Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz
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Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Dick Davis (Author, Narrator), Hafez (Author), Jahan Malek Khatun (Author),
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 200 ratings
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Acclaimed translator Dick Davis breathes new life into the timeless works of three masters of 14th-century Persian literature

Together, Hafez, a giant of world literature; Jahan Malek Khatun, an eloquent princess; and Obayd-e Zakani, a dissolute satirist, represent one of the most remarkable literary flowerings of any era. All three lived in the famed city of Shiraz, a provincial capital of South-Central Iran, and all three drew support from arts-loving rulers during a time better known for its violence than its creative brilliance. Here Dick Davis, an award-winning poet widely considered "our finest translator of Persian poetry" (The Times Literary Supplement), presents a diverse selection of some of the best poems by these world-renowned authors and shows us the spiritual and secular aspects of love, in varieties embracing every aspect of the human heart.

"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." (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post)

For more than 65 years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Listeners trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF that contains notes from the book.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

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  1. Listening Length
    5 hours and 3 minutes
  2. Author
    Dick Davis, see all
  3. Narrator
    Dick Davis, see all
  4. Audible release date
    February 9, 2021
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Penguin Audio
  7. ASIN
    B08B45XPYD
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 5 hours and 3 minutes
Author Dick Davis, Hafez, Jahan Malek Khatun, Obayd-e Zakani
Narrator Dick Davis, Tala Ashe, Ramiz Monsef
Audible.com Release Date February 09, 2021
Publisher Penguin Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B08B45XPYD
Best Sellers Rank #167,064 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#27 in Middle Eastern Literature (Audible Books & Originals)
#73 in Ancient, Classical & Medieval Poetry (Audible Books & Originals)
#146 in Medieval Poetry

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
200 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

CH
5.0 out of 5 stars A work not only of great beauty, but also of considerable social and political interest
Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2013
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Faces of Love is wonderful. It's actually so wonderful that I've had to abandon all hope of recapping of its virtues in a comprehensive way. (The account threatened to be book-length.) Instead, here is what I hope will be a more useful, if only partial, description of a few highlights:

-- First and maybe most importantly, the collection has the rare quality of being as accessible as it is intelligent. Both the poems and the commentary that frame them offer plenty of depth and detail to satisfy the frequent reader of poetry, but it also strikes me that translator Dick Davis's wry prose and contemporary analogies could provide a very entertaining inroad someone less acquainted with this art form. (Do you like Bob Dylan? This could be the book for you!) Very easy to imagine someone who was otherwise not much of a poetry reader getting curious about what else is out there, after reading Davis's collection.

-- Second, the poems are remarkable. I'm not a reader of Persian, sadly, so I can't speak to the originals, but these translations make an impressive body of work on their own. There's a dexterity with rhyme and emotion I wish we'd see a lot more of in contemporary Anglophone poetry (Davis knocked me out resolving an otherwise-unrhymed poem on despair and solace with a final rhymed couplet, closing the poem with a comfort to the reader's ear that matches and magnifies the comfort the poem's themes offer the reader's heart). There's intellectual sophistication that gives lie to postmodernity's purported monopoly on the instability of meaning (a Hafez aside about "wine that's real and not a metaphor" is but the most explicit indication that one didn't need to wait for Barthes to grasp the pleasures and possibilities in the space between sign and referent. Is all the rest of the wine only metaphorical?!) And then there's the uproariously, graphically funny (I badly wish I thought I could get away with quoting the Obayd for you here, but my strong suspicion is that it would be censored. But perhaps that knowledge will be enough to tempt!) The work is terrific, across the board; it's a bit mind-bending to imagine that one translator could work so successfully in so many different styles.

-- Third, the physical book is as lovely as the poems it contains: smooth, cream-colored paper with plenty of blank leaves at the end for note-making; vibrant blue cover art, consonant with the vitality of the book's contents; a matching blue satin ribbon to mark your page or perhaps one you'd like to share. And I think you might like to share it; it's not just a book that would make a nice gift, but the kind of book that reminds why books make such nice gifts.

-- Finally, Faces of Love offers the Anglophone reader a rare view on three very different ways of making and writing a life in medieval Iran. The choice to group these three poets as well as Davis's narration of the world they inhabited brings their culture to life in an unusually vivid fashion. The documentation of their diversity (which often included fairly heterodox attitudes toward religion) may especially interest students of Iranian and international politics. In a passage explaining why alcohol would be so prominent in the lives of these poets despite its prohibition in Islam, Davis writes, amusingly, that in flouting the alcohol proscription, "Local Persian dynasties...were saying, in effect, `This is a part of our culture; get over it.' " Those inclined to speculate may wonder whether Davis, an eight-year resident of Iran, isn't making a similar statement with this publication, if in more circumspect fashion! Regardless of intention though, the book documents a fascinating, multidimensional culture with a good deal more evidence and interest than what, for instance, the U.S. readers usually encounter in the mainstream media accounts of Iran. As such the book becomes not only a work of great beauty but also one of considerable social and political interest.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Wine, Women and Song
Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2014
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That would be the fitting title for the Hafez section -- which includes the majority of the poems by the three featured authors in this volume -- at any rate. Reading the selections from Hafez's work, it seems he would be recognizable today by the likes of Dean Moriarty or John Blutarsky as a kindred soul, in a take life as it comes and enjoy it.
Hafez also tweaked the establishment and challenged the pious busybodies of his day, as he does here:

DO YOU KNOW WHAT OUR HARPS AND LUTES ADVISE US,
when heard aright?
'Men say that wine's awful -- when you drink
keep out of sight!'

They say you shouldn't talk of love, or hear
love spoken of --
That's a hard lesson that they're teaching us,
to give up love.

Love's beauty they despise -- and as for lovers,
they deride them;
They mock the old, and tell the young that love
must be denied them.

The final couplet leaves no doubt as to his intended target:

Bring wine! Qur'an reciters, clerics, sheikhs,
religion's spies --
Look well at each of them, and we see a man
who lives by lies.

Obviously the Persians of that time had not yet achieved the level of buzzkills that their modern Iranian religious fanatic counterparts have achieved today, or else he would not have lived to die of the ripe old age he managed. He was a burr in the craw of the Muslim authorities after his more-secular patron and apparent fellow carouser was defeated and killed, bringing a Quran-thumper into power in his city.
Not to say he eschews religion altogether; but it seems to be more of a (farther) Eastern flavor of spirituality than Islam.

As for the translation, the poems work great in the English versions. I can't compare them to the original Persian, but they seem to me to convey the sentiment of the time they were written with a modern ring and with a flowing rhythm and soft touch to the rhyme schemes.
This verse from the next poet, Jahan Malek Khatun, whose poems are mostly dealing with the pangs of absent or lost love, is an example:

I'm like a cooking pot
That's placed upon love's fire --
All day and night I seethe
And bubble with desire

The final poet, Obayd-e Zakani, was older when Hafez arrived in the city, is, well, more earthy; some may even say crude. His section closes with a political satire -- "Cat and Mouse" of his patron's defeat at the hands of the army of cats depicting the pious but bloodthirsty victor.

All in all I found this to be an entertaining volume of poetry that can be easily read and digested and offers a perspective on the Persian people that perhaps we in the United States do not have. The introduction and end notes are great, especially for explaining the significance of historical figures mentioned, politics of the time in which these verses were written and common Persian literary devices.
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Erica Leigh Durian
5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2023
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This is a lovely collection of Persian poetry translated into English. There is also historical background and biographical information for the three poets included, as well as notes on translation and poetic form. So if you are unfamiliar, there is plenty of valuable context to aid in understanding. But, of course, the best part is the poetry itself.
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Lucie Greenblum
4.0 out of 5 stars READING GROUP
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2014
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This book by recommended by a friend.

I loved the 1s part because it spoke of the history of that part of th world in the 13th and 14th century and so was very relevant to what is going on these days in Iran.

I gave it only 4 stars because while the poetry is beautiful, there was too many poems
but I will go back to it if I can
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Julie
5.0 out of 5 stars Sublime
Reviewed in France on November 8, 2023
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Très joli recueil de poésie perse. Un petit bijou pour les amoureux du genre. Il faut souligner le travail admirable remarquable de traduction qui a été réalisé pour cette œuvre. À lire et à relire sans aucune hésitation.
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Alessandra d'Ambrosio
5.0 out of 5 stars Molto poetico
Reviewed in Italy on February 3, 2021
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Sono appassionata di poesia
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book
Reviewed in Spain on April 29, 2020
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personally love the old-school paper edges (not cut even), which some may perceive as a defect, but definitely done on purpose (gives the book an ancient feel)
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars At last, a true translation of Hafez.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 13, 2019
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This is far and away the best translation of Hafez into English, by an English poet married to an Iranian, who has a deep understanding of Hafez's poetry and of the religious, cultural and historical background to it, all of which is fully explained in the introduction. The whole question of the symbolism of wine and love is thoroughly examined in a clear and enlightening manner. All previous translations have been plodding, long-winded and have never failed to miss the point. Dick Davis has scored one bullseye after another and has created poetry that is a delight to read, capturing the subtle and ambiguous elegance of the original. Take this book into a rose garden on a warm evening and read it to the sound of nightingales.

Voltaire said that a translation is like a woman: either faithful or beautiful, but never both. This translation is both.

For those who read Persian, the Persian index is particularly helpful for finding the original text.
9 people found this helpful
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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Translation.
Reviewed in Australia on June 25, 2020
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In par with Paul Smith's translation. Capturing the essence of the message as well as the format, tone, rhythm and rhyme of the verses. True to the source.
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