This sure is a hard-to-find book. But i got lucky (twice) with the booksellers in the Bay Area. And i'm so glad. Having seen many translations and renditions of Hafez in English, i totally enjoyed Smith's light-verse, accurate, and correct rhyming translation that is true to the original Persian (my native tongue) line for line.
The book contains about 60 select ghazals (poems) from the complete volume of over 500 translated by Smith. It also has an accurate glossary of important thematic words (wine, wind, cup, etc.) and a fairly detailed description on the life of Hafez, although complete accuracy there is suspect.
Smith manages to imitate the difficult rhyming scheme of ghazal, AABACA, which is so essential to its form and music, and maintain a constant line-length throughout each ghazal, also part of the ghazal's difficult prosody.
The translation is true enough that i sometimes refer to Smith's version to decipher a difficult word or meaning in the original Persian. Although Smith is not a Persian speaker, he worked from H. Wilberforce Clark's painstaking literal translation. Smith adds rhyming, rhythm, music, and fluidity to Clark's, bringing it closer to the original.
I can also recommend Gertrude Bell's fine translation which still remains unsurpassed after nearly a hundred years, although the language and imagery is decidedly 19th cen. If you've had a couple of jugs of wine, or are otherwise high!, Danial Ladinsky's "translations" may lift you a little higher still -- although I for one did not see a smidgen of Hafez in them. Alright, maybe a smidgen.
And there is Haleh Pourafzal and Roger Montgomery's "the spiritual wisdom of hafez" which delves deeper into the teaching and philosophy of hafez (drink and be merry!) and contains fine translations of a few ghazals.
