V.S. Solov’ev’s pseudo-Ḥāfeẓ and the influence of the translation tradition of G.F. Daumer and A.A. Fet

The essay analyses the Russian translations of Ḥāfeẓ by V.S. Solov’ev in 1885 (24 poems in the first journal edition, reduced to 11 in all subsequent volume editions). The Russian philosopher’s interest in the Persian poet is part of European, and specifically German, Orientalism, which became popular since the publication of J.W. Goethe’s “West-Eastern Divan” (1819). This interest has a direct connection with the translations of Hafiz published by A.A. Fet in 1860. As has been shown, Fet translated Ḥāfeẓ not directly, but through the poetic imitations of him by the German poet G.F. Daumer (“Hafis. Eine Sammlung persischer Gedichte”, 1846; in particular, he used the second edition of these poems, published in 1856). Solov’ev’s lyrics have hitherto been thought to be translations of Hafezian imitations by the German poet F. Bodenstädt (1877). The essay shows how actually Solov’ev used the same imitations by Daumer as Fet, probably taking them from the same volume used by the older poet. This enables to relate the two Hafezian poetic cycles more directly and to draw some general considerations on the different intentions that drove the two poets in translating the Persian mystic: for both, Ḥāfeẓ was functional in conveying their own artistic form and philosophical meaning, although each of them had a different understanding of him. The analysis shows that Solov’ev was much closer to Ḥāfeẓ than Fet. In the Persian poet Fet saw a singer of beauty and regarded the aesthetic phenomenon as self-valuable; for Solov’ev, beauty was a conduit of the divine, as it was for Ḥāfeẓ. In his poems, the young beautiful cupbearers (replaced in Daumer by the beloved woman) are always the personification of God. It was these themes (the power of love; its dual nature, both mystical and earthly; the immanence of the divine in the world) that Solov’ev would develop in the following years and would be reflected in a series of articles key to understanding his worldview and which became the object of attention of Symbolist poets: “Beauty in Nature” (1889), “The General Meaning of Art” (1890), “The Meaning of Love” (1892), “The Life Drama of Plato” (1898), and others.