“Shoring Ghazals Against the Ruins”: A Comparative Modernist Reading of Eliot in Hafez

Abstract

Often revered as the pinnacle of classical Persian lyric poetry, Hafez Shirazi is traditionally viewed as a quintessential classical poet whose sonnets embody the timeless elegance of Sufi mysticism, romantic longing, and rhetorical mastery rooted in medieval Islamic literary traditions. However, conventional interpretations often emphasise his adherence to tradition, thereby underestimating certain proto-modernist features in his oeuvre, such as deliberate ambiguity, structural fragmentation, ironic detachment, heightened subjectivity, and the destabilisation of truths and normative structures. Informed by T. S. Eliot’s notions of “Objective Correlative” and “Mythical Method,” the present study comparatively examines selected “ghazals” from Hafez’s corpus against emblematic poems from Eliot’s canon, such as The Waste Land and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” through close textual and thematic analysis, focusing on selections rich in semantic ambiguity, interpretive openness, and structural rupture. This study aims to address three central issues: the elements in Hafez’s poetry that correspond to Eliot’s poetic strategies for evoking emotional states; Hafez’s pioneering elements that echo modernist disruptions in Eliot’s fragmented narratives and ironic voices; and the ways in which Hafez mediates between classical Persian conventions and modernist sensibility. The analysis also incorporates comparative scholarship on “negative capability” and “rhythmic unity” to strengthen the cross-cultural argument and addresses potential charges of anachronism by demonstrating formal and affective convergences. This research frames Hafez as a harbinger of modernism, concluding that his poetry emerges as proto-modernist, where symbols and situations systematically evoke complex emotions, subverting classical norms and fostering fragmentation. This study reveals that while rooted in 14th-century Iran, Hafez anticipates modernism’s sensory precision, thus underscoring his enduring significance in linking Eastern lyrical traditions with Western modernist innovations and inviting broader explorations of cross-cultural poetic resonances.