Every year, October 11 is a special day for celebrating Hafez – the great master of Persian poetry.
Of course, really every day is Hafez day – his 500 ghazals and 40 rubaiyats have been described as acting like a torch to guide us to our hearts.
Very little credible information is known about his life, but it seems that Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad Shirazi was born in Shiraz in about 1320: twenty two years before the birth of Chaucer and a year before the death of Dante. It is said that his father was a coal merchant who died, leaving many debts. Hafez, his two older brothers and his mother went to live with his uncle; and Hafez left school to work first in a drapery shop and then in a bakery. Whilst working in the bakery, he was delivering bread to a wealthy quarter of Shiraz when he saw Shakh-e Nabat, a beautiful young woman to whom he addressed many of his poems.
He became a disciple of the poet Attar before joining the court of Abu Ishak as a poet in his early twenties. He married in his twenties, even though he continued his love for Shakh-e Nabat, seeing her as the manifest symbol of her Creator’s beauty. Much later, he fell out of favour and had to flee to Isfahan.
He wrote poetry for 50 years, but only composed when he was ‘divinely’ inspired – as he aimed to write poetry worthy of the Beloved. It is said that when he died aged sixty-nine, the orthodox clergy initially refused him a Muslim burial. But after an outcry, it was agreed to cut his work into couplets and consult it as an Oracle – just like is done with Fal e Hafez now. Whatever the selected couplet said, they would abide by. And the chosen couplet read:
Neither Hafez’s corpse nor his life negate.
With all his misdeeds, heaven for him waits.
He was given the burial. His tomb still stands.
Here is one of my favourites of his poems:
You say “Sit in sorrow til the end of your days! Or, rise, and give yourself to love!” Whatever you say, my dear, I’ll sit and rise And sit, And rise..