Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry

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Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry Page 22

by Leonard Lewisohn


  Distinction is incidental in the directions that love turns its face. The essence of love is free from dimensions; it must indeed have its face at no direction in order to be love. And yet, when the hand clutches the timeless moment-of-inspiration, I do not know unto which land the water will be conveyed. When a groom mounts the Sultan’s steed, it is not his horse, yet it does no harm.10

  Mystics such as Aḥmad-i Jām Nāmiqī (d. 536/1141) used several traditions in favour of ‘ishq, quoting, ‘My servant does not stop approaching me till he becomes my lover and I his lover.’11 Ibn ‘Abbādī (d. 549/1154) devotes a whole chapter to ‘ishq in his Sūfī-nāma,12 distinguishing several stages of love. In his opinion, there are five stages which bring man to the highest level of love (‘ishq): ‘When some trouble appears in the heart for an absentee, this is called longing [shawq]; when an understanding with someone is established, it is called love [mawaddat]; when the person chooses someone as a friend, it is called friendship [khullat]; when the friendship becomes free from any calamity, and honesty is employed to attain the friend’s contentment, it is called love [maḥabbat]; when the person is melted in the melting-pot of maḥabbat and he turns his face towards annihilation, it is called passionate love [‘ishq].’13 Ibn ‘Abbādī emphasizes that ‘ishq is the loftiest stage of passionate love in which ethical and mystical perfection can be accomplished. He underlines that not everyone is able to reach this elevated stage, and the mystic should follow a particular itinerary: ‘Longing is for the novice; friendship is for he who is in the middle; love [maḥabba] is for he who has reached the end. And if someone reaches the perfection of passionate love [‘ishq] he sees that the reality of love cannot be expressed by words.’14

  Another important aspect of love is the relationship between the lover and the beloved. To explain this relationship, mystics usually rely on the verse (5:59): ‘He loves them and they love Him.’ Aḥmad Ghazālī has placed this verse at the very beginning of his treatise Sawāniḥ to draw the reader’s attention to its significance. The entire treatise can be regarded as a commentary on this pregnant verse, describing the relationship between man and God as a loving union, and at the same time underscoring that God was first the lover and man the beloved.15 The Qur’ān also informs us that God created man in His own image, in the fairest of forms (95:5). In commentaries on this verse, mankind is depicted as a limpid mirror displaying God’s ‘names and attributes’ (asmā wa ṣifāt). Mystics cite the following tradition in which God states: ‘The reason of My creating you is to see My vision in the mirror of your spirit, and My love in your heart.’16 In short, God created the phenomenal world from Nothingness (nīstī) for the sake of man.17

  Unlike other theoretical works on love, Ghazālī does not omit a mention of the primordial origin of love. In his view, love was created first, and then the Spirit (rūḥ). Although Ghazālī does not mention how God created love, it is clear from his treatise that love is identical with God and is eternal. Love exists first in an unadulterated form which flows to existence from God. Lingering on the border of existence, love waits for the human Spirit so that it can come down to the world. In Ghazālī’s metaphor, the Spirit is depicted as the steed of love, which transports love to the earth. Here on earth, love assumes many faces – sometimes it is a sensual love, sometimes love between parent and child, and so on – but ultimately love seeks to return back to its place of origin. In its return journey, love is the steed and spirit is the rider, bringing love to its original abode.

  Love’s journey throughout the phenomenal world is often described by Persian mystics as an arc of descent. Love’s primordial home in the world is the heart where man is enabled to develop his potential to realize perfection, so that his spirit can return to its original abode.

  Man’s relationship with God starts in pre-eternity (azal), when God, the essential source of love, created Adam and breathed into him the spirit from His own breath. Afterwards, He spoke to the loins of Adam on the day of alast, or ‘Am I not your Lord?’ Adam’s progeny answer: ‘Yes, we witness you are’ (7:171).18 Mystic poets interpret this verse as the ‘Covenant’ (mīthāq) between man and God, and the relationship between man and his creator is depicted in the most erotic images and metaphors.

  Ḥāfiẓ: Love and Creation

  Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry is steeped in the theosophy of this school of Love and features almost all its mystical references. He refers several times to love and the creation of man and the world. Most of these references derive from the mystical interpretations of the creation myth. Time and again, Ḥāfiẓ emphasizes that the existence of love predates the creation of mankind and the world. Like the Persian Sufi mystics and poets before him, Ḥāfiẓ equates love with God, who is also the Absolute Beloved longing fervently to reveal His beauty. In His absolute solitude, God was self-sufficient and rich in every imaginable respect and did not need any lover or beloved. Theorists of love elaborate on this infinite richness when they discuss the term istighnā – divine independence, wealth or self-sufficiency – affirming that God as Beloved was not in need of man or the creation. Several times in his poetry, Ḥāfiẓ refers to the concept of istighnā, which belongs to the higher spiritual realm of love and the Beloved. In this famous couplet, Ḥāfiẓ refers to the shortcomings of man’s love in respect to the Beloved’s beauty:

  Zi ‘ishq-i nā-tamām-i mā jamāl-i yār mustaghnī-st

  ba āb-u rang-u khāl-u khaṭṭ cha ḥājat rū-yi zībā rā.19

  The beauty of the beloved is rich in itself, it has no need of our incomplete love. What should a beautiful face do with lustre, hue, mole and down on the cheek?

  What Ḥāfiẓ is stating here is that the Beloved never needed man, whom He created ‘in the most beautiful of forms’20 to love him. His love was a grace bestowed on mankind and was not merely for the physical beauty, which the Beloved Himself possessed. The term istighnā is also used to underscore the incomparable richness and self-sufficiency of love:

  Giryi-yi Ḥāfiz cha sanjad pīsh-i istighnā-yi ‘ishq

  k-andarīn ṭūfān namāyad haft daryā shabnamī. 21

  Of what weight are Ḥāfiẓ’s tears before the wealth of love

  For in this storm, all seven seas appear to be a drop of dew.

  Man’s dependence on the Beloved is usually contrasted to the Beloved’s longing for mankind:

  Sāyih-i ma‘shūq agar uftād bar ‘āshiq chih shud?

  Mā bih ū muḥtāj būdīm ū bih mā mushtāq būd.22

  Should the shadow of the Loved One fall upon the lovers, why is that?

  We were in need of Him, and He yearned for us.

  This passionate longing of the Beloved for mankind is commonly regarded as the reason for God creating the world. One of the most important traditions concerning creation says: ‘I [God] was a Hidden Treasure and I desired to be known, so I created the creation in order that I might be known.’23 God created the world, leaving His infinitely rich solitude, so that man might know His essence and attributes.24

  Based on this tradition, the world became viewed as an epiphany and revelation of love. Love functions as a primum mobile, setting everything in motion and binding everything together. Ḥāfiẓ refers to this epiphany of love, which is depicted as a ray of God’s beauty, in the following famous couplet:

  Dar azal partaw-yi ḥusnat zi tajallī dam zad

  ‘Ishq paydā shud u ātash bih hama ‘ālam zad.25

  In the beginning, a ray of your Beauty shone out, sparked fire:

  Love was seen, and the whole world burned.

  Here, Ḥāfiẓ is referring to the beauty of the Beloved and how this beauty generates love. Mystics believe that the Beloved is the source of beauty and loves beauty. In chapter 51 of his Sawāniḥ, Aḥmad Ghazālī cites the famous tradition ‘God is beautiful and loves beauty’, emphasizing that everyone should either be in love with beauty, or with the lover of beauty. Ghazālī links this tradition to the doctrine of shāhid-bāzī, ‘love-play throu
gh the contemplation’ of mortal beauties, by which mystics try to attain direct communion with the Beloved, and to experience the primordial encounter with God. Ḥāfiẓ is dramatically expressing how the whole world is connected to the divine beauty. This idea of God’s manifestation as an essentially beautiful being is repeated elsewhere in the Dīvān, for example:

  ‘Ālam az shūr-u shar-i ‘ishq khabar hīch nadāsht

  fitna-angīz-i jahān ghamza-yi jādū-yi tu būd.26

  The world knew naught of love’s tumult and commotion:

  The chaos-causer of the world was the witchery of a wink from you.

  The allusion here is again to the dawn of creation, when there was no knowledge of anything, and the Beloved’s flirtatious behaviour initiates disorder or rebellion, through which the world becomes aware of love. The Creator thus appears as the supreme Enchanter, captivating everything He creates through His matchless beauty.

  Descent and Ascent

  After revealing love, God creates Adam and his progeny, and strengthens his bond with human beings by a pact. This pact is usually known as the ‘ahd-i alast, or ‘the pact of “Am I not your Lord [alastu be-rabbikum]?”’ – alluding to the verse: ‘And when thy Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their seed, and made them testify against themselves [saying], “Am I not your Lord?” They said, “Yes, we testify”’ (7:172). Mystics interpret their affirmative answer to God by saying that they were so captivated by the beauty of God that they involuntarily said balā, or ‘Yes. We witness thou art.’ Ḥāfiẓ too interprets this Qur’ān verse in this same mystical sense. Like Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār, who interprets man’s answer as being a trial in which he is subjected to affliction (balā’), Ḥāfiẓ believes that the attainment of the highest stage of love is only possible by exertion and by accepting the affliction inflicted upon the lover by separation:

  Maqām-i ‘aysh muyasar nimīshavad bī-ranj

  balī ba ḥukm-i balā’ basta-and ‘aḥd-i alast.27

  The station of delight cannot be attained without exertion

  The covenant of ‘Am I not’ linked ‘yes’ to trials’ decree.

  In their new translation of Ḥāfiẓ, Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn choose the following translation to illustrate this relationship between the covenant of Pre-eternity and man’s affliction:

  The waiting station of pleasure and delight

  Always includes suffering. In Pre-eternity

  The souls bound themselves to that tragedy.28

  Commenting on the same Qur’ān verse (7:172), Annemarie Schimmel explains: ‘the theme of Affliction, balā’ is ingeniously combined with the word balā, “Yes”, that the souls spoke at the Day of the Covenant, thus accepting in advance every tribulation that might be showered upon them until Doomsday.’29 For this reason, the Persian Sufi mystics considered affliction to be the essence of love. In his theoretical treatise, Aḥmad Ghazālī defines love as affliction, insofar as the suffering that the separated lover experiences from love, results only in pain and anguish.30 But this suffering is a purgative, purifying the lover from all attachments so that only love can exist. Accepting suffering and deprivation is another way of describing the mystical stages of fanā (annihilation) and baqā (indwelling with the Beloved), during which the mystic lover divests himself of everything that impedes his union with the Beloved. In Niẓāmī’s romance Laylī and Majnūn, Majnūn suffers so much hardship voluntarily that he becomes, at a certain stage, identified with love and suffering. The description of his physical and moral traits converges with the definition of love. Ascetics use stringent discipline to divest themselves of all worldly interests by keeping vigil, eating little and avoiding involvement in the world: lovers do the same things as a result of love, and the mystic lover welcomes all hardship in order to attain to the Loved One.31

  The separated lover can climb the ladder of love through exertion and voluntary suffering, the suffering having been accepted on his behalf with the ‘Yes’ uttered at the pact of alast. Ḥāfiẓ expands on this idea in the following verse:

  ‘Ahd-i alast-i man hama bā ‘ishq -i shāh būd

  v-az shāhrāh-i ‘umr bi-dīn ‘aḥd bugzaram.32

  My covenant of ‘Am I not’ was [a pact] with the love of the King,

  This covenant is my pass on the King’s highway of life.

  The world of fate is seen as shāh-rāh, a ‘highway’, which the lover has to journey, keeping in mind the primordial pact. Only then will man be able to attain union with the King (Shāh) at the end of this arduous journey.

  Part of the difficulty of this journey is that man must bear the ‘burden of trust’ (bār-i amānat). Perhaps the most famous line in this respect – in which Ḥāfiẓ summarizes the Qur’ān, Surah 33:72 that relates how this burden ‘was offered to the heavens, to the earth, and to the mountains, but they refused the burden and were afraid to receive it, but man undertook to bear it’ – is the following:

  Āsimān bār-i amānat natavānist kishid

  qur’a-yi kār ba nām-i man-i divāna zadand.33

  The heavens could not bear the Trust’s burden

  When they cast the lot, it fell to me, the madman.

  This trust has been interpreted variously as responsibility, or free will, but Sufi mystics commonly agree that the Trust refers to God’s Love entrusted to mankind in eternity. In the opening ghazal of the Dīvān, in which a lover asks a cup-bearer to fill his cup to lessen the pain of love, Ḥāfiẓ again refers to this same divine burden (bār):

  Shab-i tārīk u bīm-i mawj u girdābī chinīn hāyil

  kujā dānand ḥāl-i mā sabukbārān-i sāḥilhā? 34

  A dark night, the fear of the waves and such a dreadful whirlpool:

  What can the lightly burdened ones on the shore know of our situation?

  Here, Ḥāfiẓ is emphasizing hardship on the path of love. To foreground the lover’s agonizing state, the poet subtly uses asymmetry: in the first hemistich, the lover is complaining of his gloomy state as if he is trapped in a dark night, fearing the high dashing waves and the horrible whirlpools. The phrase sabukbārān-i sāḥilhā (‘the lightly burdened of the shore’) refers to angels who are lightly burdened because, unlike mankind, they have never been graced with Love or the burden of Trust. The phrase might also refer to those people who have renounced all worldly possessions and interests, and are, therefore, light of burden, but this is less likely since such people would have been through the seas and would have experienced the tribulations of the ‘dark night’. Note that the long vowel ī in the first half verse is contrasted to the long vowel ā in the next hemistich, forming a perfect asymmetry, with the vowel ī being entirely avoided in the second hemistich.

  Ḥāfiẓ coins variants on the theme of the burden of divine Trust when he uses ‘the burden of love’ (bār-i ‘ishq). In the couplet below, we read:

  Shāhidān dar jilva u man sharmsār-i kīsiham

  Bār-i ‘ishq u muflisī sa‘b ast u mībāyad kishīd.35

  The beauties are dressed to be seen, while I am embarrassed for my purse;

  The burden of love and poverty weighs hard, but it must be borne.

  In addition to this reference to the burden, Ḥāfiẓ also contrasts the position of man and angels. The word shāhidān means not only things that are gazed upon, such as beautiful youths, but also ‘witnesses’.36 In the latter sense, the term ‘witnesses’ alludes to the angels whom God invited to come to view the spectacle of the dawn of creation, so as to admire the creation of mankind. Angels are pure spiritual beings, whereas man is made of water and clay. Man was ashamed of himself when compared to the splendour of the angels, but despite his shortcomings he accepted to bear the burden of love.

  Iblīs and the Angels

  In the creation myth recounted by the Sufi mystics, the angels play an important role. Ḥāfiẓ refers several times to the angels’ inability to understand love and the relationship between man and God. God invites the angels t
o the spectacle of creation to admire mankind, but when they hear that God is planning to appoint man as a vicegerent on earth (2:30), the angels wonder whether man is going to misuse his power and cause damage. Iblīs, or Satan, started an argument with God, disobeying His command to prostrate himself before mankind.37 Although ultimately Iblīs was the only angel who disobeyed God’s command, Ḥāfiẓ states that angels generally do not know love:

  Firishta ‘ishq nadānad ki chīst ay sāqī!

  Bikhāh jām u gulābī ba khāk-i Ādam rīz.38

  O cup-bearer, angels do not know what love is.

  Ask for a beaker and pour rosewater on Adam’s clay.

  In another couplet, Ḥāfiẓ sings:

  Jilva-ī kard rukhat dīd malak ‘ishq nadāsht

  ‘ayn-i ātash shud a-zīn ghayrat-u bar ādam zad.39

  When Your countenance was revealed, it saw that angels had no love,

  Its honour offended, it became all fire, and struck Adam’s soul.

 

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