Forging a Rhetoric of Poetic Untranslatability: The Case of Shafi‘ī-Kadkani and His Hafiz

Episodic approaches to literary history may point in the direction of general trends in contemporary Persianate culture by examining the ideological presuppositions of dominant poetic discourses; however, they necessarily reduce the aesthetic and social complexity of literary currents. They further occlude a vigorous consideration of figures whose poetic vision does not directly speak to the common trends posited by episodic accounts. Poets such as Bizhan Jalâli (d. 1999) have been rendered standalone figures whose visions of poetic modernism are overlooked or understood only in the context of their “non-adherence” to the dominant literary discourse of their time. Using Translation Studies as an analytical lens, I unpack some of the unique challenges that arise while translating the poetry of Bizhan Jalâli into English, primarily how to render visibility to form in a target language wherein Free Verse is seen as established and normative. I propose certain measures to accommodate Jalâli’s modernist poetics and make his poetic form shine through in English. I will conclude that translating Jalali into Arabic would require different accommodations that do not necessarily involve drawing attention to its distinct form. Such framework is a step towards fully situating the poet in the contemporary Persianate literary culture.