Licit Magic — GlobalLit Working Papers №10. On Poetry Translation (Tarjama)
As a Figurative Device in Persian Poetics
In classical manuals of Persian science of eloquence (balāgha), poetry translation (tarjama) is classified as a figure of speech along with other rhetorical devices, such as metaphor (istiʾāra), simile (tashbīh), and paronomasia (jinās). Premodern Persian poets impressed their readers by incorporating translations of Arabic verses in their poems. In an ode (qaṣida) composed on the occasion of congratulating his patron, Jalāl al-Din Shirvānshāh Akhsitān b. Manuchihr, on ʿEid al-Fiṭr, Khāqānī Shirvānī (d. 1190) translates a controversial verse by Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya (d. 683), the second caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate. The verses are controversial for their praise of wine and Jesus Christ — extremely inappropriate for a Muslim caliph. Yazīd’s scandalous Arabic verses read (with a rough literal translation into English):
شُمَیْسَةُ كَرْمٍ بُرْجُها قَعْرُ دَنِّها
وَ مَشْرِقُهَا الساقی وَ مَغْرِبُها فَمی
…
فَاِنْ حُرِّمَتْ یَوْماً عَلی دینِ اَحْمَدٍ
فَخُذْها عَلی دینِ الْمَسیحِ بْنِ مَرْیَمِ
[My little sun of vineyard whose zodiac is placed at the bottom of cask,
and it rises from the cupbearer and it sets in my mouth,
…
If one day you’re forbidden to drink it in Mohammad’s religion,
Take it in the religion of Christ, the son of Mary.]
Khāqānī translates the first bayt as:
می آفتاب زرفشان، جام بلورش آسمان
مشرق کف ساقیش دان مغرب لب یار آمده
[Behold wine — the gold-pouring sun, in the crystal cup-sky,
rising from the saqi’s hand, setting on my beloved’s lips.]
Obviously Khāqānī has not rendered the verse word for word. The image of vineyard has been replaced by the image of the gold-yellow wine, the image of the cask is replaced by the image of clear skies likened to a crystal glass, and the image of the cup-bearer’s hands and the redness of the beloved’s lips — indistinguishable from the redness of the evening sky — are Khāqānī’s additions to Yazīd’s poem.
Although poetry translation was not practiced widely, traces of translation are present in the work of other pre-modern Persian poets, such as Ḥāfiẓ and Rūmī. Classical treatise of balāgha contain examples of these translations.
If you’re interested in reading more translations by premodern Persian poets, read Licit Magic — GlobalLit Working Papers 10. I have translated sections related to the rhetorical device tarjama from Tarjuman al-balāgha (written circa 1088–1114) by Muḥammad b. ʿUmar ar-Rādūyānī’s, Ḥadāʾiq al-siḥr fi daqāʾiq al-shiʿr by Rashīd al-Dīn Waṭwāṭ’ (d. 1182–1183), Daqāʾiq al-shiʿr by ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Tāj al-Ḥalāvī (active 15th century), Badāyiʾ al-afkār fi ṣanāyiʾ al-ashʾār by Mīrzā Ḥusayn Vāʾiẓ Kāshifī Sabzavārī (d. 1504), and Abdaʾ al-badāyiʾ by Muḥammad Ḥusayn Shams al-ʾUlamā Garakānī (d. 1927). In this working paper, I illustrate the significance of poetry translation for classical and modernist Persian poetry.
Please read the full paper here.
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