride before her wedding
ceremony" (pp.315-316), based on Davis's comparison the Western artists hold
the banner of representational and mimetic art while the Eastern artists believe
in the mission of art as ennobling and idolizing the banal world.
Davis seems to have a genealogic analysis of Western and Eastern
aesthetics. However, to many 18th and 19th century European scientists the
genes of a species were referred to with an objective pose, to dis/prove the
inner worth of a species or a nation or geography. Such a treatment did not
leave the discourse of literature untouched. Eastern literatures were approached
by Western scholars who tended to dismiss what was not the same as Western
literature and this attitude can be rooted in the 18th and 19th century discourse of
orientalism at the heart of expansionist adventures of Europe. Sir William Jones
Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 43

was an English philologist and scholar particularly known for his proposition of
the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages. Jones
translated one of Hafez's poems—if that Shirazi Turk—into English under the
title of "A Persian Song of Hafiz". His Translation denotes a large cultural
formation that emerges through the encounter between the colonizing West and
the colonized East.
The humanist mission of translation is said to be rooted in the universal
humane urge to spread knowledge and to eliminate misunderstanding among
people as well as to generate a broader space for communication. What is
absent from this philanthropist definition is the workings of power and the
political agendas that influence the translator's stance and his/her interpretation
of the text that he/she is translating. The translator cannot stay detached from
the society in which he/she is dwelling, and is chained in the web of discourses
that decide the marketability, reception, objectives and the audience of his
translation. Gideon Toury (1978) describes the prerequisites of becoming a
translator:
Translation activities should be regarded as having cultural
significance. Consequently, 'translatorship' amounts first and
foremost to being able to play a social role, i.e. to fulfill a
function allotted by a community—to the activity, its
practitioners, and/or their products—in a way which is
deemed appropriate in its own terms of reference. The
acquisition of a set of norms for determining the suitability
of that kind of behavior and for maneuvering between all the
factors which may constrain it, is therefore a prerequisite for
becoming a translator within a cultural environment. (p.83)

From Toury's delineation of the factors influencing the act of

translation, we can deduct that the translation of an oriental literary text done
by a scholar who is actively involved in the discourse of colonialism would be
an ideologically pregnant text, and a rich case study for cultural translation.
Bassnett (2007), herself a comparatist, agrees with Toury's emphasis on cultural
grids and notes that the focus of translation studies has shifted from evaluating
two or more translations of one text into an in-depth cultural analysis of one
44 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

single translation. Sir William Jones, the much esteemed British scholar
introduced Hafez to Westerners by translating this very poem and calling it "A
Persian Song of Hafiz." However, it is important to have a critical review of
Jones's reading of Hafiz and to analyze the influence of his colonial stance on
his translation/interpretation of Hafiz.

Concretization of the Ethereal

The objective stance of the scientist and scholar who boasts of detachment and
disinterestedness is only a colonial gesture. According to Mackenzie (1995),
"here is no such thing as an innocent eye" (p. 53). This sentence means that
even seeing is an act of selection informed by many contextual factors. In this
case, William Jones' translation is ideologically pregnant and far from innocent.
Schroeder (1984) believes that the Hafiz presented by Jones "is simply …an
eighteenth-century Englishman of taste. His voice is the unmistakable voice of
a polite rational materialist" (p. 212). Cannon (1998) uses the word
"embroidery" to describe Jones's treatment of Hafiz. He points to the first line
of the poem1 translated as:
Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,
And bid these arms thy neck infold;
That rosy cheek, that lily hand
Would give thy poet more delight
Than all Bokhara' vaunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand. (ll.1-6)

And goes on to argue that this stanzaic translation "started the English
tradition of the Oriental dream world of pleasure, opening the literary pluralism
and showing the free reworking of the Oriental source that Edward FitzGerald,
originally inspired by Jones's writings, was to do so well for Omar
Khayyam."(p. 130).
William Jones has turned each line of Hafiz poem into a six-line stanza;
changing Hafiz's sonnet into a stanzaic 2poem is an attempt on the part of Jones
to appropriate this Persian poem for Western readers. In the first stanza the
translator has apostrophized the "sweet maid," the phrase that Jones has used in
Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 45

place of "Shirazi Turk". Hafiz uses a wishful conditional sentence to show his
unfulfilled desire for the Shirazi Turk, but Jones directly addresses the sweet
maid. By apostrophizing the sweet maid, Jones decreases the unavailability of
the beloved very often highlighted in Hafiz's and other Persian poets' love
sonnets. The apostrophe reveals the presence of the beloved, hence the absence
of wishful dreams and daydreams in Jones's appropriation of Hafiz's beloved,
because Jones's beloved is not that impossible.
The "Shirazi Turk" has been translated as "Sweet Maid" in William Jones,
that is, the local and geographic identity of Hafiz's poem has been deleted and
replaced with a timeless source of beauty; therefore, Jones presents to the
Western readers a "universal" beloved; an adjective that to the eighteenth
century colonialists meant "European". Hafiz prays that the Shirazi Turk, the
ethereal beloved, may get hold of his heart. This Hafizian wish has been
transformed into such a wish that reminds one of the love poems inherited from
Andrew Marvell in which physical love is celebrated: “if thou wouldst charm
my sight,/And bid these arms thy neck infold; /That rosy cheek, that lily hand/
Would give thy poet more delight.”(Jones, ll. 1-4) Such an emphasis on tactile
imagery—touching, hugging, hands and cheeks—brings the affair down to the
earth and exaggerates the physicality of the encounter.
Another point of departure from Hafiz in Jones' translation is that the
beloved is supposed to charm the sight and give the poet delight. It seems that
Hafiz has been misinterpreted here: if Hafiz wishes that the Shirazi Turk pays
attention to his heart, Jones says that the sweet maid must make an effort to
attract the male poet, as if she has to pay the price in order to be loved;
therefore, the version of love that we see in Jones' translation is far from the
unconditional love of the Persian poet for his beloved. In Persian love sonnets,
it is the lover who willingly pays huge prices to get the slightest attention from
the beloved. Such expectations, as cherished by Jones, remind one of Sir
Thomas Wyatt and his representation of the British masculinity as an upright
and demanding man of action that refuses to wait forever and insists that the
lady pay her dues. Such expectations would sound bold to the Persian poet who
is influenced by the cult of Sufi poetry and who can't help desiring the beloved
which is the source of perfection.
46 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

Traces of the British History in Jones’s Translation

Hafiz's boasts of giving Samarcand and Bokhara for the beauty mole of the
beloved. The two geographical areas are rich but the fact that Jones has added
and hence highlighted the gold and gems and hence the material wealth of the
areas reveals the Benthamite endorsing of utilitarianism, and the consequent
mamonistic outlook. The payments in return for enfolding the neck of the
beloved and receiving delights of her lily hands makes bare such a concrete and
material exchange between the poet and the sweet maid that cannot be found in
Hafiz' poetic landscape. Apart from the materialism at the heart of such a
treatment of Hafiz, there can be traced a tendency to highlight the opulence of
the East and its eye catching picturesque colors which make it worth the
colonial ventures.
Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow,
And bid thy pensive heart be glad,
Whate'er the frowning zealots say:
Tell them, their Eden cannot show
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
A bower so sweet as Mosellay2. (ll. 7-12)

Historically speaking, saqi or the cup bearer has been male and if we
consider saqi as female now, it's because of the contemporary Persian
miniaturists who have rendered saqi as female. William Jones scholarly
knowledge of Indo-European languages and literatures has helped him do
justice to the gender of saqi but the way Jones apostrophizes him as "Boy" is
not a little distant from Persian poets' approach. William Jones strips the Sufi
connotations attributed to saqi as the spiritual mediator and relegates him to the
position of a waiter. Jones adds the image of the ruby which apart from the
color, points to the convention of aesthetizing the picturesque opulence of the
Orient. Saqi who offers an intoxicating wine and hence helps the lover get
closer to the absolute source of ideal love through intoxication has a symbolic
presence in Hafiz' poems and his psychology is never probed and his feelings
and thoughts never mentioned. There is in Hafiz, a binary opposition between
the lover and the beloved, the drinker and the cupbearer, the seeker and the
besought. The left side of the binary is articulate and vocal and expresses his
Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 47

thoughts and feelings fully while the right side of the binary is silent and
inarticulate. In order to maintain these binaries it is necessary that the right side
of binary remain flat and depthless rather than round and complicated. William
Jones adds the adjective "pensive" in addressing the cup bearing "Boy" and
hence humanizes the character of an otherwise spiritual, flat idol and hence
blurs the dividing line in the binary opposition: the humanization of Saqi strips
him from his mystical qualities and consequently the quest of the poet/lover
loses its spiritual goals.
Another point that is important in this stanza is Jones' use of the word
"zealot" which is absent from Hafiz poem. "Zealot" was used to refer to the
Puritans who ruled England after the beheading of Charles the first. Their
rejection of worldliness and their governmental system of "thou shalts and thou
shalt nots" led to discontent and finally resulted in the restoration of monarchy.
William Jones, living in the post Puritan 18th century, expresses his reactionary
hedonistic attitude when he adds the zealots to Hafiz poem, only to dismiss
them and their promise of the otherworldly paradise. Therefore, it can be
concluded that William Jones brings the historical and political dimensions of
the British society into his translation.

The Influence of British Conventions of Love Sonnet on Jones' Reading of

Hafiz
The position of the lover and the beloved has been represented differently in
Eastern and Western love sonnets. Jones, as a Western scholar, has been trained
within the framework of humanism. Consequently, his belief in human dignity
prevents him from empathizing with the Persian poet/lover who humiliates
himself in front of another human being, i.e., the beloved. To the Persian poet,
the beauty of the beloved, would lead the lover to the perfect beauty of God,
and this is the point of departure between the Western humanist and the Eastern
mystic. Such cultural differences can be traced in the following stanza:
O! When these fair perfidious maids,
Whose eyes our secret haunts infest,
Their dear destructive charms display;
Each glance my tender breast invades,
And robs my wounded soul of rest,
As tartars seize their destined preys3. (ll.13-18)
48 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

One of the literary terms used in many Persian poems and not in British
poems is hyperboles. Davis (2004) believes that the use of hyperbole can be
only justifiable-- and not necessarily poetic—only when a mortal uses it to
address an immortal; and he goes on to argue that, to British readers, it is
"distasteful flattery" when a mortal uses hyperbole to address a mortal (315).
The difficulties of translating hyperboles are due to the vacuum faced by the
Western translator when he comes to "religion of love" in Persian poetry.
KhurramshKhL quotes Abd al-RahmKn KhatmL LKhNrL4 who relates microcosm
and macrocosms and believes that human beauty points to the transcendent
beauty:
That Transcendent Beloved Being then spoke, stating that
any gnostic who is a confidant of the arcane mysteries, who
recognizes the true face of such an affair, when given such a
wine – that is, beauty and loveliness decked out in the garb
of the veiled presentment of a figurative mortal sweetheart –
will only end up veiling and concealing this display of God,
this divine theophany, unless he does becomes a worshipper
of beauty [husn-parast]. This is because it is through the
forms of mortal beauty [suwar-i husniyya] that God-as-
Absolute in reality attracts the hearts of lovers to Himself.
(cited in Lewisohn 2010, p. 85)

Based on Lahuri's delineation of the "religion of love", the praise of the

"mortal" beloved, to use Dick Davis's terms, leads the lover to the immortal
beauty and love of God-as-Absolute. The "religion of love" in Persian poetry
has been translated into a sordid language by Jones. The adjective
"Shahrashoob" in the poetic landscape of Hafez refers to a mediator that can
"free one from conceit, self-centeredness and egotism" (Lewisohn, 2010, p. 84)
and this revolutionary change in the character of the lover sounds like an
"ashoob" or a riot that is liberating in the long run. William Jones' confusion at
this cultural encounter is revealed when he replaces the positive revolutionary
force of the earthly beauty with adjectives such as "perfidious", "infest",
destructive".
Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 49

The adjective "perfidious" was used in the 16th century to refer to political
infidelity. In the 18th century the adjective is used in The Lady's Magazine and
Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, to refer to prostitutes that corrupt
men and make them unworthy of marriage. The word as an attribute for
betraying women, seems to come into fashion in the literary discourses of the
early 19th century, that is after William Jones translation of Hafiz.5 Therefore,
it seems that Jones have taken a part in establishing the tradition of using the
phrase "perfidious maid" to refer to unfaithful and promiscuous women who
betray the lover. Jones' enterprise can be informed by the orientalist discourse
and its erotic representation of the oriental woman as sensual and promiscuous.
Jones has stated in his translation that the eyes of the perfidious maid have
infested his secret haunts. The word "infest" creates unpleasant gustatory and
olfactory imagery that is absent from Hafiz description of the beauties. In order
to interpret Jones' use of such negative concepts, we'd better contextualize his
outlook within the aesthetic beliefs prevalent in the 18th century Britain. Grewal
(1996) refers to "Rousseaeauist dream of the transparent society" (p. 25) and
explains that the aesthetics of visibility and transparency was a reaction against
the pre revolutionary gothic rule of Europe with its dark dungeons and
chambers, mysterious castles and the opaque spaces in which despotic rule,
superstition and conspirators reigned. And therefore the Betamite panopticon
was put forth to replace the underground dungeons and to make the society as
transparent as possible. Based on the 18th century aesthetics of transparency,
secrets and mysteries were considered threats to the transparent society. The
East was seen by the 18th century European man "as this area of darkness not
only because it was unknown and perceived as mysterious but because it was
believed that these lands were ruled by a despotism" not unlike that of the
Goths that was already removed in Europe (p. 26).
William Jones, influenced by the orientalist discourse, interprets East as
the opaque space which is inevitably infested. The two-word phrase "secret
haunts", connotes an opacity feared by the 18th century Europeans. Haunt refers
to private moments that are probably beyond the jurisdiction of the panopticon,
and the word "secret" connotes hidden truths, constipations and plots that may
endanger the otherwise transparent society. The opacity and invisibility of this
erotic obsession has been projected on the oriental female figure whose beauty,
50 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

unlike the angelic beauty of the European female figure, is only infesting and
destructive.
The process of westernizing Hafiz for British readers runs through the
following stanza in which the self-pity of the poet/lover centralizes the lover
himself and marginalizes the beloved:
In vain with love our bosoms glow:
Can all our tears, can all our sighs,
New luster to those charms impart?
Can cheeks, where living roses blow,
Where nature spreads her richest dyes,
Require the borrow'd gloss of art6? (ll.19-24)

Hafiz in this line is describing the perfect beauty of the beloved and the
fact that the lover's love would not enhance the beauty of the beloved.
Therefore, once more the lover humbly admits through a hyperbole the absolute
beauty of the beloved. Jones in his translation of this line slightly departs from
Hafiz and with a self-pitying tone in the first two lines of the stanza attracts the
attention of the readers to his own pains rather than the beauty of the beloved.
Such a self-pitying tone can be found in many Roman elegies in which the
lover complains bitterly and self-righteously against the beloved who has
betrayed him7. There is no self-pitying tone in Hafiz's line; therefore, it seems
that the translator is using the ancient heritage of Western literature to
appropriate Hafiz sonnet for the British readers.

Empiricism vs. Mysticism

In the stanza below, a brilliant example of cultural diversions between the East
and the West can be traced. The Western scholar seems to be bewildered at the
encounter with Eastern opacity:
Speak not of fate:--ah! Change the theme,
And talk of odours, talk of wine,
Talk of the flowers that round us bloom:
'Tis all a cloud, 'tis all a dream;
To love and joy thy thoughts confine,
Nor hope to pierce the sacred gloom8 (ll. 25-30)
Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 51

A Persian reader of Hafiz’s poetry is used to finding negative imperatives

that beseech the reader not to ask, not to seek because the atmosphere of
mysticism in Hafiz’s poetry makes it necessary that the opacity of the world be
maintained. The poetic landscape of Hafiz centers round the unknown and a
halo of mystery covers Hafiz's ambiguous language, hence the unsettled
Western reader whose aesthetics of transparency, apart from the historical and
political context was informed by the ideals of enlightenment. The age of
enlightenment advocated the supremacy of science and rationality and clarity.
William Jones, himself a scientist and the true child of enlightenment
manipulates Hafiz's focus on the unknown and shifts the emphasis away from
Hafizian mystery to Khayyamian carpe diem, a theme dominant in the post
Puritan literary discourse of Britain. If Hafiz insists on leaving the mystery of
the world untouched, Jones treats this concept as if it is a boring topic and
implores his addressee to change the theme. While Hafiz believes no one can
solve the mysterious puzzle, Jones says that "it's all a cloud, it's all a dream". A
cloud would hinder the passage of light and is hence, a threat to transparency
and a dream is a violation of the enlightenment ideal of the rational, transparent
and concrete reality. If Hafiz advises his addressee not to put an effort in order
to know the unknown, the Persian reader would willingly attend to the sagely
word of wisdom and it wouldn’t sound like naïve acceptance of the world, but
accepting such an advise would sound like retreating to the pre revolutionary
gothic realm of darkness and the pre enlightenment world of superstition. In
order for Jones to appropriate such an inconvenient cultural encounter between
the East and the West, he shakes off the mysterious on the whole because the
persistence in opacity would only deserve dismissal.

Stereotyping the Orient

Once more, Jones has recourse to the strategy he used in the first stanza, that is,
the deletion of the proper nouns. On the one hand, Jones deletes the specificity
of the allusion and on the other hand, he generalizes his comment on oriental
sexuality to give a reductionist picture of the whole orient:
Beauty has such resistless power,
That even the chaste Egyptian dame
Sighed for the blooming Hebrew boy;
52 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

For her how fatal was the hour,

When to the banks of Niles came
A youth so lovely and so coy!9 (ll.31-36)

Hafiz alludes to the story of Joseph and Zuleikha and points to Joseph's
resistless beauty only to lead us indirectly to plight of Zuleikha. It seems that
Hafiz sums up the story into a focal point which is the fate of Zuleikha, while
William Jones constructs the moment of their encounter; therefore if Hafiz
brings the final result into the reader's mind, William Jones theatricalizes the
beginning of the story and depicts the bedazzlement of hers. This slight change
would lead us to the questions posed by Lefevere:
Can culture A ever really understand culture B on that
culture's (i.e. B's) own terms? Or do the grids always define
the ways in which cultures will be able to understand each
other? Are the grids, to put it in terms that may well be too
strong, the prerequisite for all understanding or not?
(Lefevere 1999, p. 77)

Lefevere highlights the influence of the cultural encounter between the

translator and the translated. The cultural grids foment a particular reading of a
text in the target culture that may not be exactly the same as the way that text is
read in the source culture. The culture specific reading of a text would lead to
conscious or unconscious manipulation and appropriations of the text.
Therefore, Jones's treatment of Hafiz can be considered as his conscious
contribution to the discourse of propagandizing the orient that was meant to
arouse sensual and erotic expectations. The colonial enterprise of Britain in
Asian countries, prepared the grounds for the project of stereotyping the orient
as the inferior other of Britain.
Therefore, Jones adds some attributes to Joseph that are absent from
Hafiz’s poem. First of all he deletes the names of the two and in this way
generalizes the story to include the whole orient. Zuleikha is the Egyptian
"dame" and Joseph is the "Hebrew boy" in Jones' translation. Jones, apart from
depriving these characters from their names, and hence from their local and
historical individuality, gives a feminine identity to Joseph by using adjectives
Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 53

that are mostly attributable to women. Joseph is a "blooming boy" and "a youth
so lovely and so coy". Such adjectives are meant to erase the masculinity of the
oriental man in general, a strategy used in the orientalist discourse to justify the
disciplining presence of the virile British forces in the orient, a geography that
had gone feminine due to its effeminate men. The oriental woman wishing for
the effeminate man would be considered as a sensual and promiscuous woman
to the British readers who believed in heterosexual strict binaries between man
and woman, masculinity and femininity. Therefore, Jones seems to be actively
engaged in the process of stereotyping the orient and the oriental.

The Cult of Mentoring and the British Love Sonnets

Jones, once again, seems to be bewildered at the Eastern cultural norms. He
sexualizes the cult of mentoring and with a patronizing tone, feminizes the
addressee in Hafiz's poem and adds strong overtones of carpe diem to his
interpretation:
But ah! Sweet maid, my counsel hear
(youth should attend when those advise
Whom long experience renders sage):
While music charms the ravish'd ear;
While sparkling cups delight our eyes,
Be gay; and scorn the frowns of age.10 (ll.37-42)

Within this stanza Jones has recourse to the British convention of love
sonnets. Sir Thomas Wyatt, the 16th century poet who is said to have been the
first who introduced love sonnets into British literature presented a British
masculinity, hitherto rare in the British elite literature. In "Madame, Withouten
Many Words" for example, he proposes to the lady but he never insists, he is
reluctant to wait forever to hear the positive response of the lady. Revealing an
impatient and demanding masculine identity, the poet predicts the
consequences of the two possible replies of the lady: "If it be yea, I shall be
fain;/If it be nay, friends as before; /Ye shall another man obtain,/And I mine
own and yours no more (ll. 9-12). The love sonnets introduced by Wyatt are
basically different from Persian love poems in that they dismiss the idea of
insistence and persistence in love, an idea that forms the pillar of Persian love
54 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

poems. In "Farewell Love and All Thy Laws Forever," for example, Wyatt
harshly refuses to follow a domineering woman that is represented as a
seductress: "With idle youth go use thy property/And thereon spend thy many
brittle darts,/For hitherto though I have lost all my time, /Me lusteth no lenger
rotten boughs to climb." (ll. 11-14). William Jones can also be influenced by
the frank and unprecedented approach of the metaphysical poets toward love.
The poet in "to His Coy Mistress" addresses a silent and inarticulate lady and
reminds her of the passage of time and mocks her romantic expectations and
finally concludes tersely that they should consummate their love before they
die: " Let us roll all our strength, and all/Our sweetness, up into one ball;/ And
tear our pleasures with rough strife/ Thorough the iron gates of life" (ll.40-43).
What is important about such influences is that they would form the underlying
structure of Jones' appropriation of Hafiz’s poem. From Wyatt, he learns the
demystification of the lady and from Marvell he learns the superior tone of a
mature man who addresses a naïve, inarticulate and immature lady and who
patronizingly gives some "adult" advice to her.
Hafiz in this line is not addressing the beloved because in Persian poetry,
the lover never considers himself in a position to advise the beloved, but Jones
locates this line within the tradition of British love poetry and with an
authoritative tone advises the "sweet maid". Hafiz in this line might be
addressing himself or any other young man and is, in fact, cherishing the cult of
mentoring which is a same sex relationship. Jones deletes the cult of mentoring
and gives a heterosexual tone to this line and imbues its sensuous pleasures.
The cult of mentoring advocated by Hafiz in this line has been missed by Jones;
he probably had met a vacuum in this line because he had found it insufficient
to advise people to take advise, so he generates some pieces of advice to fill the
vacuum: "While music charms the ravish'd ear; /While sparkling cups delight
our eyes,/ Be gay; and scorn the frowns of age." These lines, that are absent
from Hafiz, carry a striking resemblance with Andrew Marvell's advise in "To
His Coy Mistress" in which the poet advises the coy mistress to seize the day:
"while the youthful hue/ Sits on thy skin like morning dew,/ And while thy
willing soul transpires/ At every pore with instant fires,/ Now let us sport us
while we may "(Marvell, ll. 33.37), in which the poet tries to cherish the post-
Puritan carpe diem theme.
Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 55

Transparency vs. Opacity

In the following stanza Jones uses the strategy he used in the beginning stanza:
once again he apostrophizes the beloved and hence concretizes the ethereal
beloved of Hafiz by addressing her directly:
What cruel answer have I heard
And yet, by heaven, I love thee still:
Can aught be cruel from thy lip?
Yet say, how fell that bitter word
From lips which streams of sweetness fills
Which naught but drops of honey sip11? (ll. 43-48)

Hafiz uses conditional sentences about imaginary encounters while Jones

renders the encounter a past event that has already taken place. There seems to
be another encounter between the speaker and the lady because Jones addresses
her and asks her for an explanation in the fourth line of the stanza. Encounters
in Jones' translation replace the impossibility, invisibility, absence and silence
of Hafiz's beloved with the possibility, visibility, presence and articulation of
Jones's cruel lady. These reversals mean that the unknown and the mysterious
have been explored and consequently their Eastern opacity has given way to the
Western transparency.

Patronization
Within the last stanza we find the prime examples of the Western sense of
superiority and Jones' patronizing tone in his treatment of Eastern literature and
culture:
Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung:
Thy notes are sweet, the damsels say;
But O! Far sweeter, if they please
Thy nymph for whom these notes are sung12 (ll. 49-54)

The Western colonial subject assumes the position of the superior patron
and believes the East is in need of the support and the patronizing protection of
56 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

the West. In the final line in which the poet registers his autograph13, Hafez
addresses himself to offer a ray of hope or find a solution to get over his
agonies and in many cases to admire himself. William Jones in his translation
of this line deletes the name of Hafiz. Deletion of the proper names seems to be
a westernizing technique used systematically throughout the poem. The
deletion of Hafiz's name is the deletion of his autograph, his identity, his
autonomy and authority, in the same way that the deletion of "Shirazi Turk" in
the beginning stanza meant the deletion of the local identity of the poem; such
manipulations would make it smooth for the British reader to handle the poem.
While Hafiz apostrophizes himself in the last line, Jones apostrophizes Hafiz in
the final stanza and seals his own footsteps on the poem and addresses Hafiz
with a patronizing and belittling tone as "my simple lay" and encourages him to
"go boldly forth". He evaluates Hafiz poem as lacking in coherence and uses
the stereotyping image of "orient pearls at random strung". This evaluation
reminds one of Fitzgerald's judgment of Persians "who are not poet enough".
Such an attitude toward cultural differences reveals the extent to which
Westerners render their own literary taste as the standard based on which they
could score Eastern poetry.
Each one of Hafiz's lines can be quoted as an aphorism without the need
for quoting the previous or the following lines. This quality is dismissed by the
Western readers because they are used to reading poems in which an idea is
developed through the course of the poem. The British reader would feel
unsettled when his preference for a unified theme is replaced by multiple and
plural themes in one single poem, the difference cannot be tolerated; therefore,
Jones in the last stanza, says with the tone of a teacher who generously forgives
the "simple lay" for his want of coherence only if he can please the nymphs
with his words. The additions and deletions in Jones' last stanza are so drastic
that the Persian reader would probably be speechless with disbelief.
Jones adds three lines that are either rooted in misunderstanding or in his
conscious manipulation of Hafiz's words. He notes that Hafiz’s poems are sung
for nymphs and scores Hafiz as "sweet" on the condition that he can please the
nymphs that are Hafiz's intended listeners. Nymphs are mythological creatures
both in Persian14 and Western literature and refer to female beauty that allures
men. In Western literature and art, however, they are hypersexual female
Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 57

creatures that are far from the ethereal figures in Hafiz. The conscious
manipulation of the words of Hafiz that are far from subtle, shows the
deliberate effort put by the translator in order to strip the Persian poem from its
Persian identity and to westernize it.

Conclusion
At best, such a treatment of Hafiz would construct a colorful, sensuous
picturesque landscape out of orient and at worst it would create a hypersexual
and promiscuous East indulging in primitive life of instincts. William Jones
throughout his translation uses different strategies such as apostrophe,
patronizing, stereotyping and deleting the Eastern local color in order to
domesticate the exotic and present the other as one of the familiar belongings of
the colonizing West. In the hands of Jones, as a translator, Hafiz becomes just
another Western secular poet celebrating the mundane beauties and
attractiveness of the beloved and thus the reader loses the intrinsic spiritual Sufi
message of the poem.

Notes:
! " # .1
,- ./ * 0 * % ! &" ' ( ) * & & & + .2
6! '# * * 78 ( 9 0' 2 * 3! 4' 5'5 3! * 6% .3
'"; & <# => 5 7? .4
5. Fare thee well, perfidious maid,/My soul, too long on earth delayed,/Delayed, perfidious
girl, by thee,/Is on the wing for liberty./I fly to seek a kindlier sphere,/Since thou hast
ceased to love me here! Ode LXXII (translated by Thomas Moore).
You do not hesitate to beguile and betray me, perfidious wretch! XXX. TO
ALPHENUS .
Freed from the toils of a perfidious mistress, Tibulus dedicates this to thee, goddess, and
prays thee to regard him with favour ". Translations of the poems of Catullus and
Tibullus, “The Vigil of Venus” by Walter K. Kelly, 1823
7! ) = 9 D# # E( 0 & 6<A ! ) B ( C ? .6
7. The poems of Catullus and Tibullus
I 3! J= ! .( ' .( K* * ') < * " ' & 0 G H! = . 8
5 -? O P C ? * <A( M '! * N% 3A= 3 .9
( P P I ( ') ( ) * ( ) 3* R' S -( .10
# J UI5 V5 7! & W/ 0 ') !' ? 3! T( &! % B .11
! Z [? \/% ( % ' ]( * Y% = ' R'# &<T &<T NX .12
^/ .13
P .14
58 Persian Literary Studies Journal (PLSJ)

Works Cited
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USA, Toronto, Canada: Multilingual Matters Ltd. 2007: 13-23.
Cannon, Garland. “Sir William Jones and the New Pluralism over Languages
and Cultures.” The Yearbook of English Studies. 28 (1998): 128-143
Davis, Dick. “On not Translating Hafez.” New England Review. 25: 1-2
(Winter-Spring 2004): 310-318.
Grewal, Inderpal. Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures
of Travel. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996.
Hillmann, Michael C. “Hafez's 'Turk of Shiraz' again.” Iranian Studies. 8: 3
(Autumn 1975): 164-182.
Jones, William. “Sweet Maid.” Fifty Poems of Hafez. Arthur J. Arberry, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974: 85-86.
Lefevere, Andre. (1999). “Composing the Other.” In Postcolonial Translation:
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Lewisohn, Leonard. “The Religion of Love and the Puritans of Islam: Sufi
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Classical Persian Poetry. London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd
in association with Iran Heritage Foundation, 2010.
Marvell, Andrew .”To His Coy Mistress.” In To His Coy Mistress and Other
Poems. S. Appelbaum, ed. New York: Dover Publications, 1997: 1-2.
Schroeder, Eric. “Verse Translation and Hafiz.” Journal of Near Eastern
Studies. 7: 4 (Oct. 1948): 209-222.
Ford, J. “An Essay on Matrimony.” The Lady's Magazine or Entertaining
Companion for the Fair Sex. 6 (January 1775): 257-261.
Toury, Gideon. “The Nature and Role of Norms in Literary Translation.” In
Literature and Translation: New Perspectives in Literary Studies. James
S., José Lambert and Raymond van den Broeck eds. Leuven: ACCO,
1978: 83-100
Wyatt, Sir Thomas. “Farewell love and all thy laws forever” In The Poetical
Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Y. James, ed. London: George Bell and
Sons, 1904: 18-19.
---. “Madam withouten many words.” In The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas
Wyatt. Y. James, ed. London: George Bell and Sons, 1904: 178.
1
! " #
Cultural Translation: A Critical Analysis of William Jones's Translation of Hafez 59

2
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3
6! '# * * 78 ( 9 0' 2 * 3! 4' 5'5 3! * 6%

4
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5
Fare thee well, perfidious maid,/My soul, too long on earth delayed,/Delayed, perfidious
girl, by thee,/Is on the wing for liberty./I fly to seek a kindlier sphere,/Since thou hast
ceased to love me here! Ode LXXII (translated by Thomas Moore).
You do not hesitate to beguile and betray me, perfidious wretch! XXX. TO ALPHENUS .
Freed from the toils of a perfidious mistress, Tibulus dedicates this to thee, goddess, and
prays thee to regard him with favour ". Translations of the poems of Catullus and Tibullus,
“The Vigil of Venus” by Walter K. Kelly, 1823
6
7! ) = 9 D# # E( 0 & 6<A ! ) B ( C ?

7
The poems of Catullus and Tibullus
8
I 3! J= ! .( ' .( K* * ') < * " ' & 0G H! =

9
5 -? O P C ? * <A( M '! * N% 3A= 3

10
( P P I ( ') ( ) * ( ) 3* R' S -(

11
# J UI5 V5 7! & W/ 0 ') !' ? 3! T( &! % B

12
! Z [? \/% ( % ' ]( * Y% = ' R'# &<T &<T NX

13
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14
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