Hafez's aybé rendān makon

salam bé hamegee and welcome to part 2 of our discussion about Hafez’s poem, ʿaybé rendān makon! So, in the first episode, we were joined by Muhammad Ali of Persian Poetics, and we went over the overall message of the poem, and got a good understanding of it as a whole- what different words and phrases might mean, and their significance in the context of the poem. He read the poem in Persian, and I repeated an English translation. But, as we said in the last episode, the English translations of these poems are woefully lacking. It’s impossible to fully translate anything, and in poetry, where language needs to be so targeted and so precise, it’s really impossible. You can get a good idea of an overall meaning of something through a translation, but to truly understand it, to understand the nuance and the depth, you really have to understand the original language.

So with that in mind, in these subsequent episodes, I’m going to go over the poem again, word by word, phrase by phrase. As we said in the last episode, the beauty of Hafez’s poetry is that even though it was written centuries ago, we can still clearly understand it. So these words are relevant in our conversation today. So, by the end of the series, not only will you understand this poem intimately, but you’ll understand these words and phrases intimately as well, and learn how to use them in everyday conversation. 

So I want to start this lesson by having us listen to my aunt Farnaz recite the entire poem. Farnaz has a beautiful voice for reciting poetry, so in each of these subsequent poetry lessons, we use her recitation as a reference. I want you to listen to the poem, maybe with your eyes closed, and let the words just wash over you. You’re all at different stages of learning Persian. Some of you are complete beginners to learning the language, and others are more advanced. So some of you might not understand a word in the poem yet, while others may find some of the words to be familiar. But don’t let it bother you- as we continue our study, it will feel as if something very fuzzy starts to come into focus, and I love when that happens.

So without any further ado, let’s listen to my aunt Farnaz recite our selection of the poem ʿaybé rendān makon by Hafez:

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 khāna-yé ʿeshgh ast, ché masjed ché kenest.

na man az pardé-yé taghvā bā dar oftādam ō bas.

pedaram neez behishté abad az dast behesht.

hāfezā, roozé ajal gar bé kaf āree jāmee,

yek sar az kooyé kharābāt barandat bā behesht.

So we are going to be taking these lessons very nice and slowly, just learning two lines at a time. Today we’re going to focus on those first two lines. Let’s listen to my aunt recite them again:

ʿaybé rendān makon, ay zāhedé pākeezé seresht,

ké gonāhé deegarān bar tu nakhāhand nevesht!

Okay, so I want to start this entire discussion with a conversation about the word “rend.” This is quite a fascinating word. In fact, I recorded a poetry episode with Alan Eyre, former Persian language spokesperson in the State Department, and the word “rend” was featured in that poem as well. He sent me a six-page PDF titled “Semantic Evolution of Rogue rend in Mystical Persian’. It chronicles this word and its use in mystical poetry, such as the one we’re reading today. The article starts out by saying, ”A correct understanding of the meaning of rend is the key to a graphic better insight into mystic poems." This is quite a statement, but I really love this idea, that this one word can be a key into mystical poetry. So we’re going to focus on it for a bit. I think it’s also a really good illustration of the shortcomings of translations.

In the translation of the poem, Muhammad Ali of Persian Poetics uses ‘profligates’ as a translation of “rend.” Now, I didn’t even know what “profligates” was before, but apparently, it means a licentious and dissolute person. But to me, when I hear the word “rend,” I think of someone naughty or mischievous, like a scoundrel or rascal. But you can also use the words ‘drunkard’, ‘lustful’, ‘libertine’, ‘reckless’, ‘abject or evil person’. So, you see, there’s not a precise definition, and we need 6 pages to chronicle its uses, and also its deeper meanings and the evolution of the word. I’ll link to the article, but as we come to understand the poem, even this one word rend might become more clear for you and take on a greater meaning. 

So, again, the poem says “aybé rendān makon!” So a “rend” in this case is a wrongdoer, and all those other negative things I listed- a debaucherous, intoxicated, light minded and unruly person. Let’s repeat that word together: rend.

rend

So in these lessons, whenever I say a word, I want you to repeat it out loud after me. That’s the best way you’re going to learn these words and phrases by heart, and eventually commit the poem to memory. So: rend.

rend

“rendān” makes the word “rend” plural. 

So in Persian, when we’re talking about people, we make them plural by adding that sound “-ān” to the end of a word. For example, “koodak” is the word for ‘youth’. So if you’re talking about many youth, like a bunch of children, you say “koodakān.” Let’s repeat these: koodak.

koodak

koodakān.

koodakān

Great! Or if you want to say ‘man’, you’d say “mard.”

mard

And ‘men’ would be "mardān."

mardān

So similarly, back to the word in our poem: rend…

rend

And rendān.

rendān

So “ʿaybé rendān makon,” “ʿayb” is the word for ‘fault’. ʿayb.

ʿayb

So this is when you have something wrong with you, something wrong or a fault: ʿayb.

ʿayb

And the “-é” sound is something we call an “ezāfé,” which works to link the two words together, kind of like an apostrophe, or the word 'of', like “ʿaybé rendān” means ‘the fault of a wrongdoer’. So the “'ayb,” the ‘fault’, belongs to the “rendān,” the ‘wrongdoers’. ʿaybé rendān.

ʿaybé rendān

And then it says “makon,” so this is a command, and it means ‘do not do!’. makon!

makon!

Now, in current conversation, this is actually with a “n” sound: nakon!

nakon!

So that’s what you’ll hear in present conversational Persian, whereas in this poem, it’s with a “m” sound: makon!

makon!

Great, so “ʿaybé rendān makon!” means ‘do not fault the wrongdoers!’, or ‘don’t scold them or find fault’ with them. ʿaybé rendān makon!

ʿaybé rendān makon!

And like I said, it’s a command, and it's in the second person informal. So the poet is speaking directly to you, saying, ‘you, don’t find fault with the scoundrel over there!’ “ʿaybé rendān makon!”

ʿaybé rendān makon!

And then “ay zāhedé pākeezé zeresht.” Okay, so this part, again, the poet is directly addressing the reader. He’s saying “ay!” which means ‘hey!’. ay!

ay!

And then “zāhed” means an ‘ascetic’ or a kind of religious puritan. zāhed.

zāhed

“pākeezé” is the word for ‘clean’ or ‘pure’. pākeezé.

pākeezé

And “seresht” means ‘born of’ or ‘by nature’. seresht.

seresht

So “zāhedé pākeezé seresht” means something along the lines of ‘a pure-natured ascetic’, someone who is just pure by nature. Let’s repeat that together: zāhedé pākeezé seresht.

zāhedé pākeezé seresht

And as you can see, after that first word, “zāhed,” we have that “-é” sound again, or the ezāfé I mentioned earlier. We have this a lot in the Persian language, and here, it’s just used as a describing word. It’s saying that the word “zāhed” is the subject, and “pākeezé seresht” is the way to describe that subject. So “zāhed,” again, an ‘ascetic’, a type of religious person, and “pākeeze seresht,” ‘pure by nature’. We have a whole lesson in our Speak program about the concept of “ezāfé.” It’s lesson 26 of our Speak program, so I’d highly recommend checking that out. I won’t go too deep into it here, but that is the general concept. So again, let’s repeat that together: āhedé pākeezé seresht.

zāhedé pākeezé seresht

So that whole first line then goes:

ʿaybé rendān makon, ay zāhedé pākeezé seresht!

So first he’s giving a command. He’s saying “ʿaybé rendān makon,” ‘don’t fault the wrongdoers’, and then he’s addressing the reader directly: “ay zāhedé pākeezé seresht,” ‘you who is so pure-hearted by nature!’. And this is one of those examples, to quote Shakespeare, of “methinks the lady doth protest too much.” In this case, I feel like Hafez is being a little facetious here. He’s laying on the compliments to the reader a bit too strongly for it to be genuine, I think. So 'hey you, don’t fault the wrongdoer, you who is just soooooo pure hearted and good and wonderful by nature!’. So that’s my interpretation of it. Let’s repeat this whole first line together: ʿaybé rendān makon.

aybé rendān makon

ay zāhedé pākeezé seresht!

ay zāhedé pākeezé seresht!

And now the full first line, I’ll say it and you repeat it after me:

ʿaybé rendān makon, ay zāhedé pākeezé seresht!

ʿaybé rendān makon, ay zāhedé pākeezé seresht!

Great, and now the second line, which is:

ké gonāhé deegarān bar to nakhāhand nevesht.

So there are a few words in here that play off the same concepts we learned in that first line. Let’s start with the word “deegarān.” Do you recognize that “-ān” sound again? We had it in “rendān.” That means the word is plural. So “deegar” means ‘another’, so someone else besides yourself. deegar.

deegar

And “deegarān” means ‘others’. deegarān.

deegarān

And “gonāh” is the word for ‘wrongdoing’ but, more accurately, a ‘sin’. gonāh.

gonāh

And again, we have that ezāfé sound, “gonāhé deegarān,” linking the two words together. So, with the ezāfé, that becomes ‘the sins of others’. gonāhé deegarān.

gonāhé deegarān

And then “bar tō.” So, “tō” is the word for ‘you (informal)’. tō.

tō

And “bar” means ‘on’. bar.

bar

“ké gonāhé deegarān bar tō.” “ké” in this context means ‘for’. ké.

ké

The full thing, “ké gonāhé deegarān bar tō,” means ‘for the sins of others on yo’. This will make more sense as we learn the rest of the phrase, which is “nakhāhand nevesht.” “nakhāhand” means ‘they will not’. nakhāhand.

nakhāhand

So in Persian, the subject is contained within the verb. You can tell what the subject is based on the conjugation of the verb. In this case, “nakhāhand” is the third person conjugation for ‘will not’. So, ‘they will not’, nakhāhand.

nakhāhand

And “nevesht” is ‘write’. nevesht.

nevesht

“nakhāhand nevesht” means ‘they will not write’. nakhāhand nevesht.

nakhāhand nevesht

So the full thing then is:

ké gonāhé deegarān bar tō nakhāhand nevesht.

So ‘for the sins of others onto you they will not write’, so ‘the sins of others will not be written on you; they will not be attributed to you’. It reminds me of a kind of imagery of Judgment Day, when the scroll comes out showing all your sins; others' sins will not show up on your scroll. So let’s repeat the full thing together, first piece by piece: ké gonāhé deegarān.

ké gonāhé deegarān

bar tō.

bar tō

nakhāhand nevesht.

nakhāhand nevesht

And now, the full thing, I’ll say it, and I want you to repeat it after me: 

ké gonāhé deegarān bar tō nakhāhand nevesht.

ké gonāhé deegarān bar tō nakhāhand nevesht

All right, wonderful! Now, let’s go back and listen to my aunt Farnaz recite the whole first two lines:

ʿaybé rendān makon, ay zāhedé pākeezé seresht,

ké gonāhé deegarān bar tō nakhāhand nevesht!

All right, and hopefully, this time, you understood the full thing! 

So this is all we’re learning in this lesson. This week, I want you to really practice these first two lines. Practice reciting them to yourself, practice writing them over and over again, in English phonetic if you need to or in Persian script if you’re able to. Leave it around the house, on your mirror, on your fridge, wherever you need to in order to get maximum exposure to the lines and really get them into your system.

And, as always, check out the lesson page to hear each of these words individually, and use the exercises on there to test your recollection of the words and phrases.

And that’s all for this week! Thank you so much for listening, and see you next week for Part 3!