Acclaimed translator Dick Davis breathes new life into the timeless works of three masters of 14th-century Persian literature.
Dick Davis is the foremost English-speaking scholar of medieval Persian poetry now working in the West. He read English at Cambridge, lived in Iran for eight years (where he met and married his Iranian wife Afkham Darbandi), then completed a PhD in Medieval Persian Literature at the University of Manchester. He has resided for extended periods in both Greece and Italy (his translations include works from Italian), and has taught at both the University of California and at Ohio State University, where he was for nine years Professor of Persian and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages, retiring from that position in 2012. In all, he has published more than twenty books, including the award-winning poetry collections Seeing the World and Belonging. His translations include Ferdowsi's Shahnameh- the Persian Book of Kings and Farid ud-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds. The Times Literary Supplement has called him 'our finest translator of Persian poetry'.
Davis [is] widely acknowledged as the leading translator of Persian
literature in our time...Faces of Love has made the Persian
originals into real and moving English poems * Washington Post
*
Davis has done something I'd thought impossible: given us an
Englished Hafez whose verses retain an intimation of what all the
fuss is about...this anthology is a revelation * The Chicago
Tribune *
Radiant...Davis expertly elucidates the conventions these poets
worked within and played against -- A. E. Stallings * The Times
Literary Supplement - Books of the Year *
Dick Davis's love affair with Persian literature has resulted in
another marvelous offspring. Faces of Love reveals to us the
mysterious connections between three vastly different
fourteenth-century Persian poets. Through their eyes, Davis brings
us that other Iran of poetry, lyrical beauty, diversity, and
sensuality; only a lover and a poet could so passionately and
meticulously capture the true spirit of these magnificent poems
that transcend the boundaries of space and time -- Azar Nafisi,
author of 'Reading Lolita in Tehran'
For me, the most remarkable poetic translation project in the last
twenty years has been Dick Davis' ambitious recreations of
classical Persian literature. In book after book, Davis has
memorably translated one of the world's great literatures into real
English-language poetry. Finally, Davis has brought us new versions
of Hafez and the great Shiraz poets. What can I say about this new
book except: Yes! at last we meet one of the greatest lyric poets
in history fully alive in English -- Dana Gioia, former chairman of
the NEA and author of 'Pity the Beautiful: Poems'
In this heady volume of wine, roses, nightingales, and forbidden
trysts, Dick Davis shows us three faces of medieval Persian love
poetry: the elusively mystical, the searingly personal, and the
gleefully profane. For those of us unfamiliar with this world, the
excitement is something akin to stumbling across a new Pindar,
Sappho, and Catullus in a single volume - that is, if they were
contemporaries and flourished in the same small town. This book is
equally valuable for its wide-ranging introduction and pellucid and
musical translations (quotable as English poems in their own right)
- it would be worthwhile for either, but is a gem for both. Perhaps
the most thrilling surprise contained here, however, is the debut
in English (if not the West) of Jahan Malek Khatun, an intellectual
princess whose bold and moving poems of heartbreak (often daring in
their exploration of gender roles) and exile are a revelation. Her
pen name means 'the world' and indeed we feel that, in bringing
these poems into our language, scholar, poet, and translator Dick
Davis has opened a new world for us. One couldn't write a better
description of this volume than one of her own epigrams:
Shiraz when spring is here - what pleasure equals this?
With streams to sit by, wine to drink, and lips to kiss,
With mingled sounds of drums and lutes and harps and flutes;
Then, with a nice young lover near, Shiraz is bliss -- A.E.
Stallings, MacArthur Fellow and author of 'Olives'
Probably the most difficult task of all for a Persianist is
translating 14th-century poet Hafez. Poet, translator, scholar of
Persian literature, Davis has succeeded in this challenge
admirably. The most admired of all Persian poets, Hafez is a wizard
with words, always alluring, seldom quite within reach. Here Davis
also provides translations of poems of Jahan Malek Khatun, a
less-known female poet, and of Obayd-e Zakani, a scandalous
'lavatorial' poet (both also 14th century). The translations of all
three poets are superb, and they open up a new world even for those
who know Persian well. Davis has supplied a long introduction in
which he explains how Persian lyric poems (ghazals) work, both in
formal terms and in terms of what ghazals speak of and why. The
formal structure of a ghazal is not easily reproduced in English,
but Davis has managed, better than anyone else so far, to give a
rendering that makes these translations come alive and sing. He has
also translated Obeyd-e Zakani's "Mush-o-gurbeh" ("Mouse and Cat"),
a well-known narrative poem with clear political undertones, in a
charming fashion. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --
W. L. Hanaway, emeritus, University of Pennsylvania, CHOICE
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