10. Hafez and Persian Poetry in Song (Part Two)

Presented in association with TORCH, with support from the Humanities Cultural Programme, and the Bodleian Libraries

In the second of today’s illustrated talks about Hafez, we jump ahead several centuries and explore the many appearances of Hafez’s poetry, in translation, in the European song tradition. The most famous instance of this is, arguably, through Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan: this collection of lyrical poetry was inspired by Hafez and set to music by countless composers. But Hafez had fascinated Europeans of all nationalities for several centuries before Goethe, and continued to inspire composers thereafter. Russian composers set his poetry extensively, as did the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski in the twentieth century, and it continues to be an inspiration today. The conversation comes back to a discussion of the continuing importance of Hafez in contemporary Iran. The conversation will be led by Philip Ross Bullock, Professor of Russian Literature and Music at Wadham College, with Edmund Herzig, Professorial Fellow in Iranian Studies at Wadham College (further speaker TBC).