ABSTRACT
Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz's principal work is the Divan, a collection of 200 short poems in alphabetical order on conventional subjects such as wine, flowers, love and nightingales. Most of them are sensuous, even erotic, and this led to the belief that they were mystical allegories, a 'breeze' being that which brings sweet odours or messages from God, an 'amorous glance' the act of devotion when the eye glances upward to God, the True Beloved. His Divan mainly concerns his relationship with the actress Marianne von Willemer in 1814-15; indeed several of the poems in the section called Buch Suleika were written by her. The rhythmic ostinato is an exaggerated form of the trochee metre running through the poem. But it could also be said to reflect the sly, darting glances the woman is directing at the man. Perhaps this is why Franz Schubert asks the pianist to play it with rubato.
