 I just had a cursory look at some of John Houghton's poems and the poem that you translated as her anger, begrudging, sort of, you know, unhappiness towards her beloved that he does not acknowledge this bond that they have. And it really, it reminded me immediately of Sadie's poem that starts with manna don estama zaval ke to bimeh robafoi ah no vastan a zon beheh ke bebandi unafoi. And I find it just as hot-wrenching perhaps from him. And there are a lot of her, there is always a wink and a nod as you say to the predecessors, the anxiety of influence to borrow a phrase. But there is a lot of half-hears. And I also want to, towards the end, when you mentioned about the ambiguity of gender, if we believe that Masa, Tia and Ganga, these poems are her own, then there is a lot of gender-specific sort of, you know, the anatomy makes it clear. But anyways, enough of me. I'll have another thing, but I'll bring it to the modern period. I shouldn't, sir. I'll respond very briefly. I would, my response, of course I agree, I agree with what Narges has just said. I should have said, as you can tell, I did this talk from notes. Johan Khartun has been in my head so much recently because I've just published some translations of her that I thought I am not gonna write out another lecture on Johan Khartun. She's in my head, I'm gonna do it from notes. I should have mentioned this. Johan Khartun, I said that she echoes half-hears, which she does, she also echoes haju a couple of times. But she actually says, she says in one of her poems that her model is sadi. And she echoes sadi more than anybody else. And in fact, if we can, although she echoes half-hears and haju, but half-hears more than haju, although she echoes them, her writing is very different from theirs. Khartun, let's stick with half-hears. Half-hears is writing is famously dense. It's every rift loaded with oars, Keith says. There's, every phrase can be parsed in different ways. Half-hears is always trying to say two or three things at the same time, or saying two or three things at the same time. Johan Khartun says one thing at a time. Her poetry is very clear. It's very elegant. It tries for a kind of elegant simplicity. It tries for, in fact, what sadi was famous for, which was Sakle Montana, this difficult simplicity, this simplicity which is almost impossible, which seems so easy, but it's almost impossible to imitate. And in fact, in her best poems, in her most beautiful poems, she achieves this, I think. She has this simplicity which seems astonishing, because it's so clear. It's so simple. It's like that sadi poem, and yet you try and do it, mate. It's really, really hard to do. Sure, absolutely. And we should perhaps mention that the translations that you were reading were from your latest book, which I definitely recommend. Faces of Beloved? It's called Faces of Love. This is the Penguin Edition, which I think is not out in England yet. It's out in the States. The Hardback Edition is out in England, but it's terribly expensive. This will be out in England in February, so I would hang on to it. Oh, wait. Faces of Love. It's Hafez. They're translations of Hafez. It's about 70 Khazals by Hafez, and a few Rabayat. Obaid Jahan, about 60 poems by Jahan, and Obaid, including some of his most scabrous, obscene poems, and including also Cat and Mouse, which is this satire about the takeover of Shiraz by Mubarez al-Din, which is a very funny poem. It's the most famous pre-modern Persian political satire. So that's in there, too. So it's mainly Hafez, some Jahan Khatun, and a kind of sprinkling of Obaid at the end. Of course, Qabus Nomeh has a good recipe for good health on which season you should sleep with what sex, and that would be conducive to... You sleep with girls in the winter and boys in the summer. That's right. If you don't want to get high blood pressure. Yeah, that's it. Anyway, a question, Anthony, please. I took back... I'm just going to throw it at the back. Nick, that was just the perfect lecture that makes one just want to go and read these poems over and over again. Good. But, which I've been reading the poems, that's really brings it to my question. Can you tell us something about the circumstances, the social circumstances, in which Jahan Khatun's poems were read? Did people just read them privately? I mean, the poem of Hafez, you can sit around, you have a dore, a mushari, gentlemen can sit around it. But her poems, I suspect, could not be read by gentlemen, as it were. So how were they read? Well, the short answer, Anthony, is that we don't know, but we can speculate. We do know that women had relative freedom at the Inju court. It seems to me that somebody who was... I mean, Jahan Khatun's divan is very large. She obviously spent a long time writing poetry and from the evidence of her preface, it was something that was very important to her. She really thought of it as what she would leave to the world and that the world she hoped would remember her because she'd written these poems. So it was a big thing in her life. If a woman had access to her uncle's court and it was so important in her life, I can't imagine that she would stay away when Hafez was at the court, for example. And I feel certain that she would appear when Hafez was there. Perhaps they even spoke to each other. That wouldn't be impossible in that court. It probably would be in later other courts. There is actually a novel by Pesach Sardin which he imagines them having a love affair. This certainly did not happen, but anyway. It's a charming novel, though. It is also a novel by a German novelist who does the same thing. I've forgotten her name, which I haven't read. We don't know what the situation was. What we can say is that she became quite famous in her own time as a poet, which meant that her poems were read beyond the immediate confines of the court. For a couple of hundred years after her death, she gets mentioned in biographical notices. You know, this Tazkirat tradition of writing books which are collections of biographies of poets with the odd quotation. She's mentioned in those Tazkirat for two or 300 years after her death. So obviously her poems did have some fame which meant that they traveled beyond the court. There is also a tradition, though, it doesn't appear until 200 years after her death. So it might be an invention. But there was a tradition that she had a kind of salon in which she invited poets to compete and she was the kind of presiding judge at these poetic gatherings. Of course, those poetic gatherings were very common in the Middle Ages and they still are in Iran. They always have been. But of course, the distinctive thing is here that they were presided over by a woman. But this tradition does exist that she had such a salon in which poets came and read their poems to each other and she was the kind of person who gave the prize, as it were. And she read her own poems. So certainly her poems were read within the court. Her poems were known within the court. The two poems that are about her, whether they're by obeyed or not, they obviously show that they weren't just read by women because these poems are certainly by a man, probably by obeyed. And so her poems got beyond the immediate circle of the kind of women of the court. She seems to have hoped for fame. There are four manuscripts of her poems. Two of them seem to have been written almost at the same time. They're in the same hand. And presumably towards the end of her life. And it's assumed that or it's guessed that she supervised this, that she wanted her poems to go out into the world. It was less anomalous for a woman at the Inju court to do this kind of thing that it would have been at most courts at that time. She's very lucky in that way that she was a princess at such a court. But it was still anomalous. So I think her poems rather, probably had a kind of over to the edge of poetic activity existence, but they were known about by people who cared about poetry. And the evidence for this is that she gets mentioned in these biographies of poets later on. Good night. Stephen Shepard and then Dr. Gulshoy. Your first statement, please. Just wanted to know, to what extent does religion or mysticism play any role in Jehan Khatun's poetry? That's a very interesting question. It's especially interesting because of, she was clearly, she clearly knew Hafez. She quotes Hafez. And of course the question of mysticism, are Hafez's poems mystical or not? Some are clearly mystical. Some are clearly not mystical. And then there's an awful lot of poems which seem to be both secular and mystical. Hafez, and as I said, Hafez often seems to be trying to say at least two things at once. And sometimes it's a mystical statement and sometimes it's a secular statement in the same poem as it were. You can have poems which can be read in either way. That Hafez is famous for this. There are many poems like that. There are virtually no poems by Jehan Khatun in this way. To my knowledge, she only mentions Sufism once. And I will read the poem in which she mentions it. And she mentions it flippantly. This is my translation. I swore I'd never look at him again. I'd be a Sufi, deaf to sins temptations. I saw my nature wouldn't stand for it. From now on I renounce renunciations. So that's her take on Sufism, the hell with it. On the other hand, she does have a number of poems, very despairing poems in fact, which I, one guesses, were written at the end of her life in which she says the world has treated me so badly and people have treated me so badly that I turn to God. But they're not mystical poems. They're very much poems within, they're traditional devotional poems. There's no sense of air fun in them at all. They're just traditionally religious. I turn to God and God will save me, I hope. She admonishes herself to pray. She has a number of poems in which she tells herself to pray and one presumes because those poems always have a kind of ground base of, I love the world, the world has treated me wretchedly. I turn to God, that's all I have left. But it's not in a mystical sense. It's in a strictly orthodox religious sense, as far as I can see. Yijan, see. You, in the beginning of your lecture, you mentioned that the Persian poets talk about themselves too much, brag about themselves too much. But I think when the era of the, I see there was over the 12th and 13th century, during the Gaza period, 14th century onward. Poets, they didn't brag about themselves too much. In Hafiz, for example, I found only one wazel he talked about himself too much. Manam ke shokh rey shahram, behishk waar zidan. Manam ke diden, ayarudan, bebed diden. Manam manam, in one wazel Hafiz did that. But the rest of it, he's very humble. Well, the only thing I would say, I'm glad you mentioned the Ghassideh, because in fact, one can see that this convention, it comes from the Ghassideh. The Ghassideh is a praise poem, and it ends with the name of the ruler, and praise surrounds the name of the ruler. But, and then the Ghazel, which grows out of the Ghassideh, it's kind of the lyrical introduction, as you know, to the Ghassideh, which then is an independent form by itself. It ends with the name of the poet, instead of the name of the praise person. But praise was naturally attached to that name with which a poet ended, and so praise tends to get, to be attached to the name of the poet, with which the poem ends. Hafiz, I think there are more examples than you say of Hafiz. I mean, Hafiz does often end a poem saying, I'm a damn good poet. I mean, the fact that there is a special name for doing this in Persian indicates that it was quite common. I mean, the name is Fahr, it's Fahireh. The fact that it's called Fahr, indicates that it exists, that Persians were expected to boast. And in fact, I would say also that this exists in medieval European poetry too. Medieval, and the reason it exists is it's court poetry. The poet is asking for patronage. The poet is, he makes his money by being patronized by somebody. And he's saying to the king, look, I'm a damn good poet. And as I say, this exists in medieval court poetry in Europe as well in Christendom. Sadi is quite insistent that Sadi is a very good poet indeed. It's true that Hafiz, I will grant what you say in that Hafiz is much more, Hafiz is constantly ambiguous. And sometimes when he's boasting, he seems to be poking fun at himself. You're not sure if it's a boast or if it's a, don't be silly Hafiz. There is an ambiguity in the way Hafiz does it. But it is, it was a convention. And as I say, it's a convention that had a name. The fact that it had a name, I think indicates its existence. The point I was trying to make is that no matter how, how slightly any given poet seems to indulge in that convention, Jehan Khartoun, as far as I remember, never does. Her poems very often, she, as you will know, and as most people will hear know, all Persian poets write under a pseudonym. And Jehan wrote under the name Jehan, which means world. And she very often puts the word world in the end of her poems. And you might think, this is rather grandiose, it's rather shelling off. But in fact, it's always a world that's been destroyed or a world that's in tears or a world that's joking, that's broken. She jokes with her name, she puns on her name. And it's almost as if she's dissolving into something else at the end of the poem. She seems to be withdrawing from the poem at the end. Or even as she says her name, she puns and she's sort of not there. Jehan Khartoun is noticeably humble compared with most other poets of her period. Well, I think I'm going to stop. I'm afraid as we're coming to the end, I just wanted to say that finally, we did have Nimo Yushid, who dared to say that not all Iranians really do want all this spiritual love and immortal lover. And he dressed half as to say, you know, half as are in chequie do ruqis, can't go on in me or Jehan Mabak, is oh half as, you know, go on all these lies from the mouths of the wine and the cup bearer, forever loving the immortal beloved, man baru ashe gamke ravandas, I love she or he again, we don't know who is mortal. Well, Professor Davis, on Friday when we began introducing you, and of course you needed no introduction, you protested vehemently that you did not want to be eulogized and you did not want any praise. And all the she cast the Nazi. And I think you have proved that really that was not a justified protest. And indeed you have just wetted our appetites and we really want you to come back. In fact, we might just to continue to wish for further storms so you won't be able to fly back to Ohio. It has been a real pleasure. It's really, I certainly have lost track of time and you really made me want to go and explore so many other corners of this wealth of literature that we don't look at. And we're indebted to your writing and your beautiful delivery, which makes it so accessible while it lifts us to that elitist world where we feel we can also stop at the high table with the great and the good. Thank you very much indeed. And please do come back. And I think I can speak on behalf of every single person here that we've thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you very much.