Persia and Iran - poetry Hafez and Rumi

Home of one of the world's most ancient and enduring civilizations, Iran has been at the nexus of world history for the past three thousand years. Situated at the crossroads between East and West, it has been marked by its encounters with other cultures and has influenced them with its own. 

• Iran has been the home of some of the world’s most influential and inspiring poets, whose works revolutionized the literature of both the East and the West. Spanning themes of love, divine mysticism and human rights, their poetry is an incredible contribution to Iranian culture, and remains entirely relevant today.   

• From paradise gardens and Persian carpets to the mystical poetry of Rumi and Hafez, Iran's contributions have earned it a place among history's most refined and sophisticated societies.

  1.  Bringing Persian Poetry to Western Readers

      Hafez  - Poet Details   (1310–1390)

The works of 14th century Persian poet Hafez are iconic in Iran. 

Poet and scholar Dick Davis has spent years bringing the medieval writer's words to the West. 

Jeffrey Brown talks to Davis  (6 min) about his experiences with Persian culture, the challenges of translating, and his new book, Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz. 

A couplet versified by Hafez in Nastaʿlīq.

  Read three Poems here. 

Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī, Hafez. 

he is said to have known by heart the works of these four bards:  Rumi, Saadi, Farid ud-Din, and Nizami.

Two links:

• Review on his work.
• His work.  

Watch this  video, click the  link:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/video/detail/77408




   2. Three recent books dealing wih Iran


1. Title Book: Iran in World History
Author : Richard Foltz

Richard Foltz traces the spread of Iranian culture among diverse populations ranging from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, and along the Silk Roads as far as China, from prehistoric times up to the present day. He emphasizes the range of contributions Iran has made to world history by highlighting the roles of key figures such as the ancient empire-builders Cyrus the Great and Darius I, the medieval polymath Avicenna, and early modern Mughal rulers such as Shah Jahan, who built India's celebrated Taj Mahal. 

 Iran today is rarely treated well in Western news headlines, despite remarkable achievements by individual Iranians in a wide range of fields. Encompassing religion, literature, the arts, and politics, Iran in World History offers a comprehensive history of one of the world's most influential civilizations and offers nuanced examples of its continuing role in the world today.

2. Title Book: Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran

 Author:  Elaine Sciolino

The book that revealed Iran to the West, now with a new Afterword. Elaine Sciolino updates Persian Mirrors to include coverage of the 2005 presidential election in Iran. As a correspondent for Newsweek and The New York Times, Sciolino has had more experience covering revolutionary Iran than any other American reporter. She was aboard the airplane that took Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Tehran in 1979 and was there for the revolution, the hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq war, the rise of President Khatami, the riots of 1999, and the crisis over Iran's nuclear program. 

• In Persian Mirrors, Sciolino takes us into the public and private spaces of Iran, uncovering an alluring and seductive nation where a great battle is raging -- not for control over territory, but for the soul of its people.

3. Title book:  From Persia to Napa: Wine at the Persian Table

Author:  Dick  Davis

“Whoever seeks the origins of wine must be crazy,” a Persian poet once declared, implying that simple enjoyment of this greatest gift of the grape ought to be enough. Since he wrote those words, however, winemaking has been traced all the way back to the northern uplands of the Fertile Crescent some seven millennia ago, the start of a journey that would take it across the Near East and then into Europe in the dawning years of civilization. Iran was one of the nurseries of the wine grape, and, as empires rose and fell there, princes, priests, poets and people in ordinary walks of life all embraced wine in various ways. After Islam came to Iran, wine drinking sometimes slipped from public view, but it never disappeared.

The final section of the book offers 80 recipes, a guide to Persian hospitality, both old and new, and seasonal menus for various occasions. Grapes play a role in most of the recipes, whether in the form of the fruit, the leaf, the juice, the syrup, unripe grapes or their juice (verjuice), vinegar or wine. Although these recipes are presented for the modern table, they are traditional—based on sources as various as a tenth-century Persian cookbook or the culinary archives of a sixteenth-century Persian court.

           Epilogue: