Description
This little book of Verses first appeared in 1897, and although it was favourably noticed in the press it did not attract the attention it undoubtedly deserved. Gertrude Lowthian Bell was twenty years of age when in 1888 she took a brilliant First Class in History at Oxford. How her interest in the East and in Oriental languages was first aroused it is difficult to say, but from a letter written in July, 1897, it is evident that the spell of the East had already begun to capture her fancy. From the delightful Letters of Gertrude Bell, edited by Lady Bell (Ernest Benn), it is possible to follow the course of her studies in Arabic and Persian, and as an introduction to these Poems from the Hafez Divan, I think I cannot do better than to piece together extracts from those letters which have relation to this subject. Many English translators have tried their hand at the poems of Divan Hafiz, and the three varieties of translation referred to have all been attempted. Colonel Wilberforce-Clarke in 1891 published a complete prose translation with copious notes and an exhaustive commentary. This translation is so slavishly literal as to be almost unreadable, except as a crib. In I898 the late Mr. Walter Leaf published twenty-eight Versions from Divan of Hafiz, in which he attempted to reproduce both the metre and the mono-rhyme of the Persian, and probably came as near to success as is possible in the circumstances.