The Book of Ecstasy or... The Ball & Polo-stick by 'Arifi Translation & Introduction Paul Smith Written by Maulana Mahmud 'Arifi (1389 - 1449) one of the last great Sufi poets of the Classical Period of Persian Poetry the Hal-nama or 'Book of Ecstasy' often referred to as 'The Ball & Polo-stick' an allegory in which the ball and the polo-stick are personified as types of Sufi mystical love and all the images are from the game of polo or as it was known at the time in Persia as chaugan. 'Arifi composed it, as he states in the epilogue of the 513 couplets masnavi... in two weeks in 1439 when he was fifty. In their introduction to their excellent literal translation of this poem Wheeler M. Thackston, Jr. and Hossein Ziai state: 'The underlying theme of 'Arifi's work is self-sacrificing love, a conceptualization that was derived from the Sufi ideal of love, this love not only by definition is unrequited but also demands the ultimate death of the lover. In terms of mystical speculative philosophy, the "death" of the lover is the annihilation of selfhood and self-awareness, or ego-consciousness, or, in other terms, the total absorption of the lover's own consciousness of self into that of the beloved. On the purely mystical level, this represents the annihilation of the individual soul, the lover, into the godhead, the beloved.' This is the first translation in the poetic form of the masnavi. The Introduction contains chapters on The Life & Times of 'Arifi, The Game of Polo, Polo in Persian & Sufi Poetry, The Masnavi in Persian Poetry and a Selected Bibliography. Three Appendixes: A Literal Translation by R.S. Greenshields, The Persian Text, and on The Buzkashi. Large Format 7" x 10" Pages 226 COMMENTS ON PAUL SMITH'S TRANSLATION OF HAFIZ'S 'DIVAN'. "It is not a joke... the English version of ALL the ghazals of Hafiz is a great feat and of paramount importance. " Dr. Mir Mohammad Taghavi (Dr. of Literature) Tehran. "Superb translations. 99% Hafiz 1% Paul Smith." Ali Akbar Shapurzman, translator and knower of Hafiz's Divan off by heart. "I was very impressed with the beauty of these books." Dr. R.K. Barz. Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University. Paul Smith is a poet, author and translator of over 130 books of Sufi poets of the Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Pashtu and other languages including Hafiz, Sadi, Nizami, Rumi, 'Attar, Sana'i, Jahan Khatun, Obeyd Zakani, Mu'in, Amir Khusrau, Nesimi, Kabir, Anvari, Ansari, Jami, Khayyam, Rudaki, Yunus Emre, Shah Latif, Bulleh Shah and many others, and his own poetry, fiction, plays, biographies, children's books and screenplays. www.newhumanitybooksbookheaven.com