I am grateful to Dr Barbara Haus Schwepcke, director and trustee of Gingko, for inviting me to prepare these texts and translations for publication and for her constant enthusiasm and encouragement during the years the work was in progress. Her meticulous copy-editing of my transcription of the German texts improved my readings, as did her helpful suggestions on the translations.
I thank Bill Swainson, general editor of the West-Eastern Divan and of A New Divan, for his close and discerning editorial scrutiny of my translations. His comments and suggestions have improved these from beginning to end. His vision of the final shape of the book has guided me throughout. It has been a pleasure to work with him.
I wish to acknowledge the expert contribution of Stephen Brown who copy-edited the ‘Notes and Essays’ and whose subtle and nuanced knowledge of German improved this part of the work substantially.
I am also indebted to Russell Harris, my friend and former colleague at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, who was an early reader of my first version of the ‘Notes and Essays’ and gave me great encouragement; he also brought the work to the attention of Gingko, for which I am especially grateful.
My friend Professor Hinrich Biesterfeldt of the University of Bochum has been consistently helpful, reading early drafts of several of the Books of the Divan and offering both criticisms and suggestions that helped to fine-tune the translations, and I thank him for his assistance and support.
I thank the librarians at the Royal Asiatic Society and the British Library for giving me access to several rare imprints, such as the original editions of Sir William Jones’s writings and nineteenth-century Persian lithograph editions. I am grateful too to the Library of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, for allowing me to consult its Arabic and Persian collections.
My late friend Christopher Middleton, the superb poet and incomparable translator from the German, offered encouragement that was mischievous but stimulating. When I expressed my enthusiasm for the Divan, he replied, ‘Oh, it’s all guff!’ If so, it is glorious guff and I hope to have proved him wrong. I dedicate this translation to his memory.
Eric Ormsby,
Prague 2019