dick davis review of browne

8/11/2019 Dick Davis Review of Browne

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A Literary History of Persia by Edward G. BrowneThe Divan-i Hafiz by H. Wilberforce-ClarkeModern Persian Prose Literature by Hassan KamshadReview by: Dick DavisSource: Iranian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 585-588

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586

Reviews

ture can usually turn

with more profit to

the volumes by Bausani

and Safa,

or

those edited by Rypka and Yarshater.This is not at all to denigrateBrowne's

achievement,

which was

enormous and, given the

state of Persian

scholarship

during

his

lifetime, extraordinary.Nor is

it to denigrate his

subsequentinflu-

ence: most of the

best Britishwriters on

Persian

literatureof the twentieth

cen-

turywere

Browne's heirs, in

that they were either

trainedby him or by those

he

had

trained.If we see further

han Browne was able

to, it is

largely because we

stand on his

shoulders, and our

insights would not be

remotely

possible without

his

preliminary achievements.

However, we

indubitably do see further:

much

has been

discovered since he

wrote.

Particularlybut not

exclusively on the pre-

Islamic period, he

cheerfully and

openly allowed his

own prejudices for

and

againstcertain

types of poetryto color his

opinions,

and he made some

mistakes

(as who does not?). Further,the nature of writing on literaturehas become

immeasurably

more sophisticated since

Browne's time. It may

well be thought

that

much

of

this

sophistication

is

not

pure gain,

particularly

when

the

writing

degenerates

nto

the

self-regarding

and

incomprehensible,

or

gives itself

over

to

polemics

for

various

political

and social

agendas. Nevertheless our

increased

awareness

of, for example,

the

ways

authorialpersonae are

presented

in

litera-

ture, or of the

natureof literarygenres, or of

the

typologies

of

epic and

romance,

or of

the

ways comparativestudies

can

fruitfully

be

brought

to

bear

on Persian

literaryquestions, can

all at times make Browne's

approach

appeardated,

sim-

plistic,

and

only

minimally

useful.

The reissue contains an introductionby J.T.P. de Bruijn,which says some

very

nice things about

Browne, but

is

actually

ratherhard

put to come

up

with a

reason for

bringing

the

book

before the public's attention

again. Gibbon's

Decline and

Fall

of

the

Roman

Empire

is adducedas

a

work that was

pioneering

in its

field, has been superseded

by subsequent

scholarship,

but

which

is

still

read.This is

not a

very persuasive analogy. Gibbon

is

now

read

largely

for

aes-

thetic

rather than

scholarly

reasons:

he is

one

of

the

most

striking

writers

of

expository prose

in

English.

Browne's

prose

style

is

hardly

a

compelling

rec-

ommendation:

he

writes

very charmingly

at

times,

but

so

did

a

great

many

of

his

contemporaries.

Edwardian

English

belles lettres

is full

of

books

at

least

as

well

and often much better writtenthanA

LiteraryHistory

of

Persia.

A

price

of

$275

seems a bit steep for the occasional wry chuckle at a deftly turnedapercuor

witticism.

True,

the

volumes

are

quite

handsomely produced

and do

look

very

nice

on

the

bookshelf.

But if

how

one's

bookshelf

looks

is

not a

major

concern

the

money

would

perhaps

be

better

spent acquiring

Safa's, Rypka's

and

Yar-

shater's volumes,

and

one

might

still

have some

cash

in

hand

for

a few

good

editions

of Persian

poetry. (Bausani's

wonderfully

argumentative,

diosyncratic,

and

provocative Storia

della letteratura Persiana

[Milan

1960] cannot be

obtained

for

love

or

money,

which is a

scandal:

f a

publisher

wants to do schol-

arship

on

Persian literature

a real

service,

reissuingBausani,

or

commissioning

an

English

translation

of

Bausani,

would

be

of

much

more use than

reissuing

Browne.)

The

reissue of Wilberforce-Clarke's

The Divan-i

Hafiz (1895)

seems

equally problematic,

and

the

introduction

ustifying

its reissue is even less reas-

suring,

as

its

author

candidly

admits

that

he

finds little to admire

n

Wilberforce-

Clarke's work.

Indeed Michael Hillmann's introduction

s

largely

taken

up

with

tracing

the

history

of

the Persian

ghazal prior

to

Hafez,

and when

he comes to

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4/5

Reviews 587

the text in hand the

best he can offer

is readers

.. can

...

expect

a

sense

of

being

transported o a

poetic

world of

experience

not unlike

the

sense

which

Iranianreadersoften describe

as

their

experience

of Hafiz. This

is faint

praise

indeed,

and is

made even more faint

by

the fact that in the

previous

paragraphs

Hillmann

hasjust disassociated himself from

the

particular

sense which

Iranian

readers

often describe as their

experience

of

Hafez in

question,

a

disassociation

with which most other

scholars would

agree.

For

Wilberforce-Clarke,Hafiz's

text is a

labyrinth

of

Sufi

symbolism,

and

virtually

every

mundane

object

that

appears

n

the poems is to be

interpreted

s a

symbol

of

Sufi arcana.This is not

a

view of

Hafiz's

poetry,which now has much

scholarly

credibility.On the other

hand,

the

book is offered as

a

crib for

English

speaking

readers

attempting

to

read and

understandHafiz in

Persian,

and at this level it

does have its

uses,

as

long as the readerignores most of Wilberforce-Clarke'svoluminous and often

quite

batty

notes. To this end a

useful

table,

identifying

the

translated

poems

in

the

editions by Khanlari

and

Qazvini,

is

included. The life of

Hafiz

(by

Wilber-

force-Clarke)which

precedes the

translations contains

some

pretty anecdotes

but is

of

virtually

no

value as a

reliable

source: two

appendices

however,

one

listing the

historical

individuals

mentioned in the

Divan, and the

other

the fig-

ures of

speech

used

by

Hafiz

(with

examples)

are

helpful. Consulted with cau-

tion,

then,

this book can

be

of

real

assistance to someone

who has

acquired

a fair

amount of

Persian but not

enough

to read

the

poems

unaided.

However, read

by

someone

who has little or

no

knowledge of Persian

(and this seems

its

more

likely

audience)

it can

only

help

to

perpetuate

he

image of Hafiz as

yet another

writer of

inspirational,

sentimental,

goofy-Sufi

verse, who

had

not a

sensible

thought

in

his

quaintly

mystic

mind. On balance this

seems a

disservice-to

Hafez,

to Persian

culture,

and to

poetry.

After

considering

two

reprints

of

such dubious

value

it is a

pleasure

to turn

to one that can

be

greeted

with more or

less

unequivocal

enthusiasm,and

this is

Hassan

Kamshad's

Modern

Persian

Prose

Literature.

Now

almost forty

years

old,

the

book's

chosen areas of

emphasis,

and

its

judgments,

have in

general

held up

remarkably well.

Recent

scholars

of

Persian

have

perhaps

begun

to

develop

a more

nuanced

history

of Persian

prose than that

which lies

behind

Kamshad's

book

(which

might

be

crudely

paraphrased s

early

prose was sim-

ple and that was good, recent prose is simple and that is good: everything in

between was

ornate and

that was

bad ).

The

almost

hagiographic

portrait

of

Hedayat

with

which the book

ends also

seems to need a

little

more

shadingthan

Kamshad was

prepared

to

offer. For

example,

Hedayat's

unabashedly

racist

view of

Arab civilization

seems

hardly to

bother

Kamshad

at

all, and

this is

more than

slightly

embarrassing or a

contemporary

eader;an

indication of

how

our

sensitivities

on such

mattershave

shifted

since he

was

writing,

and

certainly

since

Hedayathimself was

writing.

Also, the

comparatively ittle

space

given

to

Al-e

Ahmad is at

first

sight

surprising,

given his

immense

posthumous

reputa-

tion and

influence,

and

thus the

way he looms so

large

for

us, but of course

there

was no

way

that

Kamshad

could

have foreseen

this. All

cavils aside,

the

book's

general thesis, the clarity and detail of its narrative, the persuasiveness of its

arguments,

ts

very welcome lack of

jargon,

and

its

generallyfair and

perspica-

cious

assessment of

well-knownfigures

such as

Dehkhoda,

Jamalzadeh,

Hejazi,

Afghani

and

Alavi,

as well as

its

advocacy of now

lesser-known

figures like

the

historical

novelists of the

early partof

the

twentieth

century,

together

make it

the

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