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Poetry /
Hafez's aybé rendān makon
In this lesson, we go over the following lines of the poem aybé rendān makon by Hafez:
نَه مَن اَز پَردِهٔ تَقوا بِه دَراُفتادَم و بَس
na man az pardé-yé taghva bā dar oftādam o bas
پِدَرَم نیز بِهِشتِ اَبَد اَز دَست بِهِشت
pedaram neez behishté abad az dast behesht
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View audio version of the lessonGREETINGS:
hello
سَلام
how are you?
چِطوری؟
Note: In Persian, as in many other languages, there is a formal and an informal way of speaking. We will be covering this in more detail in later lessons. For now, however, chetor-ee is the informal way of asking someone how they are, so it should only be used with people that you are familiar with. hālé shomā chetor-é is the formal expression for ‘how are you.’
Spelling note: In written Persian, words are not capitalized. For this reason, we do not capitalize Persian words written in phonetic English in the guides.
ANSWERS:
I’m well
خوبَم
Pronunciation tip: kh is one of two unique sounds in the Persian language that is not used in the English language. It should be repeated daily until mastered, as it is essential to successfully speak Persian. Listen to the podcast for more information on how to make the sound.
Persian | English |
---|---|
salām | hello |
chetor-ee | how are you? |
khoobam | I’m well |
merci | thank you |
khayli | very |
khayli khoobam | I’m very well |
khoob neestam | I’m not well |
man | me/I |
bad neestam | I’m not bad |
ālee | great |
chetor-een? | how are you? (formal) |
hālé shomā chetor-é? | how are you? (formal) |
hālet chetor-é? | how are you? (informal) |
khoob-ee? | are you well? (informal) |
mamnoonam | thank you |
chetor peesh meeré? | how’s it going? |
ché khabar? | what’s the news? (what’s up?) |
testeeeee |
salām bé hamegee! Hello and welcome to Part 5 of our discussion of Hafez’s beautiful poem ʿaybé rendān makon! We’re going to start off the lesson today as always listening to my khālé Farnaz recite up to this point of the poem and also the two lines we’ll be covering today:
ʿaybé rendān makon, ay zāhedé pākeezé seresht,
ké gonāhé deegarān bar tu nakhāhand nevesht!
man agar neekam ō gar bad, tō borō, khod rā bāsh!
har kasee ān deravad ʿāghebaté kār ké kesht.
hamé kas tālebé yār-and, ché hoshyār ō ché mast.
hamé jā khānayé ʿeshgh ast, ché masjed ché kenest.
na man az pardéyé taghvā bé dar oftādam ō bas.
pedaram neez behishté abad az dast behesht.
All right, and as always, hopefully you understood everything up to those last two lines. Now we’re going to listen to those two just by themselves, and afterwards, go over it word by word and phrase by phrase together! Here we go:
na man az pardéyé taghvā bé dar oftādam ō bas.
pedaram neez behishté abad az dast behesht.
All right, so the first line, “na man az pardé-yé taghvā bé dar oftādam ō bas.” Okay, so this part is challenging for me as well! This is where we’re getting into just poetry, but let’s just take it piece by piece, and I’ll leave the interpretation for you. So first, the word “na” simply means ‘no’. na.
na
“man,” we’ve learned before, means ‘me’ or ‘I’. man.
man
And “az” means ‘from’. az.
az
Simple enough! Now, we have “pardéyé taghvā.” Okay, so “pardé” means ‘curtain’ or ‘veil’. pardé.
pardé
And “taghvā” means ‘piety’. taghvā.
taghvā
So “pardéyé taghvā” means ‘the veil of piety’. So we’ve covered that “-é” sound between words before. It’s called the ezāfé and stands in for ‘of’; it links the two words together. So “pardéyé taghvā," ‘the veil of piety’. pardéyé taghvā.
pardéyé taghvā
Then “dar oftādam” means ‘I fell away from’. dar oftādam.
dar oftādam
And “oftādam” is ‘I fell’ in the first person singular form. So together, “dar oftādam,” ‘I fell away from’. dar oftādam.
dar oftādam
So “na man az pardé-yé taghvā bé dar oftādam” means ‘not I fell away from the veil of piety’, but then he ends it with “ō bas.” “bas” means ‘enough’, or ‘that’s it’, or ‘it’s finished’. “ō” means ‘and’. So “ō bas” means ‘and that’s it’. ō bas.
ō bas
So put together: na man az pardéyé taghvā bé dar oftādam ō bas.
na man az pardéyé taghvā bé dar oftādam ō bas
‘Not I fell through the veil of piety, and that’s it’. So the way Muhammad Ali translated this is ‘it’s not only me who fell from the veil of piety’. So it’s an interesting way of structuring things. It’s not what we would do in conversation, but for example, if I were to say “na man bastanee khordam ō bas,” it would literally mean ‘not I ate ice cream, and that’s it’. I’m implying, it’s not only me who ate ice cream. I did eat ice cream, but others did, too. So same thing here: “na man az pardéyé taghvā bé dar oftādam ō bas.” ‘Not just I fell through the veil of piety’. Let’s repeat this whole thing together bit by bit: na man az.
na man az
pardéyé taghvā.
pardéyé taghvā
bé dar oftādam.
bé dar oftādam
ō bas.
ō bas
And now, let’s say the full sentence: na man az pardéyé taghvā bé dar oftādam ō bas.
na man az pardéyé taghvā bé dar oftādam ō bas
Wonderful! And the next sentence: “pedaram neez beheshté abad az dast behesht.” So you can hear it has the word “behesht” in there with two different meanings, which we’ll get to in a second. First, “pedaram.” This means ‘my father’. pedaram.
pedaram
And then “neez,” which means ‘also’. neez.
neez
And then “beheshté abad.” “abad” is the word for eternal. abad.
abad
I often say “tā abad,” which means ‘until eternity’ or ‘for forever’. tā abad.
tā abad
And “behesht” means ‘heaven’. behesht.
behesht
This first time around, I should say, it means ‘heaven’, so “beheshté abad” means ‘eternal heaven’. beheshté abad.
beheshté abad
And then “az dast behesht.” So first, “az dast.” “az” means from. az.
az
And “dast” means ‘hand’. dast.
dast
So in modern Persian, the expression “az dast dādan,” meaning ‘from my hand I gave it’, means ‘to lose’. az dast dādan.
az dast dādan
But in this older language of this poetry, “behesht” means the same thing: ‘to lose’. “az dast behesht” means ‘let go from hand’, again, with the meaning of ‘to lose’. az dast behesht.
az dast behesht
So then altogether, it’s “pedaram neez beheshté abad az dast behesht," meaning ‘my father also lost the eternal heaven’. So basically, it wasn’t just me that gave this up; so did my father. As Muhammad Ali said in the introductory lesson, ‘my father’ here is meant to be Adam, giving up the Garden of Eden.
So how does this relate to the rest of the poem? I am really looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts in the discussion section for the poem. We’ll have a link to that on the show notes. For now, let’s listen to these two lines again read by my khālé Farnaz:
na man az pardéyé taghvā bé dar oftādam ō bas.
pedaram neez behishté abad az dast behesht.
All right, and that’s it for this week! Next week, we’ll be learning the final two lines of the poem, so tune in next week for the thrilling conclusion of Hafez’s ʿaybé rendān makon! Until then, khodāhafez from Leyla!