Hafez weighed by his unconventionality

Hafez’s time, is the era of moral decline and loss of sound principles among the different classes of people especially rulers, sovereigns, Sufis and, ascetics. Chaos and disorder resulted from the oppression and cruelty of rulers and sovereigns on one hand and growing hypocrisy, fraud and deception of religious authorities and Sufis on the other hand led to the decline of religious and moral values. Hafez is caught in the midst of this sinkhole of corruption and depravity, discord, and despair and in his own words he is caught “in the dark night with a fear of such frightful wave and whirlpool”. As a thinker and a social savior, Hafez is well aware of all the pains, corruptions, and evils of the time and like a surgeon with a weapon of criticism and irony wants to open up the wounds and with affection heal the social ills. To achieve this goal inevitably he had to choose a language, captivating and soothing enough to give new life to the otherwise lifeless words and with using variety of literary devices he creates a resurrection in the mental and customary habits and in conventional language. Therefore the best way to attack two groups of rulers and Sufis was through writing, grabbing hold of techniques such as defamiliarization, deviation from the norm, deconstruction, antilogism, paradoxical imagery, and finally what is in general contrary to the norm and habits of the populace. Such extensive application of literary devices won Hafez his fame.