In the Alley of the Friend

Book excerpt: The celebrated and beloved fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez continues to play an essential role in the lives of Iranians today. For centuries, scholars have studied his work, exploringboth his life and his deeply moving poetry of love, spirituality, and protest. Yet, Shahrokh Meskoob is one of the first scholars to take an innovative approach to Hafez’s poetry. Meskoob goes beyond a linguistic and rhetorical analysis of Hafez’s poetry in the Divan to access the interior thoughts of the poet and summon his spirit in the process of understanding Hafez’s mysticism.