Can You Feel the Love Tonight? Really?Because I Can’t

Ode 44 by Hafez has very little to do with love for a woman. The poem is very misleading by its use of language and its very specific descriptors of a lustful woman, but I find that the love is not so much for the woman but for primal desire.

Were this poem a sonnet, I would employ the use of the term volta because there very much is a turn, and a major turn in the subjectivity of the poem. This poem is about love, to be sure, but also about drinking, indulgence, and penance and the love or need for all the above. This begs the question whether the love for the woman in the beginning of the poem is really an implied metaphor for the love of sin?

The more this poem is read, truly I must ask, where is the love for this woman? In fact, where is the love for the man? If I were to look at the line, “Narcissus- eyes all shining for the fray” (l. 4) and draw inspiration from the Greek Narcissus, then this woman would have disdain for the man. It is very apparent that she is beautiful, apparent that she is in the act of lovemaking, but this does not mean it has to be with love. She is dressed to be sexy as stated by her shift or chemise. She is half-naked, sensual, but then she pours the narrator wine. The poem then proceeds to equate wine and love with each other as starting someone is mean spirited to refuse, “…wine poured out by such a girl” (l. 15).  One who does this is considered a double traitor, someone who would turn down these temptations. Therefore, love is a misleading metonymy here as it is generally understood to be romantic for another, but in this case it is not. It is a love for sex, beautiful women, and drinking alcohol.

The alcohol here is specifically stated to be not for the puritan, but for us. This us is for those indulging in this loose behavior, but more specifically, us is implied as the drunkard. But these actions are understood as a special privilege. I would say it is paradoxical to even consider someone as doomed but forgiven, but the actions are just that stated by, line 21, “Foredoomed to drink and foreordained forgiven”. This is to say that the drunkard is doomed to drink, but is also to be forgiven.

This idea of forgiveness is amplified by the final stanza. The word penitence is to show regret or sorrow. Penitence here is considered a very difficult promise to keep considering the distraction of, “…wine and women brimming o’er with laughter” (l. 25). This again brings forth my argument that there is no real love with the woman in this poem and that this is not a romantic poem about two individuals. This is a poem about the love for sex and drinking, or in other words, sinful activities that should illicit a feeling of penitence. Even the similes used in the poem imply sexual desire rather than romantic love. “Warm as a dewy rose” (l. 6) and “O knotted locks, filled like a flower with scent” (l. 27) are sensual lines. These lines evoke sight, smell, touch, not unforeseen in love, but given the context of the poem, these senses are used to tempt. The last line specifically calls towards the “knotted locks” (referring to a woman’s hair) have ravished this poor man who feels regret and sorrow. Though the narrator shows guilt, he is still not immune to temptation. Therefore, I feel as though it is safe to say that this poem is not about the love of two people, but the love for being non-abstemious with drink and to be morally loose.

—Joseph Rojas

(Side note for my professor and TA: No, the nationality of the poet does not compromise my interpretation. I really do not find that relevant at all. Surely it may provide reasons for use of content, but overall the message to me is quite clear, stated extensively above, and does not require other information. The source material was sufficient. Did not want to add this but I want full credit for answering the whole question. Give me my points!)