Hafez's barafshān

Hello and welcome to Part 2 of our discussion about the poem we are calling “barafshān” by the amazing 14th-century Persian lyric poet, Hafez! 

In the last lesson, we talked with musician Fared Shafinury about the overall meaning and philosophy behind the poem. If you haven’t listened to that lesson yet, go back and check it out. In this lesson, we’re going to go over just the first two lines of the poem, and go through it word by word, phrase by phrase. In the last lesson, we translated the poem loosely, but translations never can really get to the heart of the original. By truly understanding the individual words, their shades, their nuances, their depth, that’s when you can actually gain a true understanding of the poem itself. And by memorizing the poem, you add even another layer of understanding; the poem becomes a part of you, it becomes a part of your bones, and as you change, your understanding of the poem will change. 

Not only that, but we’ll learn how to use the individual words and phrases of this poem in everyday conversation, which is so exciting as well! Persian is a rare language in that a poem written centuries ago can be understood in present day, and the language used can even be used in conversation today. 

But enough of that; let’s get into the lesson on Hafez’s barafshān! To begin the lesson today, let’s listen to my aunt, khālé Farnaz, recite the entire selection of what we’ve learned:

modāmam mast meedārad naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

kharābam meekonad har dam, fareebé chashmé jādooyat

pas az chandeen shakeebāyee shabee yāreb tavān deedan

ké sham’é deedé afroozeem dar mehrābé abrooyat

tō gar khāhee ké jāveedān jahān yeksar beeyār āyee

sabā rā goo ké bar dārad zamānee borghé az rooyat

va gar rasmé fanā khāhee ké az ālam bar andāzee

barafshān tā foroo reezad hezārān jān zé har mooyat

All right, and even if you understood none of that right now, don’t worry- as we go through these lessons, by the end, you’ll hopefully understand the whole thing! 

To start, let’s listen to those first two lines again, that’s what we’ll be going over in this first lesson:

modāmam mast meedārad naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

kharābam meekonad har dam, fareebé chashmé jādooyat

All right! So I have to admit that even though I’ve been doing this for a while, meaning learning and teaching Persian poetry, a lot of the language in this poem is challenging, even for me. But the beauty of reading these poems, going over each word and each line is that as we go along through the process, it’s almost like unlocking a key, and everything becomes really clear. I don’t know if you have experience with the work of Shakespeare, but for me, it’s really similar to Shakespeare. If you have no experience with his work, the first time you hear it, even if you’re a native English speaker, it sounds so confusing. But then you learn that there are certain words that he uses over and over, and maybe they’re not common words in conversational English today, but they were back then. Things like thus, or thy, or thou- but once you learn these words, and you learn how to listen, Shakespeare becomes understandable, and you come to appreciate the poetry of it. It’s the same with Hafez- there are a lot of words and phrases in his poem that you won’t necessarily see a lot of in common everyday conversation. But once you understand his formula, per se, these poems will become a lot more understandable to you. 

So with that being said, let’s go ahead and go through these first two lines bit by bit, so they come into focus for you, as they have for me.

So the full first line is modāmam mast meedārad naseemé ja’adé geesooyat. Let’s start with ‘modāmam mast meedārad’

So you might have heard the word mast before. It means drunk

mast

mast 

So remember, in these lessons, whenever I say a word out loud, I want you to repeat it after me. And these lessons now come in both audio form, or video form. If you’re watching this on video, then the words I want you to repeat appear by my head, so you can read them that way, it’s super helpful. So again, mast, drunk. mast

mast

Then the word modām means constant. modām

modām

So like all the time. modām. This is a bit more of a formal word, but it is used in present conversation. So for example, if you want to say, I water my garden constantly, you would say modām een bāghchamō āb meedam, for instance. modām, all the time, constantly. So then the full sentence, modāmam mast meedārad is a kind of unusual construction, it isn’t something we would say in everyday conversation. The full thing means it puts me in a constant state of drunkenness. so modāmam mast- the am in modām shows that the poet is referring to himself. modāmam mast- so me in a constant state of drunkness. modāmam mast

modāmam mast

and then meedārad- means it puts. meedārad 

And again, this isn’t a common way of saying this in conversation. Think of it as something along the lines of ‘in a state of drunkenness I have been put’- also not something you would say in conversation in English, but this is poetry. So again, modāmam mast meedārad

modāmam mast meedārad

Ok, so it put me in a constant stay of drunkenness, and then ‘naseemé j’a’adé geesoyat’. Let’s break this down. So first lets start with the noun and that is geesoo. So this is just a simple and common everyday word that means hair. geesoo

geesoo

And it’s even a woman’s name, because it’s a pretty poetic word for hair. geesoo- think something along the lines of tresses, or locks of hair. geesoo

geesoo

and geesooyat, means your hair, and it’s conjugated for the informal you. so geesooyat

geesooyat

so that’s how we denote possession in persian, we add that bit at the end, showing who something belongs to. So if I wanted to say my hair, I would say geesooyam

geesooyam

and you should notice that this is similar to modāmam- same ending. so modāmam is my constant state. modāmam 

modāmam

geesooyam would be my hair, and then as we have in the poem, geesooyat is your hair. 

geesooyat

And then naseemé ja’adé geesooyat- so naseem is one of those words that shows up in Hafez poetry a lot. It simply means breeze. naseem

naseem

and ja’ad is the word for curls. ja’ad

ja’ad

and again, not a word that you hear often in conversation, but it is the way you say curly hair. ja’ad

ja’ad

and ja’adé geesooyat, means the curls of your hair ja’adé geesooyat

 ja’adé geesooyat

And we’ve talked about that é sound that comes between those two words extensively in our program- it’s called the ezafé and it’s the way we link words together, for example words that describe other words. So in this case, the é stands for of that we use in English- the curls of your hair, ja’adé geesooyat. So again, ja’adé geesooyat

ja’adé geesooyat

and we also have the ezafé with the word breeze. naseemé ja’adé geesooyat- the breeze of the curls of your hair. So the breeze that’s passing through the curls of your hair- naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

All right! So the full phrase is modāmam mast meedārad naseemé ja’adé geesooyat, meaning it constantly puts me in the state of drunkenness, the breeze passing through the curls of your hair. So quite literally, it’s like he’s catching a whiff of this breeze, passing through the beloveds curls of hair, and it’s putting him in the state of ecstasy or drunkenness. So let’s repeat this together, piece by piece. modāmam mast meedārad

modāmam mast meedārad

naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

All right, and now the whole thing together- 

modāmam mast meedārad naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

مدامم مست می‌دارد نسیمِ جَعدِ گیسویت

All right! So that’s just now the first line of the poem, let’s listen to my khalé Farnaz recite the second line:

kharābam meekonad har dam, fareebé chashmé jādooyat

خرابم می‌کند هر دَم، فریبِ چشمِ جادویت

All right, so again, we can go over the first half and then the next half. So first, kharābam meekonad har dam

Thankfully this is pretty simple language. kharāb is simply the word for ruined. kharāb

kharāb

So of course, it could mean a myriad of other synonyms like that in English- like broken, or messed up. You can refer to anything that’s been ruined with kharāb- so like if you dropped and broke your phone for example you could say- telephonam kharāb shod, my phone was ruined! telephonam kharāb shod.

telephonam kharāb shod

So again, the word by itself is kharāb

kharāb

  and meekonad means it makes. meekonad 

meekonad

So again we have that -am ending on kharābam, so together, kharābam meekonad, means it makes me ruined, or it ruins me. So I am the one that’s ruined- kharābam meekonad

kharābam meekonad

simple enough. So it ruins me, it breaks me, it messes me up. And then we have har dam. har is the word for every. har

har 

and the word dam here means moment. dam

dam

and this is a really beautiful word because it also literally means breath. So a moment is a breath. So har dam together means every breath, or every moment. har dam

har dam

So together, it’s kharābam meekonad har dam- so every moment it ruins me.  kharābam meekonad har dam

kharābam meekonad har dam

So what is it- what is it that’s ruining me? It’s the next part of the phrase, which is fareebé chashmé jādooyat. Ok, what is this? Let’s break it down. So fareeb is a word for trickery. fareeb

fareeb 

so trickery or deception. And this next part is so beautiful- chashmé jādooyat. So let’s look at the words by themselves. Chashm is the word for eye. chashm 

chashm

and just a note that in conversation this often gets pronounced as cheshm. cheshm

cheshm

and jādoo is the word for magic, but even more accurately, the word for witchery, or even enchantment. jādoo

jādoo

so the ending at is the informal second person ending, meaning chashmé jādooyat means your magic, witchy, enchanting eyes. chashmé jādooyat

chashmé jādooyat

So again, I want to kind of explain that jādoo doesn’t really have a direct translation in English. It’s like a spell, and a little bit dark- I guess the closest thing would be witchy, but in an enchanting way. So fareebé chashmé jādooyat all together would mean the deception of your spellbinding eyes, for instance. As Fared translated it- the magical deception of your eyes. fareebé chashmé jādooyat

fareebé chashmé jādooyat

Ok great, and the whole thing together is kharābam meekonad har dam, fareebé chashmé jādooyat which altogether means it ruins me every single moment, the deception from your spellbinding eyes. So let’s say this together bit by bit- repeat after me. kharābam meekonad har dam

kharābam meekonad har dam

fareebé chashmé jādooyat

fareebé chashmé jādooyat

all right! And now the whole thing together- again, repeat after me- kharābam meekonad har dam fareebé chashmé jādooyat

kharābam meekonad har dam fareebé chashmé jādooyat

All right, beautiful! So now these two lines together- amazing that we’ve had such a long discussion about just two lines of poetry, but let’s read both together now- 

​​modāmam mast meedārad naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

kharābam meekonad har dam, fareebé chashmé jādooyat

so now together, it’s saying It leaves me in a constant state of intoxication, the breeze that passes through the curls of you hair. It ruins me every moment, the deception of your spellbinding eyes. So first modāmam mast meedārad- so I’m in a constant state of intoxication, and second kharābam meekonad har dam, it ruins me every moment. So it’s so interesting to me, that these are both descriptions of losing oneself, at every moment, in a continuous state of having lost oneself, first due to naseemé ja’adé geesooyat, so due to a breeze passing through the curls of your hair, and the second due to fareebé chashmé jādooyat- the deception of your spellbinding eyes. So a lot of parallels here, and what an amazing beginning to a poem- in this state of losing oneself. This is a big big theme in Sufi poetry, which this is a great example of. In order to find the beloved, or become one with god, it’s necessary to lose your ego completely. So that’s what these poems are working with- it’s these different levels that they’re existing on- one it’s about this poet and his lover we’re assuming, with curly locks and bewitching eyes. And on another level it’s about a human being and the divine. So keep that in mind as we continue to learn more lines from this poem- but what a start! 

To round out this lesson, let’s listen to my khalé Farnaz read these two lines again, and this time see if you can make out the words and completely understand these lines:

​​modāmam mast meedārad naseemé ja’adé geesooyat

kharābam meekonad har dam, fareebé chashmé jādooyat

All right- that was a super fun lesson, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did- I just love how much we can go into these words and phrases and find nuances in their meanings- and how the poem becomes so much richer and more meaningful once we do get into the individual words and meanings.

We’ll stop the lesson here for now, but we’ll be back next week with the next two lines of the poem. This week, try to practice these two lines as much as you can- start to get them memorized in preparation for our final project for this lesson series, which is to film yourself in a beautiful location reciting the poem. 

Again, thank you so much for listening, and until next time, khodāhāfez from Leyla!