Repository path: workshop/translations/hafez-amad/R57-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-hafez-amad-R57-v1 — Hafez غزل ۱۷۶ whole, under R57's FREE arm

Regime: R57, the FREE arm — Walter Leaf's 1898 contract with clause 2, the metre, released. What binds: L-RHYME, the Persian monorhyme at every one of the nine rhyming positions; L-RADIF, a fixed English word sequence closing every position with the rhyme immediately before it, mandatory; bayt for bayt, one English couplet per Persian bayt, nothing added, nothing dropped, nothing merged. Line length free.

Why this arm and not LEAF. T-hafez-bekonad-R57-v1 (S233) rendered غزل ۱۸۷ in both arms and found that the metre took thirteen content words and the rhyme took nothing — the FREE arm kept all thirteen without effort, because the rhyme it needed happened to exist. With the metre released, the rhyme is the only clause left that can fail. The two poems are then rendered by one hand under one arm of one regime and differ in the thing the study limb measures.

Contamination: none, measured after the freeze. No published English of this ghazal was opened before the log below was frozen. Against the 136 stored odes of Payne 1901, the whole rendering shares 0 seven-grams and its longest common run is 4 tokens — the cleanest figure this project has on Hafez. The stored Payne is a quarter of his Divan and may not contain this ghazal: workshop/translations/hafez-amad/dependence-note.md carries the caveat with the numbers.

The rendering

At dawn, waking Fortune to the bed where I had been came; it said: Rise up, for that Khusrau of Shirin came.

Drain a goblet, and merry-headed go strolling out to gaze, that thou mayst see thy idol in what mien came.

Give the gift for good tidings, O recluse that unties the musk-pod, for the musk-deer out of Khotan's demesne came.

Weeping has brought the water back to the cheek of them that burn; the moan, deliverer of the lover mean, came.

The bird of the heart is once more the suitor of a bow-browed one — O dove, look to thyself, for the peregrine came.

Saqi, pour the wine, and grieve not over enemy or friend, for at our heart's desire that one went, and this, upon the scene, came.

When the cloud of spring beheld the custom of the days' broken faith, upon jasmine and hyacinth and eglantine its keen came.

When the west wind heard from the nightingale the saying of Hafez, ambergris-scattering, to gaze upon the sweet herbs' green, came.

The nine rhyme words, in order: been · Shirin · mien · demesne · mean · peregrine · scene · keen · green. The radif is came at all nine positions, the rhyme immediately before it at all nine.

Translator's log — frozen 2026-08-30, before any evaluation was run and before any published English was opened

D1 — The rhyme family was chosen first, and it was chosen for one word

Under L-RHYME and L-RADIF the shape of every rhyming position is forced: […] RHYME came. So before a line existed the question was which single English rhyme could stand nine times.

The nine senses the Persian puts at its rhyme are, as a set, heterogeneous in a way the Persian does not feel: a pillow, a proper name, a manner, an adjective of smell, an adjective of poverty, a bird, a demonstrative pronoun, a flower, and a class of fragrant herbs. Persian reaches them all with one ending because -īn is a live formant there — it makes adjectives (مشکین, مسکین), it ends proper names (شیرین, شاهین), it ends plurals (ریاحین), and it ends ordinary nouns (بالین, آیین, این, نسرین). English has no ending that does all of that.

Two families were enumerated and one was taken.

• -ine /aɪn/ — design for آیین, eglantine for نسرین, recline for بالین, pine for مسکین. It holds the flower, which is the one word in the poem with an exact English name that rhymes; but it has nothing for شیرین, nothing for شاهین, nothing for مشکین, nothing for این, nothing for ریاحین.
• -een /iːn/ — taken, and taken because of شیرین. Shirin is a name, and the English form of the name rhymes with serene and machine. A monorhyme that can hold the name in the matla' is worth more than one that holds a flower in bayt seven, because the matla' rhymes twice and sets the ear. It also yields mien for آیین exactly, mean for مسکین in the old sense of lowly, and peregrine for شاهین.

The family is /iːn/. It is worth saying plainly what that decision cost before the lines were written: on the enumeration above, /iːn/ had nothing for pillow, musky, this, eglantine or sweet herbs — five of nine — and the writing had to find its way round each.

D2 — What the rhyme did to each of the nine positions

Four of nine carried at the rhyme; five displaced; two of the five needed a phrase the Persian has not got. (An enumeration, not a score: the lead does not judge his own translation, and stage S buys this figure blind from a seat that is not this hand — charter §5.)

D3 — The three places where something was added or changed

Under R57 clause 1 nothing may be added and nothing dropped. Three departures, all forced by L-RHYME, all listed here rather than defended:

1. صحرای ختن → Khotan's demesne (3b). صحرا is open desert or plain; demesne is held land. The substitution buys the rhyme.
2. upon the scene (6b). Nothing in که به کام دل ما آن بشد و این آمد answers to it. It is there because this does not rhyme.
3. green (9). ریاحین are fragrant herbs, not green ones. The word is added to reach the rhyme and it names the wrong property of the plant.

Compare T-hafez-bekonad-R57-v1's FREE arm, where the same clause, the same hand and the same regime produced no addition at any rhyming position and the whole enumeration of losses fell on the metre.

D4 — The inversions, and how many there are

RS-20260829b-inversion-price priced object-before-verb inversion at 2.407 points of ten. With a one-syllable radif that must close every position, the verb is nailed to the line's end, so everything else moves left. Counting positions where the ordinary English order is broken to reach RHYME came: 2b (see thy idol in what mien came for see in what mien thy idol came), 3b (the musk-deer out of Khotan's demesne came), 4b, 6b, 7b, 8b/9, and 1a (waking Fortune to the bed … came). Seven of nine. In T-hafez-bekonad-R57-v1 the same count was eight of eight, so this is not a difference between the poems; it is the radif's standing price and it is paid in both.

D5 — What was noticed and could not be carried

• باز in 5a is again, and it is also the word for hawk — so the bird of the heart is "hawk"-ing after a bow-browed one one line before a real شاهین arrives. English has one word for again and it is not a bird.
• خسرو شیرین — the romance, the name and the adjective in three words. §D2 records the loss.
• گریه twice — the poem weeps in 4a and the spring cloud weeps in 7b, and the English uses weeping once and keen once, because the second one had to rhyme. The Persian repeats itself and the English does not.

D6 — What is not verified here

Every sentence above is a decision or a count, not a quality claim. The two evaluative-sounding words in D1 — that the family was "worth more" — are the hand's own reasoning at the time of choosing and are internal-judgment-only. Whether the nine rhymes are rhymes at all is graded mechanically after this freeze; whether the four carried senses are carried is bought blind, from seats that produced no part of this translation and are told nothing about it.