Public-Domain Hafez: One Ghazal Passage

The opening three couplets of Hafez’s Ghazal 184 stage a dream in which angels, the tavern, Adam’s clay, wine, and the “burden of trust” occupy one symbolic scene. The checked public-domain wording and lineation follow Ganjoor’s Ghazal 184, whose displayed text gives the established vocalization of ambiguous forms. Hafez died in the fourteenth century.

The quoted target text below removes editorial short vowels and ezafe signs, as normal Persian orthography does, but preserves the source’s words. Modern Persian ک/ی, punctuation, and بسرشتند as printed by the checked transcription are retained. That means the unpointed page deliberately hides distinctions which the spoken examples must reveal.

The verified passage

دوش دیدم که ملائک در میخانه زدند
گل آدم بسرشتند و به پیمانه زدند
ساکنان حرم ستر و عفاف ملکوت
با من راه‌نشین، باده مستانه زدند
آسمان بار امانت نتوانست کشید
قرعه کار به نام من دیوانه زدند

This is (literary, classical) Persian. Its verbs are broadly intelligible today, but its syntax is metrically compressed and its images depend on invisible ezafe. A translation must therefore choose a grammatical reading without pretending that one English phrase exhausts the poem.

The tavern door hidden in unpointed script

The first در is the noun dar “door,” joined by ezafe to میخانه. It is not the preposition dar “in.” The collocation در زدن supplies the clue: one knocks on a door. Because short vowels and ordinary ezafe are unwritten, the consonants alone permit a momentary rival parse, “in the tavern they struck.” Meter and verbal valency favor دَرِ میخانه.

For a full method of comparing such parses, see Philological Parsing of Syntactically Ambiguous Verse. Here the important literary effect is not mere obscurity: the grammar makes the celestial beings approach a socially forbidden threshold.

Adding را clarifies the object in modern prose, but it is an explanatory paraphrase, not an improvement to the verse.

Clay, kneading, and the پیمانه

Unpointed گل must be read گِل “clay,” not گُل “flower.” Ezafe then makes گِلِ آدم “Adam’s clay.” بسرشتند contains the classical narrative بـ attached to سرشتند, from سرشتن “to knead, fashion, create.” It is reading vocabulary, not a verb learners should freely substitute for modern ساختند.

پیمانه can be a measure and, in poetic wine vocabulary, a cup. به پیمانه زدند may evoke measuring, putting into a mold, or bringing Adam’s creation into the tavern’s wine imagery. English forces choices which Persian can keep resonant together.

A long metaphorical ezafe chain

The whole first hemistich is a subject awaiting its predicate in the next. It contains nested relations: ساکنانِ حرمِ ... “inhabitants of the sanctuary of ...,” coordinated ستر و عفاف, and عفافِ ملکوت. English usually needs “of” repeatedly; Persian can carry the chain through audible but mostly unwritten ezafe.

The chain is metaphorical rather than cadastral. حرم is an inviolable sanctuary; ستر و عفاف evoke concealment and chastity; ملکوت is the heavenly realm. The angels are described through the very purity that their tavern action appears to overturn.

That paraphrase makes the referent easier but erases the paired abstractions and the rhetorical tension. Metaphorical ezafe should be interpreted, not mechanically replaced.

Drinking with the roadside outsider

The written من راه‌نشین is read مَنِ راه‌نشین: ezafe attaches the descriptive compound to the pronoun. “Road-sitter” suggests exclusion from the protected sanctuary. The angels cross that social-symbolic boundary با من.

باده زدن is a poetic collocation for drinking wine. مستانه can describe the wine, the manner of drinking, or the scene’s intoxicated quality. The checked transcription points بادهٔ مستانه, favoring noun-plus-adjective, but the adverbial association remains audible.

The burden and the lot

بار امانت is a metaphorical ezafe compound: a trust or entrusted responsibility becomes a load. آسمان is personified as a potential bearer. In the older construction نتوانست کشید, finite نتوانست selects the short infinitival form کشید (the past stem, without final ـن); کشید is not a second simple-past event. Neutral modern Persian would normally say نتوانست بکشد or نتوانست تحمل کند. The line’s theological allusion and compressed diction are elevated.

Here قرعه کار is read قرعهٔ کار, and من دیوانه is منِ دیوانه. English needs articles and often a relative gloss; Persian apposition through ezafe is more compact. “Mad” can be social exclusion, inspired love, spiritual audacity, or a poetic self-position. The grammar does not decide among those interpretations by itself.

The paraphrase chooses انسان for the poem’s من دیوانه. That may explain an allegorical reading, but it cannot be presented as a literal translation.

Meter and translation discipline

Ganjoor identifies the meter as فعلاتن فعلاتن فعلاتن فعلن. Meter requires connected reading and helps recover short vowels, yet it does not turn every metaphor into a single proposition. A useful C1 workflow is: vocalize; restore dependencies; identify collocations; then write both a close gloss and an idiomatic translation.

Common Mistakes

1. Reading در as a preposition

2. Choosing the wrong vowel for گل

3. Translating every زدن as “hit”

4. Presenting an allegorical paraphrase as exact translation

Key Takeaways

• Recover invisible ezafe in درِ میخانه، گِلِ آدم، مَنِ راه‌نشین، بارِ امانت and مَنِ دیوانه.
• Use verb-plus-noun collocations to interpret زدند, rather than assigning “hit” everywhere.
• Distinguish the verified source, a prose-order gloss, and an allegorical paraphrase.
• Meter supports vocalization and grouping, but context and valency establish the parse.
• Multiple defensible translations can preserve the poem’s lexical resonance without abandoning grammatical discipline.