Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--Universität Zürich, 2000. / Bibliogr. p. 532-567. Résumé en anglais.

The choral music of Abbie Betinis is being widely performed and commissioned by prominent high school, university, and civic choruses. This study examines From Behind the Caravan: Songs of Hâfez, a five-movement work by Betinis for women’s chorus, vielle, oud, and Persian percussion. Four ghazals by Hâfez of Shiraz, a fourteenth century Sufi poet, are used as the text for Betinis’s Caravan. When considering a performance of this work, a conductor must understand proper treatment of the text, available translation options, Hâfez’s vast world of imagery, vocal demands inherent to the work, alternate instrumentations available and the benefits of each, how to approach improvisatory passages, how to engage heterophonic elements, and how to prepare a Western choir and audience with very little to no understanding of the philosophies of Sufism that heavily influence the work. This study addresses the body of practical knowledge gained after a year of examining, researching, teaching, and performing this work.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan [West-Eastern Divan], which emerged from the author’s interest in love poems of the fourteenth-century classical Persian poet Hafez, was the inspiration for this thesis. The overwhelmingly negative appraisal of the first translation of Hafez’s entire Divan into German by Joseph Freiherr von Hammer Purgstall, which was used by Goethe in the composition of his own poems, sparked its research questions: How can the errors in Joseph von Hammer Purgstall’s translation of Hafez’s Divan be explained, and how did these inconsistencies affect Goethe’s understanding of Hafez’s poems? Despite contention about the accuracy of Hammer’s version of Hafez, the translation inspired Goethe, who, feeling so much affinity for Hafez as to call him his ‘twin brother’, soon began to write poetry imitating Hafez’s style in the process of cultivating his growing fascination for this classical Persian love poetry. The thesis draws connections between the Hafezian elements of the original Divan and their reproduction in Goethe’s cycle of poems by analyzing a selection of poems from Hammer’s translation, considering Hammer’s role as mediator, as well as comparing with these a selection of Hafez-inspired poems from Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan. To this end, chapter one sets Hafez into the historical and artistic context of Persian poetry and introduces the formal aspects of Hafez’s primary lyrical form, the ghazal. In this it focuses especially on technical aspects of rhyme and complicating elements such as the formal consideration of unity and the contextual consideration of mystical allusions. Further, this chapter familiarizes the reader with essential features of the linguistic and rhetorical peculiarities and traditions of the Persian language, as well as the dramatis personae of Hafez’s Divan. The analysis of Hammer’s translations in the second chapter demonstrates both his successful renderings as well as his occasional deviations from the original, while addressing the difficulties he faced in transferring the linguistic peculiarities of the original to the target language. It also reviews the extent to which Hafez’s philosophy remained intact in his version. The third chapter focuses on the poems of Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan in light of both Hammer’s translation and Hafez’s original. Taking about thirty poems into account, this chapter shows that Goethe’s mastery in composing Hafez-inspired poems gives the reading audience an understanding of the poetry of that classical Persian figure without needing to read or understand the original text and it argues that the poems of his West-östlicher Divan enliven Hafezian literary patterns in the minds of readers who know the Persian poet and make them understandable for the uninitiated westerner. The analysis further elucidates how Goethe overcame the weaknesses in Hammer’s version to reconstruct the fundamentals of Hafez’s message.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan [West-Eastern Divan], which emerged from the author’s interest in love poems of the fourteenth-century classical Persian poet Hafez, was the inspiration for this thesis. The overwhelmingly negative appraisal of the first translation of Hafez’s entire Divan into German by Joseph Freiherr von Hammer Purgstall, which was used by Goethe in the composition of his own poems, sparked its research questions: How can the errors in Joseph von Hammer Purgstall’s translation of Hafez’s Divan be explained, and how did these inconsistencies affect Goethe’s understanding of Hafez’s poems? Despite contention about the accuracy of Hammer’s version of Hafez, the translation inspired Goethe, who, feeling so much affinity for Hafez as to call him his ‘twin brother’, soon began to write poetry imitating Hafez’s style in the process of cultivating his growing fascination for this classical Persian love poetry. The thesis draws connections between the Hafezian elements of the original Divan and their reproduction in Goethe’s cycle of poems by analyzing a selection of poems from Hammer’s translation, considering Hammer’s role as mediator, as well as comparing with these a selection of Hafez-inspired poems from Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan. To this end, chapter one sets Hafez into the historical and artistic context of Persian poetry and introduces the formal aspects of Hafez’s primary lyrical form, the ghazal. In this it focuses especially on technical aspects of rhyme and complicating elements such as the formal consideration of unity and the contextual consideration of mystical allusions. Further, this chapter familiarizes the reader with essential features of the linguistic and rhetorical peculiarities and traditions of the Persian language, as well as the dramatis personae of Hafez’s Divan. The analysis of Hammer’s translations in the second chapter demonstrates both his successful renderings as well as his occasional deviations from the original, while addressing the difficulties he faced in transferring the linguistic peculiarities of the original to the target language. It also reviews the extent to which Hafez’s philosophy remained intact in his version. The third chapter focuses on the poems of Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan in light of both Hammer’s translation and Hafez’s original. Taking about thirty poems into account, this chapter shows that Goethe’s mastery in composing Hafez-inspired poems gives the reading audience an understanding of the poetry of that classical Persian figure without needing to read or understand the original text and it argues that the poems of his West-östlicher Divan enliven Hafezian literary patterns in the minds of readers who know the Persian poet and make them understandable for the uninitiated westerner. The analysis further elucidates how Goethe overcame the weaknesses in Hammer’s version to reconstruct the fundamentals of Hafez’s message.

The correction, authentication, validation and identification of the original texts in Hafez’s poetry among 16 or so old versions of his Divan has been a challenge for scholars. The semantic analysis of poetry with modern Digital Humanities techniques is also challenging. Analyzing latent semantics is more challenging in poetry than in prose for evident reasons, such as conciseness, imaginary and metaphorical constructions. Hafez’s poetry is, on the one hand, cryptic and complex because of his era’s restricting social properties and censorship impediments, and on the other hand, sophisticated because of his encapsulation of high-calibre world-views, mystical and philosophical attributes, artistically knitted within majestic decorations. Our research is strongly influenced by and is a continuation of, Mahmoud Houman’s instrumental and essential chronological classification of ghazals by Hafez. Houman’s chronological classification method (Houman, 1938), which we have adopted here, provides guidance to choose the correct version of Hafez’s poem among multiple manuscripts. Houman’s semantic analysis of Hafez’s poetry is unique in that the central concept of his classification is based on intelligent scrutiny of meanings, careful observation the evolutionary psychology of Hafez through his remarkable body of work. Houman’s analysis has provided the annotated data for the classification algorithms we will develop to classify the poems. We pursue to understand Hafez through the Houman’s perspective. In addition, we asked a contemporary expert to annotate Hafez ghazals (Raad, 2019). The rationale behind our research is also to satisfy the need for more efficient means of scholarly research, and to bring literature and computer science together as much as possible. Our research will support semantic analysis, and help with the design and development of tools for poetry research. We have developed a digital corpus of Hafez’s ghazals and applied proper word forms and punctuation. We digitized and extended chronological criteria to guide the correction and validation of Hafez’s poetry. To our knowledge, no automatic chronological classification has been conducted for Hafez poetry. Other than the meticulous preparation of our bilingual Hafez corpus for computational use, the innovative aspect of our classification research is two-fold. The first objective of our work is to develop semantic features to better train automatic classifiers for annotated poems and to apply the classifiers to unannotated poems, which is to classify the rest of the poems by applying machine learning (ML) methodology. The second task is to extract semantic information and properties to help design a visualization scheme to assist with providing a link between the prediction’s rationale and Houman’s perception of Hafez’s chronological properties of Hafez’s poetry. We identified and used effective Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques such as classification, word-embedding features, and visualization to facilitate and automate semantic analysis of Hafez’s poetry. We defined and applied rigorous and repeatable procedures that can potentially be applied to other kinds of poetry. We showed that the chronological segments identified automatically were coherent. We presented and compared two independent chronological labellings of Hafez’s ghazals in digital form, pro- duced their ontologies and explained the inter-annotator-agreement and distributional semantic properties using relevant NLP techniques to help guide future corrections, authentication, and interpretation of Hafez’s poetry. Chronological labelling of the whole corpus not only helps better understand Hafez’s poetry, but it is a rigorous guide to better recognition of the correct versions of Hafez’s poems among multiple manuscripts. Such a small volume of complex poetic text required careful selection when choosing and developing appropriate ML techniques for the task. Through many classification and clustering experiments, we have achieved state-of-the-art prediction of chronological poems, trained and evaluated against our hand-made Hafez corpus. Our selected classification algorithm was a Support Vector Machine (SVM), trained with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)-based similarity features. We used clustering to produce an alternative perspective to classification. For our visualization methodology, we used the LDA features but also passed the results to a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) module to reduce the number of dimensions to two, thereby enabling graphical presentations. We believe that applying this method to poetry classifications, and showing the topic relations between poems in the same classes, will help us better understand the interrelated topics within the poems. Many of our methods can potentially be used in similar cases in which the intention is to semantically classify poetry.

Over the years the Madrid Peace Conference has been relegated to paragraphs within history books and the importance of the conference seems to have been all but forgotten. While this may be due to the perceived failure of the talks to produce tangible peace negotiations, what one must take into consideration is the fact that neither the Oslo Accords nor the more recent “Road Map” to peace would have been possible if it were not for that first steps taken in Madrid. One must also not forget the diplomacy and countless man hours that were put forth with tireless effort to achieve the goal of a peace conference that would be attended by all desired participants. When studying the Madrid Conference, one must look not only at the conference itself and the rhetoric conveyed by the delegates but also at their personalities and relationships with each other.

Cette mémoire vise à analyser les processus de changement et de continuité dans la politique étrangère syrienne. En 2000, Bachar el-Assad a accédé au pouvoir après la mort d’Hafez el-Assad, en effectuant des réformes internes en matière du appareil économique et politique. Les changements qui ont eu lieu ont été limitées en regard l'aspect de la concentration du pouvoir, mais il y avait l'ouverture aux capitaux étrangers et la nomination de nouveaux technocrates qui ont étudié à l'étranger, ce qui conduit à une plus grande flexibilité en relation a la puissance militaire et politique très forte qui a duré pendant le gouvernement d'Hafez el-Assad. De plus, nous essayons de démontrer que le nouveau contexte international résultant des attentats du 11 septembre (2001) et le changement dans la géopolitique régionale avec l'invasion et l'occupation de l'Irak (2003) ont catalysé avec la possession de Bachar el-Assad une réorientation de politique étrangère, bien qu'en maintenant les principes politiques d'Hafez. C'est l'objectif de cette mémoire, par conséquent, d'examiner comment Bachar a travaillé avec de nouveaux obstacles imposés à la Syrie par l'intervention américaine au Moyen-Orient, aussi bien que l'influence politique syrienne dans les pays voisins. / Esta dissertação propõe analisar os processos de mudança e continuidade na política externa síria. Em 2000, Bashar al-Assad ascende ao poder, após a morte de Hafez al-Assad, realizando reformas internas no que concerne ao aparato econômico e político. As mudanças ocorridas foram limitadas quanto ao aspecto da concentração de poder, porém houve abertura ao capital externo e a nomeação de novos tecnocratas com educação obtida no exterior, o que acarretou uma maior flexibilização em relação ao forte poder político militar que perdurou durante o governo de Hafez al-Assad. Ademais, procura-se demonstrar que o novo contexto internacional resultado dos ataques de 11 de setembro (2001) e a alteração da geopolítica regional com a invasão e a ocupação do Iraque (2003) catalisou junto à posse de Bashar al-Assad uma reorientação da política externa, apesar de manter os princípios políticos de Hafez. É do escopo desta dissertação, portanto, analisar como Bashar lidou com os novos obstáculos impostos à Síria pela intervenção norte-americana no Oriente Médio, assim como, a influência política síria nos países vizinhos. / This dissertation aims to analyze the processes of change and continuity in Syrian foreign policy. In 2000, Bashar al-Assad ascends to the Syrian’s power after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad, with his promises of carrying out new internal reforms concerning the economic and political apparatus. The changes he had so far were limited, as the aspect of his concentration power, but there was openness to foreign capital and the appointment of new technocrats, with education obtained abroad leading to greater flexibility in relation to the strong military political power that lasted for the government Hafez al-Assad. In addition, the research demonstrated the new international context result from the 11 September (2001), and the change in regional geopolitics with the invasion and occupation of Iraq attacks (2003), catalyzed by the rise of Bashar al-Assad a reorientation of foreign policy while maintaining the political principles of Hafez. The scope of this dissertation also examine how Bashar dealt with new obstacles to Syria imposed by US intervention in the Middle East, as well the influence of Syria politics in the neighboring countries.

Cette mémoire vise à analyser les processus de changement et de continuité dans la politique étrangère syrienne. En 2000, Bachar el-Assad a accédé au pouvoir après la mort d’Hafez el-Assad, en effectuant des réformes internes en matière du appareil économique et politique. Les changements qui ont eu lieu ont été limitées en regard l'aspect de la concentration du pouvoir, mais il y avait l'ouverture aux capitaux étrangers et la nomination de nouveaux technocrates qui ont étudié à l'étranger, ce qui conduit à une plus grande flexibilité en relation a la puissance militaire et politique très forte qui a duré pendant le gouvernement d'Hafez el-Assad. De plus, nous essayons de démontrer que le nouveau contexte international résultant des attentats du 11 septembre (2001) et le changement dans la géopolitique régionale avec l'invasion et l'occupation de l'Irak (2003) ont catalysé avec la possession de Bachar el-Assad une réorientation de politique étrangère, bien qu'en maintenant les principes politiques d'Hafez. C'est l'objectif de cette mémoire, par conséquent, d'examiner comment Bachar a travaillé avec de nouveaux obstacles imposés à la Syrie par l'intervention américaine au Moyen-Orient, aussi bien que l'influence politique syrienne dans les pays voisins. / Esta dissertação propõe analisar os processos de mudança e continuidade na política externa síria. Em 2000, Bashar al-Assad ascende ao poder, após a morte de Hafez al-Assad, realizando reformas internas no que concerne ao aparato econômico e político. As mudanças ocorridas foram limitadas quanto ao aspecto da concentração de poder, porém houve abertura ao capital externo e a nomeação de novos tecnocratas com educação obtida no exterior, o que acarretou uma maior flexibilização em relação ao forte poder político militar que perdurou durante o governo de Hafez al-Assad. Ademais, procura-se demonstrar que o novo contexto internacional resultado dos ataques de 11 de setembro (2001) e a alteração da geopolítica regional com a invasão e a ocupação do Iraque (2003) catalisou junto à posse de Bashar al-Assad uma reorientação da política externa, apesar de manter os princípios políticos de Hafez. É do escopo desta dissertação, portanto, analisar como Bashar lidou com os novos obstáculos impostos à Síria pela intervenção norte-americana no Oriente Médio, assim como, a influência política síria nos países vizinhos. / This dissertation aims to analyze the processes of change and continuity in Syrian foreign policy. In 2000, Bashar al-Assad ascends to the Syrian’s power after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad, with his promises of carrying out new internal reforms concerning the economic and political apparatus. The changes he had so far were limited, as the aspect of his concentration power, but there was openness to foreign capital and the appointment of new technocrats, with education obtained abroad leading to greater flexibility in relation to the strong military political power that lasted for the government Hafez al-Assad. In addition, the research demonstrated the new international context result from the 11 September (2001), and the change in regional geopolitics with the invasion and occupation of Iraq attacks (2003), catalyzed by the rise of Bashar al-Assad a reorientation of foreign policy while maintaining the political principles of Hafez. The scope of this dissertation also examine how Bashar dealt with new obstacles to Syria imposed by US intervention in the Middle East, as well the influence of Syria politics in the neighboring countries.

Cette mémoire vise à analyser les processus de changement et de continuité dans la politique étrangère syrienne. En 2000, Bachar el-Assad a accédé au pouvoir après la mort d’Hafez el-Assad, en effectuant des réformes internes en matière du appareil économique et politique. Les changements qui ont eu lieu ont été limitées en regard l'aspect de la concentration du pouvoir, mais il y avait l'ouverture aux capitaux étrangers et la nomination de nouveaux technocrates qui ont étudié à l'étranger, ce qui conduit à une plus grande flexibilité en relation a la puissance militaire et politique très forte qui a duré pendant le gouvernement d'Hafez el-Assad. De plus, nous essayons de démontrer que le nouveau contexte international résultant des attentats du 11 septembre (2001) et le changement dans la géopolitique régionale avec l'invasion et l'occupation de l'Irak (2003) ont catalysé avec la possession de Bachar el-Assad une réorientation de politique étrangère, bien qu'en maintenant les principes politiques d'Hafez. C'est l'objectif de cette mémoire, par conséquent, d'examiner comment Bachar a travaillé avec de nouveaux obstacles imposés à la Syrie par l'intervention américaine au Moyen-Orient, aussi bien que l'influence politique syrienne dans les pays voisins. / Esta dissertação propõe analisar os processos de mudança e continuidade na política externa síria. Em 2000, Bashar al-Assad ascende ao poder, após a morte de Hafez al-Assad, realizando reformas internas no que concerne ao aparato econômico e político. As mudanças ocorridas foram limitadas quanto ao aspecto da concentração de poder, porém houve abertura ao capital externo e a nomeação de novos tecnocratas com educação obtida no exterior, o que acarretou uma maior flexibilização em relação ao forte poder político militar que perdurou durante o governo de Hafez al-Assad. Ademais, procura-se demonstrar que o novo contexto internacional resultado dos ataques de 11 de setembro (2001) e a alteração da geopolítica regional com a invasão e a ocupação do Iraque (2003) catalisou junto à posse de Bashar al-Assad uma reorientação da política externa, apesar de manter os princípios políticos de Hafez. É do escopo desta dissertação, portanto, analisar como Bashar lidou com os novos obstáculos impostos à Síria pela intervenção norte-americana no Oriente Médio, assim como, a influência política síria nos países vizinhos. / This dissertation aims to analyze the processes of change and continuity in Syrian foreign policy. In 2000, Bashar al-Assad ascends to the Syrian’s power after the death of his father Hafez al-Assad, with his promises of carrying out new internal reforms concerning the economic and political apparatus. The changes he had so far were limited, as the aspect of his concentration power, but there was openness to foreign capital and the appointment of new technocrats, with education obtained abroad leading to greater flexibility in relation to the strong military political power that lasted for the government Hafez al-Assad. In addition, the research demonstrated the new international context result from the 11 September (2001), and the change in regional geopolitics with the invasion and occupation of Iraq attacks (2003), catalyzed by the rise of Bashar al-Assad a reorientation of foreign policy while maintaining the political principles of Hafez. The scope of this dissertation also examine how Bashar dealt with new obstacles to Syria imposed by US intervention in the Middle East, as well the influence of Syria politics in the neighboring countries.

[pt] No presente trabalho, faço traduções comentadas de dez gazéis do poeta persa do século XIV Hafiz de Xiraz. São traduções diretas do persa para o português, levando em consideração os elementos formais e temáticos do gazel – um tipo de poema lírico estruturado em dísticos. No que tange a forma, buscou-se adaptar os elementos formais – entre os quais se pode destacar a monorrima e os versos longos – tomando emprestando recursos da poesia espanhola. Em termos temáticos, as traduções consideraram as convenções tradicionais da poesia lírica amorosa do gazel, bem como a influência do sufismo, corrente mística do Islã. Considera-se que um elemento central da poética hafiziana é o jogo entre significados profanos e místicos, gerando indefinição e questionamento no leitor. Os gazéis que foram selecionados não seguem necessariamente uma linha em comum, mas são poemas icônicos de seu divã, frequentemente traduzidos. / [en] This thesis presents annotated translations of ten ghazals by the 14th-century Persian poet Hafez of Shiraz. These are direct translations from Persian into Portuguese, considering the formal and thematic elements of the ghazal – a genre of poem structured in couplets. In terms of form, my translation tries to adapt the formal elements of the ghazal – mainly its monorhyme and long lines. When it comes to themes, the translations take into consideration the traditional conventions of the amorous lyric ghazal, as well as the influence of Sufism – usually defined as Islamic mysticism. I see the interplay between profane and mystic meanings as a central aspect of Hafezian poetics, generating uncertainty in the reader. The ghazals that have been selected for translation do not necessarily follow a common thread, but are all iconic, oft translated, poems from his divan.