Creative Project #4
I found the ghazals of Háfiz to be particularly inspiring, and I immediately knew I wanted to do a creative interpretation of one of them. Through our discussions in section and that week’s readings, I was struck by the multiple layers of meaning in the ghazal verses, and I thought it would be especially challenging to attempt to interpret a ghazal visually. I therefore settled on doing a movie interpretation of one of Háfiz’s ghazals.
After reading a number of the ones in The Green Sea of Heaven, I picked Ghazal 19, because I found the imagery and the words to be uniquely inspiring. By juxtaposing images with verses, I had hoped to highlight the insufficiency of one image to capture the meanings of the ghazal. For me, when reading the ghazals of Háfiz, what I found to be truly enlightening was reading each ghazal once and picturing the literal images in my mind, and then reading it again and focusing on the specific words and the depth of their meaning. With particular verses where Gray had included notes in the back of The Green Sea of Heaven, I selected images that I thought hinted at the greater depth of meaning. For example, in the third bayt, when Háfiz says “your eyelash must pierce pearl and ruby,” Gray notes that the pearls and rubies are the tears and heart-blood that flow from the eyes of the lover. Therefore, I found an image that had a red tear to allude to this deeper meaning. Also, in the fifth bayt, the rosegarden of Iram alludes to King Shaddad’s legendary garden built to duplicate Paradise, which was then later destroyed by a storm and this was interpreted as repercussions for hubris. I used an image of a flooded rose garden to probe the viewer either recognize the allusion if they were familiar with it, or to wonder about the significance of Iram’s flooded garden. I ran into the problem that I couldn’t do this for all of the verses and their deeper significance. However, I hope that the juxtaposition makes the viewer question the verses and their interpretations. My movie hopefully will inspire viewers to realize the multiple layers of analysis that ghazals require.
You can watch my movie here. Enjoy!