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The Ghazal Form

The ghazalis the primary medium of expression used by Hafiz of Shiraz. For centurieshe has been praised for his incomparable mastery of the form. The ghazalis a specific,strict, Persian poetic form, like the English sonnet, which has been widely used sincethe early middle ages. As Elizabeth Gray (1995) explains, "Some believe that theclassical Persian ghazalevolved from the nasib, the brief and often erotic prologue tothe Arabic qasida, a longer ode with a ghazal-like rhyme scheme composed onpangyric, didactic, elegiac, or religious subjects. Others believe the ghazaldevelopedfrom early Iranian folk poetry, about which we know nothing. Others believe it to be ablending of indigenous Persian lyric with the more formal structures and themes ofearlier Arabic poetry" (pp. 6).The following brief excerpt fromAn Introduction to Persian Literature, by Reuben Levy(1969), expands on some of the important qualities of the ghazal."A people with as long a cultural tradition as the Iranians, and one endowed with suchfertility of imagination, could not be content merely to borrow. As in other fields, theyadapted what they took; out of the erotic prelude of the qasida they fashioned theghazal (a word derived from an Arabic original meaning "lovers' exchanges"), aseparate lyric form having something of the character of the European sonnet. So far asrhyme is concerned it follows the qasida in structure, but it is normally much shorter,consisting of about eight to fourteen lines, the last of which at a later stage ofdevelopment contained the poet's pen name. The framework is fixed, since there was

no poetic license, and in each line rhythm and meaning coincide. The contents arelighter than those of the qasida, and the style of language used is more polished. Themost normal theme was love, mystical or human, the homosexual being recognized; butanything might be touched on that stirred the emotions-the caprices of fortune'swhirligig, the mystery of life in the world, the upsurging happiness of springtime, or the

joys and sorrows of friendship or other earthly attachments. Subjects like these touchmost human beings, and the spark struck by the poet may leap the gap between manand man.""When verse appears in the musical language of the masters of the ghazal, thethirteenth-century Sa'di of Shiraz and his even greater fellow citizen Hafiz, who lived

about a hundred years later, it becomes understandable why Persians have alwayspreferred it to prose for their literary efforts. "Verse is to prose," says the eleventh-century author of the Qabus-nama, "as the king is to his subjects, what is suited to onebeing unsuited to the other." Two centuries later, Shamsi Qais, author of a manual ofprosody and the poetic art, being perhaps not altogether disinterested, proclaimedbluntly:

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However good your prose may be, it is improved when a poet turns it into stanzasfelicitously worded. In poetry the fortunate man expressed his joy on his day ofhappiness, in poetry the warrior boasts of his victory on the day of battle. And let himwho attracts the poet's displeasure beware, for he will never wipe away the stain. "In the opinion of the fifteenth-century literary biographer Daulatshah, "famous poets arethe tirewomen who clothe virgin ideas in wedding garb; or they are the divers who bringup the pearls from imagination's depths." In the Persian idiom, a poet deals with versesas though they were pearls which he strings together after he has pierced them. Hafiz,in the closing line of one of his best known ghazals, apostrophizes himself and says: You've spoken your ode, having strung your pearls,Now Hafiz, sing it sweetly to us;For on your verse the sky has strewnPearls from the necklet of the Pleiades."Each verse of the ghazal is usually complete in itself, though one meter and a singlerhyme run through the whole poem, the second half of each line balancing the first halfin theme and echoing it in rhythm. From their being self-contained in this fashion, it isnot unusual to find thafthe lines of a ghazal in one edition are set down in a differentorder from those in another, giving rise to the criticism that it is difficult to follow any onetheme throughout a single ghazal. In modern times the reply to that criticism has beenthat the lines are in fact variations on a theme, their subtleties being too deep for theordinary uninitiated hearer or reader. However, one brilliant line can make a ghazal, andestablish its author's fame as a poet" (pp. 33-35).