A single blaze of light from his Face.
I’ve told you both what’s manifest and what is hid.71
As with Beauty’s variegated manifestations, poetry is also both manifold and one, both dark and luminous, an expression of not only joy and delight, but also pain and grief. By crossing out all means of worldly delight and self-fulfilment (148, v. 7), the poet at last discovers that ‘the source of all joy lies in pining in grief for the beloved [gham-i nigār]’, as he says in one verse.72 Yet the melancholic grief of love (gham) is by no means the end of the story. Such grief is in fact only a means to attain a higher form of joy. For composing the book or tale of Love’s Joy harbours a secret that cannot be disclosed, a paradox impossible to grasp, whose vision is beyond articulation, yet which is allusively encapsulated in this verse here.
The ‘book of The Joy of Love’ is both Ḥāfiẓ’s ghazal and his Dīvān, which constantly mirror each other in the same way as the cup reflects the face of the Beloved, who reflects the light of epiphany. And if polished and attentive enough to the secret music of Ḥāfiẓ, every heart may read that book and behold the radiance of that epiphany of Beauty in his poetry here and now.
Notes
1 On Poetry and Poets, p. 57.
2 The word ‘monad’ is here used in the sense developed in Leibniz’s Monadologie: an independent entity, closed on itself but reflecting in its perfect sphere the whole universe. See Leibniz, La Monadologie, ed. Boutroux, pp. 141–4 (n. 167), 173–7.
3 This essay will not address the controversial question of whether Ḥāfiẓ is a mystical poet or not. The ghazal that is analysed here, definitely having a spiritual tone and content, will be analysed from a mystical perspective. On the problematic nature of Ḥāfiẓ’s poetry, see the interesting remarks of Carl Ernst in his Shambhala Guide to Sufism, pp. 158–66.
4 On the importance of this conception in the symbolic expression of Sufi poets, see Pūrnāmdāriyān, Ramz va dāstānhā-yi ramzī dar adab-i fārsi, pp. 12–14.
5 On the mirror quality of lyric poetry, see Naṣru’llāh Purjavādī, ‘Bāda-yi ‘ishq (2): paydāyish-i ma‘nā-yi majāzī-yi bada dar shi‘r-i fārsī’, Nashr-i dānish, XII/1 (1370/1991), pp. 4–18.
6 The opening verse of the Dīvān testifies to this key theme: ‘Come, Sāqī, pass the cup round and present it / For love seemed so simple at first, but so many difficulties have arisen!’ The difficulties (mushkilhā) here of course are the unforeseen complications that await every wanderer on the Path of Love. See the illuminating commentary on this and other themes in this ghazal by Pūrnāmdāriyān, Gumshuda-yi lab-i daryā: ta‘ammulī dar shi‘r-i Ḥāfiẓ, where a whole chapter (4, pp. 344–71) is dedicated to commenting on the erotic theology of this first ghazal.
7 For a biography and presentation of the life, thought, works and basic concepts of Aḥmad Ghazāli, see Lewisohn, ‘Sawanih’, in Greenberg (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Love in World Religions, II, pp. 535–8; idem., ‘Al-Ghazali, Ahmad’, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edn, I, pp. 117–18.
8 See N. Purjavādī’s introduction to his edition of Ghazālī’s Savāniḥ; also see his ‘Bāda-yi ‘ishq’, p. 16.
9 Savāniḥ, p. 1.
10 Actually, the importance of visionary experience is common to all lyric poetry, as Northrop Frye states: ‘Understanding a poem literally means understanding the whole of it, as a poem, and as it stands. Such understanding begins in a complete surrender of the mind and senses to the impact of the work as a whole, and proceeds through the effort to unit the symbols toward a simultaneous perception of the unity of the structure.’ Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, p. 77.
11 See, for example, the illuminating remarks of Annemarie Schimmel in her analysis of the characteristics of the Persian ghazal: ‘The rhetorical devices which are an integral part of that poem, are very carefully observed: murā‘āt an-nazīr requires that the images in a verse stand in a well-defined relation to each other. When the rose is mentioned, we can definitely expect a nightingale, and probably one or two more images from the garden. If a Qur’ānic prophet appears, his specific qualities or those of some other prophet are likely to appear. It is the art of the great masters to maintain a perfect equilibrium of images in such a way that they seem perfectly natural, as exemplified in the work of Ḥāfiẓ. This technique gives the verse a certain symmetry and, as in a perfect classical Persian miniature, everything has its place so that, as in miniature painting, one may speak of a two-dimensional system of signs that have equal, or near-equal value.’ As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam, pp. 58–9.
12 See Furūzānfar, Aḥādīth-i Mathnawī, no. 106.
13 See Dīvān-i Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Sāyeh, ghazal 146; Dīwān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 148. Translation by Leonard Lewisohn.
14 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 298: 4.
15 Ibid., ghazal 259: 2.
16 Ibid., ghazals 38: 9; 131: 6.
17 Ibid., ghazals 21: 1; 22: 5.
18 Qur’ān, 7:172. See also Purjavādī, ‘‘Ishq-i azalī va bāda-yi alast’, pp. 26–31.
19 Qur’ān, 3:31.
20 Actually, this Trust was first proposed to the heavens and earth and the mountains, but when they shrank from bearing it, Adam/man accepted it (Qur’ān, 33:72), not only because he was not aware of its weight, but because he was promised, so say the Sufis, a vision of the Face of God and the experience of love. Thus, Ḥāfiẓ (Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 179: 3) writes: ‘The heavens could not bear the weight of the Trust. / When the lots were thrown again, the Trust / Fell on man, on me, an idiot and a fool.’ Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door, p. 39. See also Peter Avery (trans.), The Collected Lyrics of Háfiz of Shíráz, p. 238, n. 1.
21 Purjavadī (‘‘Ishq-i azalī...’, p. 26) explains that the covenant at an earlier stage in the Sufi tradition had been interpreted as being a ‘pact of mutual love’. [See also A.A. Seyed-Gohrab’s essay in this volume – Ed.]
22 Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, b. Qays al-Rāzī, the dry thirteenth-century theoretician of the art of poetry who is by no means a mystical author, states: ‘Know that etymologically, the word shi‘r [poetry] signifies knowledge and comprehension of the meanings by exact conjecture and correct reasoning.’ Al-Mu‘jam fī ma‘āyir ash’ār al-‘ajam, p. 188.
23 Etymology is again quite interesting here since the word for world (‘ālam) is related to the root ‘alima, meaning ‘to know, to perceive’, having also developed into ‘sign’ (‘alāmat), as if the whole universe were a sign that points towards knowledge of God.
24 Furūzānfar, Aḥādīth-i Mathnawī, no. 70.
25 See note 20 above.
26 Ṭufayl-i hastī-yi ‘ishqand ādamī u parī. Trans. Bly and Lewisohn, Angels, p. 53: Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 443; Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Sāyih, ghazal 441.
27 See note 20.
28 Abū’l-‘Alā al-Ma‘arrī, Risālat al-ghufrān, pp. 361–2. Quoted by Heller-Roazen, Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language, p. 215.
29 In this ghazal, v. 5, the poet refers to the lots of destiny (qur‘a-yi qismat) having been tossed and drawn for those who are heedlessly preoccupied with life’s sensual pleasures (‘aysh), but in another ghazal (Dīvān, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 179: 3), he says that ‘the lots of the affair’ (qur‘a-yi kār) came up ‘on me, an idiot and a fool’. See also note 20 above.
30 See Heller-Roazen’s illuminating essay Echolalias, which ends up with the image of the tower of Babel as a metaphor of mankind’s imprisonment in oblivion: ‘And as long as they continued to move in the air transformed by divine decree, they would continue to forget, and, in this way, to allow the forgotten to remain about them; they, and their children after them, would still breath in the element of oblivion imposed upon them. Might they be our true ancestors? (...) The surest sign of our residence in the tower could well be that we no longer know it: to dwell within the ruined e
difice, after all, is nothing if not to subsist on its confusing air. Destroyed, Babel, in this case, would persist; and we, consigned without end to the confusion of tongues, would, in obstinate oblivion, persist in it’ (pp. 230–1).
31 Translation by Leonard Lewisohn; Dīvān, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 178: 1, 2, 4; the last verse/stanza is not in Khānlarī’s edition, but is found in variant readings in three of his other manuscripts.
32 Ibid., ghazal 58: 7, 9.
33 Ibid., ghazal 202: 10.
34 Ibid., ghazal 40: 11.
35 Strangely enough, we may compare this to the enterprise of the French author Marcel Proust, who built his great novel A la recherche du temps perdu upon the memories generated from physical sensations related to sight and taste. Though contrary to Ḥāfiẓ, Proust deals only with sensations and sentiments generated in this earthly realm; in this work, the whole process of memory and remembrance is triggered by his delight in tasting a little madeleine soaked in tea. Savouring the taste of the madeleine suddenly brings back to the mind of the author his childhood, and the intimation of its flavour saves him and allows him to rebuild his memory and construct the whole novel: ‘When from an ancient past, nothing survives, after the death of people, the destruction of things, more vivid by their very frailty, more immaterial, more persisting, more faithful, perfumes and tastes keep being remembered, like souls, they keep waiting, hoping, despite the ruin of all the rest and bearing on their almost impalpable droplets the vast edifice of memory.’ Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann, p. 47.
36 Translation by Leonard Lewisohn; Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 1: 5.
37 See Lewisohn, ‘Shawḳ’, EI2, IX, pp. 376–7.
38 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazals 26: 10; 57: 9; 63: 5; 91: 9; 156: 5; 173: 6; 177: 9; 189: 4; 201: 6; 218: 9; 237: 8; 250: 7; 255: 6; 291: 7, 10–11; 315: 4; 317: 7; 334: 5; 342: 7; 372: 7; 393: 8; 408: 2; 409: 7; 452: 1; 254: 9; 482: 10.
39 On the close connection between love and annihilation, see Leili Anvar-Chenderoff, ‘Without Us from Us We Are Safe: Self and Selflessness in the Dīwān of ‘Attār’, pp. 241–54.
40 Pūrnāmdāriyān, Gumshuda-yi lab-i daryā, p. 356.
41 Translation by Leonard Lewisohn; Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Sāyeh, ghazal 36: 9; ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 38: 9.
42 Aḥmad Ghazālī, Sawāniḥ, ed. H. Ritter, chap. 35, p. 54. See also Sawāniḥ, ed. Purjavādī, chap. 37, p. 30, on the ‘heavy’ but necessary burden of gham, and ibid., chap. 45, p. 38. On the necessity for separation, see Sawāniḥ, ed. Ritter, chap. 39, pp. 61–2.
43 This is particularly evident in the story of Majnūn and Laylī, celebrated in Niẓāmi’s mathnawī by that name, a tale renowned throughout all the Islamic world. See the remarkable analysis of this work by Seyed-Gohrab: Laylī and Majnûn, Love, Madness and Mystic Longing.
44 Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, The Mathnawí of Jalálu’ddín Rúmí, trans. and ed. Nicholson, III: 3753.
45 That is, the at of ḥusnat (your beauty) and of rukhat (your face) in verses 1a and 2a.
46 The -i (tu) in verses 6a (chāh-i zanakhdān-i tu) and 7a (‘Ishq-i tu).
47 Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, p. 598.
48 See Skalmowski’s interesting article: ‘The Meaning of the Persian Ghazal’, which explores the complicated nature of the ghazal.
49 Translation by Bly and Lewisohn, Angels, p. 53; Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Sāyeh, ghazal 441; ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 443: 2.
50 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Sāyeh, ghazal 137; ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 136: 3–5.
51 Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, ‘Naẓar-bāzi, les jeux du regard selon un interprète de Ḥāfiẓ’, Kār Nāmeh, II/III (1995), pp. 3–10; p. 10.
52 Baṣīrat-i bāṭin. See Savāniḥ, ed. H. Ritter, p. 1.
53 The association of the phony mudda’ī with Iblīs/Satan can be found in Najm al-Dīn Rāzi, Mirṣād al-‘ibād, ed. Riyāḥī, p. 317. See also Algar’s translations of Rāzī’s work, The Path of God’s Bondsmen, p. 310. This identification is also found in mystical commentary on this verse in Ḥāfiẓ’s Dīvān by Abū’l-Ḥasan Khatmī Lāhūrī, Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī-yi ghazalhā-yi-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khurramshāhī et al., II, p. 1049.
54 According to the word of the Prophet, ‘God created Adam and theophanised [fatajallī] Himself within him’. Rāzi, Mirṣād, p. 316; The Path, trans. Algar, p. 310.
55 It is considered a sin to gaze at a forbidden object. In itself, the existence of such a concept shows the importance of gazing as an act in Islamic culture.
56 Lāhūrī in his commentary (Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī, II, p. 1049), citing the Ḥadīth-i qudsī, ‘Man is a mystery and I [God] am that mystery [Aḥādīth-i Mathnawī, p. 62]’, considers this ‘secret’ as being the heart of Adam/Man which encompasses both the temporal macrocosm and the spiritual microcosm.
57 Thus, the related verbal form ḥafaẓa also means ‘to protect’.
58 Thus, Gilbert Lazard speaks of the ‘pervading mystery’ of the ghazal genre in his ‘Le langage symbolique du ghazal’, pp. 60–71.
59 Arberry, ‘Orient Pearls at Random Strung’, pp. 699–712.
60 Translation by Bly and Lewisohn, Angels, p. 57; Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 107: 2.
61 Savāniḥ, ed. Ritter, p. 5.
62 Ibid., p. 58 (faṣl 37–8).
63 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazals 2: 6; 30: 3; 107: 6; 115: 9; 237: 5; 337: 5; 414: 5; 485: 1.
64 Cf. Shabistarī’s Gulshan-i rāz, vv. 717–19, in Muwaḥḥid (ed.), Majmū‘a-i āthār-i Shaykh Maḥmūd Shabistarī, p. 97.
65 Cf. Lāhūrī, Sharḥ-i ‘irfānī, II, p. 1053.
66 Manṭiq al-ṭayr, ed. Gawharīn, p. 187, v. 3347.
67 The term ghazal (the fifth form of the verb taghazzala) literally means both to ‘express the sorrow of love’, and in Arabic poetry denotes an amatory elegy or song of love composed for a woman. See Blachère, ‘Ghazal’, EI2, II, pp. 1028–33.
68 Anatomy of Criticism, p. 281.
69 See Wickens, ‘The Frozen Periphery of Allusion in Classical Persian Literature’, pp. 171–90.
70 ‘For the greatest sin of the lover is ifshā’ as-sirr, divulgence of the secret. ... Persian poets have therefore woven a veil of symbols in order to point to and at the same time hide the secret of love, longing and union.’ Schimmel, As Through a Veil, p. 73.
71 Translation by Leonard Lewisohn; Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Sāyeh, ghazal 353; ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 355: 4.
72 Dīvān-i Ḥāfiẓ, ed. Khānlarī, ghazal 249: 4. The whole verse is ‘If others get joy and cheer from pleasures and delights / The source of all joy for us lies in pining with grief for the beloved’ (Gar dīgarān bi ‘aysh u ṭarab khurramand u shād / Mā rā gham-i nigār buvad māyih-yi surūr). For a good discussion of Ḥāfiẓ’s preference of love’s grief (gham) over joy, see Khurramshāhī, Ḥāfiẓ-nāma, I, pp. 606–7.
PART III
ḤĀFIẒ AND THE PERSIAN SUFI TRADITION
Ḥāfiẓ and the Sufi
Charles-Henri de Fouchécour
translated by Shusha Guppy and Leonard Lewisohn
By my title, ‘Ḥāfiẓ and the Sufi’, I have no wish to announce that my chapter will be a kind of recitation of tales (ḥikāyat) about the poet’s relationship with the Sufis. Ḥāfiẓ himself tells us that tales and stories (qiṣṣa) don’t interest him, whether they be epic, moral or mystical.1 Indeed, he wished nothing more but to be a lyric poet (ghazal-sarā).2 Therefore, in order to sort through his actual reflections and thoughts on this subject in the rich treasury of his verse, we must need to selectively consider his thoughts and place them in their proper context.
While I am not a specialist in Sufism, I have had a special attachment to classical Persian literature for a long time, and, in truth, how can anyone avoid encountering Sufism in Persian literature? Furthermore, is it not the case that one encounters the Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ at a supreme summit of literature, where the high spirit
uality of the Persians expressed itself in a lyric poetry that had attained its fullest maturity?
Accordingly, I translated and commented on the whole of Ḥāfiẓ’s Dīvān in order to be better able to relish this masterpiece.3 What presumption – alas (gustakhī kardam)! To better appreciate the text of the Dīvān, in the following chapter I have endeavoured to situate this monument of literature within its own century, which was the fourteenth century of the Christian era corresponding to the eighth century of Hegira. This was a grand century, between the rule of the Mongols and Timurids, an epoch of great circulation of thought, in a world with multiple centres.
The School of Sufism in Eighth-/Fourteenth-Century Shīrāz
This century saw the establishment of the great Sufi orders, with Sufism taking its place among the eminent sciences of the time. It was during this century that an immense canon of Persian literature developed, as Dhabīḥu’llāh Ṣafā has demonstrated in his survey.4 Diversified within well-defined genres, this literature was often designed for instruction. At the same time, by the compilation of manuals, some of which continued to be taught until recently, the doctrines of the Ash‘arite school imposed itself among the theologians and mystics of the period.
For their part, abundant commentaries on the works of Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) also exerted an important influence. Shi‘ite thought, too, was affirmed in this century, with masters such as Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī (782/1380). This too was the century of the Sarbedars, of the occult speculations of Ḥurūfism, of the revival of the Ḥanbalite school of theology, and it was also the era during which the founder of the Sufi order, to which the later Safavids adhered, also flourished. Additionally, it should be underlined that the spiritual and literary traditions of the Persian world had continued to persist in full force long after its Sufi founders – in particular Aḥmad Ghazālī (d. 520/1126) and ‘Ayn al-Quḍāt Hamadhānī (d. 525/1131) – had passed away.
Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry Page 26