In the Alley of the Friend ― On the Poetry of Hafez

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.

Shahrokh Meskoob (1924–2005) was a translator, writer, scholar, and one of the most influential public intellectuals in Iran. He published translations of Sophocles’s Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

M. R. Ghanoonparvar is professor emeritus of Persian and comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin.