by Dick Davis
pp. 215–223, Cat and Mouse
The subject of Cat and Mouse is the same as that of the previous poem, the conquest of Shiraz by Mobarez al-din. The “cat” is obviously Mobarez al-din, and equally obviously Abu Es’haq is the mouse king. The fact that the poem opens with a mouse getting drunk might be an allusion to the wine-loving culture of Shiraz under Abu Es’haq, something that would have provoked the contempt of Mobarez al-din. Obayd implies that the drunkenness of the mice leads them to misjudge the threat the cat poses, and this perhaps represents the Shirazis’ self-indulgent carelessness in the face of Mobarez al-din’s enmity.
Obayd locates the cat’s home in Kerman, in the southeast of Iran, which was where Mobarez al-din was living when feuding broke out between him and Abu Es’haq. (Mobarez al-din was originally from near Yazd, in central Iran, but had captured Kerman in 1340, and he used it from then on as his center of operations, which mainly consisted of raiding and terrorizing the surrounding cities.)
The cat’s hypocritical professions of Islam, while killing as many of the mice as he can, fit with reports of Mobarez al-din’s character, as being outwardly pious to the point of asceticism, and also extremely brutal.
The mouse king draws his allies from Gilan, Rasht, and Khorasan, northern areas that were friendly, or at least not hostile to, the Inju family, from which Abu Es’haq came. The more southern towns of Isfahan, Yazd, and Kerman, from which the cat summons his cat allies, were all controlled by Mobarez al-din himself or by members of his family. The mouse ambassador probably represents Khajeh Emad-al din, Abu Es’haq’s emissary to Mobarez al-din before war broke out between them. It is likely that many more references in the poem would have been be recognized by contemporary readers.
Cat and Mouse does not appear in the earliest manuscripts of Obayd’s poetry, and this has led some scholars to doubt that it is actually by him, but it has always, from the medieval period on, been ascribed to him, and no other likely candidate has been suggested as its author. Its cynicism and bitter humor, its portrait of the cat’s pious hypocrisy, its almost gleeful contempt for folly, together with the fairly intimate knowledge of Shirazi politics that it reveals, all fit well with what we know of Obayd, and with the atmosphere of many of his other poems, and so it seems reasonably safe to assume that the poem is Obayd’s.
An interesting parallel, and perhaps remote precedent, to Obayd-e Zakani’s Cat and Mouse is the Greek mock-heroic poem The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, believed in antiquity to have been written by Homer himself, but now thought to be by an anonymous poet writing at around the time of Alexander the Great (the fourth century BCE). Obayd’s poem seems quite close to The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice both in moments of its plot, and in the kind of rhetoric it employs. For example, the Greek poem begins with a mouse coming to drink, and being spied on by a frog who offers to help the mouse but then causes his death; another mouse escapes and runs home to tell the assembled mouse community of his friend’s death at the hands of the frog (this becomes two separate incidents of the cat killing mice in Obayd’s poem); the mice then decide to declare war on the frogs. The Greek poem diverges from Obayd’s version in that its next incident involves the Olympian gods, who take sides in the ensuing war. But the two poems become similar again as they draw to a close: in both, the mice at first appear to win their war, but then a sudden reversal of fate (in the Greek poem engineered by the gods) takes away their victory. The poems are also about the same length (the Greek poem is a little longer, though omission of the passages about the gods, who don’t figure in Obayd’s poem, would bring it to around the length of Cat and Mouse), and they use similar kinds of mock-heroic rhetoric. It seems very unlikely that Obayd could have known of the Greek poem directly (it was written well over a thousand years before his time), but the twelfth-century Greek/Byzantine poet Theodoros Prodromos wrote a work in imitation of The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice called The War of the Cat and the Mice, and at first sight it seems plausible that it is this work that somehow found its way into the Persian cultural world and served, however remotely, as a model for Obayd’s own tale of cat and mouse hostilities. But in fact the Byzantine work is quite far both in its plot and form (it’s a play) from The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, whereas the plot of Obayd’s poem sticks (fairly) closely to that of The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice. Despite the Byzantine work’s much greater proximity to Obayd’s poem in time, and the similarity of the two works’ titles, it seems probable that, if either of these works lies behind Obayd’s poem, it is the more ancient poem that does so, and not the Byzantine play. How this might have come about is hard to say; it may be that this or similar tales circulated in Iran during the Hellenistic/Parthian period, and had survived, perhaps at an oral, folk level, until Obayd’s time. Obayd’s Cat and Mouse seems sui generis within Persian poetry, but a comparison with The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice suggests that he may have been adapting a traditional folk genre, perhaps ultimately deriving from Greek and/or Parthian models, to local political circumstances.
Appendix
Poems on Translating Hafez
My long preoccupation with Hafez’s poetry has resulted in various attempts to formulate its nagging allure. Besides an essay in which I set out why I thought Hafez’s verse was to all intents and purposes untranslatable (“On Not Translating Hafez,” New England Review, Vol. 25, 1–2, 2004, pp. 310–18), I have also written three poems on the subject.
1
This poem was written when I first began to read Hafez seriously, some twenty years before writing the two poems that follow it. The figure in the poem is an amalgam of various British army officers and civil servants who tried their hands at translating Hafez while on duty in India; one such translator, who towers above all the others, was Lieutenant Colonel Wilberforce Clarke, of the Bengal Engineers, whose translation of the complete Divan of Hafez was published in 1891. His translation and commentary are a tour de force of both translation and scholarship, and have been very influential. Unfortunately for me, Wilberforce Clarke based his translation on a premise I think erroneous (that virtually all Hafez’s poems have exclusively mystical meanings, so that anything quotidian in them – wine, roses, a nightingale, a lover, a wine-shop, ruins, and so forth – must be interpreted as symbolic of a mystical referent), which means that while I have great respect for his achievement, I don’t feel it gets the Anglophone reader very close to what most of Hafez’s poems are really like or about.
Translating Hafez
Northwest Frontier, 1880s
For V. L. Clarke
I SEE THE MAN I CONJURE – AT A DOORWAY
Bathed for a moment in the evening light
And watching as the sun
Descends behind bare hills
Whose shadow blurs, and renders substanceless,
Parade ground, barrack, flag-pole – the low step
On which he stands; “the hour
Of cow-dust,” but no herds
Are brought in here to shelter from the dark:
The bright, baroque commotion of the sky
Is simplified to dusk
In which the first stars shine
Like an admonishment that stills the heart.
He enters the dark house: though he is here
By accident he makes
His being of that chance,
Set down within a country which he loves
And which, he knows, cannot love him – so that
His homage is a need
Become its own reward
Unprized as that which Aristotle says
Souls nurture for the irresponsive God:
A barefoot servant brings
The oil-lamp and his books
(And in another dispensation he
Would be that grave, respectful, silent child).
Moths circle him and tap
The lamp’s bright chimney-glass;
Now seated at his desk he opens text
And commentary; he
dips his pen and writes:
“It is the night of power,
The book of grief is closed…”
2
This poem pretty well sums up my experience in trying to translate many of Hafez’s poems over the past few years. It keeps fairly closely to the rules of the ghazal, as far as this is possible in English.
Translating Hafez, or Trying To
how long you’ve teased me with your tropes, hafez,
And led me on, and dashed my hopes, Hafez,
And left me like a foolish fog-bound man
Who pats and peers, and grasps and gropes, Hafez,
And thinks he’s getting somewhere till he takes
A tumble down delusion’s slopes, Hafez,
And nursing angry broken bones declares,
“God damn the guide, God damn the ropes, Hafez.”
Your imperturbability is like
A really irritating pope’s, Hafez –
But there, no matter how much Dick complains
Or goes off in a sulk, or mopes, Hafez,
Tomorrow finds him shaking (just once more)
Your glittering kaleidoscopes, Hafez.
3
The little incident described in the following poem happened exactly as recorded. “Fal-e Hafez” means “Divination by Hafez,” which is still practiced in Iran, particularly but not exclusively during the celebrations of the Persian New Year at the spring equinox. The procedure is like that of the Sortes Virgilianae (“Divination by Virgil”) as it was performed in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance (a page of the poet’s text is opened at random, and either the first line the eye lights on, or the line at the top of the page, is taken as advice, or as indicative of the future of the person who has opened the book). Both Virgil and Hafez were held in almost mystical esteem by the communities which used (in the Iranian case still use) their texts in this way, because they were thought to have access to hidden truths – Virgil because of his Fourth Eclogue, which was taken as a prophecy of the birth of Christ, Hafez because of the widespread mystical interpretation of his poetry, indicated by his common soubriquet “Tongue of the Unseen.” I took my dog’s jogging of my wrist, with its subsequent result, at the moment I was trying to decide on the literal or mystical meaning of “wine” in a particular line, as a parallel, if bathetic, kind of “Divination by Hafez.”
At the time of writing, Daniel the spaniel is still alive and enjoying his daily walks, doggedly and blissfully unaware of his part in the interpretation of Hafez arcana.
A Daniel Come to Judgment
(or Fal-e Hafez)
HERE I WAS, STRUGGLING WITH A LINE
Of Hafez – was his longed-for wine
The real, red heady article
Or was it something mystical?
At this point my impatient spaniel
(Whose name is, for the rhyme’s sake, Daniel),
Thinking a walk was overdue,
Nudged at my wrist, as dogs will do.
The glass I held splashed gouts of wine
Across the questionable line.
The wine was real; the blood-red blot
Said, “Mystical the wine is not.”
Index of English First Lines
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
HAFEZ
A BLACK MOLE GRACED HIS FACE; HE STRIPPED, AND SHONE
A CORNER OF THE WINE-SHOP IS
A FLOWER, WITHOUT A FRIEND’S FACE THERE, I THINK
A LOVING FRIEND, GOOD WINE, A PLACE SECURE
AH, GOD FORBID THAT I RELINQUISH WINE
ALTHOUGH OUR PREACHER MIGHT NOT LIKE
AT DAWN, UPON THE BREEZE, I CAUGHT
COME, BOY, AND PASS THE WINE AROUND –
COME, SO THAT WE CAN SCATTER FLOWERS
COME, TELL ME WHAT IT IS THAT I HAVE GAINED
DEAR FRIENDS, THAT FRIEND WITH WHOM WE ONCE
DESIRE’S DESTROYED MY LIFE; WHAT GIFTS HAVE I
DO YOU KNOW WHAT OUR HARPS AND LUTES ADVISE US,
DRINK WINE DOWN BY THE GLASSFUL, AND YOU’LL TEAR
EACH FRIEND TURNED OUT TO BE AN ENEMY,
FLIRTATIOUS GAMES, AND YOUTH,
FOR YEARS MY HEART INQUIRED OF ME
GO, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, PREACHER! WHAT’S ALL
GOOD NEWS, MY HEART! THE BREATH OF CHRIST IS WAFTING HERE;
GOOD NEWS! THE DAYS OF GRIEF AND PAIN
GOOD WINE, THAT DOESN’T STUPEFY,
HOWEVER OLD, INCAPABLE,
I SAID, “THE GRIEF I FEEL IS ALL FOR YOU”;
I SAW THE GREEN FIELDS OF THE SKY,
I SEE NO LOVE IN ANYONE,
IF THAT SHIRAZI TURK WOULD TAKE
I’LL SAY IT OPENLY, AND BE
I’VE KNOWN THE PAINS OF LOVE’S FRUSTRATION – AH, DON’T ASK!
IT IS THE NIGHT OF POWER,
LAST NIGHT SHE BROUGHT ME WINE, AND SAT BESIDE MY PILLOW;
LAST NIGHT THE WINE-SELLER, A MAN
LAST NIGHT, AT DAWN, IN MY DISTRESS, SALVATION
LAST NIGHT I SAW THE ANGELS…
LAST NIGHT, NEWS OF MY DEPARTED FRIEND
LIFE’S GARDEN FLOURISHES WHEN YOUR
LOST JOSEPH WILL RETURN TO CANAAN’S LAND AGAIN
LOVE’S ROAD’S AN ENDLESS ROAD
MAY I REMEMBER ALWAYS WHEN
MAY YOUR DEAR BODY NEVER NEED
MILD BREEZE OF MORNING, GENTLY TELL
MOSLEMS, TIME WAS I HAD A HEART –
MY BODY’S DUST IS AS A VEIL
MY FRIEND, HOLD BACK YOUR HEART FROM ENEMIES,
MY HEART WAS STOLEN BY A LOUT,
MY HEART, GOOD FORTUNE IS THE ONLY FRIEND
MY LOVE FOR YOU IS LIKE A YOUTHFUL TREE
MY LOVE HAS SENT NO LETTER FOR
MY LOVE’S FOR PRETTY FACES,
NO ONE HAS SEEN YOUR FACE, AND YET
NOT EVERY SUFI’S TRUSTWORTHY, OR PURE IN SPIRIT,
OF ALL THE ROSES IN THE WORLD
PERHAPS, MY HEART, THE WINE-SHOPS’ DOORS
PLANT FRIENDSHIP’S TREE – THE HEART’S DESIRE
SWEET LIPS AND SILVER EARS – THAT IDOL’S ELEGANCE
THANKS BE TO GOD NOW THAT THE WINE-SHOP DOOR
THAT BUSYBODY CRITICIZES ME
THAT YOU’RE A PIOUS PRIG BY NATURE
THE MUSKY MORNING BREEZE
THE NIGHTINGALES ARE DRUNK, WINE-RED ROSES APPEAR,
THE ONE WHO GAVE YOUR LOVELY FACE ITS ROSY
THE ORCHARD CHARMS OUR HEARTS, AND CHATTER WHEN
THESE PREACHERS WHO MAKE SUCH A SHOW
THOSE DAYS WHEN LOVING FRIENDS WOULD MEET –
THOUGH WINE IS PLEASURABLE, AND THOUGH THE BREEZE
TO GIVE UP WINE, AND HUMAN BEAUTY? AND TO GIVE UP LOVE?
TO HAVE MY HEART ACHIEVE ITS GOAL
TO TELL YOU NOW MY POOR HEART’S STATE
WE HAVEN’T TRAVELED TO THIS DOOR
WELCOME, SWEET FLOWER, NO ONE’S
WHAT DOES LIFE GIVE ME IN THE END BUT SORROW?
WHAT MEMORIES! I ONCE LIVED ON
WHAT’S ALL THIS HIDING HAPPINESS AND WINE AWAY?
WHAT’S SWEETER THAN A GARDEN AND GOOD TALK
WHEN MY LOVE LIFTS HIS GLASS,
WHEN YOU DRINK WINE, SPRINKLE
WHERE IS THE NEWS WE’LL MEET, THAT FROM
WINE IN MY GLASS, AND ROSES IN MY ARMS,
WITH WINE BESIDE A GENTLY FLOWING BROOK – THIS IS BEST;
YOU’VE SENT NO WORD OF HOW YOU ARE
JAHAN MALEK KHATUN
A HAPPY HEART’S THE PLACE FOR PLANS AND PIETY,
A PICNIC AT THE DESERT’S EDGE, WITH WITTY FRIENDS,
ALWAYS, WHATEVER ELSE YOU DO, MY HEART,
AT DAWN MY HEART SAID I SHOULD GO
COME HERE A MOMENT, SIT WITH ME, DON’T SLEEP TONIGHT,
EACH NEW FLOWER OPENING IN THE MORNIN
G LIGHT,
FOR MOST OF THESE LONG NIGHTS I STAY AWAKE
FROM NOW ON I HAVE SWORN
HAVE ALL YOUR FEELINGS FOR ME GONE?
HEART, IN HIS BEAUTY’S GARDEN, I –
HERE, IN THE CORNER OF A RUINED SCHOOL
HIS GLANCES TRAP MY HEART WITHIN THEIR SNARE,
HOW CAN I TELL YOU WHAT I WANT FROM YOU
HOW LONG WILL HEAVEN’S HEARTLESS TYRANNY
HOW LONG WILL YOU BE LIKE
HOW SWEET SLEEP IS! I DREAMED I SAW
HOW SWEET THOSE DAYS WHEN WE WERE STILL
HOW WOULD IT BE, MY SOUL’S LOVE, IF YOU HEALED
I AM STILL DRUNK THAT YOU WERE HERE,
I DIDN’T KNOW MY VALUE THEN, WHEN I
I FEEL SO HEART-SICK. SHOULD MY DOCTOR HEAR,
I KNOW YOU THINK THAT THERE ARE OTHER FRIENDS FOR ME THAN YOU
I SWORE I’D NEVER LOOK AT HIM AGAIN,
I TOLD MY HEART, “I CAN’T ENDURE THIS TYRANNY!
I’M LIKE THE MOTH THAT FLUTTERS ROUND A LIGHT
IF I CAN’T EVEN GET BEYOND YOUR DOOR,
IF YOU SHOULD KISS ME WITH
IN ALL THE WORLD, MY LOVE,
IT WILL BE GOD WHO OPENS UP,
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I SAW WITH FORTUNE’S EYES
LAST NIGHT, MY LOVE, MY LIFE, YOU LAY WITH ME,
LAUGHING, THE ROSE SAID TO THE NIGHTINGALE ONE DAY,
MOST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WANT POWER AND MONEY,
MY ENEMIES’ GLIB LIES ARE NEVER DONE –
MY FRIEND, WHO WAS SO KIND AND FAITHFUL ONCE,
MY HEART IS TANGLED LIKE THICK CURLS
MY HEART WILL TAKE NO DRUG TO DULL THIS PAIN,
MY HEART, IF YOU HAVE WORDS YOU NEED TO SAY,
MY HEART, SIT DOWN, WELCOME LOVE’S PAIN,
MY LOVE’S AN ACHE NO OINTMENTS CAN ALLAY NOW;
O GOD, BE KIND, AND OPEN WIDE YOUR DOOR,
O GOD, I BEG YOU, OPEN WIDE
PITY THE WRETCH, FORCED FROM HER NATIVE LAND,
SHALL I COMPLAIN OF ABSENCE? OF MY HEART? OR OF THE SKIES?
SHIRAZ WHEN SPRING IS HERE – WHAT PLEASURE EQUALS THIS?
