Repository path: workshop/translations/hafez-ghazals-radif/R55-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

«حافظ» غزل ۴ and غزل ۱۳۱, rendered whole under R55

Source: Ganjoor's Hafez (Qazvini–Ghani text), /hafez/ghazal/sh4 and /hafez/ghazal/sh131, fetched 2026-08-29; the Persian is reproduced in ../source.md with the fetch record. Regime: R55 — the radif carried or refused, and the refusal enumerated. Selection: mechanical, from the frozen census of all 495 ghazals (runs/RS-20260829-radif-hands/census.json). Among radif-bearing ghazals not translated by Leaf 1898, the lowest-numbered poem of 7–8 bayts in each of the two grammatical cells framework/v0.2 §7.36.1 and §7.40 call unreachable: a case particle (را) → sh4, and a finite transitive verb (کرد) → sh131. Nothing about either poem was known to the hand at selection except its radif, its bayt count and its opening line.

Contamination: none, measured. ../dependence-note.md records the run against Leaf 1898, Bell 1897 and Payne 1901 — the three published hands this arm codes. Neither poem is in Leaf's twenty-eight; sh4 is Brockhaus 4 and therefore inside Payne's volume 1, and the measurement is reported there.

This is not an independent third opinion of anything (CLAUDE.md, the contamination rule). The arm's evidence about carriage comes from the published hands and is coded mechanically. What this artifact contributes is a first-hand report of what the two refused cells cost to attempt, which no coding of somebody else's finished page can give.

غزل ۱۳۱ — radif کرد, chime in -ارت

Nine rhyming positions: both hemistichs of the مطلع and the second hemistich of bayts 2–8.

1. Come — heaven's Turk upon the table of the fast his depredation made; the feast's new moon toward the circling of the cup its indication made.

2. The merit of the fast, and of the pilgrimage that is received, he bore who to the dust of love's own tavern his visitation made.

3. Our first and proper station is a corner of the ruin: God give him good who this our habitation made.

4. What is the price of ruby wine? The very jewel of the wit. Come — the profit went to him who that negotiation made.

5. Prayer in the arching of those niche-like brows is kept by him who with the liver's blood his purification made.

6. Alas, the ogling narcissus of the city's shaikh today upon the drinkers of the dregs its denigration made.

7. Look on the Friend's own face, and to your eye be debtor: the eye that has seen service its clear observation made.

8. Hear love's tale out of Hafez, never from the preacher, though in his phrasing he much ornamentation made.

Grades. radif کرد → HELD, 9 rhyming positions of 9. chime → HELD at 9 of 9 (depredation · indication · visitation · habitation · negotiation · purification · denigration · observation · ornamentation). No filler word was bought at any position; the four lexical stretches are named in the log below and none of them is an added referent.

غزل ۴ — radif را, chime in -ا

1. Breeze, out of your kindness, to that graceful gazelle say: it is you that have driven us out to the hill and the waste away.

2. The sugar-seller — long be his life! — how comes it that alway the sugar-chewing parrot he does not once survey?

3. O rose, did the pride of your beauty grant you no leave, no way, one question to the maddened nightingale to pay?

4. By nature and by kindness the discerning are made a prey; with cord and gin they never take the knowing bird away.

5. I know not from what cause the cypress-tall, the black of eye, the moon-faced, no least colour of acquaintance will display.

6. When with the Friend you sit and mete the wine, hold still in mind the lovers who have nothing but the wind to weigh.

7. No fault is to be charged against your beauty, save this, they say: that love and constancy are not the fair face's way.

8. In heaven it were no wonder if, at what Hafez has to say, the song of Venus set the Messiah himself to dance today.

Grades. radif را → UNREACHABLE; the enumeration is D7 below. chime → HELD at 5 of 9 (1a, 1b, 4, 5, 6) and SHORT at 4 of 9 (2 alway; 3 no way; 7 they say; 8 today), each bought with a filler the Persian has not got, each named.

Translator's log

Frozen 2026-08-29 before the design of E-20260829-radif-hands was written and before Leaf's, Bell's or Payne's page for either of these two poems was opened. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims.

D1 — which poems, and why they were not chosen by reading them. Both were taken off the mechanical census by a rule stated before either was read: lowest-numbered, 7–8 bayts, one from each unreachable cell. sh131 turned out to be about the end of Ramadan and sh4 a reproach to a beautiful indifferent; neither fact entered the choice. This matters because the hand is testing a rule it wrote, and choosing agreeable material is the obvious way to make such a test come out.

D2 — sh131's radif is a transitive verb and it went straight into English. کرد is "made, did". §7.36.1 says a radif that is a transitive verb is unreachable, because "an English clause ends on an object, a complement or an adverbial" and a transitive verb needs its object after it. That is not what happened. The nine rhyme-words of this ghazal — ghārat, ishārat, ziyārat, 'imārat, tijārat, tahārat, hiqārat, bisārat, 'ibārat — are all Arabic verbal nouns, and each of them is the object of کرد: غارت کرد is not "plundered it" but "made a plundering". The radif and its rhyme are one light-verb compound, and English has the identical construction — made a plundering, a visitation, a purification. The object is already before the verb in Persian and stays before it in English. Nothing had to be inverted, nothing had to be stranded.

D3 — so the axis in §7.36.1 is the wrong axis. The distinction that decided this poem is not transitive against intransitive. It is whether the radif verb's object is the qāfiya itself. When it is, the two halves of the rhyming position are one constituent and the constituent crosses whole. When the radif verb governs an object somewhere else in the line — §7.36's انداخت "cast", where the slot before the verb "holds an auxiliary or an unrhymable subject" — English has to stroke the object out to the front of the line and the shape breaks. Both Sa'di failures §7.32 generalised from were of the second kind. This is a craft observation from one hand on one poem and it is internal-judgment-only; the arm's test of it is the published record, not this log.

D4 — the four lexical stretches in sh131, named. habitation for عمارت (an edifice, not necessarily one lived in); negotiation for تجارت (trade — the word carried the older English sense of trafficking and was taken for it); denigration for حقارت (contempt shown, rather than disparagement spoken); ornamentation for صنعت (rhetorical artifice). Each is a lexical choice inside the referent the Persian names. None is an added referent and none was bought to make a rhyme fit that the sense would not otherwise take — but each was constrained by having to end in -ation, and that constraint is the price of the form, paid four times in nine.

D5 — where sh131 lost something. Bayt 3's whole point is the paradox of خرابات (a ruin; the tavern) against عمارت (a building): the wreck is the thing that was built. English ruin / habitation keeps it, but weakly, because habitation is not the ordinary word for a building and the reader has to work. The alternative that keeps the paradox — "who this our edifice did rear" — loses the radif, which was the one thing the rendering existed to keep. Kept the radif.

D6 — bayt 7's کاردیده. "One who has seen work"; an eye that has been about the world. English has no single word. the eye that has seen service was taken over the practised eye because practised reads as skill and کاردیده is experience.

D7 — sh4's radif را is unreachable, and here is the enumeration. را marks the definite direct object. It stands at all nine rhyming positions and at eight of them the noun before it is an accusative object; at ما را it is the object of داده‌ای. Four options were enumerated before the first English line was written: 1. An English object marker. There is none. English marks the accusative by position and has no word to put in the slot. Nothing to attempt. 2. A repeated preposition — to the gazelle … to us … to the parrot. This works only where را is dative, and it is dative at none of the nine. It would add a relation the Persian has not got, which R55 §1 calls a refusal, not a chime. 3. A repeated vocative particle — O. را is not vocative, and English vocatives precede their noun, so it cannot stand last in any case. 4. A repeated discourse tag — I say, they say, look you. Nine of them would install a speaker the poem has not got and would be a different poem. None is available. The radif is UNREACHABLE, and — this is the part worth having — it is unreachable for a reason that has nothing to do with the verb: there is no English word of any class that does what را does.

D8 — the chime alone cost four fillers in sh4, and that is the honest number. Nine rhymes on one sound, with the sense held, is what Leaf 1898 calls "a serious limitation of vocabulary" (Introduction, p. 7), and the limitation showed. alway (2), no way (3), they say (7) and today (8) are words the Persian has not got and were taken to close the rhyme; under R55 §3 each position is SHORT, not HELD. Two of the nine reuse away and two reuse say in different senses, which Persian rules permit and which Leaf records himself doing; those reuses are recorded here rather than graded down.

D9 — inversion was used once and only once, in sh4 bayt 2: the sugar-chewing parrot he does not once survey. The object precedes the verb so the rhyme can stand last. It costs a register — it is a nineteenth-century line, not a modern one. R55 §5 exists because the hand expected to need this often and needed it once; in sh131 the Persian had already done the inversion.

D10 — what the hand would not do. In sh4 bayt 5 the Persian piles three epithets on one noun — cypress-statured, black-eyed, moon-faced. English can carry all three only by making them a list, which flattens the compounding. They were kept as a list. The alternative, dropping one to buy rhythm, would have removed a referent.